End of the Road

    Before I left for China I was so scared.  I was afraid of failure, of the unknown, of public bathrooms.  I hated being in social situations, and of having to change plans suddenly.  I was afraid of drinking coffee because I was afraid of getting anxious, I was afraid of being afraid and afraid I'd live with my parents for the rest of my life, while also being afraid to leave home.  I had low self esteem, low thresh hold for new experiences, and low expectations.  Once in Beijing I tried to rationalize coming home early, giving up on the trip, but I had little confidence in myself and wasn't willing to stand up to Tryg, because I was afraid of the way I knew he'd see me.  I cared a lot about how people saw me.  Now, though, none of those things are true

    To other people, who have seen me since I've gotten back, the 6 months that I've been gone have been quick, some people didn't even realize I'd been gone.  But to me those that time has felt like 6 years, or 6 life times, because who I was before seems so different from who I am now I can hardly relate to that person anymore. 

    When we arrived in Beijing I had 4000 dollars, then received about 1000 dollars midway through from tax returns, plus about 400 dollars from donations to the blog (mostly from family members) and 100 dollars I got for playing a British general in a Chinese movie.  So about 5,600 dollars to last me the entire length of the trip. 

    In Beijing we worked on a Nordic film festival with a crew of Chinese artists.  The first night there I had a panic attack and was seriously considering turning around and heading right back home, I had money, enough to get an apartment, I could probably get my job back at REI, and start a life in my safe old comfortable city.  I was sure was I wasting time, and that I didn't have much to waste.

    After two weeks we took the fast train to Nanjing, where we stayed for one night in a nice hotel.  I was so nervous, I still didn't know if I could handle the trip then and the experience of wandering around the city not knowing where we would be sleeping was far from the fun adventure I would see it as now.  The next morning we took the slow train to Shanghai and I stayed in a hostel for the first time.  There was no one sharing our 6 person dorm, which was lucky, and gave me a chance to transition into the idea of not having private space.  I was still super scared someone would steel my stuff if I left it there, but followed Tryg's lead and left everything but my phone, passport, and ipod on my bed when we went out.  I didn't explore the city much.  I was still afraid to go out of my comfort zone so mostly hung around the hostel, writing, and hanging out with the people who walked by.  I met some amazing people, and had some great experiences in spite of my anxiety, but me and tryg were living in separate yet adjacent worlds.  My pattern at that point was to retreat to a safe place when things got rough, and so I retreated, only going out from time to time to get some food, which was as big an adventure as I could handle at that time, while tryg spent his days walking the streets taking portraits of people's faces. 

    From shanghai we took a two night train to ChongQing.  In that city that was being built before our eyes into a post apocalyptic scene, radiating with a rough beauty like a demonic church me and Tryg faced our first true culture shock.  We where 3 weeks in and everything that was tough about China was being concentrated in this massive town.  Our first brush with food sickness, our first extended period of self pity.  This is when Tryg started to realize what China was about, I began to remember what China could be, and for the first time I felt me and Tryg were on the same page, both crushed under the weight of day to day life in China

    After 2 weeks in that place, which proved to be 11 days too many, we continued on to Chungdu and I instantly felt at home.  The feel of the air, the color of the taxis, it all flooded back to me and I felt wonderful being in that place that I had once lived for 6 months as a 20 year old.  In the hostel we met amazing people, a French guy riding his bike across Asia, Finnish girls who had traveled from their home by train through Russia to China and were continuing on to Tibet then India.  We we happy there, content, comfortable.  I was just starting to feel myself grow, just starting to be willing to go out on my own, not cling to what was comfortable and easy quite as much as I used to, though I was still nothing of what I was becoming.  2 weeks in Chengdu, then on to PanZhiHua for an afternoon.

    The sleeper bus from PanZhiHua to Dali was the most beautiful ride we'd had so far.  Through mountains, valleys and small pine tree forests.  Red rock canyons and glowing green farmland.  The beds were cramped, and my stomach was just starting to hurt, so I was happy to arrive in Dali, where we would stay for over a month.  We slept one night in the best hostel we would experience the entire trip.  If you ever travel in China stay at “The Jade Emu.” 

    I then spent the next 5 nights in the hospital, coming literally within minutes of having surgery in a rural Chinese hospital for appendicitis before a doctor at the last moment saved me with an examination that put me in a room with an IV for the rest of my stay rather than a under the knife. 

    This was my lowest moment so far, and there were times while spending my nights alone in that hellish hospital that I was sure I would be leaving China the second I checked out.  I was facing things I felt I couldn't handle.  I was facing things I didn't want to handle.  But this was the beginning of my true transformation.  Once I got out I fell in love with Dali.  Every day I climbed a mountain, or walked through the farmland with Tryg.  I become connected with so many awesome people, the people of the Jade Emu who were all artists, or travelers from all over the world.  I hadn't been so happy in years as I was on a daily basis surrounded by friends and culture and life.  Dali was my place, it was amazing and I could have stayed there for years if I'd had the chance. 

    But after 6 weeks the 90 day limit on our 12 month visas ran out.  We could have just hopped across the boarder and hopped back, but for the first time I was starting to be in the mood to pursue adventure, to seek out the unknown.  Confidence in myself was building and I was ready to do something.  We went to Laos, a country I honestly couldn't not have located on a map till we got there.  We hitch hiked for the first time in my life (though I'm not sure if it counts as hitch hiking if you end up having to pay the driver who gave you a lift in the back of his pickup truck).  Laos was the poorest country I'd ever seen in my life, people lived in nothing but woven straw huts standing on stilts.  They seemed to have no commerce except something to do with the dried grass they harvested, possibly to make brooms, or perhaps to act as roofing material.  The roads were nothing but red dust in many places.  But the people's smiles were some of the most genuine I have ever seen.  It was the shock of a life time when we arrived in Luang Prabang and found a teaming flood of white faces who had all come from who knows where.  Spiky haired men in muscle bound tank tops drinking beers as they walked down the streets in their mid day sun glasses with blond girls in short skirts and tank tops taking pictures of young monks.  This was major culture shock to us and we didn't know what to think about it, except that we didn't like it. 

