The Home Stretch

After a lazy day and night of imitating fog, we were on the move again. Our final destination being the world famous Full Moon Party on the island of Koh Phangan, nearly 200km to the Northeast.

It seemed somewhat contradictory to be waking at 6am in a perfectly peaceful rainforest to make a mad cross-country dash by land and sea in order to attend an all-night dance party, but by this point, I'd long since learned not to question such things, and just go with it. So, one pickup truck ride, two pointless stops, a jammed minivan, a ferry crossing, a boat ride, and another pickup truck ride later, we arrived at our hostel where everything was, “no praablem.”

Night fell. Some food and a few beers later we made arrangements to get to the Full Moon Party. The hostel had a driver, but he would only take us as far as the pier—about half way—we would have to find our own transportation to the beach from there. Whatever. We grabbed a beer for the road and piled into the back of a pickup truck outfitted with benches and a rudimentary roof, along with the usual assortment of foreigners one finds in the back of such vehicles in SE Asia.

Nearly to the pier, our truck was delayed by a traffic stop, in which a police officer shone a flashlight in the back to ensure we all had open bottles of alcohol, then let us on our way. Once our driver would go no further, the four youngest travellers pounced on a taxi, leaving us to try to recruit two middle-aged guys to split the fare to the beach. “You guys heading to the Full Moon Party?” I asked. “The what?” (Was he serious?) “The Full Moon Party. Huge beach party. It's tonight. It's what this island is famous for.” “Ohh, nah. I think we're just going to try to find a bar around here.” “I'm pretty sure it's all just souvenir shops around here, we were here earlier.” “Yeah? Well, we heard there were a few bars somewhere around here.” “You sure?” “Yeah, we're just gonna' look around for those bars.” Suit yourselves, lamewads. We were heading to the giant fucking beach party.

The official Full Moon Party website boasts that the event draws between 10000 and 30000 people each month to the crescent-shaped beach of Haad Rin. I'd say (at least on December 21^st, 2010) that a few thousand would be more accurate, but who's counting? However many people there were, they were happy: the alcohol was flowing, the was music thumping, and the night was young. Drinks here come in one form—buckets. The beach is lined with stalls run by unshy locals, each trying their best to outdo their neighbors in terms of lewd signage. I chose the stall I felt struck the finest balance between perversity and poor English, and got myself a bucket of booze. However, by this time, the beer I'd drank earlier was right ready to leave my system, so I gave Mia the bucket and went to find the nearest bathroom.

Upon returning—no more than 5 minutes later—I found Mia in the same spot, but the bucket half empty. That wasn't good. This was a girl that turned red after half a beer, and she'd just downed three double shots in as many minutes. “How do you feel?” I asked. But she was already curling up on the sand, trying to go to sleep.

One benefit of an early end to our Full Moon Party experience was a decided lack of hangover the next day (well, for me anyway). We walked a few back roads and beaches. Watched a man burning brush in a clearing cut into a patch of trees. Took it easy. I tried not to think about our trip coming to an end. Or about the flight back to Canada. Or job searching. I tried, also, not to think about how a lot of things could have gone better. Or about all the money I'd spent. Or disappointment. But that wasn't so easy.

Writing this now—one year later to the day—I find myself thinking back to some advice that Mia shared with me early on in our journey. A well-travelled friend of hers once told her that, when travelling, it's best to have no expectations. I think that's good advice. Very little of what I experienced over these sixty-two days lived up to the ideal that I'd created in my mind. But, even so, I like to believe there is value in even the most unpleasant of situations. At the very least, they are an exercise in endurance; a test of ones mettle. At best, they give me a wealth of memories and plenty to write about. The highs can't exist without the lows, after all, so why complain?

We returned to Haad Rin beach the night following the Full Moon Party, (we discovered there was no shortage of moon-themed parties on Koh Phangan: Full Moon, Half Moon, Black Moon, and why not? Did people really need much of an excuse to party on a tropical island?) and found things very nearly as lively as they'd been twenty-four hours ago. The energy, alcohol, and fire flowed here almost as constant as the tide.

Looking out down the beach, I felt a strange déjà vu: like I'd dreamt this place once, but had forgotten it until now. We walked alongside the revelry, letting the waves lap our feet, the almost-full moon pulling us towards home.

Khoa Sok

Our inflatable canoe slid into a river of oily army green, beneath a multi-tiered fog that hung in the air like a crude afterimage of the jungle canopy, superimposed on the sky. We were in the heart of Khoa Sok National Park—thick jungle grown out over karst topography covering an area larger than Toronto. But that frigid metropolis was far from our minds twenty minutes into our trip down a tropical river, through forest older than the Amazon. In fact, the jungles of Khoa Sok are so old that they once shared the planet with the dinosaurs. And now, floating down this river between soaring, twisted cliffs of rust-streaked grey rock, under dozing pythons and mammoth moths, it wasn't difficult to believe that prehistoric beasts once hunted and ate each other here.

Back at the lodge, we had a buffet-style lunch with an overly-talkative Australian woman, (inexplicably in white), and a couple from Indonesia, who communicated almost exclusively through a series of knowing looks. “Have you eva' seen anything like this? Just look at this place...oh you're not Japanese, you look Japanese, has anyone eva' told you that before?...we don't have elephants in Australia, you know, not enough wata'...it's hot, sure is hot...” A young elephant trumpeted its return back to camp, mercifully cutting off the Aussie, and causing a cacophony of birds to erupt from the nearby treetops. Our rides were here.

Our guide informed us that there were 17 elephants in the park, (13 females and 4 males, who were kept separate) they weighed about 3000 kg each, ate 250kg of fruit a day, drank 200L of water, and lived up to 70 years. With all this in mind, we met our elephant driver, or manhout, whose ancestors rode these animals down from the lowlands of Nepal, below the foothills of the Himalayas, through the dense jungles of Burma, into Northern Thailand and on to Khoa Sok—a journey of over 4000 kilometers. Our trek that afternoon would be considerably less ambitious, but exciting nonetheless, as neither myself nor Mia had ever been so close to an elephant, much less ridden one through a tropical rainforest.

