I'm too big for Asia

I can't count the number of times I have hit my head on a door way that is just a little too short. It hits that very top part of my head like it wants to take a little slice off the top. And its not just short doorways, everything here is just a little too small. When I went shopping for jeans in Kunming, I would start looking and the sales people would walk up and say say "Oh, you big size!" and then they would go about finding the largest pair of jeans in the store, usually returning with a 36 or so (I wear 32). We took a bus to the bottom of the Yellow Mountains and I hardly fit in. It was a sleeper bus which, first of all, is bad news in and of itself. They pack these little buses with three rows of bunk bed sleepers. You lay on a little incline because the person behind you puts their feet in a compartment below your head. Chinese people have a hard time fitting in them. When we walked on the bus I was wearing a small day-pack backpack and because of the line of people pushing me from behind, I got lodged in the aisle. My shoulders were pressed in front of me reaching for each other and I was pushed until I could do nothing to free myself. My backpack prevented me from turning, not to mention I would have to dislocate my shoulder to accomplish that task. I had to slide down onto my knees and crawl along to my bed. When I finally found my bed, people were laughing at the prospect that such a giant as myself would actually squeeze my huge-ness into such a small space. I wedged my feet into the compartment and sat on the bed with my butt about where my face should be, on the incline. Not my favorite sleeping position I admit, but eventually, after a lot of rolling around, I managed to squeeze myself in laying in the fetal position with my butt hanging slightly off the edge. Then the video started. These buses are equipped with several TV screens to keep people occupied instead of thinking about how miserably uncomfortable they are. However, its at the drivers discretion what video should be played. This particular driver enjoyed videos of Chinese circus acts. Loud Chinese circus acts with bad singers and horrible comedians. Video after video of them. And just when you think you're going to give up and break the glass, rolling yourself on to the busy highway, someone starts smoking. In a bus with no windows that open, people smoking. Its amazing, the only way to travel.

So today we're in Hangzhou taking a break. After two days of hiking the Yellow Mountain stairs, we're pretty tired. Two full days of hiking stairs up and down to see some of the most amazing scenery in the world. We'll post pictures soon. Then for my birthday we're heading to Long Shan, the village I used to live in. I'm starting to realize that the trip is coming to a close. I come home in 10 days and and Jeff comes home in about 193.

One of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a play called Slapstick. And because of his recent passing, I have though a lot about it. In the play the Chinese have become so advanced that they find a way to shrink themselves to microscopic proportions and live on other humans. Just something to think about for the day.

Eight Bites of a Mysterious Nature

We are being eaten by something in our beds. I woke with eight bites on my right elbow alone.

When we last left Clay and Jeff they had arrived safely in Kunming, China after a long few days of traveling in miserable circumstances. Fatigued, sick and weary they boarded their train to Guilin at around 8 at night. There was no room for them in the hard sleeper class, which is the preferred means of travel, and so were forced to ride in the 3rd class hard seats. Upon inspection, the 3rd class seemed a fine place to spend 20 hours. The seats were in fact quite hard and offered little support for these two exhausted travelers, but they settled themselves down and prepared for the long journey. At around 2 a.m. just as they were getting so tired that they could sleep anywhere, for this is the only way to actually get sleep in the hard seat class, they pulled into a remote station crowded with passengers. It seems that the difficult reputation of the 3rd class wasn't so much the hard seats themselves, but the fact that this is also where those with standing room tickets were to stand. In a matter of minutes, the already full train car was packed to the excess with commuters. The aisles were full of people standing, sitting and laying. Our little bench was quickly occupied by an opportunist who crowded us over. At times during the course of the remaining 14 hours there were people occupying the bathrooms, the table in front of us and even the standing in the space between our knees. We shared our seat with a few different interesting people, and one woman who was throwing up in a garbage can between her knees.

