Three Great Days

Kira’s post.

Have you ever walked twelve kilometers in one day? Well, I have. On a three-day trek out of Chiang Mai, Thailand. (I walked twelve kilometers on the second day, plus more on the others.)

On the night before we left we had to tell our hotel what we wanted for breakfast because we wouldn’t have enough time to order since our trek started so early the next morning. When I woke up, I had to get dressed very quickly so I would finish my breakfast on time. When my pancake came, I dug in because I was so hungry. I knew I had a long day ahead of me. The truck arrived just as I was finishing it. My parents were a little bit late because they were getting all our bags ready and making sure everything was the way we’d planned. Finally, they came out of the room and into the truck. The night before, our guide had said that we would be sitting in the truck for about an hour and a half to two hours before our first stop, which was an elephant ride. I wasn’t so excited about the elephant ride because I had already had an awesome experience with elephants in Laos. We were riding in a basket, not on the elephant’s neck. I like riding on the neck much better. When we were about half way into the ride, our mahout asked Adam if he wanted to ride on the neck. After a while, I told Adam that I was going to ask the mahout if I could ride on the neck, too. Adam thought the mahout would ask me later so I waited. But the mahout never did. I was disappointed. I didn’t really know how to talk to the mahout anyway because he didn’t speak much English. After about an hour more in the truck we stopped for lunch, which turned out to be fried rice wrapped in a banana leaf, the exact same thing we had on our eighteen-kilometer trek in Laos.

Once we were done with lunch, we got back into the truck and drove to the spot where we were dropped off to start our trek. I think you can tell that the truck ride was pretty long. That day was about 2-3 hours of trekking, about 7-8 kilometers. On the way we saw some huge spiders and lots of dry rice fields. There was too much cool stuff to tell you all of it. When we finally got to the Karen village where we would spend the night, we walked into a small room made of bamboo with mats on the ground and mosquito nets above them. I knew they were our beds because once one of our tour guides brought us to his house in a village and he slept on mats like that. Adam and I called it a five star hotel because you can usually see at least five stars from inside. I changed into my long pants and a warmer shirt. It was kind of cold that night. We all sat by the fire while our dinner was being made. Finally it was ready. It included steamed rice, like almost all dinners have, egg omelets, coconut milk stew with eggplant and chicken with green beans. I finally learned to eat chicken on this trip, but that's the only meat I eat. I ate quickly, but the rest of the trekkers took their time. My dad wasn't feeling well that night so he couldn't stay up and play his guitar like he normally would. I might have stayed up later, but I was feeling very tired so I went to sleep.

In the morning, I was woken up by roosters cockadoodling right under my bed. Oh, I forgot to tell you, almost all houses are on stilts. That's how the roosters were under the room. When I finally was awake enough to get out, I saw some of the other people on the trek out by the fire drinking hot cocoa. I hadn't had that drink for a while so I decided to have some. It was served in bamboo cups. I liked drinking out of them.

After breakfast, which was white bread and jam and scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions, we began our second day of trekking. That day was 12 km. There were so many hills on that hike! It felt like the trek was going on for about 10 hours or more!

That day we had the same exact lunch – fried rice. I guess that’s just what you have on treks. At our lunch stop there was half a strip of bamboo with water flowing down it and we could go under to cool off. That day was really hot. Well, I guess all days are hot in Thailand. At least when I was there. Then we started walking again, up more hills and down more hills. Sometimes we were walking by the stream and jumping across stones and sometimes we were walking through a path in jungle or something that was kind of like a bamboo forest. Finally, we came to a small bamboo house on the river where we would be sleeping. The beds were exactly the same as the night before. We were all really hot and sweaty so we changed into our bathing suits and took a swim in the river. Everyone was gone by the time I was ready to get out. When I was walking to shore, I stepped on a bamboo raft, which we would take the next day. The bamboo was slippery and I fell on it. When I fell, a little stub was sticking out of the bamboo and it went into my foot. I had a very bad scrape on the bottom of my foot and that night I couldn't walk very well. The next day I was very careful not to slip on the raft again. We went down the river on the rafts for about an hour. We saw lots of water buffalo. There were lots of rapids, too. It was really fun. When were done rafting, we took the rafts apart and some people took the bamboo poles up on shore and we started up the hill. Finally we got to the truck again and we drove to a waterfall where we got to swim. I didn’t want to because there were lots of rocks on the bottom and they hurt my cut. When everyone who wanted to had gone in the water, we got back into the truck for the drive back to our guesthouse. That was a really fun trek.