    We tried to by a boat to float down the  river we'd been driving along in our bus, but upon playing a game of boccie ball with a nearby village chief who told us the river was too low to navigate this time of year we abandoned our plans.  We took the most beautiful bus ride I have ever experienced in my life from Luang Prabang to Vientiane and decided to continue on to Thailand.  After a day of chaos trying to get our visas, and a rather pleasant train ride from, we came to Bangkok, where we stayed for only one night.  In the morning we hopped on a bus to an island in the south, relatively unknown and out of the way.

    The first two weeks on the island were wonderful, but when they were done, and our friends had left, we still had a month left, and had adopted an attitude of extreme stinginess.  By now we had decided that we would go to Australia.  We had met a number of people along our trip who had talked about the jobs in Australian mines, where one could make a starting wage of 90,000 dollars a year even if you had no skills going in.  The jobs were incredibly easy to get, and we were tempted enough to submit applications for working/travel visas. We put the 270 dollars each which served as a commitment, and waited for a response.  In the mean time I was eating only 1 meal a day, filling my stomach the rest of the time with muesli.  The whether became prohibitive to action, 95 and humid in the day, with sun that would burn you in minutes.  The mosquitoes at night ravaged my body so that at one point I got an infection on my leg that became systemic.  I had to take my emergency supply of antibiotics.  Each day became a meditation on nothing, I spent hours staring at the cashew trees that grew in front of our bungalow.  I listened to pod-casts and took up the hobbies of passive sweating and beard growing.  I endured unbearable boredom, anger, sadness, and all the things that come up when you sit and do nothing.

    The night before we flew to Hong Kong we slept in the airport, and that was the moment I realized everything had changed.  Nothing was uncomfortable even though I knew I would get almost no sleep that night.  I was not worried that we had no place to stay when our plane landed, I wasn't worried about what we would do.  I started going through the lists of all the things that used to terrify me and found none of them were an issue anymore.  I could sleep anywhere, talk to anyone, poop in the worst conditions.  A stomach ache didn't make me want to hide in my room anymore.  As I lay there I realized finally why I had needed to go on this trip, because I had so much that needed to change, so much about me that was preventing me from simply enjoying my life.

    There was still no word about the visas from australia by the time we landed in Hong Kong, and we were were getting a bit worried.  We met Lupin at the airport and took her to our tiny little hotel that we'd found earlier in the day.  Hong Kong was truly incredible, to a degree I cannot at all express in writing.  The amount of energy on the street, the age of the signs that hover over the double decker buses, the density of the people and the density of the culture.  Every square inch of the city seems to harbor some ancient story.  Every breath of air was filled with voices of every nation on earth.  I had never seen anything so diverse, so incredible in all my life.  Money was everywhere, in the solid gold statues of cartoon characters for sale in the windows to the million dollar cars being driven on the streets.  People judged us for our cheap cell phones.  Despite this, all three of us agreed we could live there if given the chance, the energy was just too intoxicating not to love it. 

    When Lupin got her visa we took the train to Dali, I was super excited to show Lupin around this place that had become so important to me and Tryg.  We ate all the food, saw all the sights.  I introduced Lupin to my favorite person from the whole trip, George, a guy who despite being only 24, and having Aspergers, has already lived a more amazing and adventurous life than I think I will ever experience.   Lupin was as excited to see everything as I had hoped she would be and by the time she went home she had been bitten hard by the traveler bug and seemed more alive and excited than I'd ever known her. 

    While in Dali we discovered that, though the Australian visa office had never told us this, because we had been traveling in China they required us to get a chest x-ray to prove that we didn't have tuberculosis before they would grant us our visas.  This we learned after a lot of difficult research and a full month after we'd applied for the visa in the first place.  Unfortunately the closest place to get the chest x-ray would be in Hong Kong, so when Lupin left China we flew back to that magnificent city again, only to discover that it was easter and that all the doctors offices were closed.  This was remarkable, as almost the exact same thing had happened to me 4 years earlier.  When my Chinese visa had run out while I was traveling through the country in 2007  I flew to Hong Kong to get a new one only to find that this Asian City was celebrating the rebirth of Jesus, and I was forced to spend a week waiting for the visa offices to open. 

    The Hong Kong experience this time around was a mess, it took forever to get the x-rays, took forever to get them submitted, there were hiccups and challenges all along the way that made me think it wasn't going to work out.  Finally Tryg got his visa, but I did not get mine, and as each day passed which me not receiving word from the visa office I started thinking it might just not come through.  I told Tryg that if I didn't get my Visa by a certain day I would be flying home.  My desire to go to australia was already tenuous, I was only going to make money, and now I was confident enough in myself to act in the way I felt was the best for me, rather than trying to please others. 

    At the last minute the visa came through and the next day we flew to Australia.  We couch surfed with a guy who made beer, gardened and loved to cook, it was an amazing couple days, but while we were there it became painfully obvious that the mining jobs were not going to happen.  Our visas would only work for an employer for 6 months before we would have to find some other job, and all the mining companies wanted people who could work for a year or longer.  We looked into other jobs, but while we could find work, none of it was anything I wanted to do if it meant just getting by in Australia.  We decided to try WWOOFing, but by that point I was already seeing the writing on the wall.  As it was I'd already have to borrow money from Tryg to get home, and if I stayed to WWOOF I'd end up owing him over a thousand dollars.   If I had to choose between working as a waiter in Australia, or working as a waiter in Portland, I'd rather work in Portland and start taking steps towards getting a job in the field I want to pursue, rather than just getting by.  Finally I made the decision to leave.  To Tryg it seemed sudden, and when I told him I was leaving and he said he'd stay in Australia, it marked the end of our adventure together. 


    On the plain ride home I cried, and laughed, and slept on the floor of the airport during a 12 hour layover in Beijing.  I mourned the loss of my adventure even as I knew it was the right choice.  I wanted to stay in Asia, but that wasn't an option anymore. 