Sorry, I read Jane Eyre this week and I think it has effected my writing. Once we finally got to Guilin, we still had another hour on a bus to get to Yangshuo, our final destination. We got here and plopped down our bags and were definitely to stay in one place for more than just a few days. This week we had our vacation from our vacation. We sat around our room, ate really great food, went shopping and rode bikes for three days around the most incredible scenery in the world (in my opinion.) We have some pictures uploaded of the week that we've spent lounging and riding.

We stayed in a great hostel and Johnny, the owner, hooked us up with stuff to do. One night we got tickets to a huge outdoor performance. Its the largest natural landscape theatre in the world and closes off a large section of the river (about 2k) each night for the performance. The show was truly amazing, but exemplified the elaborate scale in which much Chinese art is done. I like to call it the "because we can" style. Its staggeringly enormous, its astonishingly spectacular, it takes your breathe away and it means absolutely nothing. There's nary a story or meaning to be pulled from it. 600 cast members participate and the show requires amazing technicals took five years to complete. Basically what happens is they bring something out to amaze you, like 250 woman dressed in costume with hundreds of little lights on them. Then once the shock wears off they do everything they can with the gimmick. They flash the lights on and off, they flash in sequences ect... So its just a collection of awe inspiring visuals. Hundreds of fishermen floating around with lights on their boats and then pulling big sheets of red silk from the water as if they appeared out of no where! A lady sitting on a giant glowing moon and then running back and forth on it! Whole mountains appearing and disappearing before our eyes! I have no idea whats going on! I joke, but it was really worth seeing.

We rented mountain bikes and aside from me almost breaking my knee, twice, it was great. The first day we got lost in the rice fields for a few hours. We finally came upon a little squirrely man and asked him for directions. He was so excited to see us! He was obviously drunk and sung us little songs as he walked us, with our bikes on our shoulders, up and over a mountain pass. He literally was skipping around us the whole way. After a while we came to a river and he walked us through a rice patty to where he kept his bamboo raft, singing and laughing all the way. Once we had loaded ourselves and our boats he became immediately somber and told us we owed him 20 yuan. Thats only about $2, and we were thrilled to have found our way back, so we didn't mind.
Well, two weeks until I come home and next week is my birthday! Think of us and write to us!

Why I Travel

Last night we slept in a bus that was so full of cockroaches that the floor not only moved when you looked down, but it also crawled up onto your face. They ate through part of Jeff's backpack. Eventually you just have to give in and go to sleep because getting creeped out by it really isn't going to fix anything. On top of the cockroaches, there were several chain smokers on board who seemed to see right through the red line on the "no smoking" sign. To them, the sign must have said something like "Please, by all means smoke! Smoke until your teeth fall out!" I wasn't surprised to see this morning that one of them had burned a large hole in his pillow.

I spent the few hours before getting on the bus throwing up. Jeff got a bug a few nights ago and I got it yesterday. It also could have been that we hadn't really had a meal in two days, except for the one bag of mini muffins we bought at the bus station in Laos (which we discovered later were moldy.) Or maybe it was the bus ride with chickens and dogs or the fisherman sitting next to me falling asleep on my shoulder. Or maybe it was that we hadn't been in one place long enough to do laundry and the last place we had do our laundry lost two of my shirts, which brings me down to 'dos shirtos' as our friends say south of the border. Or maybe it was the stress that we had no money and no one, not even the banks, would exchange our cash or help us with the ATM because it 'wasn't their day.' Luckily, out of no where, a Japanese back packer came up to us and asked if we were having trouble getting money. He walked us over to a guy in an engine repair shop who said he would illegally exchange our last U.S. cash at a horrible rate. In thanks, we bought the Japanese guy a bus ticket.

Don't get me wrong, thats why I like to travel. Something inside me loves to get packed into buses, eat moldy muffins and throw up in bathroom stalls I usually wouldn't wish on a prisoner at Alcatraz. So why? Why do it to yourself?

