A Night in Bhutan

"Look, cranes!" I shout as the car coasts down from the mountains into the Phoebijika valley. We have passed our first yaks on the snow patched summit after hours of hairpin turns through the mountains of Eastern Bhutan. Mark and Ugyen, our driver, squint through the windshield at the large flat expanse. The Black Neck Cranes come to the Phoebijika Valley to winter. In the spring they return to the Tibetan Plataea. "No wait, those are prayer flags!" They laugh, but the flapping white things seem to rise a bit. "Nope, those are cranes." We all squint across the expanse of marshland to see the large white birds take flight.

Ugyen tells us that there are no local hotels in the valley and most of the tourist hotels will cost more than we are used to. In the high tourist season, sometimes tourists have to stay with local families. Mark and I exchange glances, some discussion ensues, a phone call is made, then we are on our way to stay the night with a potato farming family. Tourist hotel be damned!

Ugyen negotiates the car across the dried marshland until the road disappears in the middle valley outside a small monastery. The wind whips across the plain making the bunches of white prayer flags on poles snap back and forth. The sun has begun to set over the far hills and the shadow across the valley is growing.

Ugyen approaches the monks to ask if we can leave the car there. It turns out the monk's car is broken. We help the monks push the car across the tundra as Ugyen gets in the drivers seat to make it start. "This is the reason I bought all that special clothing before we left" I think back smugly on the hours of agonizing decisions in REI and Paragon sporting good stores back in the US. It was so exciting to think of what we might encounter and what gear would prepare me for it. Then I look down and saw that all the clothing I had on today I had bought in a market in Cambodia. The minivan putters 50 yards and Ugyen emerges triumphantly. The head lama thanks him and drives off towards the sun now rapidly setting behind the mountains.

We grab our bags from the trunk and start walking up the hill. "I think its that house" Ugyen gestures to a mud house half way up the hill still golden in sunlight." We march up the hill through the scrub bamboo and over a small muddy stream with muddy rocks. The wind howls and whips up sheer cold as muddy temple dogs pad past me, nearly knocking me over as I battle between warming my hands in my pockets and keeping them out for balance.

Soon a young woman in an olive kira and a grey north face fleece appears on the hill side. She cocks her head and smiles and offers to take a bag. Then she leads us the rest of the way to her 70 year old mud farm house near the potato fields. She and Ugyen stomp their feet and yell at the three temple dogs who have come up the hill and encourage them to go home. "Leopards" she explains. If the dogs don't go home, they will be eaten by leopards. With that, she ushers us into the house. I notice that this is one of the few homes I have been to that has no dogs.

The mother and father appear at the door of the house and usher us in. We take off our shoes and come in to a small dark wooden room. In once corner is a propane stove and some pots and pans on a shelf above. In the other corner sits a neatly folded stack of blankets. In the center of the room is a pot belly stove with some small seating mats encircling it. Behind this room are two more. We put our bags in the corner and sit down.

We spend the evening drinking milky sweet tea around the stove, a cat curled under our knees (proof, I think, that the family had offered us the warmest seat in the house). With Ugyen as an interpreter they ask us where we are from and how long we have been in Bhutan. Then they chat amongst themselves and with Ugyen, who, as it turns out, is only shy in English.

Dinner is local red rice, home grown potatoes cooked with chili homemade cheese and dried beef cooked with more potatoes. The father urges us to eat more and more, refilling our cups from a seemingly endless pot of dahl until we feel drowsy. Then the daughters get up and make our bed in the alter room. "Are you happy here?" asks the 80 year old grandma sitting on the floor across the stove from us. Yes, yes, we say emphatically. Happy and warm. The family laughs. I am afraid you think we are dirty" says the older daughter in English. No, no. We insist.

One of the daughters escorts me to the outhouse with a flashlight before bed. We brush our teeth together on the porch and I ask her about her schooling. She is studying to be a teacher in Paro. Then we are ushered into the Alter room, one wall completely full with calendar pictures of gods and Buddhas and a burning butter lamp beneath them. Large pieces of bacon hang from a rack on the ceiling. Our bed is a series of mats and blankets carefully arranged on the floor. We put on all our clothing on and arrange blankets strategically before going to bed and shiver beneath the bacon.

jl

Mark and Juliah

Adventures in India, Veg and Non-Veg

We found an interesting article in the Kolkata Telegraph about urban professionals who've been robbed with snakes. Kolkata is such a teeming, colorful mess of people, food, and the bizarre. After 6 days here, the idea of taxi passengers have snakes thrown at them in the name of Bholebaba no longer seems strange. Bands of totally naked children run to you in the street, tug at your arm, beg for money, and follow you for blocks. Outside Kalighat Temple, someone tried to hand me a pigeon. You need a sort of evasive grace to make it down the street here: beggars and street children emerge from the corners and come directly to you; adults walk up to you with broad, paan-stained smiles, arms out, as if to shake hands. "Hello, sir!" But shaking hands can be the biggest mistake of your day, as these men have iron grips, and won't let go until they're done with their spiel: a desperate fumbling for a personal connection ("Your country USA...Obama!"), a plea to visit their shop ("No charge for looking!").