After climbing a wooden structure to board the beast, and some nudging from the manhout, we plodded off into the jungle, riding the slow swells of the animals giant steps. Behind us, the elephants footprints filled with water from the saturated soil, leaving a trail of muddy puddles the size of dinner plates. It couldn't get much more Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom than this. I had an elephant, a little Asian (who had recently been to Shanghai), a jungle, and someone who was deathly afraid of snakes. Not to mention the fact that I was carrying an authentic 1930's canvas book bag embroidered with the words: “MARSHALL COLLEGE ARCHAEOLOGY DEPT” (A gift from a sister forced to endure repeated viewings of said film on Beta growing up.)

Our elephant stopped mid-stride at one point, took a few steps off the path, and pissed. Was it toilet trained? The awe of our elephants fine manners was matched only by the sheer volume of urine it expelled. It was like a faucet on full blast. Once our elephant had relieved itself sufficiently, we continued on, overtaking the Aussie, whose animal had decided to deviate from the trail, tear down some vines, and eat them. (Later, we'd see elephants munching thick bamboo canes like stalks of celery.) Eventually, we came to a clearing—a sort of Lost World jungle valley—took pictures, and turned around.

After a short jeep ride, we were dropped at our riverside jungle house, which, to our surprise, turned out to be just that. With a group of monkeys whooping next door and a banana tree growing outside our bathroom, an interesting stay was virtually guaranteed.

That night, we dined by candlelight on the upper level of the main tree house. The food was good, the setting ideal, but the atmosphere seriously compromised by the owners decision to play top 40 hip hop. It reminded me of my first days in Korea, when, browsing through a corner grocery store, I noticed they were playing hardcore gangster rap—rife with foul language, sexist expletives, and racial slurs—and everyone, from old ladies to toddlers hand-in-hand with their mothers, was completely oblivious. There is a time and a place for rap, but grocery stores and candlelit tree houses are definitely not it.

Waterworld

We awoke to rain, no electricity, a few weak feathers of light filtering in through the curtains. So much for seeing the sunrise. With some effort, we wriggled out of our comfortable cocoon of silk mosquito netting and crawled up to the window to take a look outside; bleak grey skies, mud puddles, a wet dog. Mia returned to the cocoon, and with no major plans for the day, I couldn't blame her.

I ate alone amidst the clicks of geckos stealing glances from behind beams. Mia slept, while I read. Shortly after Mia woke, with the tide then low and shallows long, we had a swimming lesson.

Though she grew up on an island, Mia can't swim, and in fact, she's afraid of water. As a child, her younger brother had nearly drowned, so their mother told them that if they ever went in the ocean again, a ghost serpent would eat them. This proved so effective that, to this day, Mia fears sea monsters, and therefore, doesn't swim. But she gave it a shot—treading water, a few simple strokes, holding her breath—and did just fine.

Later, under a graphite sky, we kayaked to an uninhabited island, and paddled its perimeter. We scoped out the coast and eyed its nearest neighbours, but between ill-fitting life jackets and dark clouds rolling in, decided against going into deeper water, and instead made our way to the nearest point to follow the shoreline back around to the beach.

Our tandem kayak cut through waves past disused docks and backyard barramundi farms, fleeing growing thunderheads. All color drained from the Andaman. Bone-colored ships with masts like the tips of fish skeletons passed silently in the distance. We pressed on, navigating a mini mangrove forest where fishermen staked nets in receding water.

Back on our beach, we enjoyed some excellent seafood spaghetti and vegetable tempura. After dinner, I got 4 beers, a bucket of ice, and wrote until it was rude to stay on the computer any longer, then read. After some preemptive packing, I laid down with a little Legend of Zelda (A Link to the Past) but, instead of defeating Trinexx—the three-headed keeper of Turtle Rock—I fell asleep with my earphones and glasses on, the DS resting on my chest.

Route Canal

I awoke with high hopes for the day of rock climbing laid out before us, and knew—the moment we rounded the last karst's corner into Railay Bay—that I would not be disappointed.

We made our way down an aquarium gravel beach populated by cowardly crabs and dogs barking for the best breakfast scraps their still-sleeping owners would rightfully reward them. Then, after negotiating with a fisherman to cross a narrow canal, we caught a longtail boat to scream us past fantastical cliffs and hills plucked straight out of Super Mario to Tonsai, and, arriving late, got our gear and longtailed it to Railay, where the climbing had already begun.

Twenty Thai-led travellers tackled cliffs like melted candles; the smoky, residual rock sculpted into a beginner climber's paradise. While scared at first, (especially coming down) Hyangmi grew braver with each progressively more difficult route, until, somewhere between her third and forth ascent, she began enjoying it. After scaling a simple boulder, we advanced to the cliff, climbing ever-harder and higher routes until peaking on a narrow ridge of rock some sixty feet above the sand overlooking a translucent blue bay. More than once, I thought I was going to bail, lose my grip completely, and end up swinging like a pendulum from my groin; but I didn't, and neither did Mia.

It started to pour during our lunch break, a tropical torrent of violent proportions that had the patio cleared, umbrellas crippled, and all the footprints in the sand erased in seconds. We were forced to abort our afternoon climb, and retreat back to our beach beyond the cliffs. However, before we got there, three things happened: we visited Krabi Town, it stopped raining, and the fisherman raised his fee.

By the time we got back to the canal, it was dark, and the early bustle of activity at the nearby launch had fizzled down to a handful of off-duty boatmen, drinking in a hazy hut. I asked if anybody could take us to the other side of the canal—a distance of sixty feet, an accordian bus-length away—as a fisherman had done earlier for a fee of 50 baht; a price, we felt, was double what it was worth. After a few grunts and grumbles, one boatman spoke up:“I'll do it for 200 baht.” Ridiculous. No way were we paying that much to be ferried across this thing, but the boatman wouldn't budge; 200 baht for the fifteen second trip, or fuck off.

We chose to fuck off, and were dismayed to discover that, due to some weird twist in the landscape, it would take hours to trek to our villa along the jungle roads, despite it being a five minute stroll along the beach from the other side of the canal. I really wanted to just swim it. I'm not even a strong swimmer, but I knew I could make it easily. As far as sheer richness of experience, it was really the best option. But I had my camera on me, some things we'd bought, and Mia doesn't like the water, so we had to come up with another plan. Forty-five minutes, one failed phone mission, and a great deal of cursing later, the villa sent a jeep to pick us up, for free.

