Thai Christmas and a Rough Start in Malaysia

We had a great Christmas-time, on the Southern, Thai islands of Phi Phi and Lanta. We went on a snorkeling trip on Christmas day! One of the elements of the snorkel trip was that we were given bread to throw into the fish, and then we swam among hundreds of them while they went on a bread-feeding-frenzy. It was pretty intense! But amazing. Our first night on Phi Phi was a bit of a disaster, as we were staying in the terrible "tourist village" of Ton Sai, the largest (and only) town on the island. It was filled with young partiers, the buildings and businesses were tacky and tourist-oriented and there was no beach close by!

Luckily, Joe trekked all over the island to find a better place for us to set up shop for the next few days, including Christmas. He found the Relax Beach Resort, which was the only thing on an isolated beach, accessible by boat or a very rough and tough trail from Ton Sai. This place was amazing! Simple, wooden bungalows, a great open air beach restaurant and bar, a very international clientele, beach chairs and hammocks spread out along the beach and kayaks and snorkel gear for rent...The ultimate highlight of this place was the staff, however. They were amazing: palpably happy folks, who were so helpful, chatty, kind and smiley. They called Janie "Mama." They prepared a Christmas banquet and party for all of us Western guests, and it was really amazing. We drank Mai Tais out of pineapples on the beach with Christmas dinner.

The day after Christmas, we went by boat to Ko Lanta. At first, it just didn't seem to compare to the Relax Beach Resort but then the sun came out, and it set over the water (the beach was west-facing, while on Phi Phi it was east-facing, so no sunset), the hotel staff grew on us (Thais are awesome!) and we just chilled on the beach, read books, went swimming and walked on the beach to neighboring restaurants and bars at night.

Joe and I said goodbye to Janie (who had more than 48 hours of travel ahead of her to get back to Sanibel- ouch!) and set out for Malaysia. We left Thailand (so sad! we love it there!) in Satun, boarded a boat, and an hour later landed on the island of Langkawi in Malaysia (we are in a land of islands, here!). Langkawi was a complete disaster! We got in a cab with 3 other tourists and asked the cab driver to bring us to the beach where there a lot of hotels. When we got there, we found tourists, wandering around with their luggage, none of them finding a place to stay. All of the hotels from the five-star places to the hostels were booked solid. It is Malaysian school holidays and every single family it seems, went to Langkawi and took all the hotel rooms! Us five tourists finally ended up in the worst room in Southeast Asia, a dirty, flea bag-ridden, dorm room that we shared and Joe and I got up the next morning determined to get the hell out of Langkawi. Which we did- yay!

We are now on the island of Penang, in the city of Georgetown, where we will spend the next few nights, including New Year's, before going to Indonesia for a few days to an orangutan conservation park. Penang (and all of Malaysia, really) is amazingly diverse. The government's tourist slogan is Malaysia: Truly Asia. And Malaysia does embody much of Asia, with a significant population of Chinese and Indians, who have lived here for generations. So, there is great food here! And architectural and religious and cultural diversity. The British were also here for hundreds of years, so there is a lot of English spoken and many other remnants of its colonial history. We are staying in an old Chinese hotel, with big rooms, tile floor, wooden slatted window (no screens) and a wonderful, aging, Chinese staff. Last night, we went to a strange traveler hotel around the corner from ours, where there was a live band made up of both Westerners and Malays, and a really diverse group of people, both travelers and locals, drinking and dancing outside. Joe said he thought it reminded of him of "old-school traveling." An eclectic, random scene: the travelers were not very young or cute or cool, they were not traveling in big groups and there were lots of characters among them...We were two of this crew!

Merry Christmas from Thailand!

Joe's mom arrived in Bangkok last night. We are about to head out and show here the few sites we know and enjoy...Tomorrow, we get on an over-night (got to show Janie what long-term, budget traveling is all about), VIP (but it's Christmas, so we'll go in style! Thai VIP busses are truly luxurious!) bus to the south of Thailand, where we will spend several nights on the beach resort islands of Ko Phi Phi and Ko Lanta.