We started one day checking e-mail at a nearby internet cafe, but had to leave when an electrical fire started in the corner of the room, flushing out the patrons with acrid smoke. Our other plans that day included a subway trip to Kalighat, to visit the temple of Kolkata's patron goddess: the multi-armed, black-skinned destroyer Kali. I was super-excited by this trip, my 10 year-old undergraduate degree in Religion coming back to me in foggy bits. Kolkata--formerly Calcutta--is the ancient resting place of one of the goddess's severed toes, and one of the holiest places in India for offering a goat.

I thought I would be disturbed, but the sacrifice was quick and the animal was neatly beheaded: one moment it was standing quietly in the corner, eating red flowers from another goat's garland necklace; the next moment, it was walked to a guillotine and decapitated by a strong man with a mustache and scimitar. The family who have brought the goat dipped their middle fingers into the pooling blood and dabbed it against their foreheads, like a kind of tikka.

But Julie and I were hungering for a weirder scene, so we went to Varanasi--also called Benares, also called Kashi--the holiest site along the Ganges River, the city of Shiva, destroyer of the universe, where sadhus come to paint themselves in a holy ochre and roam the steps leading to the water. Our guesthouse was several blocks from the burning ghat, where families bring their newly dead to be cremated. We passed by the cremation sites with hoards of other tourists, foreigners and Indians, and our clothes became saturated with the smell of ash. "No photos! No photos!" a well-dressed Indian man barked at every foreign face, sometimes to no avail as pasty white tourists clicked their shutters at the crowds and the embers. A semi-charred leg rolled out of the fire, and the priest tending it would roll it back in.

In spite of round-the-clock burning funeral pyres, narrow streets congested with temperamental cows, and constant pitches for silk, musical instruments, hashish, imported Chinese toys, prayer baskets, and caged birds, Varanasi is an excellent place for hanging out, walking the length of the city by the holy river, watching funeral processions from the inside of a lassi shop, and taking things in: talking to other travelers, to Indians, to shopkeepers, tea sellers, rickshaw drivers, boat rowers, child touts, and guesthouse staff. After weeks here, you can start to understand the bewildering diversity in this country of a billion; how people can describe themselves as Gujurati, Punjabi, Keralan, Kashmiri; Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Buddist, Jewish; Businessman, Holy Man, Poor Man, Artist, Host, and Friend. In 6 weeks here, we covered over 3,000 miles--most of it by train, usually moving no more than 40 miles per hour. But we feel also that we've barely scratched the surface...but that any more time here might drive us both crazy.

ma

Mark and Juliah

Inventory Time

It's what's inside that counts, right?
Now that we have been traveling for over four months, we'd like to take a minute to tell you about what is inside our bags. What we still have, what we picked up and what we have lost along they way.

Best Thing I Bought:
Juliah: Dominoes! We bought them at a small country store in Sulawesi, Indonesia for 20 cents a set. They're made of cardboard and each set is the size of a roll of film. The dominoes totally save the day. There is often a lot of down time on a trip like this. Having some cheap games makes you a more patient traveler.

Other games we have are Othello, which I bought in Japan, and Connect Four, which we picked up in Thailand. These are good because the rules are easy to communicate and easy to follow. This means you can usually pick up a new player or a spectator at least anywhere you go.

Mark: A new tattoo! Thais are very into spiritual tattoos (though their designs actually come from Cambodia), and there are hundreds of images for a variety of purposes. The one I picked out is a 9 Spire Sak Yant Gao Yord that protects and brings good luck. I don't know why I spent all that money on travel insurance.

Since we arrived in Bhutan, I've also been very grateful for the thin, warm layer I picked up in Phnom Penh's Russian Market. I've worn it almost 10 consecutive days without washing, have slept in it, and spilled yak butter tea on the sleeves. It smells like travel, but it keeps me from freezing.

JL: Mark's only other long shirt of Mark's has affectionately been dubbed "Stinky Blue."