Suck it, boatman.

Letdowns Abound

Our much-hyped Krabi cruise turned out to be something more of a passenger ferry, where the majority of passengers roasted under an unforgiving sun on deck, or breathed dirty diesel fumes down below, while we paid the extra fee to sit in an air-conditioned cabin on the upper deck. Here, like a hundred other places in Thailand, Ong-Bak 2 played in an endless loop.

We had a short stopover on Phi-Phi island, so I ventured into the gaping tourist hole that spread out from the dock like a tropical fungus. Mia, furious about having to pay an“island cleanup fee” upon our arrival, chose to stay behind and fume. With the sun blazing and little interesting to see, I returned 10 minutes later with a strawberry smoothie to chill us out, and we continued on to Krabi.

At $33 a night, our Krabi accomodations were the most expensive of our trip. They were also fairly far from the core of Krabi culture at Railay Bay, but with our “Private Sea View Villa” booked, I was confident that we would—just this once—get a taste of luxury. I could picture the sea air blowing in through big curtained windows, waves practically lapping at our feet as we fell asleep to the soothing sound of the changing tide.

Yeah, not so much.

While the sea was technically visible (provided you stood on the porch with your head turned 90 degrees to the right), the “villa” was a cobwebbed hut with no electricity between 6pm & 6am, and no hot water, ever. On the bright side, they made some pretty good food for decent prices, had a couple of beat-up kayaks for rent, and it was quiet. We took what we could get, which included books and beer on the beach and some time on their single computer, and slept.

The Beach

One turbulant flight and two days after our trek, we were soaking up the sun on a semi-secluded Phuket beach. It was actually quite a bit more developed than we had hoped, but not nearly to the extent that many of Phuket's more popular strips of sand have been exploited. At least here, we didn't have to see any fat, fifty year old slobs parading young local girls around as if they had anything more than money keeping them together. We tucked into a quiet, palm-shaded corner of the beach and watched the waves come crashing in.

The weather was absolutely perfect, if hot, and before long the water looked far too tempting not to take a dip. Mia remained on shore, unraveling The Da Vinci Code (in Korean), while I took to the tropical sea. Up to this point, I could count the number of times I'd swam in the ocean on one hand, so I didn't think much of the fact that everyone else was swimming a hundred or so meters down the beach. Turns out, there was a very good reason for that. Rocks. More specificaly, razor sharp rocks. After I got up to my shoulders in water, the force of the waves pushed me into a series of rocks, which I instinctively tried to brace myself against with my hands. Before long, my palms were sliced up pretty bad, so I made my way back to the beach, hands streaming seasalty blood.

Bandaged up yet unable to swim any more, I decided to explore the coast, take a walk along the rocks and see what I could see. I rounded the small cape that bordered our beach, stepping carefully from stone to stone, and soon left civilization behind. Before long, I came upon a boy fishing by himself. I asked him if he'd caught anything. “Yeah, a fish, but I let it go.” “Just fishing for fun, then?” I inquired. “No. I'm fishing for mermaids.” He said, completely serious. “Oh really?” I said, suddenly intrigued. “Yep, I caught one once, a long time ago,” he said, casting his line out. “What did she look like?” I asked. “She had purple hair, she was pretty.” “I'll bet.” “And, she gave me this,” he said, setting his rod down and pulling a seashell necklace from his pocket. “That's a nice necklace. Where do you think the mermaid got the string to make it?” “It's fishing line. Someone probably threw it into the ocean and she found it. People throw a lot of things into the sea.” I couldn't argue with that logic. I wished him good luck and turned back to my beach, leaving him to fish for his mermaid.

Mia & I ate some BBQ chicken so good that I seriously considered ordering seconds from one of the seaside restaurants that jutted out onto the beach itself. Afterwards, we got a couple of beach chairs on the sand, sipped cocktails, listened to music, and read our respective books while the water frothed up to meet us. The singular perfection of this moment was not lost on me. I remember looking up from the pages of my book at the setting sun, or at the pretty girl sitting next to me and thinking: 'Well, it doesn't get much better than this. Remember this place, this time. You'll need it.' Then wishing I could stretch the moment out indefinately, somehow live inside that feeling forever. But the waves kept coming in, my glass became empty, and the sun eventually set.

Later that night, back in Phuket Town, Mia & I booked a cruise to nearby Krabi. The tour agent, a man in his early 30's, seemed to take great pleasure in accentuating the word “Krabi” rolling the “r” like a purring tiger, and emphasizing the “BEE” with a satisfying punch. “Soyouwannaboatto KrrraBI?” “Youeverbeento KrrraBI before?” “Krabi is nice, you will like Krabi.” If we liked Krabi even half as much as this guy enjoyed saying it, we were in for a treat.

Hill Tribe Trek

We loaded into the back of a pickup truck we'd booked to take us on a trek of some of the hill tribe villages surrounding Chiang Mai. Inside, we met Liz, an English girl, and Ingo, a German guy (more on him later). We were soon joined by three chain-smoking French, a Thai, and two more Germans. It was a cozy ride.

Our first stop was a long-neck tribe village, which was pretty obviously set up as more of a trinket-hawking market and human zoo than an actual, traditionally functioning village. Lucky for our wallets, we were given a strict 15 minute time limit, as not everyone in the truck had paid for this portion of the “trek”, and could therefore not take part. After a brief visit to a butterfly and orchid farm, and some lunch eaten on a bamboo structure that had recently collapsed under the weight of too many travellers, the real trekking began.

We spent four hours footing it through the forest, spotting wild orchids, giant mushrooms, and exploring an insect-infested cave. Despite his fear of all things eight-legged, Ingo braved the cave, but his visit was cut short after a hand-sized spider was discovered hunting crickets in the dark. Our hike finished in a village by a stream, where tiny chickens ran free, and two brothers kicked a ball back and forth through the dust. It was a pretty idyllic setting, and one that almost made me wish we had arranged to spend the night, especially since I was fairly certain the French guys had weed. They'd disappeared earlier, around the half way mark, while we were resting in another village, only to return 20 minutes late and giggly, with some less-than-believable excuse. I had hoped to smoke it once in each country, a record I had managed to maintain—par pur hasard—through Korea, Japan, China and Vietnam. But my luck began to run out in Cambodia, where the opportunity arose, but under circumstances that were much too sketchy for my liking, and it looked like I wouldn't be reenacting any scenes from The Beach while in Thailand either.