    It took 34 hours to get to Seattle where I spent 2 nights adjusting to American life at the house of a friend I met in a fly fishing forum.  I took a bus from there to the San Juan Islands, where I hung out with my 90 year old Grandad as he prepared to move down to Portland where he could be closer to my parents.  While I was there I did an interview for a job that I would later get, working with teenagers in a residential therapy/alternative high school program for kids with all kinds of social and emotional problems. 

    It's maybe worth saying now, since from time to time I wrote things that made people uncomfortable, that when I wrote about my inner turmoil, my struggle in one situation or another it was not because I was seeking sympathy or support, but because it was an honest part of the story I was living and it is always worth it for me to tell a good story. 

    Now in Portland I am preparing to move to Utah for my new job and I have never felt so vindicated in the choices I've chosen to make.  I am not the same anymore, and I have no interest in ever becoming that same scared kid I used to be.  I have strength now, confidence.  I could sleep under a bridge tomorrow and be comfortable, I could fly to the heart of Africa in a heart beat, I can do anything.  I am so happy about everything this trip has meant to me, and even though it took me the first 4 months to get there, I now realize that this trip was absolutely necessary.  I feel ready for what ever comes next, I feel ready for life.

Dirt, Grease, and Neon Lights

Crowds pack Hong Kong sidewalks and streets late into the night.

If you wanted to, at ten at night you could go shoe shopping, buy a camera, or

pick out designer jewelry. Photo by Maia.

Note: It's me, Maia, writing. I visited Ian and Tryg in China from March 20 through April 6. There's so much to write about from the time I was there that I can't contain it in one post--so this one covers our few days in Hong Kong, and my next post will cover our time in Dali, a town in Yunnan Province. I've noted in the captions which photos are mine and which Tryg took.

An HSBC advertisement in the Hong Kong airport hallway pictured Eiffel Tower souvenir keychains labeled with Made in China stickers. Captions in English and Chinese explained how this image—which looked to me like a photographic political cartoon—represented exciting business opportunities; HSBC didn’t have a sense of irony. That was my first indication that I was in a foreign country.

As I searched for the nearest restroom, I wondered if I was sick—my head throbbed, my stomach twisted, and my mouth was dry—but I remembered all the times the flight attendants had woken me up with their prowls down the aisles asking who wanted a drink…and how almost every time during the thirteen-hour flight I’d fallen back asleep instead of accepting a ginger ale or a cranberry juice. I was dehydrated.

From a quick glance in the restroom mirror, I was also disheveled, sweaty, messy-haired, and groggy. As soon as I spotted Ian and Tryg in the arrivals hall, I realized I was in good company. Even from afar I could tell that like me they’d slept in their clothes. Tryg was the first to give me a smelly but enthusiastic hug—followed by Ian, a bit bug-eyed, as if part of him couldn’t believe we were actually hugging after so many months communicating only via the occasional email.  

“The airport seems so clean,” I said. “Everything is so white and polished.”

“It’s the only thing in China that is clean,” Ian said.

“Oh man, I wish you could’ve seen Chongqing!” Tryg laughed.

I rushed to the airport 7-11, where Tryg bought me a giant bottle of water—because I hadn’t gotten any Hong Kong cash before I left America—and then Ian explained my options for getting a Chinese visa—because that was another very important thing I had left home without.

I could get a Chinese visa in Hong Kong the cheap way: for about thirty bucks (US dollars), we would get up at six the next morning and get on buses and trains to get to the bureaucratic office where they issue visas, where we would stand in line for several hours, until we got to the front of the line, where I would fill out a bunch of paperwork…and the visa would be ready four-ish days later. Or, for two hundred bucks, I could go to the kiosk at the airport, where they’d get me my visa twenty-four hours later, and deliver it to our hostel. That was worth two hundred dollars to me. The women in the kiosk snapped photos of me that are still stapled in the back of my passport: greasy hair, pasty-white skin, bra straps poking from an off-kilter tank top, glassy red-veined eyes that look more gray than blue between the fluorescent lights and the camera flash.

“The red double-decker buses remind me of London,” I said. We were waiting outside the airport for the bus that would get us to our hostel. Massive hills loomed behind the high-rises in the distance, craggy patchworks of rock and vegetation. I hadn’t expected any part of Hong Kong to be that green. The air was sticky, heavy, and hot enough I wished I was wearing shorts; I had come from slushy late-March sleet in Portland the day before I left home. “Nothing else reminds me of London though,” I added. “Or of anywhere else I’ve been.” When the bus came, we sat on the upper floor at the front of the double-decker, chatting and gulping from our water bottles, resting our feet on the window in front of us—Tryg and I accidentally matching in Chacos and rolled-up khaki-colored jeans.

A wild tropical plant clings to a wall with roots gnarled and twisted like

something from a fairy tale. The walls it climbs belong to an expensive

Western designer jewelry shop. Photo by Maia.

We got to our hostel by cramming into an elevator that brought us up the seventh floor of a high-rise that was made up mostly of other hostels, each located on a different floor.

“There’s no shower!” I said, peeking into the bathroom in our hostel room. While on that thirteen-hour plane ride, the only thing I was looking forward to as much as seeing my friends was taking a shower.

“Yeah there is,” Ian said. “Look again.”

“No there isn’t—I’m telling you—it’s…oh…” This explained the mist of water droplets all over the toilet seat and the toilet paper dispenser, and the puddles on the floor. The shower spigot resided a few feet above the toilet tank. Ian assured me that this was normal. “Wait till you use your first squatter toilet,” Ian said. “At least at this hostel they have Western toilets.” I was put off enough by the idea of showering with a toilet that I left a shower for later—washed my face and hands, twisted my hair up to disguise the grease, and, after changing into shorts, was ready to explore the city.