Most Recent Purchase:
Juliah: A clothes line and clothes pins. $1.50. Laundry has become a very satisfying activity for me. I'm getting much better at washing clothes in hotel sinks.

Mark: Prayer flags. These cost something like $10 in the tourist markets, but we picked ours up for $3 at a temple in Thimpu. And they've already been blessed by monks.


Thing We Lost That We Really Miss:
Juliah: Our camp light! We used it for everything: reading late at night, reassuring ourselves after malarone-induced nightmares, bathing with a bucket when the power was out, escorting our British friends back to their hotel late at night past barking dogs. I left it at a home stay on an island in the middle of the Mekong River in Cambodia. Hours later on the bus to Eastern Cambodia, I had a dream that our homestay host asked me "Juliah, why did you leave your camp light here?". The odd thing is that the woman spoke 7 words of English in real life, but in my dream we could really converse. That night we went through our bags and confirmed that yes, we had indeed left our camp light there.

Mark: My lightweight, warm, black shirt from REI camping store, forgotten on an overnight bus from Laos to Bangkok. There's such a crush of tuk-tuks and touts whenever a bus disembarks, that Julie and I had a strategy to get off quickly, grab our bags, and run two blocks away from the bus. Unfortunately, I was groggy and disoriented, and left behind the warmest thing I owned.

Favorite Thing I Brought:
Juliah: Contact lenses and hiking boots. Everything else I think I can find here.

Mark: Journal: perfect for scrapbooking beer labels from across Asia.


Last Thing I Left Behind:
Juliah: A snorkel. I left it in Bangkok. It served its purpose and probably won't get much use in India and the middle east. Thanks for the snorkel,dad.

Mark: Purple, short-sleeved button-down shirt. I have almost none of the original clothing I brought from the States.


Things I Don't Need Anymore
Juliah: Toilet paper. I'm almost over it altogether. Pretty cool, right?

Mark: Asthma Medicine. Amazing how 4 months in Asia can clear up a chronic respiratory problem.


Thing I Would Like to Ditch Next:
Juliah: Mosquito Net. Its pretty light weight and useful but we haven't used it at all! So far we've been lucky with the bugs. It was dry in south east asia or else too cold for mosquitoes.

Mark: Malaria pills. It's horrible medicine that needs to be taken daily, induces stomach cramps and sunburn.


Thing I Covet the Most:
Juliah: more clothes. I just wish I had more choices, but I guess that's a sacrifice you make when you travel light.

Mark: Right now, I covet gloves.


Juliah: Mom and Dad, there is a box of stinky old clothing headed to the house right now, but don't worry, the thai post office said it would take two or three months to arrive.

Mark and Juliah

The Altitude Hits You and You Fall Down

While you catch your breath, here are some interesting facts about Bhutan:

Bhutan has one of the strictest tourist policies in the world. Having witnessed the rise of tourism in neighboring India and Nepal, Bhutan has regulated the tourist industry to keep out low budget backpackers. The average tourist must pay $200 to $250 a day to be in the country.

Bhutan got its first popularly elected Prime Minister in 2008. Most Bhutanese will tell you they wish the king was still in power.

Bhutan uses "Gross National Happiness" rather than mere economic measurements to measure its progress towards society's greater good.

The penis is considered a protective image. Pictures of penises adorn walls of buildings while wooden penises hang from the eves to protect the home. (See our flickr page for extensive documentation http://www.flickr.com/photos/markandjuliah/)

Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it is said that there are so many mountains in Bhutan that many have not been named, let alone climbed.

There are only two flights in to the entire country per day.

Bhutan got television for the first time in 1999.

To enter temples, schools and other government buildings, Bhutanese nationals are required to wear national dress.

There are no traffic lights in the country.

20% of the country is under constant snowfall.

By Constitutional Law, 60% of the country must remain covered by forest. Currently 68 to 72% of the country's land is covered in forest.

They have free health care for everyone--even altitude-sick tourists.

Mark and Juliah

The Nine Best Ideas in South East Asia

Last night we went out for a little escapist pleasure and saw Sherlock Holmes in Bangkok's Siam Square. After 128 days of continuous travel, it was nice to sit in a cool theater, get sucked into American entertainment, and forget that we were supposed to be engaging in rewarding cross-cultural experiences. The movie was excellent, and started after only two trailers and a 90 second homage to King Bhumipol. Check it out if you get the chance. Everyone in the theater stands while this is playing.