There are a lot of possible explanations, but its been a long three days so I'm just going to get right to the point. It makes me grateful. Maybe it was that its Easter and Jeff and I don't have much other way to celebrate, but I spent the whole day giving all my change to people begging in the street. I'm so glad to have a bed to sleep in and something to eat. You quickly realize how little you need to survive and all the excess you get just for fun. Sure there are a lot cheaper ways to realize how grateful you are for your life, but you sure see a lot less the other ways.

Here are some videos that we haven't had time to upload until now. They might not be up and running right away because youtube.com takes some time to get things rolling. If they're not, check back, because some of them are pretty great and you won't want to miss out.

1. On our way out of the Bokeo Reserve in Laos, this monkey jumped on Jeff and started grooming him. Then he jumped on me and did the same. When I tried to take him off he made angry monkey noises and showed his teeth. I let him finish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7BFbyS9Q18

2. We put this one in one of the blogs, but some people had trouble getting it to work. This was at our cooking class in Chiang Mai. Its really a big surprise to me that more people don't get injured taking these classes. After our Master Chef instructor gave a brief description of what we were supposed to do he had us pull off this technique.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvi6bnW3uXY

3. This is one of the really special meals we ate while traveling through Thailand. Its pretty much self explanatory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95RfvSANtR0

4. So, if you're getting this blog then you know that Jeff and I are kind of nerdy. This is our nerdiness at its peak. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was dehydration, but for some reason while wondering around Angkor Wat we decided to relive some of our favorite Indiana Jones moments. Here is the fruit of our labors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLAzZdNBSxI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHZGSCY-6lo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lc0qhy8xCw

5. Here is Jeff climbing Angkor Wat at full speed. We found out later that this is where two tourists died last year because they fell and rolled all the way down. Yeah, that was a good idea.
(Ok, this one is having a really hard time loading, if you look in youtube in my videos, it should be there soon.)

6. Zipping throught the primary jungle in northern Laos is probably at the top of our Most Amazing things list. This is a little video of us breaking the rules and zipping as a duo across the forest. We have rough take off, but you can get a little idea of what it was like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4LWZmWmzHw

Chiang Mai

Hide lines • Show trip route • Reference map
For some people, the idea of a vacation is booking flights, arranging transporting early to an already reserved hotel and then diving into the mapped out museums, restaurants and other points of interest found weeks in advance in travel books and on the internet. If this is you, you're missing out. I don't mean to sound judgmental, or to tell you that you're going to have an awful time on that trip to Paris you've got itinerized, but you're missing out. Until you've showed up in a city with nothing but a hope to meet the right people and find great things to do, you haven't gotten the full experience of being a traveler. Do it sometime.

We got to Chiang Mai yesterday afternoon and after 17 hours in tight quarters with a bunch of hygiene difficient backpackers, we were ready to shower and do some laundry. Bangkok is sort of a gathering place for all sorts of people who wish really hard they were hippies. The big tourist area is called Khao San Road. You could start at one end of the street looking like a Christian missionary from Princeton and after being tattooed, pierced and installed with long fake dread locks, come out looking like a shiny new hippy. You can really tell those committed to the hippy art of living from those who are backpacking in Asia to see what its like. Most people just want to stick their little toe into the hippy life and get all the pictures taken so they can show them to the future generations and say: "Yeah, when I was a wild child backpacking in Thailand..."

Anyway, we stumbled off the train and not two seconds later were assaulted by a woman I like to call Admiral Jessica. She's sort of the dictator of guest houses in the new part of Chiang Mai. She's a shorter but round woman with round black framed glasses. She putters around town on her little moto scooter just begging for people to sing the wicked witch theme as she passes. There are a lot of places to stay here so the Admiral decided to set up camp right at the exit of the train and start negotiating right there. She weaseled us into her van and had her driver take us to her first guest house. We pull up outside the tallest and thinnest building around. Each floor has 4 rooms and as they lower to the ground they get more expensive. The top floor, the 7th, is shared bathroom with a fan (or what I like to call "hell") for 150 B ($5), then down from that you get your own bathroom...We weren't really feeling this place, so we started to walk away when Admiral Jessica muscled us into the van again. I say muscled because this woman could take me down. I mean it, I'm 6'2 and 190 pounds and I'm still certain this Thai women could make me scream uncle with tears running down my face.