When I’d gotten my bearings enough to be fully aware of my surroundings, the first thing I noticed about Hong Kong was the smells: bloody meat, hot deep-frying oil, car exhaust, dust, sewage, spices I couldn’t name, body odor, expensive cologne, chemicals harsh enough to make me cough, and fruit so ripe as to be almost spoiled. Delicious intertwined with revolting in such a tight knot that I couldn’t separate one from the other.

In the street immediately outside our high-rise hostel, people crowded around an open-air stall that impaled various meats, seafood, tofu chunks, and vegetables on sticks and then dunked into bubbling oil and doused them in handfuls of spices. Ordinarily, no food gets me more excited than spicy things on sticks deep-fried (except maybe spicy things on sticks grilled over charcoal or over a campfire). But my stomach was still turning as it recovered from dehydration and a long flight. When Tryg told me to try the skewered squid, I hesitated, but said no. “Where can we get some fruit?” I asked.

Live frogs are easy to find in China, sold on the street alongside tanks of fish or heaps of raw meat.

We saw images like this in Hong Kong and in Yunnan. Photo by Tryg.

Outdoor markets were easy to find. In the States, or at least where I’m from, an outdoor market sells either expensive artisan crafts (Portland Saturday Market style), or it sells fresh local produce. In Hong Kong we found none of the former and some of the latter. But in addition to the fruit and vegetables (which really can’t be local since Hong Kong imports virtually all of its food), we could buy bras, knockoff designer handbags, broken-English joke bumper stickers, dildos, vibrators, porn, fake antique coins, fake antique communist propaganda, anything with Mao’s face on it, every kind of mobile phone (mostly fakes), lingerie, and neckties with images of farm animals having sex. Posters of President Obama were displayed next to posters of Stalin, Lenin, Marx, Osama bin Ladin, Angry Birds, and Chairman Mao.

Ian, Tryg and I wander through one of many outdoor markets. I never could take

a photo that captured anywhere near the color, vibrancy, diversity, and chaos of

these markets. Here it looks pretty mellow, but believe me it’s not. Photo by Maia.

It was in one of the outdoor markets that I tried my first mangosteen—a fruit the size of a small orange and the color of an eggplant. Peel it and it reveals slimy white flesh divided into segments like a head of garlic. But don’t judge mangosteens by their looks. Those cloves of slimy white flesh taste like the juiciest fresh peach.

Next I tried a dragonfruit. I have encountered no fruit more awesome-looking: a pear-ish-shaped fruit with bright red scaly skin streaked with green, a little bigger than a grapefruit. Sliced open, the flesh is bright-white and the texture of a kiwi, but studded with so many tiny black seeds that it looks like the fruit gods added poppy seeds to their recipe when they created dragonfruit. Sadly, its taste didn’t live up to its looks—nicely popping seeds, but not much flavor. Ian told me they’d had way better in Bangkok.

That night, Tryg fell asleep clutching his bottle of Hop Stoopid to his chest like a teddy bear. I’d brought Ian and Tryg two bottles of Pacific Northwest beer, some Tillamook cheddar, dill Havarti, olives, Olympic Provisions chorizo salami, and a loaf of seeded New Seasons whole wheat bread as tastes of home. In bed, right before he turned off the light, Tryg asked me if I’d give him his beer. I dug around my backpack till I found it, wrapped in plastic grocery bags in case it leaked on the flight. “I don’t want to drink it,” Tryg said. “I just want to hold it.” We ended up not breaking into any of the food or drinks I’d brought until a few days later on the train, but the Hop Stoopid rested on Tryg’s bed both of our nights in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong held two of the best meals either of us have ever tasted—at two different Japanese restaurants, both at a mall. When we went out to eat the next day, Ian explained that in China only the wealthy could shop in malls, so that’s where we’d find some super nice restaurants. He couldn’t have been more right.

At the Japanese place at lunch, each table was equipped with its own gas grill. Of the six or so dishes we got there to grill over the flames, all were jaw-droppingly good, but one stood out so much I salivate when I think about it: thin slices of beef so intricately marbled with fat that as they cooked they coated themselves in their own fatty juices without any marinade to help them along. The only sensible thing to call it is “butter beef.” No butter was involved (dairy is pretty rare in China), but there’s nothing in the world that melts on your tongue like that beef did. Ian and Tryg swooned over the daydream of a steak made out of that beef.

After a long day of treks exploring the city’s alleyways and outdoor markets, we returned to the same mall, but a different Japanese restaurant, for dinner. This one perched on the top floor of the mall, overlooking Hong Kong’s harbor. Tryg had to convince Ian and me. We balked and backed away after one glance at the menu’s prices. None of us had ever ordered any meal approaching that expense. Yet once Tryg had us convinced, we figured we’d go all the way—as a group, we chose the three-person multi-course meal, and we sat on stools at the grill so we could watch every step of the process like theatre.

They started us with a green salad in a forgettable dressing but topped with smoked salmon so tender it might have been gravlax or lox. Next, sashimi slices. While eating every new course, we ogled the chef in front of us, wondering if the next dish he sent sizzling onto the griddle would be something else for us. I don’t remember the order of things after that, but at some point there were fried oysters topped with chunks of sautéed onion and bacon. Tempura was perfectly crispy on the outside, with shrimp so succulent on the inside that to be was almost custardy. The butter beef from earlier that day got competition from thin slices of grilled beef that were wrapped around a filling of green onions and bacon.

I savor every bit of those perfect sushi rolls. Tryg was laughing while he took this picture. 
Ian’s in the background. Photo by Tryg.   

Oh, but nothing compared to the sushi rolls! Salmon, salmon skin, avocado, big popping fish eggs in the middle, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and a green powder that at first we thought was seaweed, but its taste was too subtle for that—maybe a type of green tea? I let every flavor seep all over my mouth until it all melted into a wasabi-tinged puddle of salmon and ocean. Later they served us ordinary fried rice and miso soup, but we were in too much of a sushi-roll-induced blissful stupor to be disappointed.