It was just us and Ingo, the German arachnophobe, riding out to see another waterfall before returning to our respective hostels. The truck jumped up and over the first bump in the road with such force that I bounced up and hit my head square on a steel crossbeam; it was at this moment that Ingo chose to tell me that he loves heavy metal music. I told him I only really knew of/liked two heavy metal groups: Metallica and Tool, which he didn't much care for, but he went on to explain that heavy metal encompassed a wide range of music, and even included guys like Bon Jovi. Somehow, I couldn't reconcile the difference between Tool's “Hooker With A Penis” and Jon Bon Jovi's “Bed Of Roses” (I still can't), but I took his word for it. Ingo went on to explain how he had left a new girlfriend back in Germany, for who “his heart was burning”, how they had met at a heavy metal concert and “made love their first night together.” He'd never met anyone like her, had only dated “stupid girls” before her, and, he told me, was seriously considering cutting his trip short so he could return to Germany and be with her. I got to know quite a bit about Ingo by the time we reached the waterfall, and we all sunk our feet into the cool muddy pools that the rushing water filled up and spilled out of down the dripping clay embankment.

On a locals recommendation, we ate at a stunningly good Italian restaurant, before enduring a hair-raising ride back from a drunken tuk-tuk driver, who insisted on shouting incoherant assertations that he knew where he was going the entire way back to our hostel. Thailand, it seemed, was full of bumpy rides.

Flying High

Chiang Mai was a subtler city than Bangkok, it had a softer touch. It was more simple, modest. It lacked noise. We wandered its streets, in and out of quirky shops and art galleries hiding untold talents. Packs of lazy dogs sprawled all over the pavement, as if melted by the sun. We took dinner in a riverside restaurant with twenty geckos watching overhead. With our hostel closed by 8, we had a quiet Saturday night, and looked forward to our appointment with Flight of the Gibbon the following morning.

Flight of the Gibbon is a jungle zipline adventure company located in the mountains outside of Chiang Mai. There, they've built rope bridges, wobbly spiral staircases, and strung cables between trees in order to let people experience what it's like to be a gibbon moving through the canopy. Imagine the Ewok village in Return of the Jedi and you've got the picture. After getting geared up, and going over some safety rules, our simian simulation began. We drove to the first zipline, where one girl backed out before even getting started. (Later, much to my amusement, Mia told me that she thought this girl couldn't go on because she was too heavy). The rest of us whizzed over to our first tree, clipped in, and laughed about who'd screamed loudest (that'd be Mia). Over the next 3 hours we did just about every kind of zipline imaginable—solo, tandem, fast, even “honeymoon”—culminating in a huge 1 km long tandem flight that sent us soaring over the rainforest. We finished by absailing down the side of a tree, something I opted to do face-first, Mission Impossible-style; it was an excellent decision. Thai musicians played for us at lunch, after which we hiked up the side of a multi-tiered waterfall.

We returned to town, the sound of palm fronds still rustling in our ears, and explored the night market. After some $10 all-you-can-eat sushi & shabu-shabu, I finished reading The River's Tale and started The Beach, a predictable, but entirely fitting choice, seeing as I was in the country in which it is set, was a huge fan of the movie, and had never read it before. It would prove to be a wildly entertaining read, the perfect compliment to my time in Thailand, time that now amounted to less than two weeks. Our great journey was nearing its end, all the more reason to make the most of every day we had left.

Bang

The bus ride to Bangkok contained about as much bullshit as we'd come to expect travelling through SE Asia, so nothing much surprised us during this day-long trip. Pointless 7am pick up to take us to the bus, wait there for 45 minutes, and then drive directly past our hotel on the way out of town? Yep. Musty old tin can with lumpy seats when we were told it would be a new coach? Mm-hm. Overly-talkative Swedish-Iranian businessman next to me explaining how he divides his time between Sweden and Cambodia, house and hut, wife and girlfriend? Ok. Draining 2.5 hour boarder crossing? Naturally. Arriving in Bangkok during rush hour? Whatever. We were pretty travel-hardened by this point, and none of this second-rate bullshit could touch us. In fact, anything less than a band of bus pirates hijacking our ride and robbing us blind could piss right off. We'd seen it all.

The transition from Cambodia to Thailand, however, was an interesting one. Buildings grew taller and roads smoother. The jungle thinned, then disappeared entirely, until only pavement, billboards and brand names ruled. Darkness gave way to neon light. We checked into a hip, modern hostel just 30 meters from the infamous Khao San Road, a place I'd hoped to find every bit as dicey, debaucherous and alcohol-soaked as I'd heard, but it was completely tame. Perhaps the party scene was played out, people had moved on, but I would have felt a lot better if I'd seen just one drunken shemale puking on a pantless foreigner.

Next day, we were talked into a 20 baht (66 cent) tuk tuk tour, the only catch being that we had to make a stop at a couple of preselected stores, so our driver would get a kickback. So the day whizzed by in a blur of buddhas and Armani suits, glittering wats and jewelery emporiums, a surging juxtaposition of spiritual traditions and modern moneymaking. After this, we visited the Royal Palace, the sparkling centerpiece of Bangkok, gilded to the gills, and bursting with enough bling to make Mr. T blush. But the most striking feature of the Royal Palace were its wall paintings, a series of mind-bending murals depicting warriors, ape-men, and gods in such epic scenes as divine death-matches and elephant battles, in all their glorious gore.

Later, after a great deal of haggling, we secured a tour of the surrounding canal system in a longtail boat; a slender craft propelled by an engine that looked like it belonged to an airplane. We ripped around canals lined with quaint wooden houses bursting with flowers, burnt-out buildings and rusty tin roofs, checking off another wat at sunset. We explored Khao San Road more fully after dark, finding a number of trendy restaurants, shops, and cheap drinks. Unfortunately, around 3am, some drunk, belligerent wankers made a point of proving they were dicks, making a loud, obnoxious entrance into our dorm, and keeping everybody up for a good 15 minutes. Apparently, Khao San had some life left in it yet.