By the time we got to the second guest house, we were so exhausted we gave in. 150 B for a shared bathroom and fan on the second floor. It was cheap, we were desperate. How do these guest houses survive on $5 a night rooms? Upselling. They do your laundry, arrange trips, arrange your future travels ect... For example Jeff was walking out with a bag of our dirty cloths to take them next door when the Admiral caught him and before he could turn around she had taken it, weighed it and was putting it in the soapy water and asking for money. Every time we pass her she drills us on where we're going for the day and what we're doing tommorow. This doesnt sound like such a big thing, but they dont take no for an answer. The constant stream of questions, pamphlets and suggestions is just too much. We half expected to find an itinerary taped to our door this morning with a bill. We finally told her that we're leaving for Laos (which technically we are, just not for a week or so) and we're checking out tommorow.

We are having an amazing time here however. We've just been wandering around the city and have stumbled on some incredible experiences. We met an 65 year-old Thai artist who has galleries in Seattle and around California, but has never left Thailand. His gallery here is signifigantly cheaper and is basically piles of paintings everywhere. We walked past a temple while the monks were meditating and praying and spent three hours with them, including a long talk with the only monk who spoke English. We found a cooking course, which we took today, which was hysterical! We have a video of us learning to make a curry by lighting the pan on fire, we'll get that posted by the next blog. Our instructor took us to the market and explained all the ingredients to us as we bought them. Then we went to the cooking school and learned to make some incredible food. On our way home we past a spa and went in for massages and reflexology. Tonight we're going to the night bazaar and tommorow we leave for a three day elephant trek to the hill tribes.

So, my advice is to spend time wandering on your vacations. You're always bound to find interesting things if you keep your eyes open.

Something interesting we learned from the monk yesterday: "You always striving. If you don't paddle your boat, you don't go far."

Jeff is going to get us thrown in prison

First let me catch you up on the past few days. We've been traveling with these great Canadian girls. Of of them is doing missionary work in northern Thailand and had to go out to a little village to do her training, so we went with her. It was a few hours outside Bangkok, but it was far enough to get out of the tourist industry which was really nice. We stayed the night at the university, which was so cheap and so nice. The next day we all got up and went to the zoo. The zoo in Thailand is a much more hands-on experience. Jeff paid a dollar to dangle a whole chicken on a string over a large pool of crocodiles. Eventually one lept out of the water and snapped the chicken into pieces, almost taking Jeff with it. We held an orangutan, a kangaroo, a bunny...it was really fun and sort of scary. Jeff and I bought a bunch of bananas and fed some elephants too. Big elephants that weren't behind a fence. Huge elephants standing around, hungry, waiting for tourists with bananas to feed them. You could even have the elephants walk over you and tap you on the butt. You've got to know that its only a matter of time until someone gets hurt. There were shows with people putting their heads inside crocs mouths, and pig racing, and tigers jumping through flaming hoops. There were even stands selling deep fried crocodile on a stick. Crocs that didn't do well in the show I suppose.

I'll be honest, the past two days have been kind of hard. Yesterday moning we got up at 6 and caught a rickshaw to the bus station, a bus to Bangkok, a boat up the river, walked to the wrong train station, took a tuk-tuk to the right train station, and hopped on our train to Aranya Prathet at the border of Cambodia just before it pulled away from station. We were too late to get seats on the train, so we were looking forward to 6 hours of standing on a train with no air conditioning. Luckily, we fell upon some seats early in the trip and claimed them until we arrived. The train was hot, muggy, and full of strange smelling food. We bought a bamboo stick filled with sticky rice finally because we were starving. Our train was two hours late and by the time we got to Aranya Prathet at the border of Thailand, the border was closed, so we found a place to stay for the night. We stayed in a cement building above a garage, on the fourth floor. Its wasn't a bad room for $4. We had our own bathroom with a squatter and sink and a ceiling fan (a major plus.)