I can't imagine a better way for me to "forget" that I am spending Christmas away from home and my family than spending it on a sunny, Thai beach. We will be thinking of you, and sending our love northwards, however! Happy Holidays from Erica and Joe!

We are in Food Court Heaven!

You know those food courts in the mall? Bad pizza, not the freshest sushi, maybe some okay sandwiches, but nothing that makes you feel healthy or excited about eating? Now imagine all of the food stalls being varied selections of Thai and other Southeast Asian delicacies:

• green papaya salad with peanuts, carrots, fish sauce, limes and chile
  spicy and sour tom yum soups


• thai-style barbecue: vegetables and fish or meet or tofu on skewer, in spicy red asian-spiced barbecue sauce


• curry sauces with and without coconut milk over vegetables, and meat or seafood


• vegetables of all kinds, steamed, sauteed, grilled in garlic, chili, oil or fish sauce (our new favorite is stir fried morning glory! oh my god! the best vegetable in the world!)


• the most incredibly fresh and varied fruit juices and shakes (with yogurt or milk): strawberry, watermelon, pineapple, banana, passion fruit or a mixture of all fruits


• quick fried vegetables and shrimp with various dipping sauces


• stir-fried noodles with bean sprouts, peanuts, eggs, tamarind sauce and chili


• noodle soups with fish or meat and vegetables and spices


• sushi


• spring rolls, either deep fried, or entirely "fresh" (my favorite- no oil! just veggies and noodles wrapped in rice paper)

We have arrived back in Thailand and are indulging ourselves in food court experiences. Aside from the incredible variety of amazing food, the other best feature of Thai food courts is that it is very, very cheap to eat at them. Maybe just $5-8 dollars for 3-5 small dishes and drinks. Oh yeah, and because Thailand is "the future" (Thailand is the most futuristic and modern bit of Asia we have seen. And when I say modern, I have never seen streets, public transportation, malls, plazas as modern as parts of Bangkok. Not in the U.S. or Europe or Canada), these food courts are incredibly clean and comfortable. Hundreds of chairs, set around tables on tiles in an outdoor or indoor market. Fancy lighting, plants, nice public bathrooms, and music (some of it live, on the stage at the end of the food court, and oh so entertaining! the other night there was a woman lip synching on stage in a gorgeous dress!). We've had two nights back in Thailand and have visited two glorious food courts, and I have mapped out visits to at least 3-4 more, as we make our way south to Bangkok and the southern Thai islands, where we will spend Christmas with Joe's mom. I hope she's excited about food courts as we are!

Boat Ride up the Mekong

Rather than braving more tortuous, windy bus rides through Laos, we decided to take a two day boat ride from Luang Prabang in Laos, to the Thai border at Chien Khong. The boat started at 8:30 in the morning both days and docked in small Laotian towns after 6, when it was too dark to keep going safely. There were basic guest houses and food options (and Beerlao!) in the towns where we spent our nights. The boats were long (maybe 60 feet?), narrow (maybe 10 feet?), wooden affairs. It is hard to describe them but they had a very Asian feel.

There were various, rather uncomfortable seating options on board, but by the beginning of the second day, we had re-arranged all the benches and were lying about on the floor, playing cards and sharing food with other travelers. We had a good crew of about 15 Western travelers on the boat, and about as many Lao folks. Our "clique" of travelers for those 2 days consisted of a South African couple who had been traveling for nearly a year, are about to return home and got engaged during the time that we knew them, a Canadian guy traveling alone, who plans on being away from home for a year, and is pretty much going to be traveling along our planned route through Asia and Australia/New Zealand, and a couple who had met traveling in Asia a couple of months ago: a girl from New Zealand and boy from Sweden. Our clique styaed up later than anyone else in those small Lao towns, talking about Asian and other travel experiences, telling each other about our "real" lives back home, and laughing a lot over Beerlaos. When we got to Thailand, we exchanged emails and went our separate ways, but I imagine we will see at least a few of them in different places, in the future.

