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!