We've got about 36 hours left in Thailand before we fly to Bhutan, via Kolkata. Julie's getting some highlights while I do laundry and hunt down some paperback books. Over our last few pitchers of Beer Chang, we've had time to consider some of the best ideas to come out of South East Asia. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Street Food. Okay, this might actually be the best thing in South East Asia. Street food is sold from wheeled carts and grilled or fried immediately as you order it, so it's often more sanitary than the restaurant meals that may have been sitting for hours in the corner of a dodgy kitchen. There are hundreds of options, it costs a fraction of what you'd spend anyplace else, gives you a chance to banter and practice your language skills with the vendor, and you know your money is supporting people at the bottom of the economy struggling to get a leg up. Yay, street food!

2. Tuk-tuks. Named after the sound of their motors: "tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk...." You can cross Phnom Penh from North to South for about $0.75. In Thailand, they look like a green, three-wheeled egg. In Laos and Cambodia, they're usually just a motorcycle with a carriage hitch.

3. Fresh, Green Pepper. Not chili pepper, but "pepper" pepper. It's cooked fresh with your meal: soft, ripe, and about the size of tobiko caviar. Fresh pepper pops in your mouth, and the flavor is strong like bitter dark chocolate.

4. Mortar and Pestle. Grinding spices releases and blends flavors more effectively than a food processor. The twenty minutes it takes to mash raw ingredients into curry paste is well worth it. If you don't have one at home, go get a large, wooden mortar for your kitchen.

5. The Wai. Put both hands together in a prayer position at your forehead and give a little bow. For over a billion people in Southeast Asia and India it means "Hello," "Goodbye," "Thank you," and "Welcome." More humble and less ambiguous than a handshake.

6. Monks. Most Thai, Lao, and Khmer men are expected to spend a period of their lives in a monastery. Some serve only 6 months, while others train for 10 to 20 years. Monks perform acts of charity, prayers for their communities, and give daily blessings in return for alms. They live off of nothing that is not given to them.

7. Constitutional Monarchies. Thai people really love their king, and are fiercely patriotic. Check out this video. Most of it is in Thai, but it's still fascinating.

8. Haggling. Even in some department stores, there's no set price. The disadvantage is that there's usually tiered pricing: one for locals and one for foreigners.

9. Geckos. They're small and green, and they chirp and eat mosquitoes. What's not to like?

Mark and Juliah

First Quarterly Report

First Quarterly Report
By Juliah

January, 2009 Kampot Cambodia

After over three months on the road, I feel compelled to give you a quarterly summary. Thanks City of New York, I obviously haven't forgotten the work we did together. Here, we have chosen some very important qualitative and quantitative indicators to provide you with a snapshot of our travels so far. Let us know if you have any suggestions for other data we can/should track and we will probably do it.

Countries visited:
South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

Average daily expenditures (for the both of us)-$56

Sunglasses Replaced:

Juliah-
Seoul, South Korea $8 (they came with a case!)

Manado, Indonesia $2 (the red ones)

Bangkok, Thailand $1.50 (blue)

Mark- none

Three points Juliah. Juliah wins.

Accommodations used to date: 43

Note: We have slowed down considerably from when we first started this trip. In our first month or two, a change in accommodation was more likely to indicate movement between towns or attractions. Now we find ourselves changing accommodations within one town more often- like to move to cheaper or more comfortable places.

Cheapest Accomodations: Muang Ngoi, Laos, $3.75 for a riverside bungalow. It had a nice balcony, electricity from 6pm to 10 and a shared bathroom round the back.

Most Expensive Accommodations: Seoul, South Korea, $35 for a room in a large budget hotel where you had to request the sheets but you get instant coffee in the morning.

Modes of Transportation thus far

airplane, taxi, shuttle bus, day ferry, donkey cart, outrigger canoe (motorized), motorcycle, trekking, cargo truck, share taxi, city bus, overnight train, sangthaw (its a pick-up with benches in the back), overnight ferry, double decker overnight bus, bicycle, tuktuk(benches pulled by a motorcycle), riverboat.

Flat Tires Attained: 3

Sulawesi Indonesia:2

Kampot, Cambodia: 1

Best Animal Related Injuries

Juliah: In the Monkey Forest in Ubud, Bali, a monkey climbed on to my shoulder and ripped out my earring. It took the earring up into a tree and sucked on it for a few minutes before spitting it out. My ear hurt for a few days. I kept wearing the earring for several weeks.

Mark: On Koh Wai, Thailand, a nasty centipede crawled up my swim suit and bit me three times on the left and right legs. Everyone there was very nice about it, but the the spots ached for weeks!

