Grande Cafe Mocha, soy milk, hotto, no whip

You know how you can wander into a convenience store in Canada, pick up a Diet Coke and some licorice (ok, in Heather's world, maybe something practical like OJ for the rest of you), silently hand over your cash, and never actually engage in conversation with the person behind the counter? Well, it doesn't go down like that here in Japan.

There's an enormous amount of chattering that goes on during the simple interaction of procuring a Diet Coke. Of course, the chatter is completely one-sided, which makes it even more ridiculous, but simultaneously charming. Given I speak absolutely no Japanese, I amuse myself imagining what is being communicated. In my little universe it goes something like this:

Polite Salesperson: Welcome, beautiful lady to our most humble establishment. We sincerely hope that we may be of service, and that our products will be most pleasing to you.

Heather makes brief eye-contact, smiles awkwardly and scans the brightly lit aisles for the coveted Diet Coke. Ah, excellent. They stock Diet Coke, not the vile Coke Zero that leaves a nasty aftertaste. Subtle differences between similar toxins, but important nonetheless. She shuffles towards the front of the store and places the Diet Coke on the counter.

Polite Salesperson: Ah, I am pleased that you have found what you were seeking. Is there anything else we can offer you today, beautiful lady?

Heather smiles stupidly, and silently communicates her complete incompetence with the Japanese language.

Polite Salesperson: If you would be so kind as to pay us, the amount of 147 Yen would be pleasing to us, but only if it causes no inconvenience to you, most esteemed guest.

Heather looks at the price listed on the cash register, and hands over two hundred yen. 

Polite Salesperson: I am receiving two hundred yen from you, from which I will now give you change. The amount of 53 yen is the total of the change that I am giving to you. I hope the change is received in the spirit it is given, with the utmost respect and admiration. 

Heather slips the change in her pocket and moves towards the door, Diet Coke in hand.

Polite Salesperson: It has been most excellent serving you today, most beautiful lady. A thousand blessings on you, and we would be most pleased to serve you again, at your convenience.

So clearly, I do have an active imagination. But my friend Dave, who's lived in Tokyo long enough to be pretty much fluent in Japanese, told me the other day that the customer service policy in Japan is to treat the customer as if he/she is a god, so I think my translation could be reasonably accurate. And even if it isn't, my interpretation at least keeps me amused.

As with any language, obviously native speakers talk, well, fast. So despite my brief studies of the vocabulary section of my Lonely Planet guidebook, I recognize words only occasionally. Thank you in Japanese goes something like 'domo arigato'. Of course it sounds nothing like this when Japanese people say it - they string it together with a bunch of other words I don't know, and I end up being confused. So I mumble 'arigato' quietly as I depart, with an embarrassed smile, and beat it out of there as quickly as possible.

I had a major language victory last week in Kyoto on a minor hike up to a temple in the woods. As I started climbing up the path there were a bunch of senior citizens on their way down, and each said 'konichiwa' as they passed me, which I was excited to recognize as 'good afternoon'. Probably the only reason I recognized it was they were so winded from their climb they were talking slowly for once, but I was super excited, and replied with my own 'konichiwa'.

Equally exciting was my language lesson at Starbuck's the other morning. It adjoined a hotel lobby, and a few hotel restaurant staff members were in the lobby attempting to drum up business, and yelled something in Japanese to anyone who strolled through the lobby. It could have been 'cheap bacon', but I suspected something more basic. Looking up 'good morning' in my guidebook, I vaguely recognized 'ohayo gozaimas' as the phrase that was rapidly being delivered with disturbingly large smiles. I've tried to slip it into conversations a couple times, but I say it so slowly and butcher it so badly, it's embarrassing. 

I have 3 days left in Japan, and I don't think there's much chance I'll be improving my Japanese. But I've got ordering my cafe mocha down pat, and I have learned to take the victories where I find them, no matter how small. Ok, I confess, there is an English menu, but still...

All I Really Want is World Peace

I've landed in Japan during school field trip season. Busload after busload of school kids are on the same tourist trail as me in the Kansai Prefecture, which means the temples are literally crawling with what I would guess are 10 or 11 year olds. Herding them about are teachers and a small army of tour guides - the female ones, unfortunately clad in what closely resembles an airline hostess costume from the early 90's. All school uniforms seem to be navy blue and white or black and white, so at least there's some uniformity to this endless sea of bodies. The only way to have a temple to yourself is to go to a boring one, I've discovered. Plus I visited the city of Kyoto, one of the world's most culturally rich cities (17 UNESCO world heritage sites) on a weekend, so on top of the school kids, their parents, aunts and uncles and grandmas were out in mass as well. How I long for open spaces!


While taking in a bit of culture is part of the curriculum, they also seem to have English language homework as well. I regularly get swarmed by 5 or 6 kids at once - I think being on my own is either working in my favour/going against me, depending on your perspective. At a temple on Sunday afternoon I was quickly surrounded by a group of students who I learned were from the Tokyo area. They were so incredibly polite, it was insane. I'm sorry, but if this was a pack of Canadian kids, forced to wander around five or six hundred year-old churches with homework assignments, I think there would be a lot of grumbling over the stupidity of the whole thing. The group, I kid you not, visibly quivered with excitement when I agreed to answer a few questions. I think they must have had a quota of English-speaking foreigners they had to land by the end of the trip, and given they outnumbered us at least 300 to one, it seemed I was worth celebrating. Typically the questions are fairly routine, the only variation being the ease with which they are delivered. What is your name? Where are you from? Is this your first time to Japan? May we take your picture? At least the questions are less probing than elsewhere in Asia. How old are you? Are you married? Do you have kids? Why you have no boyfriend?


But things do get a bit challenging when I'm asked to write a small essay for them, on the spot. The other day I was asked to share my thoughts on world peace or the friendliness of Japan, for future translation by the class. Suddenly I felt like an ill-prepared Miss Louisiana at a beauty pageant, faced with publicly sharing her thoughts on world peace when she though all she needed to do was look good in a two piece. I dodged the world peace question and instead chose to write many positive comments about Japan's friendly people. It really should have occurred to me to spend a few minutes of my spare time crafting a more eloquent answer to the world peace question, which I could summon if questioned in the future. But of course, I didn't. So I find myself in Hiroshima this afternoon, touring the atomic bomb memorial. Having just finished viewing a memorial to children killed or poisoned by radiation, I suddenly found myself surrounded by four school kids. After the preliminaries were out of the way, I was once again asked to share my thoughts on world peace. While I contemplated responding 'well, isn't that what George W. Bush is over in the Middle East fixing right now before his term ends?', I stopped myself. I rambled on for a few sentences in the vein of highly optimistic 'we must all work together' drivel. Not that I don't mean it or believe it, but upon quick reflection it sounded so ridiculously simplistic to border on plain stupidity. So here I am, standing at the epicentre of a nuclear bomb that killed 140,000 people and I'm busy wondering whether next week, when the kids get back to class and work on translating my thoughts, they'll all have a good giggle over the idiotic ramblings of 'Heather, from Canada'.

Naked Girl in Japan

As a policy, I try to avoid public nakedness as much as possible. There are variations on 'public', but I generally classify it as 'me plus 1', where the 'plus 1' is a complete stranger. There was a lot of public nakedness going on at the ashram in India - for those of you with dirty minds, let me complete that sentence - during my prescribed ayurvedic massage sessions. Since then, I've managed to keep the public nudie time to a minimum.

Tragically, Japan is conspiring against my policy, and the situation is simply beyond my control. For accommodation for my two weeks here in Japan I've booked 3 types - business hotels, hostels, and ryokans, which are traditional Japanese inns. As I discovered last night, and confirmed tonight - public bathing is the norm in both ryokans and youth hostels. By public bathing I mean the following. There's a curtain or opaque glass door (no lock) that separates the change room from the hall. A series of cubicles are available for you to store your belongings while bathing. Through another glass door is the communal bathroom, which features a half dozen open-concept showers, a few toddler-sized plastic stools and a very large tiled tub off to the side, full to the brim with hot water. Here's how it is supposed to work. You soap up and rinse off at the mini showers - the shower head is positioned at chest height so I think the idea is you're supposed to shower while perched on the stool. Once you're clean, apparently you go for a dip in the communal tub. Considering the policy I explained earlier, you can imagine how I was feeling when I sussed out the situation. Genders are separated however, a small victory.

Last night I whipped in and out rapidly, forgoing the dip in the tub completely. Here's my thinking on the communal tub - total and utter grossness. I'm not sure how often they drain the water - there were signs up in the ryokan the other night that instructed bathers not to drain the tub after use. (I'm sure it is cleaned out frequently, but it's simply the fear of the unknown.) So putting aside the fact you might find yourself in a tub with a complete stranger, one who is completely naked, you're assuming everyone before you (and who knows how many bodies that might include!) have soaped up sufficiently. I'm sure someone could make a case that my love-affair with hot tubs really isn't that far off this experience, but my argument is that at least in the hot tub there's a layer of spandex between my important bits and a pool of contaminated water. And there's the immediacy of the communal bath that is much more confronting and therefore panic-inducing. Anyway, I managed to zip in and out so quickly, public nakedness didn't occur. (I've just realized that public nakedness could be interpreted to mean me naked in a public place with no witnesses, but for the purposes of this ramble, let's stick to the original definition.)