The scenery along the Mekong was gorgeous. It is a very wide (maybe a mile at different places) and powerful river, with huge boulders and rock islands cropping out of it, as it is the dry season now. During the wet season, the river is even much wider and deeper. There are green, lush, hills and rocky mountains on either side of the river, that occasionally made us think of the Pacific Northwest and at other times of some tropical place in Central America. And for much of the hundreds of kilometers along one of the most important rivers in Asia that we traveled, we saw no one and nothing. No towns, no cities, no place to stop...No farms or factories or roads. Just hills and greenery. Here and there, we would see people walking along the river, with bundles on their heads or backs, or a small village of fisherman and farmers living in wood shacks. When there was a more substantial town, we would usually stop at it, and deliver people or bags of rice, sugar or other foodstuffs, and/or make collections of the same. Our mode of transport (river boat) was the only way to get people and goods to most of these places. On our last evening, as the sunset over the hills on the Thai side of the river, I was listening to our Ipod and thinking about all the people and places that the music I love makes me think of, and feeling so incredibly full of wonder at the world and love and gratitude for my life. A fleeting feeling, but a true one. : )

The Most Beautiful City in Asia

On the night we arrived in Luang Prabang, Laos, I saw a beautiful, old-style, Asian house (dark teak trim, pointed roof) with a sign outside saying that the German Consulate in Bangkok had built that house in homage to the most beautiful city in Asia...And it is truly beautiful here. Two rivers converge in this town: the Mekong and the Nam Kheon (spelling?). There are wats (Buddhist temples with gold and red trim) everywhere, parks to sit in, huge towering palm trees, monks in brigh orange garb, and beautifully restored colonial French-style and Asian architecture.

Laos has been "discovered" by the international tourist in the past 10 years or so, and Luang Prabang is definitely on the tourist trail. It is crawling with tourists and there are so many hotels, cafes, bars, tour companies and book stores catering to the international tourist...We are really enjoying sunny, lazy days here, and running into (and drinking Beerlaos with) travelers we have met throughout the region. We have picked up some good books, taken nice walks, and are resting before beginning on a reportedly rough, two-day boat trip to Thailand in a couple of days.

Prior to coming to Luang Prabang, we made a brief stopover in a hellishly over-touristed town called Vang Vieng, which had been over-run with young, budget travelers and the very un-Laotian enterprises catering them (restaurants that played endless episodes of Friends and the Simpsons and bars blaring crappy dance music). Vang Vieng is in an incredible setting, and we spent one day tubing down the river there, along with tens of way young tourists from Australia and Britain. It was actually quite fun. There were bars set up along the way, and people would paddle over to them in their tubes, stop for a beer or a bucket of whiskey and coke and paddle on down the river. A purely hedonistic scene that screamed of dangers to us old folks in our thirties! Can you imagine the liability of such an activity, if it were on offer to college students on spring break in Daytona or Myrtle Beach? Ummm...yeah, Vang Vieng made us feel OLD!

In Lao...

Arrived in Lao yesterday, crossing from Vietnam into Lao at the Namphon border in the early morning hours. The border was at a high elevation and it was freezing! Not literally, but probably in the low 40s or so, which was a shock to our systems. The bus ride was seemingly never-ending, nearly 24 hours from Hanoi to Vientiane. There was a pretty diverse group of tourists on the bus, from just about every Western country and Thailand (poor Thais have few other ways of returning home than by road these days). We made many stops, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, and always without warning or explanation, as the bus driver and his helpers spoke no English. So, we rarely knew what was happening: how to get our passports stamped or when we were stopping again for food or a bathroom break. Joe and I kind of kept it together, remembering other brutally long bus-rides we'd been on the past (Joe's most memorable was a 52 hour bus-ride from Brazil to Bolivia, when he was relegated to a urine-soaked seat )...But that didn't help so much, because we're older now, less patient and way less interested in roughing it. ; ) To make matters worse, we were forced to watch Vietnamese music videos/movies for hours and hours on the bus (some we watched more than once) and the music is very grating! Nasally and off-key and high-pitch. Joe says he can't think of anything less likely to have cross-cultural appeal than Vietnamese music. He said other terrible things, too, but I won't share them. He didn't get off the bus in the middle of Lao, as he threatened.