Memorable Meal

Juliah:

1. Day 2 of our trip, in Seoul we decided to have a sashimi lunch at the fish market. The Seoul fish market is huge and full of, well, fish. Its bigger than Cosco. We confused the exchange rate and ended up ordering a $60 sashimi meal instead of a $6 sashimi meal. We realized this too late and decided we just had to roll with it. The number plates and dishes that followed were mind boggling. We didn't know what it all was and which parts we should have been eating. It was day 1 of sitting on the floor and my legs had fallen asleep before the sashimi even arrived. We washed as much of it down with Soju as we could. See our flickr page for the pictures.

2. We took a motorcycle tour in Eastern Cambodia and stopped in to a Pagoda around lunch time. The monks and the abbot were just finishing lunch and after some talk between our drivers and the pagoda staff, it was decided that we would eat lunch here. We sat on the floor in front of the large gold budda on matts and ate the lunches we brought with us. Then a woman offered us tea, the remaining food the monks had eaten and rice from an alms bowl (the kind that monks across SE Asia use to collect food from the community each morning.) Sadly, the alms bowl rice didn't taste any different from regular rice. At the end of the meal the abbot requested we take a picture together.

Mark:
1. JULIAH ATE DOG! We were starting a two-day hike through Sulawesi, Indonesia and our guide was buying a little package of dog meat for himself. He asked if we wanted to try some, and Juliah took a heaping handful, ground up with chili and lemongrass.

I did not eat dog.

2. On our overnight village stay on that same trip, our guide Budi arranged for us to eat Papion. It wasn't the most delicious meal, but the preparation was amazing. We helped pick out the chicken for slaughter, and then we got to hold it and play with it for a bit. After it was killed and cleaned, the parts were mixed with rice, diced banana stalk, and instant noodle seasoning, then poured into a long segment of bamboo and cooked directly in the fire, while the head of the household kept beating a pesky cat with a stick. The taste was overall pretty plain, but the preparation was amazing.

Notable Sleep

Juliah: Trekking in Tana Toraja we got to stay the night with a family who lived in one of those crazy carved houses. (Note: this was actually the same day I ate dog and chicken in bamboo that Mark mentions above). We had dinner with them and watched the soap operas from Malaysia until the generator went off at 9pm. The older daughter had given us her bedroom for the night. It was one of the three rooms and was at the front of the home. The bed was a two inch mattress on the floor and two blankets. As we were settling in, she ran upstairs to us and said in English "simple" and gestured at the room, as if she were embarrassed about how simple her home was. I think she learned the word from our guide downstairs and ran upstairs before she could forget it. In our limited Indonesian, we told her that the house was beautiful and thanked her for letting us sleep there.

Mark: Our first night's stay in Bangkok was pretty horrendous. It was the cheapest place we could find, but the walls were just plywood and the mattress was just a thin layer of sawdust.

Food We Love

Juliah- Coconut pudding dumplings in Thailand, Roasted sticky rice served in banana leaves in Indonesia, mango salads, cold sugar cane juice with orange served with crushed ice in a plastic bag, green onion dumplings.

Mark: Lao sticky rice, Thai green curry, our first meal of Indonesian nasi goreng, and Cambodian iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk.

Best Splurges:

Juliah: Jeans! I bought them for $10 at the Russian Market in Phnom Phen. Since so many clothing factories are in Cambodia now, you can buy clothing really cheap. Jeans are totally impractical for this climate and travel but they make me feel like a human being again.

Mark: Scuba diving certification in Indonesia! It was a serious expense, around $350, but it include something like 20 hours of instruction and 4 ocean dives, and it's allowed me to continue diving with Juliah.

Memorable Party

Juliah: This is easy, because we haven't had many parties. Most of the time, its just the two of us, drinking a local beer and playing dominos in the evening. Two evenings come to mind.

Pay day at the Scuba Shop on Gili Meno in Indonesia

Mark was getting his scuba certification and we practically lived at the dive center. When we walked by the only bar on the island, the local scuba guys beckoned us to have a drink with them. Later, the poi came out and there was fire dancing. Mark amazed all the 18 year olds punk rock surfer guys who worked in the dive shop with his fire dancing. Their jaws dropped to see a older white guy twirling fire. Afterwards, we looked at those green glowing things in the water (phosherates?) and I fell into the ocean.

Tubing in Vang Vieng, Laos

So you rent an inner tube for $5 and take a tuk tuk up the river and find bars full of hundreds of half naked 22 year-olds drinking and zip-lining in to the water. After a beer or two at the first place, you and ten of your new best friends smear more sunscreen on each other and get on your inner tube and slowly float down to the next bar. The bar staff throw you a rope to reel you into their bar. Then they help you to stack your inner tub on the already gigantic pile of inner tubes. This goes on for about 10 bars. The whole scene felt so hazardous- so much drinking and poorly constructed rope swings over shallow water. All the same, it is a time and a place unlike any I have ever seen.