This morning we got up early (again) to head over to the border crossing before the lines started. We made it to the border at around 7 and started the ugly process of getting out of Thailand and then into Cambodia. When we finally got everyone on the Thailand side happy, we crossed the big bridge into Cambodia. Now, we had heard that Cambodian immigration officers are a pain to work with, but come on. Jeff had got himself all worked up to stand his ground about how much he would pay for a visa, so we walked up to the counter ready to argue if necessary. After only a few moments Jeff and the officer behind the counter were in a heated argument. The officer wanted Baht only which we didn't have enough of and so we were being told that we had to go back to Thailand, exchange money, and then try to immigrate again. Caboom. I'm not quite sure when Jeff got used to being a traveler, but he definately is now. The argument was in full swing at this point with me standing in the middle. Finally the officer offered $25 for each visa, only $5 over what the sign right above his head was asking for. I threw the money and passports down and pulled Jeff away from the counter.

Today we had our first taste of Angkor Wat. I've been dying to visit this place since I was living in China. Its the largest religious builing in the world and was built between 800-1100 A.D. There are hundreds of temples in the area as it was one of the largest empires of the time. The population was over a million at the time when London only had about 50,000. The temples were in poor shape until the early 1900's when a team from France started to restore them. They managed to stop the jungle from breaking some of the temples apart when the civil war stopped their efforts. So now its like an Indiana Jones playland, but for real. We paid a tuk-tuk driver about $8 to drive us around for the day. Jeff is planning a blog to talk more about the temples, so I'll leave that and the pictures to him.

This is my last plea to email us. Its nice to hear from home.

The Great Bangkok Tuk-Tuk Scam

So, we had our first real scam pulled on us yesterday, but came out pretty much unscathed, except for the blisters on our feet.

We're been traveling with two Canadian girls we met on Koh Tao island (who are a total riot I might add). So we wake up on our first morning in Bangkok to go hit the city and we wander out in the street to figure out where we are. Almost immediately a very friendly man walks up and asks us who we are and where we're from. When we tell him that we're going to the Koa San Rd market, he informs us that its closed for the morning, but he can tell us where to go until then. He makes quick friends with us and has us pull out our map, which he writes all over and tells us where he thinks we should go. Then just moments later, his friend in his tuk-tuk pulls up and we all crowd in. At this point, we're having a GREAT time! We paid about .30 cents each to spend the whole morning going to temples and seeing Buddhas. Perfect.
[PHOTO_ID_L=mvi_0401.avi]
We pull up to our first stop, which is a suit shop. We get ushered in and a bunch of really pushy guys try to sell us really over priced suits. We turn them down politely and get back into our tuk-tuk for our second stop, a travel agency. Again, over priced travel. By this time we've already started to figure there weren't going to be a lot of Buddhas in our morning. Back in the tuk-tuk and to another suit shop. This time though, the driver pulls over and sits us down for a little talk. He says that if we stay in the suit shop for at least about 20 mins, then he will get a gas card from the store he takes us to which will really help him out. Now, we're nice people. We're in for a good bit of fun to help someone out. So we go in there and put on the best show ever! We're trying things on, we're acting interested, we're pretending our pockets are just exploding wish cash to spend on tailored suits. After 30 mins, our performance is over and we start to head out, at which point the store owners get angry. They start yelling at us that we're waisting their time and telling us that we're too poor to afford their suits anyway. Shamefully, we get back in our tuk-tuk.