Lao is much less developed than Vietnam. There is a lot more wide open space, way fewer people, and it is hot and dry here, now. The land appears inhospitable, with lots of scrub and not much under cultivation, which is surprising in South East Asia, where almost everywhere else is wet and lush and green. Lao is also very mountainous. It is land-locked. The capital maybe be one of the smallest, world capitals anywhere: just 200,000 people. And it is super chill here. Not a lot of noise or traffic. Easy to walk around. And really pleasant temperatures. We treated ourselves to a French dinner last night (lots of French and other international food here in Vientiane), in hopes of putting our 24-hour bus ordeal behind us. There are gold and red-painted temples with pretty complexes scattered throughout town and the Mekong River runs right through the city, creating the border with Thailand. We hope to spend the next two weeks here, before returning to Bangkok (if all is well there) and meeting up with Joe's mom for Christmas.

Sunny Boat Days in Vietnam

We spent (un-) Thanskgiving weekend on a boat in Halong Bay. I guess the rain gods decided we'd seen enough typhoon action since being in Vietnam, because our days out there were absolutely gorgeous. We booked a 2 day, one night boat excursion with our hotel on Cat Ba Island (the only inhabited island in Halong Bay), got a shockingly good deal on the price, and were skeptical that the whole experience might be a complete sh*t show, but no! On the first day, we shared our boat with a Dutch couple, a French couple, and two Vietnamese, male crew members (the driver and the cook, but they both did everything around the boat and neither spoke any English). At the end of the day, of cruising around the Bay, and making stops to walk around in caves and go kayaking, we dropped off the other tourists and Joe and I spent that night and the next day in close quarters with our Vietnamese boat dudes. It was great! They ordered us around, (i.e. using sign language to tell us when to go swimming, when to go kayaking and where, to come inside and eat or have tea, etc) served us incredible seafood and otherwise, left us alone, on roof of the boat, where there were two comfortable couches, and incredible sunshine and gorgeous sea-green water and islands as far as we could see.
So many Vietnamese are water people. They live in floating houses, out there in Halong Bay, and in other bodies of water, throughout the country. These people get everywhere by boat. They fish. They have dogs and other pets at their floating houses. I feel bad that the animals don't get to run around much. Then again, dog is eaten for dinner here, sometimes, so maybe it's not so bad to be a water-bound dog, considering the alternatives. It got cold, at night, on Halong Bay. And the houses that people live in are made of thin wood and the wind whips through the karsts at night, and it felt like we were at the end of the earth! But there were tons of Vietnamese, living their lives out there on the water. The stars were amazingly bright in the incredibly dark sky. The sea water in the Bay had a very high level of salinity. Joe cut himself a few times, getting in and out of the boat, because his skin was so dry from the salt. But his cuts healed quickly, because the salt water scoured everything clean. And our hair stuck up like we had salty dread locks. Especially Joe's curls.
We also spent two nights on Cat Ba Island where we watched great sunsets from the balcony of our hotel and walked to the beach. Now, we are back in Hanoi, a city we really, really enjoy, especially now that it has stopped raining. It is a fun city to walk around in. Nice parks and outdoor cafes with numerous places to sit and watch the city life.
In two days, we take a monster-long bus ride to Laos. Our first stop is Vientiane, the capital. We have heard really good things about that city and country from other travelers. Colorful and calm and friendly and very Buddhist. We will spend a couple of weeks in Laos before returning to Bangkok to meet Janie, Joe's mom, who is flying in to spend Christmas with us. That is, if the airport is open again! The political situation in Thailand (mostly, just Bangkok) sounds pretty shaky, to say the least, right now.