After checking myself into the youth hostel, I did a quick tour of the place to suss out the bathing situation. I'd hoped that a hostel might feature western shower stalls in a concession to the foreign tourists, but no such luck. As I'd come in from dinner I noticed a large group of school kids having dinner in the lobby restaurant. Theorizing that I didn't really need an audience of giggling school girls while I shaved my legs, I beat a quick path to the bathroom. For those of you who read about my drama back in Vietnam when my magical quick dry towel was sacrificed to the Laundry Gods, you'll be happy to know I managed to acquire a new towel in Singapore - at five times the cost of the original, but hey, life is hard. The new towel isn't full size, I simply could not justify the price - but it still was triple the size of the hand towel provided by the hostel. So me and my trusty new quick dry towel headed down to the bath. Stepping into the change area I came across my first and thankfully only naked body of the evening that wasn't my own - a middle-aged Japanese lady. We made very brief eye contact then went about our business. As I'd made my way down from my room to the bathroom, I'd decided on my philosophy for the event - act like this whole public naked bathing thing is no biggie, my thinking being if I seemed freaked out by it I'd make an even larger spectacle of myself than my bare ass would manage on its own. And a part of me realizes that given the entirely public nature of bathing, clearly it is in no way voyeuristic for the Japanese. Even accepting this intellectually though didn't prevent me from being mildly disturbed by the whole thing.

After all my apprehension I managed to successfully shower in privacy. Three school girls entered the change room as I was whipping on my PJ's. They must attend an English language school, as they chatted in English. During my eavesdropping I was amused to learn that at least one of the girls was equally disturbed by the public nakedness, as she peaked into the bathroom to first determine whether anyone was bathing, and then attempted to negotiate with her friends that she could go in on her own first, and they could go in after. I guess I'm not the only girl in Japan with a policy against public nakedness.

I have a few nights booked in business hotels (translation - Western style to look forward to. And I'm trying to look at the whole experience from a mature perspective. While I don't think public bathing is going to turn me into some sort of exhibitionist (the world breathes a collective sigh of relief), I think it will lessen one of my many hang-ups. And that's all good.

A Bit of a Rant/Welcome to Japan

I have to admit, as I was sitting in the boarding lounge at the Hong Kong International Airport, waiting for my flight to Osaka, Japan, about 75% of me wished I was boarding a flight to Toronto instead. I just questioned my ability to summon the energy for another country. Whine, whine, boo-hoo, poor Heather. Pathetic, I know. But people, I was pooped after almost 5 months on the road.

My flights, Singapore to Hong Kong and Hong Kong to Osaka, were pretty magical. I got to see two movies that we on my should watch list, and on the flight from Hong Kong to Osaka they were generous with the red wine. (No one has been generous with red wine in, like, 5 months, so this was big.) It was 13 hours in transit in total, which does seem ridiculously long given I didn't even get of out Asia, but the shiraz made it all quite civilized.

At customs at Kansai International Airport, I experienced the most vigorous questions I've had in 5 months of travel. I think the combination of my slovenly appearance (who doesn't dress for comfort when flying, I ask you?), a backpack that looked like it had been at the epicentre of a nuclear disaster, and my visas for dangerous places like India and Thailand made me a slightly suspicious character. A very polite customs officer pawed through my undies with his gloved hand, and asked with the most serious of expressions on his face, whether I'd smoked any marajuana while in Thailand. I tried not to giggle, but 13 hours in transit does make one a little punchy.

Right. So it was 9:30 at night and I had two tasks to accomplish before I could collapse. Find an ATM and catch a shuttle bus to my hotel. Emerging from customs I spotted a Citibank ATM, my favorite international bank, as my stupid CIBC ATM card doesn't pitch a hissy fit when I stick it in the slot and expect it to perform. Clearly I jinxed myself, though. Because 20 minutes later I still had no money and was highly irritated. I wish ATM machines would speak in plain English when telling you to piss off. I do realize that I was dealing with a couple banks communicating with eachother, but can't the smart people who work at banks dedicate some time to scripting more helpful and informative ATM messages? There was some gobbledy gook sentences that used some big words, but the jist of the message was 'no money for you, loser'. Finally giving up after the same message had flashed at me 8 times using both my ATM and Mastercard, I rummaged in my trusty money belt to see what currency I still had. I gave up on being organized about money a few countries ago. It's simply too much work to get currency before entering a country when I can just zip up to an ATM machine in the airport upon arrival. It's actually more exciting this way - the fancy, colourful dollars with monarchs in absurd hats are sort of the welcome wagon for me, 'Hello beautiful lady, come spend lots of us'. Anyway, clearly this little policy of mine was in the process of backfiring on me. I had a grand total of 2 U.S. dollars, 50 Singapore dollars, and 4 apparently useless ATM/credit cards. At the currency exchange I was disappointed to realize that this only netted me 4000 Yen, which really seemed on the low side. But partially comatose, I decided things would be better in the morning and I stumbled out to the shuttle bus for the 5 minute ride to my hotel.

Fifteen minutes later I was in a puddle on my bed, cracking open my Lonely Planet, looking for the helpful section on currency. I've always imagined Japan to be a utopia of high tech marvels, tiny robots and obscene efficiency. So imagine my surprise when I read that while ATMs were everywhere, the did not accept international cards. This is both inefficient and completely unwelcoming, as far as I am concerned. My only hope, according to the Lonely Planet was to find a Citibank machine or go to the post office, which had ATMs that would accept my nasty foreign cards. Citibank, good times indeed. As I read more, things appeared more bleak. Apparently in Japan, cash is king and few businesses accept credit cards. Lonely Planet's parting words of advice were to stock up on cash and traveller's cheques before entering the country. I could have done something about this 7 hours ago in the airport in Hong Kong, but now I was pooched. My overactive imagination quickly got the better of me. How far could my 4000 Yen stretch? How could I afford to eat? Perhaps I'd finally lose the 10 pounds I was supposed to shed on this trip, as I'd be forced to resort to eating every other day. I slept, dreaming of the complimentary snacks I'd refused on the plane. If I'd only known the hardships that faced me ahead - those peanuts could have kept me going for a couple days.

At 9am the next morning I was back at the Citibank machine, trying to be optimistic, given it was the only thing between me and potential starvation. An international trio of tourists were infront of me in line and seemed to have no trouble receiving cash. Asking what magic buttons they'd pushed, I confessed my problem. A young Japanese woman offered to help. She asked how much money I was trying to take out. I replied 300,000 Yen, as I was concerned about how long it might be before I found another ATM that didn't hate my guts. Upon hearing the amount, she replied 'that is a lot of money'. And that, friends, is when I realized the importance of a simple zero. Instead of asking for $300, I'd been suggesting it cough up $3000. So I'm stupid. I can chalk it up to being overtired, but really it comes down to bad math, really, really bad math.

But let me rant for a second. If ATM messages were in English, I wouldn't have lost sleep the previous night, imagining my own death by starvation. Here's some potential options:
a) Hey loser, $3000 exceeds your withdrawal limit.
b) 300,000 Yen = $3000 Canadian. Keep dreaming, my friend.
Perhaps this is a potential career option for me. Translating bank talk into rudimentary English for the exhausted traveller with the math skills of a 5 year old. There must be other people out there that are equally stupid, right?

Princess in the Jungle

I find it ridiculous, but just two days living it up in the lap of luxury that is Singapore seems to have ruined me for roughing it in the Malaysian jungle. I feel like such a sissy girl princess-type, it's disturbing.

I arrived in Singapore last Wednesday night. For two days I enjoyed efficient public transport, excessive air conditioning, soul-less malls, movie theatres (my first popcorn in months!) and quick and easy access to chilled cafe mocha's courtesy of Starbucks. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it was a totally beautiful couple of days. As for cultural experiences? Well I wandered through Little India (where the momos and chai were inferior but comforting) and Chinatown (it felt a little bit like the interior of a miniature snow globe universe - Chinese-like, but a little cold and artificial).

Friday night, I hopped on the train to Malaysia for a little jungle trekking with friends Anne & Brian from Vancouver, who now live in Singapore. We arrived at 2am in the morning and were driven an hour to a national park in central Malaysia in the sketchiest cab I've been in (well, since Mumbai.) We dodged herds of cows amidst inferior visibility due to fog, and I attempted to stay alert, as it was decidedly alarming to hear the driver express such disbelief and terror every time he narrowly missed hitting some cows. For the first time on this trip, I had no idea where we were going - I hadn't even cracked a tour guide on Malaysia, and had to keep asking Anne the name of the national park, as it kept escaping me. (Taman Negara - seriously large ancient rain forest in central Malaysia - I finally retained it! Apparently it's 130 million years old.) Anne even was responsible for holding all the tickets, so I was footloose and fancy free, and it was magical.