Coconut Milk

Tired after three days of temple-trodding, we took things down a notch, and decided to take a day off to relax. We started by changing hotels, (bugs and overpriced beer just weren't doing it for us anymore) and snagging lunch at a very chillin' restaurant. They played perfect ancient temple beats, real Kingdom of Zeal shit. I got pretty excited about it. The day flowed easily from there: reading The River's Tale, watching Star Trek: Generations, stocking the mini-fridge with cheap beer from the grocery store, updating this blog in an internet cafe during a downpour. The only excitement came when Mia insisted I remove a baby gecko from our ceiling, which I caught in a rameon cup, but not before it ejected its tail, leaving the tiny translucent appendage twitching on our floor.

Next day, we made our way back to the Kantha Bopna Children's hospital to donate blood, and then tried to find a Korean NGO that Mia had sworn she'd seen on one of our trips to the temples. After considerable confusion and a lengthy walk, we found the place, and asked how we could help out. We were told that we could teach some classes tomorrow, but that some students were coming in that very afternoon, so we might as well stick around and join in. The students were understandibly shy, but betrayed a certain keeness in their eyes.

We returned to the Korean NGO the following morning, met the regular teacher, and drove out to a rural elementary school; a simple, single story building at the end of a dirt road. The schoolmaster presented us with a coconut upon our arrival, which I sipped throughout the lesson. Given the chance to guess the students ages, I would have put them between 8 and 10, but soon found that they were actually 10 to 16, with most being 11-13. Very few Cambodian children get a healthy, balanced diet, (let alone 3 meals a day) and as a result, look considerably younger than they actually are. They had no backpacks, pencil cases, or toys. Some didn't even have a book, which cost all of 2500 riel (60 cents), their parents were simply too poor.

What they did have, was heart.

These students rose, as a group, to greet me loud and clear, they did what they were asked, and tried their very best. They sat quietly with eyes facing forward, and stood up to answer questions. They didn't doodle, play, or fight. They were there for one reason, and one reason only, to learn English. It was like something out of The Twilight Zone, an alternate reality where students behaved the way teachers wished they behaved, but rarely do. One boy erased an entire page of writing, because, he explained, “[he could] do better”. I'd never seen that happen before, in two years of teaching in Korea, with any boy, of any age.

After every student had thanked us for the lesson, they headed back home, many of them barefoot, to help with the farmwork. We returned to the NGO, had lunch made for us, and prepared for our afternoon lessons. Mia went off to teach Korean at a local high school, while I remained there. All of the students from the previous day returned, in addition to several newcomers, and they brought questions. “What is ice hockey?” Was perhaps the most fun to answer, while “what is a playboy?” was the trickiest. I guessed they had seen the Playboy bunny symbol on a t-shirt or something, as the logo is quite popular in Asia, but that definition, of course, was out of the question. They were all 16 or older, so I ventured a defintion of “a man, with lots of money, who has many girlfriends.” This, however, only sparked another question from a particularily keen young lady, “Is there such a thing as a playgirl?”

We said our goodbyes, hit up some $4 all-you-can-eat galbi (that's right) and watched a Chuck Norris movie in which he single handedly escapes a Vietnamese prison camp, and then takes out an entire army, only to discover, in the end, that it was a documentary.

Lingas, Landmines and Light Rain

It was a long, bumpy ride to The River of A Thousand Lingas, our speeding tuk-tuk trailing a cloud of martian dust all the way back to Siem Reap. For those of you wondering, a linga is a phallic symbol (a cock), so yeah, the place is called The River Of A Thousand Cocks. More accurately, it is a sacred object or carving that embodies a wide range of meanings and carries a rich history. It's also the magic rocks (Shiva Linga) that get stolen from the town in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. While the river was nowhere near as exciting as IJatToD (alas, no cutting of a rope bridge with a machete and hanging on for dear life), it did have a pretty decent waterfall, which are hard to hate.

More temples materialized out of the forest. Temples of rust-colored stone, intricately carved, where the sound of strange strings and wooden flutes floated on the air. These were places populated not only by tourists and trinket hawkers, but barefoot monks, musicians, and those mutilated by landmines. One temple, which appeared flooded, consisted of four square ponds positioned around a central lake, small shrines rising up from the water. Mia mused that it might've been the king's private sauna, while I thought it looked more like something out of The Legend of Zelda.

But the best was yet to come. Towards twilight on our third day, Bechet smiled and told us, “one more temple.” It started out fairly standard, as Angkorian temples go, the requisite stone cobras and headless sentinels ushering us inside, but soon revealed itself to be the most spectacularly ruined temple in the complex. The sun-bleached carcass of a monster tree trunk had a collapsing doorway in its death-grip, each locked in a mutually dependent embrace. Stones were bigger here, designs bolder. A two-story columned structure still stood, admirably, on the fringes. With dusk closing in, a light rain began to fall, darkening the stone by degrees in sync with the sky. After the rain came we realized something wonderful—we were alone. There was not another person in this place. It was ours. We made our way to the back of the site, where a truly massive tree rose up from a wall like the outstretched neck of a brachiosaurus, feeding on the highest leaves. I couldn't take enough pictures.

That night, we said goodbye to Bechet, the tuk-tuk driver (I slipped him a 10) and went to a buffet and traditional Khmer dance show. The food was uninspired, but the show was mesmerizing. Girls in golden crowns made slow, swirling motions with their wrists, flicking flower petals in little bursts as they flittered about the stage. There was also a dance of courtship, in which a masked man repeatedly tried to win the affections of a pretty girl, who at first rejected him, and then fought with him, before finally taking him as her lover. We left, bellies full of bland, and perhaps a touch tantalized from the performance, in search of a new hotel.

Dr. Beat

That night, on Bechet's recommendation, we went to see one Dr.Beat perform on the cello at a local children's hospital. He opened with an intensely moving and flawlessly executed piece before taking up the mic and informing the entire audience of the dire state of Cambodia. The figures he rattled out were alarming: 40 000 children under the age of 5 dying each year from curable infections, over 80% of the population rural and poor, and an average household income of around 50 cents per day, to list a few. Even more alarming was the Cambodian government's utter lack of funding and support for its own hospitals, paying a paltry 2% of the facilities operating costs, while Switzerland picks up 10%, the remainder being supplied entirely through donations.