Still Raining in Vietnam

We are making our way north, along the coast of Vietnam...Each new place we arrive,there is heavy rain just like in the place we left behind! Remember the scene in "Forrest Gump," when Forrest is fighting in Vietnam and the rains start? "And it rained, and it rained, and it rained...Big old fat rain, etc..." That is really how it rains here. We were considering heading east, into Laos, where the weather reports are dry and sunny, but we both had our hearts set on going to Halong Bay, which is on the northern coast of Vietnam, near the border of China. Halong Bay is probably the place in Vietnam most renowned for its physical beauty. Thousands of uninhabited islands, emerald waters, and limestone cliffs (called karsts) rising up out of the water. Featured prominently in the movie "Indochine," which we loved and highly recommend.
On a happier note, we found an internet cafe with a good enough internet connection for Joe to do some work, in Danang, where we holed up for a few days. Danang was an interesting stop because it is off the tourist trail. Just a big, non-descript, Vietnamese city, where we walk down the street and people stop us and call to us, not to sell us things, but just because we are a strange sight. The amount of times we have been asked by a Vietnamese person where we are from is innumerable. And people always smile when we tell them. They do not seem to harbor resentment or hatred towards the US for the war our countries fought against each other. Instead, they tell us they have a friend who lives in the US or a family member who moved to California...Or, they want to talk about Obama. A guy asked us yesterday, in a very strong accent, if we liked the "white-skinned President or the dark-skinned President more better?"
Now in the city of Hue, which is on the tourist circuit, and has good, traveler restaurants (i.e. menus in English!) and bars and "things to see and buy." It is not raining, so we will probably head out to walk around the old city soon, before getting on a night bus tonight for Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, which is supposed to have great food and architecture, both influenced heavily by its time as French colony. Joe has his heart set on eating at a recommended French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant, because of a great restaurant we used to go to when we lived in Berkeley, where the Vietnamese chef had been trained in Paris...