Oh, but on to my Princess moments. Right, so as I suspected, it's pretty darn hot in a tropical rain forest in the middle of May. I know I whined last week about the sweating, but this just took it to a whole different level. Absolutely every pore of my body was busy producing excessive amounts of sweat, and it was just sort of gross. I got kind of used to it eventually, but having sweat drip off the tip of my nose for 5 hours on Saturday was a bit much. Anne just sort of glistened in a more lady-like way, but Brian and I were pretty much soaked. I should have wanted to do some serious hiking, but 5 hours on Saturday and 3 on Sunday were enough for this Princess. I chalk it up to the sweat production, because otherwise the scenery was great, and we saw some really weird jungle bugs, which was cool.

And while I tried to internalize it, the coffee at the resort was total crap - having recently had access to Starbucks (and I don't even really like Starbucks when I'm at home), I was all the more painfully aware of how horrid the coffee was. I know, those of you who know me well are wondering what's up with this coffee consumption? Well kids, Heather's growing up. I can now drink beer and coffee without groaning, and am capable of ingesting a fried egg if it's sort of masked by other flavours (e.g. on a club sandwich or on top of fried rice.) The jungle featured excellent BBQ and fruit shakes though, so there was some high points. It always seems to come back to food for me!

Monday morning we caught a boat up the river and then a bus back to Kuala Lumpur. While we had 5 hours to kill before we caught the night train back to Singapore, Brian and Anne's offers to take me on a tourist hike through the city were politely rebuffed. I think 4 and a half months of travelling have tired this Princess out. So we went to K.L.'s Petronas Twin Towers (seriously cool) then camped out in the mall at the base of the towers - enjoying, you guessed it, more air conditioning, shopping and Starbucks!

Dining in Danang

Tonight's my last night in Vietnam. I'm in Danang, central Vietnam, which is as far south as I've been motivated to venture, baring my flight via Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow morning. It's pretty disturbingly hot here most of the time, and I just didn't have the tourist juice left to attempt a visit to HCMC in the far south. I've come to the conclusion however, that if the guidebook really does a hard sell, attempting to convince readers that a place is more interesting than it first appears, well, it's not a good sign. I'm in Danang because it has an airport, and really, that's it.

Danang's Museum of Cham sculptures is the tourist desination of interest. I spent about a half hour there this afternoon, but the fact that I was starving and tired somewhat impeded my ability to really revel in all the history it had to offer. At least I tried.

So I've come to the poshest restaurant in Danang - partially because it's super close to my hotel and mostly because I felt I deserved an excellent final Vietnamese meal. While I did it completely unconsciously, I find it ironic that instead I ordered sushi and Singapore noodles - food from the two countries still on the 'to do' list on this little adventure.

The wasabi was like, completely over-the-top and snot inducing (sorry about the graphic nature of that), which I think is appropriate given so far Japan's been a pain in the butt to plan. Finding a cheap flight was like the bane of my existence for a week straight. And I've just realized today that I've left it a little late to book accomodation in Japan, given it's high season. I'm so past dorm beds in hostels at this point in my life, but it appears they're the only easy accomodation to book.

I know absolutely zilch about the food for Singapore. Well, other than I'll obviously have to have a Singapore Sling while in town. And according to the expensive new tv commercial campaign currently on all English language tv stations, courtesy of the Singapore tourism board, the city also has some to-die-for desserts. I've done absolutely zero research on Singapore - the joys of staying with friends from home. It's positively decadent to travel to a country (or city state, whatever Singapore is!) and not have to make any plans - I feel spoiled! Anyway, while I don't think Singapore can boast of internationally revered and distinct cuisine like some of the other countries I've visited, my Singapore noodles were satisfying but somewhat lacking in punch. (Which is sort of how I envision Singapore, but I'll have to report back.)

I find I measure countries by how comfortable I am dining out on my own. Paris, for example, is a city that I just can't seem to dine alone in comfortably. I'm constantly self-conscious and feel like I'm inconviencing the wait staff by wandering into their restaurants and expecting to be fed. I didn't quite feel it in Thailand either. That may have something to do with the fact that Thailand seems to attract more than its fair share of two demographics - a) 21 year olds determined to drink their faces off and, b) young couples in their 20s travelling together for the first time, testing whether their love can handle so much quality time together. Vietnam has rocked in this regard (and in many other ways). I've met lots of great, independent travellers to hang out with and share a plate of fresh spring rolls. And even dining on my own, it's fantastic. So I ordered my sushi and noodles and relaxed over a lovely glass of Aussie red, closely watched by two attentive wait staff. Even if Danang is a bit of a dud, good food and drink can cure a lot of things.

Superficial Rant about a Towel

The other afternoon I found myself in one of those mortifying situations - you know the type, where you desperately want to extricate yourself from the situation immediately but doing so prematurely would actually make an even larger spectacle of yourself. Mine was of the 'spoilt tourist/sissy girl' variety.

It started out innocently enough. After a hard morning trying to cram myself into tailor-made clothes that didn't fit, I retired to the hotel pool for some R&R. While I was busy blathering on in my journal, my trusty quick-dry towel blew off the back of my lounger and into the very dirty rice paddies below the hotel deck. The deck is about 12 ft above the rice paddy fields, so there was no obvious way to rescue my towel. Now I know, you're thinking, 'it's a freaking towel, get over it', but having travelled with this towel for the last 4 and a half months, I assure you, it is a gem. I bought it in the bargain bin at the Europe Bound store in Toronto and it is a pale pink colour that is offensive to me, but it's a quick dry towel that's almost full-size, and that, my friends, makes it one of my prized possessions. Other travellers I've come across over the last few months have actually expressed a bit of jealousy over my towel, so my attachment to it is justified.

Anyway, after an inquiry with the girl at the reception desk I was supplied with a duster with an extremely long handle to attempt to fish the towel out of the water. While I was able to reach it when I layed down flat on the ground and stretched, the towel at this point was so water-logged that I couldn't get a grip on it. The girl from reception assured me that help was coming, so I sat back down on my lounger and attempted to look as inconspicuous as possible. By this point the Australian lesbian couple who were enjoying beers at a table nearby were chuckling at me and suggested that perhaps I should consider the towel my gift to the nation of Vietnam. I laughed along with them but still hadn't given up on a potential rescue. My 'help' quickly emerged from the hotel - a small middle-aged lady from the cleaning staff who was prepared to lauch herself off the patio and shimmy down a cement pole to rescue my towel, if I'd just help with the launch. Absolutely horrified that she was prepared to do what I was not to retrieve my towel, I communicated as succinctly as possible that the towel wasn't worth it, we would leave it there, and not to worry. She just kept smiling and saying 'you no worry, no problem'. I was horrified. While I wasn't about to shimmy down a cement pole in my bikini, there was no way I wanted her to think that I expected her to do exactly that. (But not in a bikini, obviously.) The Australian couple piped up that maybe I should go after it myself. A part of me felt like I needed to prove to them I wasn't the large sissy girl I appeared to be, but heck, I was that sissy girl, no doubt about it. Thankfully the cleaning lady seemed to understand what I was saying, but still hovered disturbingly close to the edge of the patio. A couple minutes later one of the young boys on staff came out, quickly scrambled down the pole like he could do it in his sleep, and 2 minutes later my very dirty towel had been returned to me.

Feeling ridiculous and highly appreciative of the efforts they'd gone to, I awkwardly attempted to tip both the boy and the cleaning lady. The lady, having felt she'd actually not contributed to the rescue of the towel as she hadn't launched herself off the patio, took a bit of convincing. But I persisted, passed along the tip with a big 'thank-you' and attempted to beat it out of there as quickly as possible. I dropped the now filthy towel off at reception for laundry service, and retreated to my room feeling highly ridiculous.

So imagine my annoyance early this morning when I found out that the hotel laundry service had lost 3 items of clothing - a gaudy but flattering blouse I bought in India, a trusty pair of quick-dry underwear, and yes, the cursed towel. I kicked up a bit of stink - I've had laundry done all over Asia for the last four months and haven't yet lost a thing. (Which I do realize is a small miracle.) The girl at reception, having assured me that they'd checked numerous times, communicated that 'no one would steal your underwear, they can't use them'. I replied that yes, I didn't suspect deliberate theft. I didn't bother getting into the jist of the problem. Every pair of underwear is vital when you're backpacking - so losing a pair that isn't granny style (25% of my undies) or falling apart (another 25% of my undies) is a complete tragedy. As I paid my bill she attempted to smooth things over - discounting my laundry bill a whole $1.60. Given I'd tipped $2.50 for the rescue of the towel, this did little to calm me, but getting into a long conversation would have probably contributed even more to my reputation around the hotel as 'stupid spoiled girl obsessed with her towel' , so I dropped it.