For the past 30+ years, Dr. Beat has been building hospitals, saving sick children and their mothers lives, and constantly drumming up donations by playing his cello, meeting world leaders, and speaking at every possible opportunity. We were shown a short video about the history of the hospitals, but it also included footage of a much younger Dr. Beat answering a reporters questions while tending to patients, all the while gunfire and explosions could be heard going off in the background. It is no exaggeration to say that he rebuilt a vital portion of a shattered country's medical system from scratch (during its reign, the Khmer Rouge exterminated almost every doctor and medical professional in Cambodia) and is responsible--through his hospitals, inoculations, and educational programs--for saving hundreds of thousands of lives. After an hour, it was clear that this was a man that fought an endless uphill battle, and one who was intimately aware of the damage a heartless government could inflict on its people, by simply failing to act.

He finished by imploring the audience to give blood if they were young, money if they were old, and if they were somewhere in between, give both. This time, we settled for giving money, but with Dr. Beat's words ringing in our ears, we'd be back.

Snakes. Why'd It Have To Be Snakes?

On our second day in Siem Reap, we saw several of the outlying temples. Unattended for hundreds of years, these structures are literally being consumed by the jungle that surrounds them. Shrubs sprout from stairways, vines weave over walls, huge banyan trees strangle stone like mutant squid. Here, time has blurred the line between jungle and temple.

We walked under weird shadows cast by branches swaying far overhead, through doorways darkened by the collapse of adjoining corridors, and around great trees that had inconsiderately taken up residence directly in the center of the sidewalk. It was as if the forest was reclaiming its space, slowly taking back what had once belonged to it. The result was awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, (at least for today) the best temples were also the busiest. It was difficult to take a picture without ten tourists lingering all over the shot.

Later that day, I climbed a large pyramid that offered excellent views of the jungle on all sides, the tips of temples peeking up through the canopy. Mia, unwilling to climb the incredibly steep steps in the raging heat, opted to explore the base, granting me a moments solitude. I took this time to try and gather my thoughts, try to make real all the unreality that was unfolding around me on a daily basis—that had been unfolding for 42 days now, and would continue for 20 more—I was two-thirds through my travels, slightly over 67%. As if that meant anything. How could you measure the things I'd done, the things I'd seen, experienced, and felt? In all honesty, I rarely felt the way I thought I would, traveling, more often than not finding myself preoccupied with the discomfort, annoyance, or disappointment of the whole venture. Of course, there were moments of bliss, flashes of brilliance that almost certainly made up for these feelings. Perhaps, though, a good portion of the pleasure of travel comes from finishing it, and looking back, thinking, 'I really did that?' and then remembering, you did.

One thing about traveling in Asia is that you never have to wait long for your next WTF experience.

That very evening, we set out on a cruise of Tonlé Sap lake, aboard a boat which bore a striking resemblance to a jumble of old planks, (painted a lovely Robin's egg blue) and skippered by a 10-year-old boy. With his older brother as navigator, our captain donned an over-sized cowboy hat and kicked the worthy vessel to life. We motored over the water towards a nearby floating village, and in thirty minutes we were there. This wasn't a mere 'village-on-stilts', but an entire community—houses, stores, school, church, and gas station—bobbing on the waves. There was even a floating basketball court.

After evading an attempted scam, (which involved buying school supplies for children at hugely inflated prices) we were told we'd visit a fish farm. Balls, I'd been expecting crocodiles. Puttering up to what appeared to be a restaurant, we noticed a couple of kids paddling around in big metal tubs. How cute. It wasn't until they paddled up beside our boat that we noticed they had big, fat snakes draped around their necks, and coiled at their feet. Mia screamed murderously. Another boy, sitting at a table in front of us in the restaurant, adjusted his even bigger, fatter snake so he could more easily eat his lunch. We were surrounded by motherfucking snakes! Frozen with pure fear, Mia shut down, and curled up into a ball, while I tried to convince the boat boys that we had to forget about the fish farm and leave, now. “There's no snakes here,” he tried. I pointed out three. “Okay, we go.”

Brought back to shore early, we watched the sun set from the slums, the place where lake people came to live during the dry season. It didn't seem too bad, the dwellings were shabby, to be sure, but, hung with brightly colored garments and prettied by potted plants, they had a certain charm. Moreover, the people looked happy. This was something we'd see over and over again in Cambodia; people who had nothing, who probably lived in a hut with no electricity, plumbing, or running water, but who always had the biggest, most natural-looking smiles on their faces. It was as if, never having anything, they'd learned to love life for what it was, and expected nothing more.

In a few hours, the true plight of the Cambodian people would be made all too clear.

Bechet: Best Tuk-Tuk Driver In Cambodia

We met Bechet, a tuk-tuk driver, outside a restaurant following breakfast our first day in Siem Reap. Bechet struck us immediately as a man of integrity; he was well-dressed, honest, and knew his trade.
The driver's finger moved over the surface of a map, tracing the day's route from Angkor Wat to Banyon Temple to Elephant Terrace and beyond, afterward, he told us, we could climb a nearby hill and watch the sun set over Tonle Sap Lake. For all this, he told us, he would charge only $12, since it was already late morning. Deal!

Angkor Wat definitely lived up to my expectations, (of course it was awesome, how couldn't it be?) but it wasn't my favorite temple in the complex, not by a long shot. For one, the aesthetic beauty of Angkor was marred by the fact that large portions of it were undergoing repairs, that is, surrounded by bamboo scaffolding and draped in ugly tarps. This could hardly be avoided—ancient temples need upkeep—but was annoying just the same. Bayon Temple, with its many stone faces (peaceful giants staring out into the jungle from atop a sort of pyramid) was more interesting, and the cascading trunks of Elephant Terrace took top prize for conceptual coolness. The sunset was well attended, but underwhelming. Throngs of tourists don't add much to the ambiance of hilltop temples.

Our hotel was $6 a night, the trade-off was a detached staff and a room crawling with bugs. Amazingly, and much to Mia's delight, we found an $8 all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurant and ate our fill. Though we'd already spent seven hours seeing half a dozen temples, our exploration of Angkor had just begun.