We were done playing. So we told our driver we just wanted to go see some stuff. He was obviously a little upset, but said he would take us to see a famous Buddha the most lucky one in Bangkok. He said it didn't matter that it wasn't in our travel book, because it was generally unknown. It was a little far away, we were driving for quite some time, but sure enough we ended up in front of a little temple area. We hopped out and headed in to check things out. Now, I've been to some amazing temples in my life and then I've been to some small ones. This one was nothing all that incredible. Yeah, buddha was there, but come one.

When we walked out to get back in...our tuk-tuk had taken off. He drove us far out of the way and dropped us far away from the tourist track. Luckily, we're still in good spirits. We laugh about the whole thing and pull out the book to try and salvage what we can of our day. 3 buses, $10 and 4 hours later we had made it back to downtown. We ended up walking for much of that time and didn't end up back at our hostel until 10:30 pm.

Bruised and tired, we rubbed tiger balm on our foot sores and went to bed.

On the good side, we did find the biggest market in Bangkok and did some great gift shopping.

Our Room Came with Pets

Its hard to keep a travel blog up to date. Every day so many things happen that you wish you could share with someone. Like yesterday

So I've decided to just type up a few sections right from the pages of my journal to kind of get caught up. I've added some photos too, finally.Check out the album to see the photos.

5.9.07 In the Taman Negara Rainforest

"The jungle on this side of the river is much thicker. We saw a few monitor lizards and a monkey while hiking. After a few hours we came around a bend and ran into the Orang Asli village, the aboriginees in the area. They didn't really seem thrilled to see us. The women had large afro like heads of hair, each with several combs tacking parts down. A little naked girl ran around a corner and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw us. This seemed to send up a red flare to people around who all immediately turned to stare at us. Awkward. A man finally said that we could walk around the village if we wanted, so we headed in. All the people were wearing half tribal wear and half Nike t-shirts. We walked past a hut with a girl standing out front in a pink flowery dress with puffy sleeves. Something I might have seen at church in the 80's. Just then I realized that I was looking at all the D.I. Commercials I've ever seen. "Even small donations bless Malaysia" I thought. True, its less catchy, but it was standing right there in front of me. When we started to go, the man approached us again and said that we could take pictures if we wanted for 5 ringgit (about $2). We had snapped some photos of a hut, so we paid him but declined having anyone pose. The magic illusion of a bunch of people fairly unharmed by technology and the outside world was gone. They were working the tourists! Good for them I suppose."

5.10.07 Kuala Tahan

"We're sitting in our new hostel, just as cheap as the first night, but at least twice as worse. The mattress pads and pillows are stained with some scary looking colors that make us bless the heavens we have our sleep sacks.We used the internet today in someone's house. Right across from our hostel there was a big sign that said internet. We walked over and were met outside by a girl who asked us to take off our shoes. She led us through their living room to a back room with a few computers inside."

5.13.07 Kecil Island

"We are in Paradise. Paradise with a capitol P. We have a private bungalo on the beach, we take all of our meals right in the sand, our laundry is done for us, we're eating the best fresh fruit picked from right behind our villa, and we went snorkeling with sharks and giant sea turtles today. Amazing.

There are cats everywhere here. When we got to our room, there was a cat waiting for us on our balcony. It just lounges all day long and never seems to leave. We're not sure how it eats or drinks, but it has taken on the general persona of the people here, ULTRA laid back."

5.15.07

"Jeff and I have started playing a game. You know you're in Malaysia when...and filling in the blank. Here are some that we're come up with thus far:
...The word chicken describes a wide variety of meat including goat and cat.
...You're hotel room always comes with an animal.
...The only bugs that bother you are the ones that are bigger than your hand.
...Animals you normally just see at the zoo are crawling across your shoes, stealing your food and flinging poo at you."

Well, I only have a little bit of time, I hope to get better at this so I can keep everyone updated. Please email us or comment on here and we'll get it.