Wandering around the harbor after dinner, Ian and Tryg complained light-heartedly about the cold just as they had the night before. “I swear it’s like this close to snowing!” Tryg said. As usual, I couldn’t tell if he was joking. My understanding of sarcasm is that of a second-grade child. “No it’s not,” I said. I still wore my tank top and shorts while Tryg and Ian—recovering from the hundred-degree intensity of Bangkok—dressed in jeans and jackets. “It is, it is,” Tryg insisted, “I bet it’s like thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit.” “No, it’s more like sixty-five,” I said. “If the wind picks up I might put on my flannel shirt.”

Buildings across the water winked their changing patterns of colored neon—geometric shapes of glass and electricity that belonged more to a Star Wars prequel than to a city in this world. Smog and lights teamed up to ensure that this city saw neither true darkness nor stars. Too soon, we’d be leaving this place for two full days eating instant noodles on narrow sleeper trains and pissing in squatter toilets.

A Month on the Beaches of Koh Payam

After a month an a half on a relatively remote island in southern Thailand I found myself with Tryg in Bangkok wondering exactly how one comes to a place like this. After all, I didn’t plan on being in Bangkok 5 months ago when we set off for asia free of trajectory and started wandering. I can honestly say I never planned to go to Bangkok ever in my life, it was to remain a Timbuktu, Transylvania, or Emerald City, mythic in its scale and remoteness. But when your intention has no direction all destinations are possible; In fact in such a situation where one makes no plans, each happening begins to feel intended, or at the very least miraculous. Here I am in Beijing, here I am in Shanghai, suddenly I find myself in a rural hospital, and now a Buddhist temple. I’ve gotten good at riding the currents of this trip becoming aware of the fact that I am part of the whole ocean and these waves were heading towards me long ago.  I find myself being able to accept what comes and flow with it on towards what ever ends it offers me.

Ian swings on the beach.  Another perfect sunset over Burmese islands and the Andaman Sea.

Koh Payam, the island off the coast of Ranong, Thailand, was absolutely incredible - at first. Me and tryg arrived there with Liisa, our Finnish friend from our first week in Beijing who had decided to join us for a little while in the tropics. We arrived on the island by ferry from the main land and took motor bike taxis to our hut made of weaved bamboo pieces right on the white sand of the beach. Though it was too hot in the middle of the day – 95 degrees usually - to do anything but go swimming, that was more than enough to keep us occupied for a while. Tryg built spear guns out of sticks, bicycle spokes, and rubber tires to be used while snorkeling around the truly razor sharp coral reefs just a 3 minute walk from our front door. Inland was covered in jungle, cashew orchards, and coconut trees. Wild dogs roamed around in packs that you could hear at night fighting raucous yelping turf wars. We explored the little shops and restaurants around us in the cooler evenings and woke up each morning to a chorus of a hundred different tropical bird calls each beautiful and unique. In all we paid about 5 dollars per person per night, and I could not believe how someone like me, with as little money as I have, could afford to come to a place that seemed like it should be reserved for millionaires and honeymooners. I was awash with contentment.

Texture of a jackfruit. 

This changed slowly. Within 2 weeks Liisa left to return to school in Beijing, and me and tryg moved into a cheaper place away from the beach with nicer cabins. Like the huts before we only had electricity after 6 pm, and no Internet of any kind. The heat was absolutely stifling during the day and I’d started getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes. In the beginning I stuck to a workout routine that I could maintain within the confines of the cabin, because the sun was so intense I couldn’t bring myself to go running. But mostly, we settled in for a long stay with books and pod casts.

Kink-tailed cat.

The beginning of my downfall was the mosquitoes. I have a stronger reaction to them than most people I know and it becomes almost impossible not to scratch them. I do my best but in those hazy moments between sleeping and wakefulness I find myself completely lacking in self control and scratch my legs to ruins. They became bloody and eventually, my right leg got infected. I did my best to take care of it but when I started feeling sick and found my lymph nodes were starting to swell I had to start taking my emergency antibiotics. Though the leg eventually healed and I redoubled my efforts to resist scratching, my moral would never return to it’s full force. Each day became exactly like the last, waking up without a goal or a reason. I was running low on money and wanted to have some to spend when Lupin came to meet us in Hong Kong, so I was eating mostly just musli cereal with only one real meal a day from the restaurants on the island. As I said it was too hot most of the time to walk much during the day, or go exploring, and even when I did force myself to go out there were only 3 roads on the island, all of which I’d already walked down many times. I read 4 books in the month we spent on the island. I listened to close to 50 podcast including Radio Lab, All Songs Considered, The Splendid Table, America’s Test Kitchen, and a few others. I found myself sitting in the chair on our porch staring mindlessly into the trees simply waiting for our time on the island to end. I became numb.

The biggest, meanest, gecko on Koh Phayam. 

In the middle there was suddenly hope for some way to pass the time. Tryg had found a hidden beach down a jungle path that was covered in sharp rock. The first day I went we brought the fly rods we’d been carrying with us since Portland that we'd yet to use and for the first time in 5 months tried fishing. That first day was beyond fun. Tryg caught a massive squid - over 3 pounds - on "The Pram Rod", which he won in a rock paper scissors contest before we left the US. I caught a much smaller squid accompaniment, all within an hour.. That night we had a massive feast. The owner of our cabin turned the one big squid into 5 different dishes, then made a few dishes of his own and we ate with the staff. When we tried to pay for the extra food they’d given us they refused “when you are here you are family” he insisted.

A friendly guy I met out in a jungle hut.

The next day we caught nothing though, and same with the day after that. For days we returned to the beach to hangout and fish, but in time the hike didn’t feel worth it to me and I would spent the last 2 weeks sitting on the porch or walking aimlessly around the island by myself.

One of the many flying lizards on the island.  They had quite a glide ratio, and amazing maneuverability. 

When finally we left and found ourselves in the massive city of Bangkok I felt suddenly like I could accomplish anything. Despite the boredom and incredible act of mental endurance involved with doing nothing at all for a month, it left me also feeling powerful. I was so happy to be in Bangkok. I knew that I was feeling something that you could only feel after traveling for 5 months, a simple awareness of the world and your place in it, and joy in knowing that. I loved that I was somewhere so unlikely, I loved that I was doing something so intense, I even loved the experience on the island, as miserable as it was, because that much quiet time to yourself it's self teaches you a thing or two.