A part of me realizes that this whole incident is highly superficial. And I do feel like a spoiled tourist expecting others to go to such lengths to help me. Clearly I was meant to leave a part of me behind for Vietnam to enjoy. I just wish it didn't have to be my prized quick-dry towel and undies. I'll get over it though, drinking seems to help.

yes, my thighs really are that big

I've gotten a bit lazy recently - oh, let's be honest, extremely lazy. I'm in Central Vietnam in May which equates to disturbingly humid weather. Just walking a block, I sweat from parts of my body that I didn't actually realize produce sweat. I used to think the only people who sweated profusely from their foreheads and upper lips were overweight old men, but apparently, in the right weather conditions, I can join the ranks of the damp and irritated. Enough on that though - I've probably just crossed some invisible line of good taste with all this chat about me sweating. Anyway, the combination of my laziness and the obscene humidity has me either under an umbrella or in the hotel pool most days between 1 and 4pm. At most other times, I'm shopping.



It seems highly frivolous, but I've spent the last 4 days shopping. I've chosen to get lazy in an excellent location - Hoi An - a paradise for the materialistic and commercial side of me. There are 500 tailors in this town, which basically means if you spit a metre, you'd hit 5 tailor shops. (And they wouldn't mind you spitting if you did some shopping!) It's the low season here right now, and it's very evident that there are not enough tourists here spending adequate amounts of money to keep the locals happy. You cannot make eye contact with anyone, nor can your eyeballs rest for more than a nanosecond on any product that could be sold. Well you can do these things, but then you'll find yourself in an awkward conversation where you can't help but feel rude and crusty because you don't want to buy some peanuts. (I'm not kidding, peanut sellers are on every street corner.) I turn down at least 50 offers a day 'lady, you come buy something', 'lady, I have cold drink for you', 'lady you come see my shop, looking is free'. I made the mistake the other morning of going into the cloth market - a large market full of mostly ugly fabric and small tailor stalls. It was clear that I was the first tourist that had ventured in all morning, because I was practically mobbed like I was a minor superstar. After ordering a dress I was literally dragged to a shoe stall and forced to order a pair of shoes. I mean, yes, I could have escaped, but when they're charging $15 to make me a pair of shoes, it sort of seems really mean to say 'no, too much money'.



Oh, but back to the tailor shops. It took me a couple of days to get warmed up, I'm ashamed to admit. Highly indecisive at the best of times, it was ridiculously stressful for me at first. You know how quite often the friend that you can count on for brutal honesty has a better idea of what clothes look good on you than you do? Well, I was friendless in Hoi An, adrift amongst 500 tailor shops with millions of styles and fabrics to choose from. Life is hard, people, it really is.



What I didn't factor in is when you order a whack of tailor-made clothes, you have to keep returning to the shops for multiple fittings. And, as I mentioned, when you're sweating from every pore of your body, this is a real trial. I mean, it really isn't my idea of a good time to be trying on wool trousers in 35 + degree heat. And of course nothing actually fits at first. I think it's quite possible that after my measurements are taken the sales girl and the tailor confer in the backroom and are in debelief at the width of my hips in relation to my waist. This has been my own personal cross to bare since I hit puberty, but I'm now generously sharing this with the tailoring industry in Hoi An. And I do feel bad about that, because I wouldn't wish this on anyone. (I do believe that in some culture somewhere, my torso-waist-hip ratio is revered as being the ultimate in female beauty, but Vietnam isn't it, unfortunately.) Not believing my measurements to be physically possible, the tailors go ahead and make trousers that they think will fit. But they are wrong, and 4 fittings later, the trousers that accompany my lovely new suit jacket still don't fit. After the second fitting when they realized the seams couldn't be let out any further, they replaced that back panel of the trousers with more material. At the third fitting we discovered that something had gone wrong, as standing still in the trousers produced a wedgie, and they were still too tight in the thighs. At one point this afternoon during my fourth fitting I was surrounded by five sales associates (all petite young Vietnamese women who I could snap in half with my powerful thighs!) all nattering in Vietnamese and gesturing at my hips. I think the rough translation was probably 'ah, look at this cow, can you believe it?'. I was then told that most ladies like a slim fit and my response was 'yes, but I'd like to actually be able to sit in these trousers without cutting off the circulation to my legs'. I'm getting in a taxi tomorrow morning at 10am to leave Hoi An, and hopefully the trousers are in the backpack with me.


For the unfortunate tailor shop that took my order for an Asian-style silk dress, I think there was a lot of celebratory drinking that happened last night after I finally left with the dress, 5 painful fittings later. The poor ladies had to deal with the entirity of my bust-torso-waist-hip ratio - and that really isn't good times at all. First of all, I'm not Asian, so I quickly realized that the style was completely unflattering on me. But you can't really give up at that point, and I think it became a matter of pride for the ladies for the dress not to look like a burlap sack on me. It was touch and go though, and after fitting number four I announced that I'd just take the dress, that I couldn't sweat through another fitting. The ladies were horrified at the idea however, and magically after loosening the bust once, loosening then tightening the torso, and adjusting the waist and hips about 5 bezillion times, the dress actually is wearable.


I met a pain specialist at the ashram in India a couple months ago. Consulting him for the lower back pain I was experiencing at the time, I got a full-body evaluation. Unprovoked, he told that me there was no amount of time in the gym that would whittle my thighs - according to Dr. Pain from Texas, I'm storing massive amounts of negative energy in my thighs. (I suppose that's as good a place as any!) He gave me a series of exercises to do that would, according to Dr. Pain, shrink my thighs to such a point that a new wardrobe would be required. I tried the exercises a few times, but they're like super hard, so I've procrastinated and told myself that I'll do them once I'm home. I'm guessing now the tailors of Hoi An wished that I'd actually toughed it out a bit more!

A Day on a Moped

I’m on the back of a moped on a random highway in Vietnam in a rainstorm, wearing a plastic bag, a pink one at that. It’s raining so hard, water is slashing in between my sunglasses and my face, running into my eyes and I can’t actually see anything. Wiping my eyes would mean I’d have to remove my hands from Thai’s waist (the driver), which currently seems like a very bad idea. The rapidly increasing puddles are so large that when we drive through them the friction of the bike's tires seem to be heating up the rain water and my toes are experiencing a warm, high-pressure shower. (I think this may finally wash off the elephant dung that's been clinging to my foul sports sandals for the last 3 weeks.) Oh, and there's a very large vehicle looming up behind us, its size obvious from the gigantic beep of its horn that's rattling about in my helmet-clad brain. A tour bus just thundered past as I managed to crack an eyeball open. The sign I just saw says 65 km back to Hue. Good times. I say that without sarcasm. I could be dry inside that tour bus right now, but how boring would that be?

Given that a mere 2 weeks ago I was skittish about getting on the back of a moped to zip around Hanoi, heading off on a 6 hour moped trip does seem like a bit of a leap, I admit it. But the DMZ, or demilitarized zone is a mopedable distance away from Hue, the city I've been staying in recently, so it seemed like a good idea. And the trip was great. A large bug smacked into my forehead, and left some sort of residue. My guide/driver, Thai, did offer a massage in my hotel room post-ride, but I laughed off the suggestion quite successfully. I toured the Vin Moc tunnels, which apparently are quite authentic. I saw the river that formerly divided North and South Vietnam. I accidentally wandered a little too close to a live mortar area, but Thai yelled at me in time. And I lost feeling in my right thumb after an hour and a half in a rainstorm, but a half hour soak in the tub has restored feeling, so no amputation will be required.

Responsible Tourism?

I’m trying to imagine how I would react if a mini-bus pulled into the mighty village of Thedford, and puked out a half-dozen sweaty tourists onto the sidewalk, all keen for a bit of authentic village life and a chance to spot locals in their natural habitat.

Quick, get your cameras ready, folks, local resident Heather Anderson is just exiting the grocery store. We’re quite lucky - based on the mud splatter pattern on her car it’s clear she’s from a more remote gravel road outside of town. And just as promised - she’s clad in traditional dress common to the area and it looks like she’s having a bad hair day. Yes, you’re right, it does seem she’s sporting pajama bottoms - traditional dress for the unemployed 30-something who’s moved back in with her parents. Now remember to be a responsible tourist and ask permission before you take her photo. Oh, it looks like she’s camera shy today, she’s sprinting back to her car. A back shot will just have to do. Come along everyone, if we hurry down to Caroline’s we can sample the local delicacy, date cookies, and see the village elders gathering over coffee.

Ok, so perhaps I’m exaggerating a bit. But spending 3 days in the northwest of Vietnam, in hill tribe country, has me reflecting on how invasive tourism can be, and the nature of the exchange between locals and tourists. The mountainous north of Vietnam is home to a variety of ethnic minority groups - some who have lived there for thousands of years, others emigrating in the last couple hundred years from China. Land ownership here in Vietnam seems to be a first come first served system, and as a result, many of the tribes eek out a very tough living on the sides of mountains, growing corn on patches of ground so steep that the average tourist would be unable to stand upright. The countryside is absolutely gorgeous, fantastic views. But what tourists really go north to experience is the colourful hill tribe people, the majority of whom wear traditional dress, whether they're ploughing a field of selling postcards.