Vietnam Vacation

Our introduction to Vietnam occurred in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), which is the largest city in the country and was the capital of Southern Vietnam before reunification. Arriving from Cambodia's capital, Phnomh Penh, we found HCMC to be much more developed, overwhelming, crowded and more modern. Walking across the street was a real challenge, and Joe had to confidently take my hand and lead me across each, big, 4 lane road, teeming with motos (mopeds are the transportation of choice throughout the region, it seems). We would inch our way out, hoping the motos would swerve around us - and they did, they do, that is how these cities work.
We ate great food in HCMC and found comfortable cafes with wi-fi, which was a nice treat. We also went to the War Remnants Museum, which documents, through photographs, news articles and quotations, the work of journalists and politicians, the Vietnam War. As an American, I felt compelled to go, but it was very, very difficult. At the entrance of the first room that a visitor to the museum walks into, is a quote from Robert McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of defence during the escalation of the war, who said in no uncertain terms, that in looking back at the war, it was all a mistake, a terrible mistake. The photos spoke a million words: of death and destruction, lasting these 30 years after the end of the war. Babies are still being born with deformities (from the extensive use of chemical weapons) and people blown apart by landmines in Vietnam. I felt terrible to think that humans have not learned, that we are still at war with each other, in so many locations across the globe.
On a much brighter note, we met up with a friend of a friend of Joe's who had gone to Northwestern with him and has been living in Ho Chi Minh City for the past 7 years, with her Vietnamese-American husband. They are building a new house in the city, and her husband recently opened a financial services firm there. She is working on establishing a foundation that would provide technical assistance to Vietnamese non-profits. We were picked up in a Lexus by Joe's friend and driven by her Vietnamese drive to the Central market, where we ate a typical Vietnamese breakfast. It was tasty and strange, consisting of broken, deep friend rice and pounded rice paper, with fish sauce, and ordered without meat of all kinds for me, in Vietnamese, which was fun! Being a vege/pescatarian in this country is really, really challenging. Even vegetables are cooked with pork and beef bits! I see tofu for sale in the markets, but never seem to find it on menus...On the subject of food, I was slightly disillusioned with the food we were finding and eating for our first several days in Vietnam. Before arriving here, I had thought that Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese and Mexican were the highest-ranking food genres in my world and this trip to Southeast Asia was going to serve as an ultimate test as to whether Vietnamese or Thai was better, in my book. For the first several days here, I would say that Thai food was blowing Vietnamese food away, but we have had some really amazing food the further north into Vietnam we have travelled and the playing field is evening out somewhat.
From Ho Chi Minh City, we headed north up the coast to Nha Trang. Tourism is heavily concentrated in a few locations in Vietnam. It seems that getting "off the beaten path" is really difficult. The guide books, tour companies, and transportation options are limited: there are about 5-10 destinations that tourists are shunted towards and while these so far seem like good places to visit, they are touristy, and I have to wonder what the next city up the coast, that no tourist busses stop at and none of the guidbooks talk about, is like. We got to Nha Trang at the tale end of a cyclone had pushed through the area and it rained intensely and heavily for about 36 hours while we were there. Joe had previously mentioned that he would like to visit India during the monsoon season, to see what the heavy rains were really like. After our days in Nha Trang, he had decided that really didn't sound like much fun, after all. Our last day there, the weather cleared, and we had a great time walking around the town and sitting on the beach.
Now, we are in Hoi An, a small city on a river, with ancient roots. The old town is a UNESCO world heritage site, and the architecture is old, Chinese/Japanese in style. There are a lot of tourists here, so there are many good places to eat and drink (cheapest beers of the trip so far! 25 cents! this makes Joe very happy). This town is renowned for its tailor shops. Many tourists come here and have clothes and shoes made to order. There are all kinds of shops and designs and materials to choose from. I walked by a store yesterday where I liked the dresses on the manequins, I went inside, had my measurements taken, picked out different colors and patterns of material and will go back today and collect two custom-made dresses, for which I paid $25! Joe was busy drinking 25 cent beers while I shopped, and we made friends of some Dutch, Australian, and Israeli travelers over cheap beers last night...

Don't eat cold chicken or fish

That's our new mantra. It sounds, perhaps, self-evident. It's probably not a bad thing to keep in mind wherever you may be, but we can empirically confirm now, that it is indeed a bad idea in Bamako, Mali, and now somewhere between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

After making it through 3 healthy weeks in India, I figured we were due for some sort of reckoning at some point, but somehow didn't think it would come in SE Asia, but it has. Erica and I have become incredibly familiar with our cable selection in our little guesthouse room, as we've been spending some solid quality time inside for the past few days. We are blaming it on a the lunch we had mid-trip between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. I had a lukewarm Chicken curry and Erica had a not so warm fish soup. It is oddly similar to our undoing in West Africa as well, where she had lukewarm grilled fish, and I lukewarm grilled chicken. We have self-medicated now, however, and are sincerely on the mend, which is a wonderful thing. We'll see if we can make some better lunch decisions moving forward.