Young pineapple.

Travel, I decided, even with all it’s inevitable suffering, and in fact because of it, is an incredible thing, it makes me feel stronger and more capable than anything else I’ve ever experienced. Our last night in Bangkok we laid our air mattresses out on benches in the airport to sleep. With my hat over my eyes to block out the fluorescent lights I soaked in steady confidence.  5 months ago I wasn't sure if there was a reason to go on this trip.  I wanted to focus on my education, on building my career, I was worried this was a waste of time, but in the airport as I noted all the anxieties and self doubts that had evaporated in these past 5 months I was so thankful I'd continued, because every challenge, every inner tumult, was worth the way I'd now begun to feel. 

A Teaser - New Post Coming Soon!

Maia has landed in Hong Kong to spend some time with Ian and Tryg, and I have volunteered to take care of the blog while she is visiting. Due to technical difficulties, I received Tryg’s images, but not Ian’s text. Since they will be on a train and out of touch for the next 3 days, I thought I would offer up a teaser image planned for the soon to come post of their latest adventures.

From what I understand, the guys have been hanging out on a secluded island for the last couple of weeks. I don’t know about you, but after seeing the pics I am looking forward to hearing the story!

Enjoy!

Gary

Faces of Shanghai

Arriving in the bustle of Shanghai I had the itch for a new lens. Such cravings are nothing new, and I generally ignore them, but I was in China to photograph people, and the part of me that likes toys was especially vocal about the fact that I did not have that perfect lens. I needed something fast, which is slang for a lens that allows in a lot of light (the f/ stop), in order to get that appealing look of only a little bit of the image being in focus (the eyes), and the rest turning into a creamy blur. After three hours of haggling, bluffing, and arguing in Chinese (thanks to Ian) in the largest camera store I’ve ever seen, I walked away with lens I wanted. It is a Sigma 30 mm f/ 1.4 and I’ve loved it since that day, using it far more than the rest of my (more expensive) lenses.  

Upon getting the lens, I went on a two-day binge of portraits throughout the huge city. No one interesting looking escaped my request for a photo (though many refused) and I got some cool shots from my boldness. This blog is a compilation of my favorite images from those first couple days in Shanghai.

Ian and I are temporarily stuck on a tropical island in the south of Thailand, reading feverishly and awaiting news about our futures. A “normal” blog is sure to follow, once we get back to civilization and real computers.

Tryg

Laotian Infatuation

The mountains outside Vang Vieng.

I’m sitting still on a stone bench on the edge of a courtyard in the middle of Luang Prabang. I’m still because it seems like the thing to do in such a place. Behind me young Buddhist monks between the ages of 8 and 17 are bathing in the cold water from a well they are draining with a bucket. It’s warm out, as always, and humid. The papaya tree has only one ripe fruit and the coconut trees near by have already been stripped of everything edible. I’m angry about the tourists. 

I see more tourists in 15 minutes on the street on the other side of the courtyard than I have seen in all the three months I spent in China combined. You’re most likely to hear people speaking French around here because at one time, like many parts of Southeast Asia, this was a French colony, and so a lot of the locals still speak the language. The reason I’m annoyed at the other foreigners is not just because there are so many of them, though that was an unpleasant surprise when we first arrived here. It has much more do to the fact that a lot of the tourists are either very old, or very young. It seems to be half a retirement home and half a spring break destination, which seems to negate all the trouble it took to come here. You see I was pretty proud of the journey, up until I arrived in Luang Prabang and found more white faces than locals.

We left the Jade Roo, our home for the past month and a half and the best hostel I’ve ever stayed at, the afternoon of January 27. The bus we took first, from Dali to Jing Hong in southern Yunnan, was filled with deaf Chinese people. The whole 12 hours or so was almost completely silent, something nearly unheard of in most parts of China. The people, speaking in sign language, were all young, probably either teenagers or in their early twenties. (After all this time it’s still hard to tell how old Chinese people are, but I feel okay about it ’cause Chinese people seem to have the same trouble guessing my age.) The only sounds I heard for the most part came from when someone somewhere on the bus would succumb to motion sickness, yak into a plastic bag, and then toss the bag out the window. We woke up at 1 am when we arrived in Jing Hong. With no place to go, I asked the driver if we could just sleep on in the beds of the sleeper bus and he agreed. 

When morning finally came, it revealed a tropical environment green and vivid. A papaya tree grew just feet from out bus. Palm trees where everywhere. It seemed that every open patch of earth was completely covered in life. Plants grew on top of plants so the trees were dripping with orchids, vines, and ferns. 

A tree full of epiphytes. Ah, the tropics.

Though I would have loved to have stayed a few days in Jing Hong, our expiring visas pushed us onto the next bus, and we took off for the southern edge of China. It’s strange walking across a country border. One minute you’re defined as a traveler in China, and the next your designation changes and you’re something different—but because there is a ten-minute walk down a jungle-y dirt road after leaving China and before arriving at the Laos visa shack, there is a good chunk of limbo-like time where one doesn’t know quite what they are. The most adventurous I ever feel is in these fuzzy periods where everything I know is behind me, and everything in front of me is an unknown. Nothing has ever been as much of a mystery to me as it is at this particular moment.

To say I knew little about Laos would have been some record-setting understatement. Not only did I know nothing about the culture, food, or geography; before I crossed the boarder I would have been hard-pressed to point out Laos on a map. I didn’t know how to say hello or thank you in the local language. I had no guess whatsoever what might be considered rude, what the local religions where, what the exchange rate was, or even what the money was called. I’ve never walked so blind into any situation in my life, and I’m proud to say I was only mildly panicked. 