The guidebooks don't lie. Over 3 days we visited four markets and as many villages and 90% of the women, just going about their business, did so in traditional dress. Each tribe can be identified by their clothing, as head gear, colour schemes and amount and style of ornamentation vary by tribe. We soon discovered which tribe were the most persistent business people, as we were constantly trailed by small ladies and girls, who were ready to sell us the bracelets off their wrists, which seemed very wrong. On one afternoon walking tour through villages that stretched across a valley floor, our group of six tourists was escorted for two and a half hours by 20 women from the Black Hmong tribe. I had a personal escort of 3 ladies and a baby (who was strapped to his mom's back) who stopped with me each time I paused for a photo, and were ready to assist me as I navigated slippery rocks while crossing streams. Their intentions were fairly obvious from the outset - we'll let you wander through our backyards and at the end of the afternoon you will buy some embroidered bags that you neither need nor want.

And here's the bit I find especially interesting - how tourists react to the clearly set out rules of engagement in hill tribe country. As far as I'm concerned, if I'm allowed to wander through small villages, invading their privacy, then sure, it's only fair that I spend a couple dollars on an embroidered whatever that will collect dust in my closet at home. (Well, if I had a home with a closet!) I won't be please if the ladies try to rip me off excessively, but by all means, let's negotiate. Other travellers I've met refused to purchase anything, with the argument that it just 'encourages the behaviour'. I personally think that view of things is a bit naive. The 'behaviour' of trying to support your family is completely legitimate. While it may be unfortunate, you can't expect tourism not to impact remote regions. If tourists can afford to fly halfway around the world to hike through the countryside of Vietnam, how can they balk at spending a couple dollars on hill-tribe souvenirs, when each dollar matters so much to people who have so little?

Ah, enough of my rant. My collection of photos of the ethnic minority people of northwest Vietnam is a series of backside views - partially because I'm not a National Geographic photographer, but primarily because the people there believe photos will capture their spirit. Beyond not wanting to inadvertently snatch someone's spirit, I also find taking close-ups of perfect strangers a complete invasion of their privacy. I mean, would I want my photo taken on the main street of Thedford? Decidedly not. At the end of 3 days I had acquired enough random embroidery that a trip to the post office was required. If the boat from Vietnam ever arrives some of you lucky people may be recipients of some perfectly stunning embroidered handbags. (Note, sarcasm has been engaged.) Please, no fighting, people. Tragically there's enough for all of you.

Things Seen on a Moped - Vietnamese Edition

I've been amusing myself recently with an old favorite - entertaining things seen spotted on the back of a moped. I'm finding here in Vietnam, the people are more creative and industrious with what they'll strap to a moped - it transports a lot more than just the odd monk or gaggle of toddlers, as witnessed in Thailand and Cambodia. Tragically I'm usually on a bus and whip by these fascinating scenes too quickly to capture them, but I'm managed to include a couple shots.

Here's a quick list of my favorites.

1. Trees

I've frequently seen trees, complete with root systems and trailing clumps of dirt, strapped to a rack on the back of a moped. And we're not talking about small shrubs, but full-on trees, my friends.

2. Vases

Vases on a moped - seems to me like you're just asking for trouble doing this. Oh, and the size of the vases? Well, that's what makes it truly ridiculous. Last week I saw two vases attached to the back of a moped, and without exaggerating at all, each vase was about as tall as I am. How crazy is that?

3. Piglets in Burlap Sacks

I went to a market last week in northwest Vietnam. The weekly market had an active animal trade business going on, with piglets, dogs and horses doing a brisk business. After trading was done we saw 3 piglets ingeniously strapped to the back of a moped, and the only visible parts of their bodies were their snouts, poking out through holes cut in the bottom of burlap sacks. If you didn't look closely you couldn't even tell what was in the sacks. Oh, except for the occasional squeal that pierced the air - that sort of gave it away.

4. A Moped

Yes, that's right, I saw a moped on a moped. Let me explain. Behind the driver of moped A sat a passenger. The passenger had moped B gripped in his arms, with the front tire balancing precariously on the seat between himself and the driver. Can you imagine if it fell off as they whipped down a highway? OUch!

5. A Bed
Now, I have entitled this one 'bed' for dramatic effect. It was actually a headboard and footboard for a bed, with the headboard on one moped and the footboard on another. Still, I was mildly amused.

6. Dogs

Ok, this one actually makes me pretty nauseous. The Vietnamese eat pretty much anything they can catch. This, unfortunately includes dogs. I met some truly obnoxious Americans last week who seemed to be proud that they'd sampled dog from a Vietnamese restaurant. They deserved to be slapped - partially for being obnoxious Americanos, but mostly for eating dogs. (In my opinion it's one thing to eat dog because it's part of your culture, but it's another thing entirely to do it just so you can run home to your idiot friends with a story. Stupid people can be found everywhere - they don't stay at home, unfortunately.) Ok, enough ranting. Back to how this relates to mopeds. On a highway the other day our bus passed a couple of mopeds, each with two cages loaded on the the seat behind the driver. The cages had about 4 small-medium sized dogs squished into each one, so I imagine I saw about a dozen dogs out for their last joy ride. As we drove past I saw one sloppy pink tongue whipping about in the wind, so the pup on top of the pile was enjoying himself, but the rest looked miserable. Who can blame them? (Now granted, I found this more traumatic than the piglets, and they were on their way to an eventual death as well. But somehow, its very, very different.)

7. Me in a Pink Garbage Bag
I just spent 5 hours on the back of a moped, touring the demilitarized zone. An hour and a half of that was in a downpour. Seriously good times.

Hello Tuk-Tuk*

As a tourist in Asia, I can't walk more than a couple metres in a medium-sized city without having someone yell at me, 'Hello Tuk-Tuk*'. The vocabulary changes a bit depending on the country. In Laos and Thailand it's 'Hello Tuk-Tuk', but in India it changes to 'Hello Rickshaw'. From what I've deduced based on my first 5 minutes on the streets in Hanoi, in Vietnam, it's 'Hello Moto'.

Regardless of the country, my irritation is universal. The rational part of me knows they're just enterprising small businessmen trying to earn a living. But here's my perspective - I'm an adult, who, on a good day, can make my own decisions. So if I'm walking down a street I'm probably doing so with some vague purpose in mind, making my way from point A to point B, and I've most likely already worked out in my head my chosen mode of transport for this journey. So you yelling 'Hello Tuk-Tuk' at me as I walk with purpose away from you is not suddenly going to change my mind and create a fare for you. It's just going to irritate me, and then I get crusty, and then the whole world feels it, from the pissy look on my face.

My friend Lisa tried to experiment with the drivers in Vientiane on our last day in Laos. In response to 'Hello Tuk-Tuk' she replied cheekily, 'Hello, but no, my name is actually Lisa'. It's hard to make a point like this when the English comprehension is limited to the obnoxious 'Hello Tuk-Tuk' greeting and negotiating fares, so her attempt at humour was met with a blank stare. But I silently applauded the sentiment behind her efforts.

My first full day in Hanoi I ignored about a hundred invitations to jump on the back of a motorcycle, because, as I explained, I already had a plan. To attempt to orient myself to the maze that is the old quarter in Hanoi, where I'm staying this week, I deliberately followed a walking tour provided in my constant companion, the Lonely Planet guidebook. I was quite proud of myself upon completion of the tour - not one wrong turn in 3 hours. And given I usually abdicate map reading responsibility to whoever my companion is, this was a big deal.

I also admit, the suspicious part of my nature - the part that occasionally worries about the worst possible outcome in a scenario and then obsesses for a stupid amount of time till I start to lose sleep - yeah, that part of me, well it was more than a little skeptical about the casual nature of this motorcycle-taxi system in Hanoi. There are something like 3 million motorcycles/mopeds in the city of Hanoi for a population of about 3.5 million people. So there's thousands of random guys on corners ready to take you wherever you want to go, even if you don't want them to. And I find it all a bit too casual - what's stopping a complete psychopath with the knowledge of a few key phrases in English, the required moto and spare helmet, to pick up unsuspecting potential passengers - one preferably who has just arrived in the city and knows no landmarks - and zipping off to an alleyway somewhere and bludgeoning said tourist to death?