Tomorrow is the Cambodian independence day, which should be relatively exciting here in the capital, and then we are planning on going to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

Cambodia: Confusion, Temples, Elections

Arrived in Cambodia on Halloween, by way of a very un-used, backwater border post with Thailand, called Psar Pruhm. We were the only non- Thai/Cambodians at the border crossing and we had to rouse the Cambodian visa official from a nap in his hammock to issue us a visa. From that point forward, communication got very difficult. In the touristy parts of Thailand, English is spoken and written a lot. In Psar Pruhm, there were few signs in a non-Cambodian alphabet and NO ONE spoke English. We struck out, several times, when attempting to find out about transportation options to the city, Battambang, about four hours away, that was our first over-night destination in Cambodia. People just kept telling us "take taxi." When we asked about busses (we're on a budget!), we received blank stares. At the first intermediate-sized town we visited, one taxi driver pulled up to another taxi driver on the dirt road (all roads in this part of Cambodia are dirt- and in very bumpy shape!)and tried to hand us off for the next portion of our trip. Again, we tried to ask about busses or a bus station. Nothing. Finally, Joe asked if we could be taken to the hotel in town, which was in our guide book; we hoped someone there would speak English or know how we could get a bus to Battambang. The taxi drivers got very excited when they understood we wanted to go to the hotel- it was the first thing they understood us say at all! We pulled up to the hotel and the proprietess, who spoke some English, offered to help us communicate...She confirmed that the only way to get to Battambang was by taxi, the road was too bad for busses, and she walked us out to the street to find a taxi: it was the one and only taxi in town, who we had just had drop us off at the hotel 20 minutes ago! Confusion all around...Everyone laughed and we got in the taxi for a 4-hour ride to Battambang (which was a great introduction to Cambodia: a chill town on a pretty river, with wonderful food, friendly people, etc).
From Battambang, we took a 7 hour boat ride with 30 other tourists to the major tourist destination of Siem Reap, where the ancient temples of Angkor Wat (sometimes referred to as the 8th Wonder of the World, but I wonder how many other places are called that, too?) are located. The boat ride was amazing! Least of all because it started at 7 a.m. and a friendly tourist from England who we had met the night before wanted to start drinking his good birthday bottle of whiskey with Joe and I and others- at 7 a.m. It was a really fun day, involved a 2nd bottle of local (horrible) alcohol purchased en route before 9 a.m. and great scenery: bright green rice paddies, wide open skies, and wooden houses, and villages built on stilts, populated by fishermen/women, who basically live on water...
Angkor Wat is amazing, even though I am sort of "templed out" (so many temples here in Asia!). Spread out over 20 miles, and built by Khmer (the ethnicity of Cambodia) rulers from the 11-14th centuries, are tens and tens of temples, both Buddhist and Hindu. The surroundings are lush, jungly, wet, and the temples are in various states of ruin or restoration...We rented bicycles and biked all over, getting there (with 100s of other tourists) in time for sunrise at the major temple complex: Angkor Wat. I enjoyed biking through the exotic landscape as much as actually getting off our bikes and walking into and around the different temples, but I didn't tell Joe that - turns out he's a temple freak and can't get enough of this ancient, religious architecture!
We are really enjoying our time here. The people are great and friendly, the scenery is superb, and we have enjoyed every meal we've eaten (one highlight was when we went to a casual restaurant near our guest house in Siem Reap, where we were the only foreigners and there was no menu and almost no English spoken. All the staff gathered around us and used their combined efforts to help us order one beef and one vegetable rice and they all laughed hysterically when we had been presented with our food and utensils, which included different empty bowls, and sauces, chillies, a huge array of raw vegetables on ice, a pot of rice and we began trying different things and putting them in our bowls; we were obviously doing something VERY wrong and funny but we had no idea what it was), and the scenery is superb. But Cambodia has a very, very painful recent history. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were killed during and right after the U.S. war with Vietnam, when the brutal Khmer Rouge took power here. The country lost more than 10% of its population and it is still recovering, obviously.
It is election day morning in the U.S. and I am in a high state of excitement and anticipation, here in Phnomh Penh (the capital of Cambodia). I want to wake up tomorrow at a.m. our time (6 p.m. Eastern time) and begin to watch the election coverage, before meeting up at a Democrats Abroad party here...

On a Tropical Thai Island....