Mark: There was also Christmas at Niall's house in Phnom Penh. Just before we left California, we joined a social networking site called CouchSurfing, that allows people all over the world to connect while traveling through homestays and coffee dates. Niall is a British guy living in Phnom Penh and a few housemates, and the four of them were generous enough to throw an open-invitation Christmas party for 25 strangers in their penthouse apartment. We met some incredible people and had a great time.

Some awesome things that made it all worthwhile

• Diving a airplane wreck in Indonesia
• Washing an elephant in a waterfall
• Exploring a floating village at sunset in a boat with local young people
• Sharing a meal with 1,000 people at a funeral in Indonesia
• Kayaking through a green mountainous valley with no one else around
• Getting an amazing thai massage in a temple in Bangkok

Most Frustrating

Juliah:
1.Asian style toilets. I don't understand why I am still peeing on my left foot every.single.time. I wish I could watch other women use the toilet to see what they are doing. But I have not been able to facilitate this so far. . .
2. Tiered pricing systems. I pay $8 that locals pay $1 for.

Mark: The Indian Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. When we applied for our visa in person, we were told we needed to submit photocopies of our passports and paperwork--something not mentioned online. This required a mile's walk through the city during the hottest part of the day to find a working photocopier, and a race back to the embassy to submit our application before the noon deadline.

Interesting People We've Met
I think this was Michael, an older American who'd moved to Cambodia in 1992 to start the country's first English-language newspaper, the Phnom Penh Post. His only previous experience with journalism was as a newspaper delivery boy. He'd been in Cambodia when the UN Transitional Governing Authority pulled out and just as Cambodians were sorting through the rubble and rebuilding their country, and he'd documented the very violent coup of 1997 when separate political parties had their own tanks and soldiers fighting in the streets. He said he'd only been able to publish about every other week, "the most infrequent weekly in South East Asia," but the coverage had been brazen: interviews with child soldiers, photographs of soldiers going through the pockets of air crash victims. When we met him, he'd recently returned from several weeks in Afghanistan.

Most Annoying Fellow Backpacker

Juliah: French woman on bus in Laos from border of Thailand and her stupid German boyfriend. They rolled their eyes and snorted everytime the bus stopped. The bus kept stopping because the driver was looking for gas before trying to cross an isolated strip of mountains. The european couple would have noticed had they looked up from their lap top. When they did look up, the german dude came around to the front of the bus, sat in the drivers seat and honked the horn at the driver. It was a bad moment for white people everywhere. Oh, AND he threw trash out of the bus window. Who does that?

Mark: In Vang Vieng, Laos, we met this bizarre Swedish guy who lured us to his friend's bar and just became stranger and more annoying as the night went on. He asked us about our lives back home and what we did for work, then said, "Oh, I'm a carpenter, healer, rescue diver; I do many, many things." He later said he hoped something really awful would happen to the US, that it would fail and that it would be good for the world.

Things we have learned about ourselves that we feel like sharing

Juliah:

1. I have a good sense of direction. I can take you to places that neither of us have ever been before, but I some how know how to get us there.

2. I am more afraid of heights than I would like to admit. But I just admited it! There, glad thats out in the open.

3. I am fine with very little. A bucket of water for a shower, a plate of rice for a meal, one pair of pants. No problem. Bring it.

Mark:
1. Travel is more rewarding when you can speak the local language, and I really enjoy learning foreign languages. Just a few words can get you much closer to local people, and that's been the most rewarding part of this trip.

2. I have a serious fear of biting and stinging insects. Since the centipede incident one month ago, I keep swatting at imaginary red ants in my shorts.

Surprises so Far:

Juliah:

1. Mark is STILL talking to me!

2. I'm not exhausted or grumpy or jaded at this point in the trip.

Mark:
1. In the eight years since I was last here, there have been some serious changes in South East Asia. Many of them are positive: people have higher standards of living, the roads have improved, and more schools have been opened. But mass tourism development has left a mark on some previously very beautiful and quiet places, and I'm not always happy to see large, loud crowds of culturally insensitive foreigners interfering with monks in Laos or laughing in some of the more somber places in Cambodia.
2. We are under budget! We never have to go home!

Hopes/Fears for the Future

Juliah: I have an irrational fear of running out of SPF 85 sunscreen. Thanks mom and Kate for the last shipment.

Mark: I'm looking forward to dumping some of the weight in my backpack! We haven't bought many souvenirs, but the small things have been adding up. I also hope we can continue to avoid dysentery in 2010.