So with these thoughts running through my suspicious head, it took 24 hours for me to stop panicking, trust the universe, and take someone up on their offer. I actually find the offer of a helmet comforting - it says without words, and possibly, any sincerity, 'I'm at least conscious that I should be worried about your safety as we weave in amongst crazy speeding traffic'. It goes without saying that I was ripped off. In this area the Lonely Planet continually fails me - yes, I do suck at negotiating, but the price is always at least 30% more than the guidebook says it should be. After getting within 10,000 dong of the guidebook's estimate for my first ride, I donned a pink helmet and we took off for the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex, where Uncle Ho's body has been on display since his death in the early 1970s. Stupidly I didn't read the guidebook and failed to realize that he's only available for viewing for 2 hours in the morning, so we arrived 15 minutes too late. (I don't blame him - if my body had been pickled against my wishes, I'd be a bit ornery about being gawked at as well). My second ride with driver number two was frustrating, but educational. What I have to surrender to is my wishes are insignificant in the transaction. We decided on two destinations, the Temple of Literature, which was nearby, and the Museum of Ethnology, which was 7km out of central Hanoi, and barely on my guidebook map. My driver's vision of things was that he would wait for me at the museum, and then take me shopping, basically spending the whole day in my company for a ridiculously large fare. After a lengthy airing of my perspective he finally accepted that I wanted to be left at the museum. Clearly this wasn't what he wanted to hear, and decided to retaliate, because he dropped me off a couple blocks from the museum - translation - in the middle of nowhere - with the vague instruction that I just go up the street to buy the ticket. I recognize now that given I was paying him money I should have insisted on being dropped off right in front of the museum. But he'd sneakily dropped me at some other random tourist destination in the same vicinity, and I'd gullibley gone along with it. Yes, dense, very dense move on my part. About 2 seconds after he'd taken off I ascertained that I wasn't where I wanted to be, no one spoke English, and my crappy map was useless. But that's the thing in Hanoi, as I mentioned, you're always within spitting distance of another moto driver eager to take you somewhere, even if they don't know how to get there. That was the problem with driver #3 - he acted like he knew where he was going when we first started to mime at each other, but once we'd spent 15 minutes circling the same few blocks, it was clear he was lost. Panic sort of set in at this point, and while I didn't fear for my safety, I was very conscious of my stupidity and naivety - which is this case had combined to find me on the back of a motorcycle in a foreign city, with absolutely no idea where I was. Thankfully at an intersection my driver finally found someone who knew where the museum was and he quickly took me there - we'd passed the spot 10 minutes earlier from the wrong direction and hadn't seen the sign. We then argued about the fare - he wanted $3 U.S. dollars for a trip that should have taken about 30 seconds, and well, Heather was pissy and tired of being taken advantage of. So I mimed that he was crazy, and walked off, having paid him $1. A small victory, and for the next half hour I felt guilty about it, but I had to strike back at the Hanoi moto-taxi industry, no matter how feebly!

What am I doing tomorrow? Walking. And no one will convince me otherwise.

Northern Laos Adventures

According to my guidebook, Mueng Sing in northwest Laos 'is a small town that grows on you by the hour'. I have to disagree. Situated in the Luang Nam Tha district, just 10 km from the Chinese border, this apparently is an ideal spot to see a mix of traditional hill tribe cultures. A couple ladies dressed in traditional costumes bullied me into buying a bracelet this afternoon, so I have had a cultural interaction of sorts. The town itself is a sleepy farming town, currently surrounded by dried-up rice fields. We're on the edge of a national protected forest area and through the haze of what we think is pollution from factories across the border and smoke from slash and burn agriculture, you can see the vague outline of a nearby series of hills. The dusty streets are almost empty, but the occasional chicken, dog or piglet meanders past every few minutes. The pollution seems to have done something to the sky and everything is coated in a yellow tinge in the few snapshots I've taken this afternoon.



I wrote that honest but whiny account of our first day in Mueng Sing the afternoon we arrived. Sitting on a patio in Luang Prabang shortly after Lisa arrived in Laos, we started planning our Laos adventure and realized quickly that if we wanted to get back to Luang Prabang in time to celebrate the Laos New Years, we only had 6 days to get ourselves north, see something of interest, and get ourselves back to the city. A few spots were ruled out due to the long boat ride required or the torturous way the Lonely Planet guidebook described the bus journey. We landed on Luang Nam Tha district because it sounded beautiful and rural, yet reachable in a totally feasible way. Was it beautiful? Well, beautiful is stretching it a bit. Rural? Most definitely. Reachable in a feasible and not torturous way? The bus rides were the biggest adventure of all. I find I sometimes get caught up in developing expectations of what a place is going to be like, and when I fixate too much on these expectations, it's easy to miss out on how fascinating the reality is. We didn't necessarily find the 'something of interest' we were expecting in Luang Nam Tha, but having had time to reflect on it, it was pretty fantastic in a weird, but highly entertaining way.


Heather & Lisa's Northern Adventures
1. The Bus Ride that Never Ended
Our bus ride from Luang Prabang to Luang Nam Tha took 9 hours but only covered a distance of a couple hundred kilometres. The first two hours were speedy and we engaged in lengthy conversations about how the bus company must be totally delusional about the length of time required. If anyone was delusional however, it was us. We soon hit winding mountain roads and then dirt roads which slowed things down considerably, and turned what had just been a sweaty ride to a bone-jarring, sweaty in a whole new level of nastiness sort of way. My brother Brian would have appreciated the driver's intolerance for toilet breaks, having dealt with driving my small bladder around for years. The bus would come to a sudden stop in the middle of nowhere and passengers would quickly begin to disembark, leaving Lisa and I speculating on what was happening. As we speculated we were wasting precious moments, as we soon realized that the driver was stopping for a brief roadside bathroom break - emphasis on the word 'brief'. The driver tended to just start to drive off regardless of whether everyone was back on the bus, so we resorted to a two-man system - the person who was closest to busting ran off into the roadside shrubbery to squat and pee while the other stood lookout to watch the bus and make sure our ride wasn't leaving without us. Running through a ditch with my pants still undone was not one of my most dignified moments, but desperate times calls for public humiliation.


2. Bicycles and Ice-Cream
I think there's something sad about my life when two hours riding a bike through the villages around Luang Nam Tha can leave me with a delicate backside, which was still feeling bruised 4 days later. I mean, what kind of pansy am I? Clearly I need to work on toughening myself up, or more specifically, toughening up my bottom. I consoled myself afterward with a bowl of the best ice cream I've ever eaten. Coconut flavour, which I think was made with a combination of both coconut milk and condensed milk, which is the national sweetener of Laos. My butt still hurt afterwards, but the ice cream took the edge off, I have to admit.


3. Journey to Mueng Sing
The village of Mueng Sing, our chosen starting point for a trek, was 58 kilometres from the town of Luang Nam Tha. We went to the local bus station early because, well, we're a bit anal. This aspect of our nature's proved to be quite beneficial as we quickly learned that with local public transport it pays to be early. The bus to Mueng Sing was a sawngthaew, which literally means 'two rows' - a converted pick-up truck with benches along either side of the truck bed. Forty-five minutes before our scheduled departure the bus looked like it was already half full. That perception of course was very wrong, as we soon learned that it's feasible to cram twenty people into the backside of a pick-up truck, a small one at that. The sawngthaew was so overweight that half of us had to get out and help push the truck out of the station so the truck could start up. Lisa ended up squatting on a small stool in the aisle way between the two benches, in amongst bags of rice. While I managed to keep a butt cheek on the bench, I was unfortunately positioned between the two sickest people on the bus. An elderly woman who'd just gotten checked out of the local hospital with a broken arm was seated on a stool in the aisle in front of me, clinging to the railings on the back of the truck cab, supported by her daughter. She spend the trip looking like she was on the verge of passing out and horking onto the back of the cab. On my other side was young woman who clearly had motion sickness problems. I tried to distract myself when she was vomiting over my shoulder, but I wasn't completely successful.


4. Our 'Trek'
Reviewing our trekking options at the local tourism office, and taking into account how sweaty we got from just walking a couple blocks from our guest house to the tourism office, we decided a one-day trek was more than adequate. This proved to be a very good decision. A one day trek meant of course that we really weren't in particularly remote areas. But a 15km hike between local villages in 35 degree heat (that's before the humidity, which was horrendous) was really as authentic as we needed. The hike at times was a bit bleak. We visited a sugar cane field that was being harvested - all of the sugar was heading north to China. The hillsides surrounding us were partially deforested, the natural vegetation having been replaced by the local villagers with rubber trees, which after 8 years, start producing rubber which can be shipped to China. Evidence of China's investment in Laos is everywhere - roadways, dam projects, national monuments. Chinese tractors drive through the streets of Mueng Sing. And most transport trucks you see are heading north across the border with natural resources. (Trucks do the routine journey full of tractor parts and cheap, Chinese-made clothing, from what we could tell.) Midway through the hike when we stopped for lunch in one of the Akha villages and rested at the chief's house, it was cheap, Chinese beer he served us. Drinking warm, nasty-tasting Chinese beer in a local village with pigs snuffling nearby - can check that off the to-do list! (For those of you who know my drinking habits well, you'll know what huge progress I've made over the last few months in the beer department!)

5. Toxic Udomxai
Having survived our nine hour bus ride north, but still experiencing nasty flashbacks, we decided to split up the southbound journey into three bus rides spread across two days. Backpackers take rides across this country that last 24 hours or more, but I have no problem with the fact that I'm a bit on the delicate, spoiled side. We overnighted in the city of Udomxai, which is seriously unattractive but seems to be the travel hub of the north and a booming Laos-Chinese trading centre. Udomxai was a whole new level of bleakness from an environmental perspective though, as the sky was absolutely grey at 3pm when our bus rolled into town, and there was ash falling from the sky. There was just an empty, depressing quality that hung about the place. I think if we'd wandered too far off the main street we would have stumbled across an opium den without too much effort. The highlight (and I do cringe at calling it a highlight, but that's what it was for me) was seeing a pair of Siamese twin dogs on the street. They seemed to be joined at the back hip joint, and maneuvered around quite naturally. They also looked well fed and happy, so I've got to assume they are well treated. Our theory was that it may have had something to do with the radioactive nature of the environment they were raised in, but that's just pure speculation. What didn't make sense was the dogs didn't look identical, which threw me off a bit. So either some really devious kids with super strong crazy glue had stuck them together, or I need to study up on Siamese twin anatomy in the canine species.