On the Road As A Family – Chapter 2 - Getting to India

Written by Michael - 03.19.11

We arrived in New Delhi, India 1 week ago, braced for an inevitable assault on our senses. India, if you didn’t know, is a land of extreme contrasts: old and new, wealth and poverty, magnificence and squalor. Here’s the story of our entry.

I took my first India task very seriously: to orchestrate as easy a transition into this predictably unpredictable land as possible so that AJK would be more turned on to India than turned off. Last I was here was 21 years ago when I coined the phrase “India takes you by the throat” – and I saw my job as minimizing this phenomena for us all. I think first impressions are particularly important with the kids – so the strategy was to create a soft landing by pre-booking transportation from the airport to safe and clean accommodations in an area that wasn’t teeming with people, filth, beggars and tourist touts. Sounds straight forward, right? FALSE!!!

• First challenge: Where in Delhi won’t be too intense yet not too inconvenient? Fact: Delhi is quite large. Tour books list places w/the most guesthouses for obvious reasons, aka “traveler ghettos”, which are conveniently located but also logically attract the most sham artists and tourist pariah, which is precisely what we were trying to avoid.
• Next: Which hotel will truly be clean and secure without costing us several arms and legs? (Note - What you see on the net is not always what you get, particularly in India. And even if it is a good place, the traveler grapevine says there will probably be a basement room or 2 that could rival a mid-evil dungeon.) Arriving at midnight with all our backpacks is not the best time to discover this.
• Lastly: Try making a Skype voice call to India from the Eagle Guest House in Chiang Mai, where we were staying. It’s as though sound quality was akin to the process of making taffy, continually stretching and contracting over and over again. I can’t do the hilarity of the Internet garbled Indian accents we were hearing justice. The kids were literally rolling with laughter, and Jeanne wasn’t far behind. It eventually became so frustrating that all I could do was to respond in my own very extreme Indian accented garble – to create one more layer of entertainment to a futile and frustrating exercise.

Well – this obviously wasn’t going well. It seemed every place recommended was booked, and the choice was looking more and more like either risk staying in a pit and tainting our India experience from the get-go or spend $350 or above for an unmemorable, antiseptic Radisson-like hotel room with the hope that they would take in the 4 of us even though the web site stipulated “2 people per room”. (Money much better spent on something amazingly memorable.) The clock was ticking. Even though we had started our accommodation research prior, we had purchased our flights only one day before, since when we tried to transact on Air Asia’s website over multiple days it wouldn’t accept a US credit card, and when we went to pay at their office in person they couldn’t process our card either – shades of India to come, but I digress…

The stress & despondence of “where are we going to stay” was beginning to take its toll on Jeanne & I. But I had a job to do, and after quite a bit of persistent research, I finally located a B&B in South Delhi, quite a ways from the tourist areas, and rec’d confirmation via email of an available room for one night only (no more were available) including transport from the Delhi airport. Hooray for MAJKFam! Happy times again – let’s go enjoy our last Thai meal and sights. (Note – This type of travel is chock full of ups & downs – very high highs, and pretty low lows. One advantage of doing it as a family is there’s often one of us who can hold a higher notch while the rest of us are low.)

We splurged and took a flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok rather than a 12 hour sleeper train, and overall the flight to BKK and then onward to Delhi was pleasantly uneventful. Well… almost… There was this one little hair-raising glitch in Bangkok. Turns out 3 of our 4 passports were never stamped when we entered Thailand overland from Laos. We all had exit stamps from Laos, but only I had a stamp showing that I had entered Thailand and when that occurred. We actually noticed this several days prior, but were advised it would easily work itself out at the airport, since “it was their mistake and we would already be in their system”, and we should just proceed as normal. We did so, expecting that we would have 3 hours layover in BKK and that would be more than enough. That was theoretically correct, at least until our flight to BKK departed an hour or so late.