The little border town just inside Laos was the kind of place that would be wiped from the face of the earth without a trace in less than a year if it weren’t for the people there carrying out the bare minimum upkeep. Walking past huts made of mud with metal sheets for roofs, we found ourselves remarkably without a plan. There were a group of van drivers offering rides to the nearest town but they were charging incredible sums of money even by American standards, and there was no kind of bus station anywhere in sight. We reached the edge of the town without any Lao money (called Kip) and still no idea of what we were going to do. Finally we were able to change money with some guy we met who was running a little soda stand, and with nothing else to do we started walking down the road.

In retrospect, I guess we assumed we’d eventually find a town or a village, but this only shows how little we knew about the place. Looking back on it now, we were probably a good 30 miles from the nearest village, let alone a city with hotels or guest houses. The sun was pounding us and the jungle was dense on all sides with banana trees and flowers the colors of panic buttons glowing all around. 

Finally, a covered flatbed pickup truck broke the silence, and we stuck out our hands to wave it down. In the cab were the driver and a largish Chinese lady who just happen to be going to the city we’d heard was a viable destination, Luang Prabang. The driver said he could take us to an intersection where the bus to Luang Prabang would drive by. We’d have to chase it down, but then we’d be set. So we jumped in the back of the truck and took off.

The intersection truly was in the middle of nowhere. There was a Chinese restaurant and a couple of huts. The Chinese woman that had become our travel partner was proving to be a little more grouchy than we’d initially guessed, and I found myself not completely trusting her when she gave us advice. Nonetheless, we bought some food and began doing nothing. 

Local fruit.

It was about two hours before the bus arrived, then left without us in it. The driver shouted that the bus was full as we chased after it. The sun was setting as Tryg was calling dibs on the wooden bench in the Chinese restaurant for the night. Neither of us were in particularly bad spirits though. In fact, generally we don’t get too stressed about anything while traveling unless there is something we have to figure out. In this situation, since there seemed to be nothing we could do, there was no reason to panic, so we didn’t. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before a van drove by, which the Chinese woman waved down. We put our trust in her because we had no other choice, and we climbed aboard and took off through the jungle. 

The drive was beautiful through winding dirt roads that rose and fell through the mountains. We snaked along a small enchanting river most of the way. Tryg and I started talking about the possibility of buying a canoe and floating on a paddling trip for a few days through the denser parts of the jungle. 

Coming around one bend we came across a broken-down bus full of people waiting in what remained of the day’s broiling sun. The same bus, in fact, that had passed us by just hours before as we stood on the side of the road. Everyone there seemed to be contemplating a night on the side of the road as we continued on our way.

To this day, we still don’t know what town we arrived four hours later after the sun had gone down. We checked into the worst accommodations we have yet experienced in Asia, just across the street from the bus station, and started walking through the small town looking for a place to eat. We noticed quickly how many foreigners there were. Not tons, nothing compared to what was coming, but enough that we felt out of place. We’d gotten used to being unique over the past months, and so it was strange to see so many travelers in such a random tiny town. 

The next morning we woke up early and caught the first bus heading towards Luang Prabang. The ride was as beautiful as ever, with mountains that would shoot as straight as pillars out of the forest, reaching four of five thousand feet into the sky. Lush green plants covered every peak, while we were surrounded on all sides by stark sheer cliffs.

The colors of the morning market in Luang Prabang.

Here in the courtyard a few moments ago, a monk set to beating a low muffled bell. At the same time birds have been stealing bits of stale bread as hard as pebbles from the offering plates in front of the golden Buddha statues. A cat makes a last-ditch effort from behind the Buddhas, scattering the birds in a single pounce as the young monks in the shower house respond to the bell, dressing in their bright orange robes and walking towards the center of the complex where a temple colored in black, gold, red, and silver dominates all the other structures. The birds are carrying the bits of food they’ve stolen up to the roof of the temple and dropping them so that it bounces down the tiles, sounding like a muted xylophone before falling to the ground amidst a flurry of chasing finches. I hear the monks beginning to chant inside, which gathers the nearby tourists like months to peer inside the temple. I haven’t seen inside yet, but I am more interested in watching the masses collect, and I think it would be a pity to become one of them too quickly. 

When we arrived in Luang Prabang we couldn’t quite fathom the crowds. It seemed more like southern California than a city in SE Asia. White faces and bright blond hair flowed everywhere. Everyone wore expensive clothes and designer sunglasses; the locals sold posters, statues, and other tourist bait, which filled streets as far as we could see. Somehow in the middle of SE Asia, in a country I’d barely ever heard of, we’d found a thriving resort town on the banks of the Mekong River.

A celebratory swim in the river after a long trip to Luang Prabang.

We arrived in Luang Prabang at noon, and within two hours we were checked into a room whose windowless walls, ceiling, and floor were all covered in the same dark stained hardwood paneling. We left to walk around this odd Caucasian bubble and soon found ourselves swimming in the fast currents of one of the two rivers that flank Luang Prabang, turning it into a tropical peninsula. 

The monks are still chanting. It’s been close to an hour, and most of the tourists have gotten bored and left to peruse the night market as the sun dissipates leaving the courtyard empty. I’m sitting very still just listening to the harmonies vibrating in and around me. After a few days I’ve gotten better at finding these quiet pockets. It’s a very small city, maybe a mile and a half across, but there are at least five different temples within it, each hidden away so that you might not notice them as you walk by. 

It took very little time to discover the city and head out on excursions to other local villages. We were looking for a boat that we could buy, and had so far we had only heard incredible prices of three million kip (approximately 375 dollars) for a motor-less canoe. 

Choosing dirt roads over paved ones, we found ourselves in a minuscule collection of huts, where we played a game of Padonk with some local men. This, as we learned, was a French game that has become popular amongst the Lao people in the last few years. I’ve mostly heard it called bocce ball in the U.S. The game consists of throwing heavy metal balls at a small red ball at the other end of the court. You are trying to get your team’s balls to land as close to the red ball as possible. It’s similar to curling, though the people of the other team will try and knock your balls out of the way. Whoever is closest to the red ball after all the metal balls have been thrown wins the round.