When our bus finally pulled into the station at Luang Prabang I don't think I'm exaggerating to say we were deliriously happy. A couple hours chilling on a patio fixes a lot of things though - and we saw some of the real Laos as we travelled, which is what this was all about.

Elephantine Adventures

There is no graceful way to launch yourself onto the neck of an elephant. Let me clarify - there's no graceful way to do so if you're somewhat inflexible in the hip region and lacking in upper body strength. Oh, and having longer legs would help as well.


But let me back up a bit. For the last two days Lisa and I have been hanging out at an elephant camp near Luang Prabang, in Laos. We're on a mahout experience trek, which means we get to spend more quality time with elephants than the average 1 hour ride that most tourists experience. The camp rehabilitates elephants who previously worked in the logging industry. As their former career involved working 13-14 hour days in dangerous conditions, the elephants seem to enjoy their new gig, spending 3-4 hours a day strolling along a set route by the river with a couple tourists perched on their backs, then allowing the tourists to feed them bananas and sugar cane.



I got to ride on the neck of our elephant straight away the first morning instead of on the very posh seat that straddles the elephant's back, as it was Laos New Years, which means even the elephants are taking a couple days off, and we were 3 people to an elephant. For our first trip we boarded the elephant from a raised platform, so the trainer (mahout) encouraged our elephant, Mae San, to stand near the platform and I just sort of shimmied onto her neck without stopping to think too much about it too much. Excessive examination would have had me freaking out. There's nothing soft about an elephant's hair - it's sort of like sitting on the stiff, very dry bristles of a brush, and the light, pajama-like trousers I was wearing were not adequate protection for my delicate backside. It's also a bit demanding on your inner thigh muscles - think of the bow-legged walk that sometimes afflicts you after horseback riding, then multiply it big time because elephants are large. And unlike riding a horse or even a camel, where you're perched halfway between moving legs, by sitting on the neck of the elephant you're essentially sitting on the shoulders - which means directly above very large moving parts that are propelling us forward. So you sort of need to pay attention, as you get jostled about a fair bit, and falling from that height would be a bit painful, I imagine.



Anyway, back to the task of launching myself onto the neck of an elephant. Well, to be honest, it was highly undignified. After our first ride, the day-trip tourists that had been with us left, and it was just Lisa, me, our guide Nyong (yes, I'm fairly sure I'm butchering the spelling of his name), the mahouts (trainers) and our elephantine friends. The correct mounting technique is to command the elephant to bend her front leg (the command sounds sort of like the word 'song'), while she's still standing. At that point I was supposed to place my right foot on the elephant's bent knee, grab onto her ear quite vigorously, throw my left leg up over my own ear and the elephant's and then sort of scramble up onto her neck. This of course is pretty much impossible to do. Lisa managed to do it on her third attempt, but it required an awkward maneuver that involved bracing her left leg against the elephant's upper leg, and pulling herself up with a lot of upper body strength. Hence my problem with the whole thing. I gave up after 3 or 4 attempts, and we adjourned for lunch.



During lunch I think the professionals must have strategized a bit, because when we returned for our afternoon ride they had the girls sit down, which made getting up into position slightly more feasible. But embarrassingly for me, they still sort of had to push me up from behind, as I got halfway on and then sort of got stuck, my legs straddling the ear of my elephant, which is not correct form at all. Some of the problem was my unwillingness to really tug on the elephant's ear hard enough to pull myself up (yes, worried I'm somehow going to hurt an elephant with my body weight - how screwed up is that?). But the larger issue was my inflexibility and lack of upper body strength, as I stated up front. After riding the elephant's further into the bush, about halfway to where they sleep for the night, we trekked back to the elephant camp, then retired to our balcony for the afternoon to try and stay cool.



On the second day we left camp at 7am to trek about a half hour to meet the elephants again. After another completely ungraceful mounting, we rode the elephants down to the river for bath time. The mahouts went with us, and the elephants just walk right into the river to the point that their upper back and heads were the only parts still above water - and well us, thankfully. The elephants also use the river as a toilet, and there was something about watching a gargantuan elephant dropping float past that made the experience very authentic and well, unhygienic at the same time. My elephant seemed to want to completely submerge herself, so it was a bit of a struggle to focus on staying on her neck and help scrub her down at the same time. Lisa's technique was impressive, as she turned and scrambled around on the elephant's back and got the hard to reach places. I left those spots to the mahout that was helping me wash my elephant. We then rode the elephants back up the riverbank so they could get ready for work, as another group of day trippers were already on their way out of town for a morning of rides.



After breakfast we embarked on our hill trek - 15 kilometres of sweating our way through bush, field, and rural villages. The scenery was absolutely fantastic - ironically, we got the views we'd expected to see further north in Luang Nam Tha. A revolting amount of sweating happened (the joys of the hot season in Laos), but the hike itself wasn't that difficult, and according to Nyong, we made very good time. It seems to be the strategy of every guide I've met to overestimate the length of time a trek will take, then congratulate us when we end up being one of the fastest groups he's ever had. You end up feeling good about yourself though - and when you're tired and sweaty and aching, you take what you can get.

Anyway, I'm still contemplating career options for when I go home. After my experience with the lovely ladies at the Elephant Camp, running away to the circus to ride elephants seems like a good option. Except for if I had to wear a spandex unitard littered with sequins - that seems to be the uniform of choice for elephant riding circus ladies. I'm really not sure I could pull that off, but I'll file it away as an option.

Hasta Luego, India

I arrived back in Delhi yesterday morning on the overnight train from Amritsar more than a little sad about leaving India. What started as a spontaneous shopping trip to Mumbai somehow turned into seven weeks of exploring this fascinating country, and I know that India’s gotten under my skin. A friend and I were perusing a map of India in the Lonely Planet yesterday afternoon and I was shocked to realize how little I’ve seen of the country – seven weeks in Mumbai, the ashram in Kerala, a tiny corner of Eastern Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh in the north – I liken it to visiting Canada and managing to see one province, and a smallish one at that.
I know that when I was planning this trip, India was the one country that got the almost universal response, ‘what would possess you to go there?’. And I do understand that perspective. I've had my moments of wishing I was anywhere but in India. The poverty, the dirt, the crowds, and the leering men have been at times overwhelming. But I think that’s what I love about India the most - it’s ability to elicit such strong and contradictory emotions in me. Temples that resemble amusement parks. Naan bread that comes in many magical variations, each more tasty than the last. Bollywood music and movies that are equal part glitz and cheese – a fantastic combination that has me hooked. The unspoilt beauty of the Himalayas. Bouncing through the desert perched on the top of my camel friend, Rama. It’s hard to resist, so I don’t even try.

But just when you think you’re doing alright, India can kick the snot right out of you. I think it’s fair to say Heather’s more than a bit tired. Just a mere couple hours back in Delhi, trying to navigate around the city with some friends and dodge continual attempts by locals to throw us into rickshaws/sell us useless crap, I was completely overstimulated and ready to scream. As I sat in the backseat of a cab to the airport last night, trying desperately to stay conscious, I knew I’d reached that ideal place where my reluctance at leaving was outweighed by my eagerness to get on to my next destination.

So I’m having a very posh day at an expensive hotel in the Bangkok airport. I paid a stupid amount of money for a buffet breakfast. I spend the morning having a facial and foot massage, as seven weeks of dust and grime took a bit of effort to dislodge, but I do finally feel clean. I think I slept through most of the 2 hours of pampering and awoke during a spontaneous Thai massage manipulation that had the tiny masseuse whipping me around like a broken rag doll. Tomorrow I leave for Laos where I’m meeting a friend for 2 weeks of relaxation. I know that’s obnoxious for me to say, as I enter my fourth month of travel, but after India, I need it, kids.

An Indian friend of mine told me that people don’t say goodbye in India, but rather ‘see you later’, in the hopes that no farewell is ever final. So ‘hasta luego’ India, no worries, I will be back.

Momos - My Tibetan Love Affair

It feels very wrong to have discovered an addiction to momos, a Tibetan steamed snack of unmeasurable goodness, during a Tibetan hunger strike, but that’s exactly what happened to me in McLeod Ganjj. Dharmsala, or more specifically the small town of McLeod Ganjj, about 4 kilometres up a mountainside from Dharmsala, is the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile and home to the Dalai Lama. We arrived in McLeod Ganjj right after violence erupted in Tibet over protests against the Olympics, so wandered through town on streets crowded with marching Tibetan protesters. Throughout town were strung banners of graphic photos of Tibetans tortured to death by the Chinese. And near the entrance to the HQ of the Tibetan government, a group of at least 50 protesters huddled under blankets conducting a peaceful hunger stike.