As expected we landed in BKK from Chiang Mai, collected our bags, checked our bags to India, got our seats, and proceeded to passport control with what appeared to be over an hour to spare for eating dinner. Nice! So smooth in fact that I had entered a pleasant traveler sense of familiarity, ease and flow. Then the boom dropped. “Would you please step over here and wait in this line?” Jeanne and I glanced at each other. “OK, just be polite… This is straightforward… They messed up at the border… They’re sure to fix it”, we both thought. At least we thought that until we met our nemesis. She was a stiff and gruff, bulldog of an official who curtly told us to go get an Air Asia representative after several minutes of mulling over the situation. “But why?” I responded and calmly presented our side of the story. That went over like huge brick – so all 4 of us dashed to Air Asia and corralled a very nice fellow to help us. I won’t give you a play by play of the next 30-45 harrowing minutes. It’s enough to mention a few snippets we heard including “we don’t have entry stamps here, only exits”, “you need to go back to the Laos border (note: 24-36 hrs away at least) to get your passports properly stamped”, and “there is absolutely nothing I can do.” I need not detail how we’re feeling (and particularly those of us who have not directly dealt with such unyielding, illogical adversity before), as the clock was ticking and our bags had already been loaded onto our India flight. Then there was an alternative offered by our stonewalling official: “Fly to India without a Thai exit stamp,” to which our Air Asia angel mentioned “and if they notice that in India they won’t admit you and either bounce you back to Thailand or send you home to the USA.” Hhhmmm… things were looking very grim, and our attempts to remain polite, positive and optimistic were running extremely thin. But – another official stepped in at the 11.5^th hour and actually tried to help us. (What a concept! A Thai official who seemed to take a modest interest in our plight!)She made a few calls, seemed to undermine and upset our Anti-Christ official, and actually compelled her other listless colleague to scrawl several lines of Thai into AJK’s passports which then magically opened up the gates, allowing us to proceed through security.

We had maybe 15-20 minutes before our flight was to depart. Our Air Asia angel worked his radio, directed us through various lines, told us to run as fast as we could, and ultimately sprinted ahead of us to prepare the gate attendants so they could process us quickly. Remember – Kira’s legs are half my length and had a painful cut on the sole of her foot, and we’re all touting carry-ons, but we made it in time nonetheless. On the plane - phew!!! With maybe 2 minutes to spare even! Of course the plane then waited another 20 minutes for half a dozen straggler Indians whom we initially saw ahead of us at the ticket counter, each checking in a sizable Samsung flat screen TV and a large remote controlled toy helicopter. But, we took off, took a few deep breaths, and India here we come!

To end this mini saga, we arrived in Delhi to a pristine and modern airport, which is an extreme opposite of the Delhi airport I flew into 21 years prior. What I recalled and was therefore envisioning was a large, thin walled hangar with windows showcasing shoulder to shoulder Indians who were begging and banging from the outside. But instead there were gleaming advertisements, “travelators”, and all the conveniences of the most modern of airports. We collected our bags, quickly found our diver holding a “Lipson” sign, got into his private car, and took a half hour drive on modern roads and bland cement boulevards to a residential neighborhood. We squeezed our way through a narrow doorway wearing our packs, wearily climbed a few flights of marble stairs, and entered in the K One One “B&B” well past midnight. It looked more like a high ceiling urban apartment than a charming “B&B”, but no matter. We had arrived! Finally! The room was a bit strange, but nice. Everything is a bit strange when you first arrive in a very different country. But we were so exhausted we barely minded the rock hard double bed or the super saggy spare cot in our $125/night room and off to sleep – knowing we would need to find yet another place the next day.

Epilogue:

Turns out that having only 1 night available at the K One One was a blessing in disguise. The next morning I located the “Likir House”, a Tibetan operated guesthouse on the web that had a few open rooms and whose ownership was supposedly connected to the Dalai Lama in some remote way (which projected a sense of caring and trustworthiness). Adam and I walked and then bicycle rickshawed to see it (and getting there was no small task in and of itself – seems even the most ordinary events in India can turn into a mini odyssey.) We liked the $60 room quite a bit. Safe, clean, calm, and even kind of cozy – the respite I had been hoping to find for us to comfortably acclimate into this marvelous, crazy,confronting, colorful, spirited and illogical country.