Mark and Juliah

True Tales of Survival from Cambodia

If you've ever imagined ghosts rising from their grave to haunt a dark cemetery, you'd have a pretty accurate picture of Phnom Penh's Killing Fields. Through the nearly 4 year nightmare of the Khmer Rouge, two million people were starved to death, worked to death, forced to farm fields studded with hidden landmines, beaten to death with hammers, rifle butts, and against the trunks of trees. 20,000 of them were dumped at this site, one of 300 around the country. Reconstruction efforts designated this place a site of remembrance and mourning, gathered the remains of as many victims as could be recovered, and placed them in a memorial stupa in the center of the field, a former Chinese cemetery. Many of the bodies were buried too deep and scattered too far for recovery, and now, 31 years after the fall of Pol Pot and the KR army, when the rainy seasons churn the ground to mud, chips of bone and scraps of cloth sift from the earth and float to the surface, occasionally fragments of skulls still blindfolded in traditional red krama scarves.

The older generations (meaning anyone over 35, since the average age in Cambodia is 18), remembers the KR and the following years of war vividly. They recall their own humiliations and suffering, but none who we've met will discuss their feelings about the leadership: not only Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, but the village chiefs who facilitated violence and starvation, the teenaged children who conducted the interrogations and murders. "Cambodian people remember, but they do not say,"one man told me, himself a former Khmer Rouge soldier until his parents were murdered. "We don't want to be angry, but we know which countries did this." Start with Richard Nixon, which orchestrated a coup and installed a corrupt, viciously anti-communist puppet who would allow the US military to carpet bomb Cambodia's eastern border, where Vietnamese troops were building bases. Consider Great Britain and France, who taught Cambodians how to lay land mines, still maiming farmers and children today. Blame also China, who traded guns for food with the Khmer Rouge at a time when Cambodians were starving to death, anticipating that the KR would use them against their ancient enemies, the Vietnamese. Cambodia is still awash in Kalashnikov machine guns. There's no one devil behind the atrocities, just the manipulations of superpowers fighting a proxy war over ideology.

I do want to share with you how amazing this country is: the people are humorous, giving, and show kindness without limit; the land is flat, covered in rice paddies and majestic, tall pagodas against a background of small hills, karsts, and mountains. Phnom Penh is a clean and sophisticated city with cafes, noodle stalls, silk shops, and a rich tradition of foreign communities and western ex-patriots who bring their own colors to the culture. But the crowds of street children and amputees keep prompting the same questions about the terrible history of the country. Instead of writing about our adventures, I'm going to try and share stories of some of the people we've met here, who've been generous with their time and every other resource they've had at their disposal.

Sokha Keo

Sokha Keo was the very first person we met in Cambodia, just about an hour after crossing the border from Thailand. We'd had a rough time crossing immigration: Julie had haggled down the price of our visa from $40 to $25, which I didn't think was even possible. The border guard wore no name tag and no shirt, and refused to give his name or any kind of receipt. It was a quick introduction to the corruption of public officials in Cambodia.

It was too late to reach Sihanoukville in the south, so we walked into town to seek out lunch. We had no Cambodian money, spoke none of the language, and had no hotel.

"Can I join you?" a man asked us from another table. "I am a student of English," he said, and proceeded to tell us about his teacher, an American who had left several years prior. Sokha recommended dishes for us to try, shared some food from his own plate, and said he would be happy to pay for our meal, though we rejected the last offer.

"Are you from Koh Kong," I asked him.

"No. I am born in Phnom Penh, but I am an orphan. My parents were killed, Khmer Rouge, so I come here to the orphanage in Koh Kong. Now I work at the social affairs and rehabilitation department."

"Oh," we said, not really sure how to respond, feeling uncomfortable, realizing that back home it's culturally taboo to ask questions about death.

"Do you want to come to my house?" he asked. We turned him down, feeling too green in Cambodia to know or trust people, but he gave us his number and asked us to drop in on him the next time we were in his town.

Receptionist at the Ankor Meas Hotel

We reached Phnom Penh the next day in the late afternoon. Reaching the capital city involved a 6 hour bus ride over smooth, new roads built by Chinese construction firms. We'd already checked in, and had spent the day exploring Phnom Penh: the Royal Palace, where the floors were covered in silver tiles, the National Museum, housing Hindu relics from Ankor Wat, and S-21, an old high school the Khmer Rouge converted to a detention and torture center where prisoners were kept immediately before transfer for execution at the Killing Fields. Now we were back at the hotel, chatting with the woman at the front desk.