All of this made my experience in McLeod Ganjj all the more painfully superficial. We discovered an espresso bar and sat down to blissfully enjoy a cafe mocha and a divine toasted tuna sandwich. (I know it sounds like a vile combination, but it wasn’t.) We did tour Tibetan temples and Norbulingka, a cultural centre established by the Dalai Lama to preserve their culture, so it wasn’t totally pathetic. One thing that's fascinating about India is how multiple religions and cultures at least, to my ignorant eyes, seem to coexist quite peacefully. Because strolling along the same streets as the Tibetan protesters were drunk Indians in the middle of celebrating Holi, the Indian festival of colour, which marks the beginning of the hot season. Basically you run around throwing colours on friends and perfect strangers and douse them with water. Alcohol consumption enhances the experience, so we hunted down some Smirnoff Vodka and quickly became disturbingly buzzed. While we'd hoped to celebrate with the locals, given the celebration involved rubbing colour onto eachother's bodies, and the way anonymous Indian men tend to leer at us, it's probably best we had our own private party at the hotel. Craziness ensued – a week and a half later I can still find patches of colour on my skin, and let’s just say my bra is unlikely to return to it’s natural colour, ever.

A little bit too much Smirnoff and my dodgy ankle protesting combined to make an optional hike up a mountain the next day quite impossible, so Lisa and I shopped our way through town, bargaining badly. And basically at every opportunity, we ate momos. If you haven't had momos, well, I'm sad for you. They're basically a steamed dumpling stuffed with diced veggies, meat, cheese or some combination of the three. They're sometimes served with a hot spicy soup, chutney or even ketchup, and they are just simply gorgeous. I'm having a really tough time deciding which I like better - Indian naan bread or Tibetan momos.

The exciting thing is I think I may have found my calling. I'm going to acquire a tandoori oven for baking naan bread, and whatever equipment is required to steam a momo, and will open up an Indian Tibetan fusion restaurant in downtown Thedford. Perhaps I need a couple more items on the menu, but you're seeing genius at work here, kids. I think the locals will appreciate my efforts - though the chip wagon proprietor may get a bit nervous!

Ramblings from Rajasthan

I could spend a day sitting on a street corner in rural Rajasthan, never move from the same spot, and would be endlessly entertained for hours. Life here seems to tumble right out through every open doorway, shop front or alleyway and mix in an endlessly fascinating jumble of laughing faces, bright sarees, bleating goats, empty stares, horn blasts and snuffling pigs. All too often we're bumping through broken down streets on our way to another destination, and from the backseat of the 4x4 jeep I'm torn between wanting to ask to be dropped off for a few minutes to simply look at it all, and being slightly terrified of actually finding myself alone doing just that.

I can't begin to capture it all, but here's a random collection of some of the sights I've found interesting, amusing, and disturbing - often all at the same time, which seems to be India in it's essence.

Traveling by train through cities and towns in the early morning will guarantee you a view of more naked Indian men's bottoms than you could possibly imagine. (Though understandably this is probably not something most people would spend any time imagining, or attempting to visualize.) Slum housing made of brick, wood, plastic tarps and rubble extend out from the railway tracks like small, seemingly well-organized towns, and beyond the garbage heap before you hit the track, hundreds of men can be seen squatting for their morning constitutional.

While I naively thought that horns may be exclusive to big cities, it appears I was wrong. Even seated on top of a camel you can get honked at by motorcycles and cars that are determined to get past you. I think the only form of wheeled transport that doesn't have a horn is a bicycle rickshaw, and as far as I'm concerned, they're the ones that really need it. A friend and I were on a bicycle rickshaw the other night and while dodging a car on his right our driver simultaneously shoved a pedestrian out of the way on the left. At the time it seemed sort of rude, but lacking even one of those dinkie bicycle horns, what choice did he have?

Shops are often set up on tiny patches of sidewalk or by the edge of a dusty road. There's no need for a sign advertising the type of business, as a barbershop chair smack in the middle of a sidewalk, or a sewing machine set up on a ramshackle pile of bricks quickly communicates the service for sale. Today a man approached me at a median with what looked like a Q-tip tucked into his cap and offered his services as an ear cleaner. Having done the job myself yesterday, I politely declined his services. Veggies are sold from tarps spread out on the edge of a rubbish heap, with piglets snuffling nearby and small children digging for bottles to recycle.

As I may have mentioned, cows are absolutely everywhere. And by default, their 'business' is everywhere too. What's really interesting is what's done with the cow patties, beyond trying to dodge them as you walk down the street. Cow patties are dried and used as fuel, and litter roof tops and front yards as they dry in the sun. They also use the cow patties in the construction of homes, as mixing cow dung and local clay and coating the outside of buildings with the mixture is a natural fly repellent. So I've become somewhat obsessed with capturing the many sides of cow patties in rural India - clearly my photography obsession with livestalk extends just a bit too far.

Traffic snarls in the smallest of villages. A herd of goats or water buffalo being led down the road by a tiny boy or sari-clad woman struggle for space amongst camels pulling wagons, motorcycles, taxis and transport trucks so heavily loaded with produce that they resemble a Tim Horton's muffin with an abundant muffin-top.

Women work manual labour by the roadside, digging ditches while their toddlers wander nearby, playing with a stick and pebble. Tiny girls with matted hair navigate busy street corners, with near-naked younger siblings perched on their thin hips. In larger towns and cities garbage seems to be everywhere, covering the sides of roads and what looks like garbage dumps are right in the middle of towns. Often you'll see a small boy squatting going the bathroom amongst the refuse, while pigs are sniffling around a metre away, looking for lunch. It's all heartbreaking.

There's nothing private about bathing in small-towns, as young men just wash by the roadside pump. Clad only in underwear the same colour as their skin, shower-time is often a jarring sight as we drive through town. As three young men quickly wash off from a shared bucket of water, nearby twenty or thirty people go about business as usual, herding goats across the street, with men often sitting by a small chai shop, gossiping, or gambling while beautiful women with heavy anklets and brightly-coloured sarees walk past with large jugs or bundles of branches balanced on their heads.

I find it disturbing that even in the middle of India, my marketing brain doesn't quite shut off. I've become fascinated by the local equivalent of billboards - which in small towns translates to a painted ad adorning the sides of homes and buildings. Companies that don't have much money pay the home owner a small fee to advertise their products locally. What's fascinating is every third ad is for underwear, or 'innerwear' as its called here. The ads are accompanied by a rudimentary painting of briefs and undershirts. It baffled me at first - drawing a pair of briefs doesn't really provide enough detail to differentiate your product. But apparently some of the brands are quite small and local, so the paintings help communicate what the product is. (I've just reread this paragraph and it is disturbingly 'worky'. I can't seem to stop myself!)

Young men seem to be engaged in one of two activities - playing a game of cricket in a dusty pitch or waving and leering at western female tourists who happen to wander past. They resemble tiny pimps from the early 80s with high wasted flares, skin-tight t-shirts that show off their scrawny frames and leave nothing to the imagination, and frequently sport tiny moustaches - and you know my opinion of moustaches. As long as you're not walking on your own, they're fairly easy to dismiss, but occasionally you come across a group with a particularly feral look in their eyes that just says 'I spotted you about a block ago, and now I'm undressing you with my eyes as you walk past me'. I horrified my Group Leader one day by asking how much he dreads it when he gets his list of tourists and realizes that he's going to be escorting a half dozen young women through India. He was extremely polite about the whole thing and wouldn't admit that it sucks. I finally convinced him to teach me some insults to throw back at the super creepy ones, but I was drinking at the time and promptly forgot my new vocabulary.

Wandering through small villages, school-chilren run alongside you screaming 'one photo, one photo'. Being responsible tourists and not wanting to encourage payment for photos, our group tried to politely ignore them at first. But it turns out they just want their photos taken so they can then see themselves on the digital screen. You're quickly mobbed and 'one photo' turns into 'ten photos' as they all attempt to pose for a glamour shot. As we drive through small towns kids will pour out of doorways waving and giggling. At a roadside stop for chai one morning our arrival in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere quickly brought a crowd of about 20 young school boys, who stood and watched us drink our tea with apparent fascination. Touring the Taj Majal brought frequent requests to pose with Indian families for photographs. All in all, its just completely crazy. You travel thinking you want to capture the perfect photo of small kids, but after photographing 20 of them and trying to keep their fingers off all the fun buttons on your camera, you've just had enough. And it turns out we're minor celebrities ourselves simply due to the colour of our skin and the funny way we speak, and pose for numerous photos that will end up in some stranger's photo album. My protests of bad hair days get lost in translation somehow, so I shudder to think of all the photos taken that I wasn't able to delete!

I looked at a map the other day and realized I've only managed to see a tiny corner of Rajasthan, which is depressing, but sort of great at the same time. It turns out India's huge, go figure. This is fantastic really, as I'm already looking for an excuse to come back!