The Tibetan people there took good care of us. We stayed for one week and left yesterday with an increased appreciation for Tibetan Buddhism, some warm memories and new friends, recommendations of places and guesthouses to visit throughout the country, and enough seasoning to more comfortably explore other parts of India.

Stay tuned for what lay ahead…

One Half Hour in Luang Prabang, Laos

Written by Michael Feb 23, 2011

Here I sit in Luang Prabang at 6:30am amidst so many contrasts. The main attention grabber is a procession of 100’s of electric orange robed monks receiving food alms during their daily ritual. I first glimpsed them after turning just a few steps out of our guesthouse, “Villa Le Tam Tam”, which is built in French colonial meets Asia architecture out of rich, dark woods that seem burnished to a gloss from decades upon decades of footsteps. As I walked our side street a few hundred yards to the main drag, where the monks were calmly shuffling past the alms givers in long lines, I passed a man urinating in the street business-like and unaffected. Some mangy dogs barked and chased each in circles and I heard a few stray rooster crows came from different directions in thedistance. I turned the corner, entering the periphery of the alms giving scene and took a seat at an outside table at “Joma”, a very well liked Café/bakery which Adam previously commented “looks like the Roasters” (a coffee house in our town in California) and their menu isn’t all that far off from that, where I am now writing. Note – a random slice of home like Joma is such a grounding and welcome respite, particularly for A&K, now and then. The tourist paparazzi were thick – all clicking away capturing irresistible images of the monk ceremony, which truly is absorbing. Some were respectfully distant, viewing and shooting from across the streets. Others participated, buying sticky rice and bananas from way too aggressive local vendors who pitch “The monks coming. Feed the monks.” and provide a turnkey alms-giving package of a bamboo woven container of sticky rice, tray of bananas and cheap woven mat place on the sidewalk and sit upon. And perhaps the largest group of tourists are almost aggressively (and certainly not reverentially) shooting photos up close and personal, of the monks and the many older local woman who are seated on low stools and give to them daily. I feel very conflicted and at dis-ease. On one hand I'm very drawn to and steeping in the rich, sanctified spirit of the age-old ritual, and in particular the giving by old, relatively poor women to young, innocent monks. but on the other hand I'm uncomfortable and even ashamed by my insensitive tourist brethren who are all about the photo opp and barely registering the meaning and magic. And as this inner stir is occurring, a 20-something backpacked traveler walks up to me and asks me in what sounds like an Israeli accent where a particular guesthouse is located. My synapses immediately traject me back to living in Jerusalem when I was 20 and what it felt like solo traveling on the cheap at that age.

I become present again, as I notice a woman beginning to set up her portable sandwich stall across a side street 15 feet away, complete with a little a clay urn in which she’s lighting charcoal in order to warm the baguette buns. Tuk tuks and motorbikes start whizzing past, more and more of them as time passes. It’s now 7am and the monks and alms givers are gone, replaced in a blink by a fleet of shiny silver minivans with decaled Laos and English lettering in the rear windows, several of which say “VIP” amongst other things. Some older women walk slowly by in plastic sandals, dressed in old worn skirts and attractive and brightly patterned broad scarves wrapped diagonally from 1 hip across to the other shoulder. Soon the tourists will be getting their coffee fixes and whisking themselves off to various day trip sites.

I sit still, taking in what i can and letting the rest slough off me. Such is but a single half an hour on the road. Practically every half hour of our 7 month trip contains such a rich opportunity for observation. It’s ever present, yet tough to really capture, as it takes (me) focus and quietude to absorb it. I'm often walking a tightrope between thirst for insight, sensory overload, desire for A&K to experience, navigating our course, and fatigue - so where does heightened awareness fit into this soup. I guess that all depends... but for now I wouldn’t have it any other way. It's nice to capture this fleeting half hour, and remind myself of ow much there is to notice whenever I want.

One last note: I tend to wake up before rest of MAJK Fam, and get an hour or so of solo time wherever we are. This translates into taking a photo walk or going for a run (both allow me to play the “advance” role to scope out spots that we should visit together), or sometimes just writing and posting. I like these early morning times, and this one is a great reminder to just sit "take it in" sometimes.