Crossing Into Cambodia

Actually, we didn't leave until nearly 9. We woke up at 7, got to the travel agency for 8, and then sat in the bus for the better part of an hour while the staff kept assuring us it would be “5 more minutes, 5 more minutes.” When we asked what the hold up was, they told us we were waiting for a late passenger.
This would never happen in Canada, if you're late, you get the next bus. Simple. And it sure as shit wouldn't happen in Korea either. Once, when I was on a bus (bound for the Jeju Fire Festival) that was running 10 minutes late the locals started shouting, “What's going on HERE!? Let's get a MOVE ON! The HONOR of JEJU is at stake! We've got FOREIGNERS on board! You're bringing SHAME to our island by not leaving right NOW!!!”
This dawdler rather pissed Mia off, to the point that she unloaded on him when he finally boarded, demanding “You have to apologize! Everyone was here on time! We all had to wait for you!” This was soon cleared up. The passenger wasn't late at all, the company had made a mistake, put him on the wrong bus on the other side of the city, and made everyone wait while they sorted it out. When we confronted the staff with the truth of this cover up, they mumbled a reflexive sorry and considered the matter solved.

The “late” passenger introduced himself as Renné, a Filipino-American physiotherapist who owned a clinic in Florida. He was on vacation for 9 days; 3 in Saigon, 3 in Siem Reap, and 3 in Kuala Lumpur. If this seems like a rather unusual itinerary, that's because it is. From experience, I knew the jet lag alone would last 5 days, that there wasn't enough in Saigon to warrant staying 2 days, let alone 3, and that this bus would likely take all day, (despite whatever we'd been told) thus consuming a huge chunk of his limited travel time. I kept these thoughts to myself, and, perhaps sensing it was strange that he should take a long, cheap bus ride sandwiched in between three expensive flights, explained that he was, 'just getting a taste of each place.' If he liked what he saw, he would return at some point in the future for a longer visit. I guess if you own a clinic you can do stuff like that.

In a few hours we reached the Vietnam-Cambodia boarder, and began the long, painful process of crossing to the other side. This involved getting off the bus carrying all our gear, regrouping outside and getting stickers, waiting in a huge line, having our picture taken, hoofing it a good kilometer to another building, waiting in another line in the scorching heat, having our visas processed inside, walking another 200 meters to a store, getting re-stickered, taking a mini-van to another location, and boarding a different bus. All told, it took about 2 hours; every minute of it bullshit.
While we were waiting in the second line (the one for foreigners), I read a huge sign that informed me that people who were caught with drugs at the boarder could be executed. This seemed both vague and excessive. It didn't specify which drugs. Just drugs, in general. There weren't any signs prohibiting the smuggling of guns, animals, or humans into the country either--apparently those weren't a big deal--but you try and bring the wrong plant in and they'll fucking shoot you on the spot. Makes sense.

From the comfort of our second bus, we watched the drivers of motorcycles strapped fat with plastic containers climb up and over their front tires with their boarder passes—that narrow slit being the only opening in an otherwise solid cube of Tupperware—and hover away, kicking up a huge cloud of dust in their wake. Lucky for us, the majority of the trip would be on paved roads, a relatively new addition to Cambodia's transportation network.

Apart from my usual music, reading, daydreaming and DS playing, I also watched a Sylvester Stallone action movie that came on (kung-fu and action are the only kind of movie ever played on buses in Asia). I had every intention of outlining the story, characters, and sequences here in great detail, but I can't remember a single thing. I think one guy was really good at throwing knives into other guys' necks.

Sometime after lunch Renné offered me some tea-—Emperor's Green Tea, to be precise—which he had picked up in China last month on vacation. You added the leaves to water, let it sit for ten minutes, and drank. The tea, Renné told me, was reserved for only the most special of occasions, but could be re-used up to eight times without losing its potency. He told me it cost $200. However, it is not Emperor's Green Tea that I find most interesting, but Lotus Tea. This tea is made by women who paddle out into ponds at night to sprinkle tea leaves into the nocturnally blossoming lotus, where they remain for a day, absorbing the nectar of the flower, and are carefully recollected the following night, having been naturally imbued with the essence of the lotus blossom. I can't imagine such a thing taking place anywhere but Asia.

The deeper we traveled into Cambodia, the darker it got; this was not merely a result of the latening hour, but also the fact that there were no lights, and not another vehicle in sight.

Contrails

Our train clacked south along the ocean towards Da Nang, curving in and out of cliff sides that hugged beaches littered with boats that looked like washed up coconut shells. We caught a flight to Saigon, which, at $27, was easily the cheapest of our trip. Of course, officially speaking, Saigon is now named Ho Chi Minh City, but, much like nobody with any sense refers to the Skydome as “Rogers Centre” nobody calls Saigon “Ho Chi Minh City.” There's a much longer history in the original name, plus, it just plain sounds better.

We only had one night in Saigon, but it was probably for the best, because Saigon is a city for single men. It is a place absolutely jam-packed with beautiful women. Not since I visited Osaka had I seen such an alarmingly high number of stunning babes. It was as if all the rockets in the region had converged on a single spot, a hyperconcentrated honey pot, a quantum mamularity, a point of infinite ass. Even the desk clerk of our second-rate back alley hostel looked as though she should be modeling professionally. It was really too much to take.

We booked a bus to Siem Reap and were gone by 8 the next morning.

Beware the Street Meat Sold Outside of Vietnamese Train Stations

Food poisoning is never fun, but having it hit you in the middle of the night on a train is enough to spoil anybody's day. I'll spare you the graphic details following those first desperate moments—waking in a cold sweat, fumbling around in the dark for a roll of toilet paper—and let it suffice to say that I painted the porcelain in two different tones, and it wouldn't flush in between.

So bad was my condition, that when we arrived back in Hanoi four hours later, I couldn't get into a taxi, because I felt I might repeat the incident on the train at any moment. So, I limped towards our hostel, stopping to make urgent use of the first bathroom I could find—a squatter—before heaving in the gutter, and going right back to the squatter again, practically rendering it useless for anyone else. I doubt the owner of that particular restaurant thought that this was worth the price of the single cup of coffee we bought.