I’m not exactly sure why, but drinking is an integral part of Padonk. You must finish your drink before taking your turn, and your cup will be filled with beer again the second you put it down.  This means that after a few hours both Tryg and I were drunk, along with the other men we were playing with, and we had all become the best of friends. One of the men could speak English, while another turned out to be the chief of a local village. 

We mentioned our plan to boat down the Mekong River and the village head quickly advised us against it. “It is not the right time of year,” the English-speaking man translated. “The water is too low, so there are many dangerous rapids.” For the sake of our livers, we left soon after that, giving everyone big hugs and promising to come back the next day. 

Assessing boat options with the idea of a long-term trip down the Mekong.

The monks have finished chanting so I’ve stood to leave the courtyard. I’ve been sitting for hours on that stone bench, so my tailbone is sore, and the monks exiting the temple look at me as if one of their statues were running away. I’m hungry and tired, and since Tryg has the only key to our room and I have no idea where he is, I start walking. 

It’s warm tonight, as it is every night. It feels like nighttime after a long hot summer day. I look at a few of the things being sold in the market, listen to the foreigners around me complaining about this and that, or marveling at this or that, or proselytizing about this or that. I walk to the river, saying no to each man who offers me a boat ride down the Mekong. Geckos swarm around the streetlights, toads hop down the road and get killed by little girls on motorbikes. Coconut trees sway in the warm wind, and the sound of the river rapids roll up from down below. I walk for hours in the dark; it’s a nice night for it.

Playing an impromptu game of sepak takraw in the cool of the night. Vientiane, Laos. 

Things You Should Know

Ah, the allure of fire.*

After the crazy traffic, food sanitation, and hospitals, a man swinging 
around a string of firecrackers doesn't even register as moderately dangerous.

Chinese New Year: It’s like Christmas, New Years, and the Fourth of July rolled into one, 
with really cheap fireworks (all of which are legal). The next morning there is literally 
a carpet of red paper covering the streets from the millions of firecrackers.

There is so much I wish I’d shared with you about this place. I’ve gone off on tangents about the nature of the Chinese mind, and I’ve been distracted by my adventures in the hospital, my terrible Christmas Day date, and my chance encounter with the Chinese film industry. But I’ve been negligent when it comes to explaining Dali. Maybe it’s because it’s so incredible and I know that anything I write will fail to capture exactly why Tryg and I have chosen to stay here so long. But there are things that I really need you to know before we leave.

I want you to know intimately that there is a moment that happens right at sunset, if the weather is just right, when there is a tiny gap of blue visible between the mountains and the clouds. If you watch as the sun descends unseen behind the overcast sky that small patch of blue will soften in color to deep purple, then to amber, and then bright orange, until suddenly the sun itself will appear in that minuscule window of space, and massive rays of light—as clear and real as if they are the tangible condensation of something sacred—will erupt across the valley. In that moment the snowy mountain peeks are set metallic, shining like polished brass in summer heat. In this moment of light, the ego melts in acceptance of temporal perfection, and draws the people watching together in communal love for the place that they are.

An unusually wintery day along Er Hai Lake.

Did you know in Yunnan marijuana grows like a weed all over the farmland where farmers produce fresh highly-inorganic vegetables all winter long? In Dali all the houses are white with murals neatly placed in the corners of the walls. The temple halfway up the mountain is the best place to get vegetarian fried noodles, while in town there is a Buddhist buffet where you can eat as much as you want for around 80 cents. But you have to eat everything on your plate or the nun will stand disapprovingly beside you, refusing to let you go till you’ve finished every single grain of rice. 

Unusual flora of rural Yunnan.

Sometimes on a clear calm day a gust of wind so strong you can stand sideways against it will rip down from the mountains and then disappear, leaving a clean street and crowds of people rubbing the dust out of their eyes. 

I want you to know the people here. In such a small town I never walk through the streets without running into friends. I know the juggling Italian clown that regularly drops his balls in the middle of otherwise impressive shows. I know the male Chilean modern dancer with long curly hair who moves to cello music on stage like a worm plumbing the earth for a beat. There is the Australian/Colombian couple who have been traveling the world for two years from South America on their way back down under, keeping a blog of their adventures. I know the English brewer at the Bad Monkey Bar who I play Monopoly with on Saturdays, along with Jane, the former co-owner of the Jade Emu hostel. There’s Steve the American tea tycoon, Simon the muscle-bound ex-British Air Force backpacker, Richard the out-of-work biologist, Lewis the anthropological filmmaker. For a while there was Jack the pot-smoking writer who was never found away from the sun that shone on the third floor, and Adrian the Scottish mother of two teenagers who could turn heads while sunbathing on the terrace. The whole city feels like our own private mansion, with all the people in it making up a strange churning family of comers and goers that seem destined to converge on this little village in southern China.

In Dali there are two alternate universes.  The western tourists arrive at the hostels with backpacks intending to climb the mountains, see the temples, experience the local culture and enjoy a relaxed artistic existence. The Chinese tourists check into their hotels and head off to take pictures with their point-and-shoot cameras while riding huge fifteen-seat tourist golf carts, or being herded through the city by tour guides dressed in outfits imitating the ethnic minorities of the area.

BAMFs by night.

An unexpected subject made for a much more interesting photo.

Tomorrow we are leaving China.  We will explore Southeast Asia starting with Laos, possibly continuing on to Thailand, Cambodia, or even Vietnam—but we will return to Dali when we get tired or run low on money. This is the place in Asia where we will always come home.

It’s been a while since I thanked everyone who reads this regularly, or irregularly. We love hearing from you guys when ever you make the time to write comments or emails and I love that people somewhere in the world care about what we are doing. I hope you all are making it through the winter OK as we head off to the tropics.

* Note: The first photo in this post, captioned “Ah, the allure of fire,” is not my photo. It was taken by our good friends Kris and Andreas, an Australian and a Colombian, who have been traveling and blogging for close to two years. Read about their adventures at 2sporks1cup.com

Women dancing in the Dragon Festival on Day Two of New Year.