"Are you from Phnom Penh?" I asked, wondering if she might recommend other cities in Cambodia.

"No, I'm from Kampong Thom," she said. "I moved here after the war."

"What do you remember from the war," I asked. "Do you remember the Khmer Rouge?"

"Always, poom-poom," she said, imitating the sound of machine gun fire. "Sometimes we eating, 'poom-poom', we have to drop everything and hide. We working, washing clothes, 'poom-poom,' we have to leave and run."

The woman was roughly our age, and I came to understand later that she wasn't referring to the Khmer Rouge, but to the years following their defeat--once the Vietnamese had invaded, chased Pol Pot into the jungle, and attempted to turn Cambodia into a colony. For nearly a decade, guerrilla battalions of KR soldiers held control of land in the south and east, making incursions into the cities to murder civilians.

Mr. Sreung

After visiting the ruins of Ankor Wat in Siem Reap, Julie had an idea to get as far away from the tourist circuit as we possibly could. In Kratie, roughly four hours south and east of Siem Reap, we could spot endangered Irrawady River Dolphins swimming in the Mekong, then take a boat to a small river island and stay with a family.

The home we found belonged to a slightly older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Sreung had grown children who lived nearby and visited often, though none of them spoke any English. Mrs. Sreung had a point book through which we were able to communicate that we could stay for $6 a night and request meals, though I vigorously underlined the picture showing that I had trouble with entrails, and ignored the illustration of dried stingray.

Mr. Sreung returned home from work every day at around 7pm, and initially showed very little interest in us. When Julie and I attempted to teach him dominoes, he tried to teach us a Khmer card game. None of us could really follow the rules, which seemed a cross of blackjack and poker, and Mr. Sreung opened up a bit, revealing he was diabetic, and that he knew some French.

"I was working for the French," I think he said (though he might've also said he lived in France, or was going to France).

"Oh, so it was good for you to be away when the Khmer Rouge came."

"No, no," he said. "All the time, working. Always working." He got up and went to his kitchen, returned with a small amount of rice that fit in the center of his palm. "This was for one person, for one day. All we had to eat." He got up and went to the kitchen again, returning this time with a small bowl filled with rice, enough for a single pot. "And this," he said, "was a ration for 40 people."

Mr. Thriy

Mr. Thriy was our guide to Bokor Hill Station, a resort for wealthy French colonialists abandoned in the 1950's, then used by Pol Pot as an army base and prison.

"Don't worry about the guide," he said, pointing to a shy official in flip flops, carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. "There is no crime in the jungle; he only carries the gun if we run into the wildlife. Like in Bokor, there is still the black bear."

"Also," he said, "I know many books explain about the landmine, but don't mind about the landmine here, because I was army, and I know when we put the landmine, we only use them against the army, then when we leave, we pick them up again."

"What army were you in?" we asked him later.

"Khmer Rouge army," he said. He had joined when he was 21, when the KR was a collection of loosely assembled bands of rural villagers reacting to American bombing in the east and President Lon Nol's suppression of communist sympathizers in the cities. A year after Pol Pot came to power in 1975, he learned the Khmer Rouge had killed both his parents. He deserted the army and lived alone in the jungle, eating wild potatoes, fish, and any game he could catch. "If I heard a person talking, I would run away," he said. "I still knew how to talk, but my mouth couldn't make a sound."

After two years of living in the forest, Mr. Thriy was captured by Vietnamese soldiers, who had invaded to fight KR attacks against border villages. "They tied me to a tree. I thought they were going to kill me, but I talked to them, and they could understand me, slowly, so then I became a soldier for the Vietnamese army." Fighting against the Khmer Rouge in a later battle, he had stepped on a landmine. "But a small one, a plastic one, so no problem. I'm moving so fast, I can't stop, but I knew what to do: jump on my side and tuck my leg." The explosion shattered his shin, which wasn't repaired until years later. Now, at age 53, he takes tour groups on mountain treks to Bokor Hill Station, close to where he fought the Khmer Rouge.

These are only a few of the stories we've heard from people over the last month, traveling Cambodia west to east and back to the Thai border. We love this country--enough to overstay our month-long visa and deal with the hassle of corrupt border officials--and if any of you were considering a trip to Thailand, I'd recommend Cambodia first.

If you're interested in learning more about the Khmer Rouge, I strongly recommend Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. It's a complicated history, and the author explains it much better than I can.

Thanks for keeping up with us over the last few months. We're working on a statistics and retrospective entry that should be up soon. We leave the Southeast Asian peninsula on January 28th for Bhutan.

Mark and Juliah