Somehow, I made it back to our hostel, a room, and a bed, where I spent the entire day, sleeping and watching excellent Vietnamese TV. When I could finally keep fluids down, I knew I was getting better, but not nearly good enough to make it to Cuc Phuong National Park, a trip that required an hour walk, 3 hours on a bus, followed by an hour-and-a-half long motorcycle taxi ride. Cuc Phuong was out of the question. A pity too, as I was very much looking forward to seeing my first real rain forest, but this experience would have to wait until, three weeks and two countries later, we rode elephants through Kao Sok National Park in central Thailand.

While still weak, sore, and slightly nauseous the next day, I felt well enough to make it out for a few hours to a museum, a temple, and take my first solid meal. Following the Pho, we went to sit by the lake, where I was approached by a teenage boy, who first asked me where I was from, and then gave me a roach. Surprised that I should be offered weed—for free and at midday in urban Vietnam—I at first refused, but after he insisted, what could I do?

I walked a little ways down the lakeside, puffing the joint stub, looking out across the water through the blowing willow branches at Turtle Tower, standing stoically in the center of this chaotic city, a place in perpetual motion for a thousand years*. I was cured; and not a minute too soon, we had another train to catch.


*The city of Hanoi turned 1000 in October of 2010, just one month before our visit.

Sapa

Our wake up call came at 5am; a disembodied metallic tapping stirred us from sleep. The train was approaching Lao Cai, a town about an hour's drive from Sapa. We were herded to a van through the rain, crammed in, and taken to our hostel. I'd paid extra for a room with a mountain view, but the only view we had was of an impenetrable wall of fog and rain. Our spirits doused, we slept the day away.

By breakfast the rain had gone, but the fog remained, keeping Sapa cloaked in a veil of secrecy. We decided to explore. We walked through town to nearby Cat Cat village, a small community of H'mong ethnic people situated in the rice-terraced hills of northwestern Vietnam. Visibility was low, limiting our view of the landscape to about 10 meters, but we did meet a lot of local people; H'mong women dressed in their brightly stitched skirts, beaded shawls, and colorful turbans, carried large baskets on their backs, from which they pulled various handicrafts, urging tourists to “buy something from me” while the men, in jeans and t-shirts, zipped around the countryside on their motorcycles, hunting for fares. There were animals too: chickens on the trail, ducks in the ponds, pigs rooting in the fields, a lone monkey chained to the railing outside a store. Only once during the day did the sky show a brief flash of sunshine, before fogging up again, thicker than ever.

We booked a trek and met our guide the following morning, a minority hill tribe girl of serene composure who had hiked 4 hours from her village to meet us, and was now turning around to go straight back. I liked her immediately. She proved to be an excellent guide, and a rich source of information. Her English, entirely self-taught from talking with tourists, was remarkable. Over the course of our hike, we learned that she was 20 years old, married, and had a son, that in fact, marriages among her people were arranged at 18-19 and a baby by 20 was common, (it used to be 14-15, and 16-17, respectively). Divorce was forbidden. If she insisted on divorce, she would not only have to leave her husband, but her family and village too.
She also told us of a “kidnapping” ritual, in which boys, if interested in a girl, get a couple of their friends together and ambush her, state their romantic intentions, then carry her off to the kidnappers house, where she undergoes a 3-day trial run of the boys home and family. If things go well, she marries him, if they don't, she leaves. If this weren't interesting enough, there's also a once-a-year “love market” where married people go to reunite with former lovers, though, just how friendly these reunions get was not made clear.

Our young guide led us along dung-spotted roads, past prehistoric palms, and through tiny villages where curious children gathered to watch and laugh as we struggled down muddy slopes, all the while pointing out this plant or that feature, and filling in the details for each:

“These plants are used to make medicine. You can get $10 a kilogram for them at the market, so a family that picks many of them can get rich.”

“There used to be a lot of different animals here: tigers, elephants, pandas, monkeys, but not anymore, they were all either killed or scared away. You might still find some monkeys in the mountains.”

“At one time, opium was very popular here, many people smoked it, but after they started selling their children to buy more opium, it was abolished.”

Walking back to our hostel that night, we came upon a crowd of people, motorcycles, and cars blocking the street. At first, I thought it might be a traffic accident—we had already seen half a dozen by this point in our trip—but, after working our way forward, I saw that it was a fire, or at least, the aftermath of one. A charred frame stood smoldering where, hours earlier, a three-story restaurant, bar and massage parlor had been. People from neighboring businesses splashed buckets and drizzled garden hoses onto the embers, while the owners sat crying on the curb. It was the biggest fire in Sapa's history.

From the forth floor bar my last morning in Sapa, I watched the fog flow in and out like slow, woolly waves over the valley, show the faintest hint of mountain, before crashing back into the foreground, blocking out everything beyond the windowpane.

We took a tour to the Big Market, three hours southeast, the sky clearing finally as we drove down, revealing the stunning beauty of Sapa to us for the very first time since we'd arrived: bright terraced mountainsides laced with rivers, spanned by rope bridges, crossed by shepherds herding flocks, heading for greener fields, and hot meals, cooked in distant huts.

The market was lively, with vendors of every kind, selling skirts, shirts, hats and shoes, food, bright bolts of fabric, handbags and hammers. Blacksmiths pounded out new tools opposite young H'mong girls browsing for cell phones. Local women gossiped in small circles while the men smoked big bamboo bongs in the food tents. This was no ordinary market either, for in addition to the usual fare, there were areas for selling live fowl, horses, and buffalo. One entirely white buffalo sat apart from the others on a hill, people touching its horns for good luck.

There was something I couldn't leave the market without trying, something our guide had recommended highly--homemade rice wine. However, at 48%, I'm not sure it can rightfully be considered wine. Nevertheless, I found an old Vietnamese couple who were only too happy to let me sample some. The man offered me a capful, poured from his finest recycled plastic bottle, and I drank it down. It wasn't half bad, a bit like triple strength soju, but as soon as I'd downed the first shot, he was handing me a second, and after that, a third. I cut him off then, paid 3000 dong (about 15 cents) for the shots, declined the proffered liter bottle for $2, and went on my way, buzzed before lunch.

Continuation

Some may question the logic of continuing a travel blog nearly a month after returning from the trip on which it's based, however, considering that I finally have complete internet access, that now I can post pictures, and that every post up until this point was written about a month after it happened anyway, I don't see any reason why not to.

Now, where was I...?