Arrived in Bangkok two days ago after a middle of the night flight from Kolkata. We were feeling sad to leave India, because we don't know if we will ever be back and really, really enjoyed our time there. It is such a dynamic, real, intriguing, and complicated country. We just saw a small part of it and feel really lucky to have seen what we did and have some small understanding for what will soon be the world's most populated country (approximately one in 6 people on the globe are Indian)...

I had been to Thailand once before, with my friend Kelly, for a couple of weeks in 2001. It seems very changed since then...or maybe it is just me that is very changed? Anyway, Bangkok is a really, modern-looking, futuristic city these days. It has new, fancy, public transportation lines with televisions on the trains and announcements in English. We went to the commercial, center of Siam Square in Bangkok and wandered around giant,glittering, all-white malls filled with the most exclusive of Western and Asian shops of the kind you think might be in Tokyo. And we ate great street food and drank beers sitting at plastic tables and chairs on street corners...Many, many people visit Bangkok for sex tourism purposes and we stayed in a part of the city where a lot of these tourists and businesses were located: awful and depressing.

After one day in Bangkok, we took off for the island of Koh Chang, near the Cambodian border in the Gulf of Thailand. It is a wet (nearly 100% humidity), very green, lush island that is mostly (not very well protected) national park, with a mountainous interior. Joe has never been to Southeast Asia or anywhere in Asia prior to this trip and he said yesterday that "Thailand is like travel for dummies." It is really easy to get around here. The language and alphabet are unintelligible and English is not widely spoken aside from a few words, but the tourist infrastructure is very well established and comfortable. Thailand receives more than 3 times the amount of international tourists that India does, though it is less than 1/10th as large a country.

We leave for Cambodia in the next couple of days. We have one stop before going to Siem Reap to see the ruins of Angkor Wat. I would like to get to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, by November 5th to watch the elections results with a group of Democrats Abroad there who are planning an elections-viewing party at a hotel there. Go OBAMA!!!!

Strikes, Road Closures and Return to India

Wrapping up our time on the Indian Subcontinent now. We leave for Thailand on October 28th. We had a great time in Nepal and were happy to return to India last night. We had a long travel day to arrive in Darjeeling, India last night. We woke up to beautifu views of the surrounding highlands and the world's 3rd highest mountain, Kanchenjunga, on the border of India and Nepal this morning. While Darjeeling is similarly physically beautiful like neighboring Nepal, it has a chilled out tourist atmosphere (unlike the busloads of tourists we ran into everywhere in Nepal)! It is a remarkably clean and aesthetically pleasing Indian city (which can be quite overcrowded, polluted, lots of traffic, etc).

We were meant to arrive in Darjeeling the day before yesterday but got "stuck" at a beautiful place in Nepal, near the Tibet border...It was called the "Last Resort" and was owned by an Aussie and a Kiwi. They specialize in bungy jumping (something I would never do in a million years), but also do canyoning and rafting. Joe went canyoning one day (this is just mainly rapelling down a valley wall into the river below), but I just chilled out around the resort and joined Joe and a horribly grueling, all uphill 4 hour hike one day. I am still sore! On the day we were supposed to leave, the manager of the resort let us know that there was a "strike" on the road to Kathmandu...Nepal is known for such disruptions; basically, when people are aggrieved about any sort of social or political issue, they set up barricades on the roads and don't permit traffic through for sometimes days and weeks on end. So, we had no idea when the road would open again. We had to delay our flight back to India and hang out until the following day when the very, scary, mountain road with no guardrails and sheer drops down, down, down opened again and we could get out- yay!

We've met a lot of interesting travelers in the last few days, in Nepal and India. The one that tought us the most was a Nepali we met at the Last Resort who had been living in the U.S. for the last 10 years, after attending college and graduate school there. He now works for a South Asian-focused non-profit out of Madison, Wisconsin. We talked to him for hours about Nepali history, politics, culture and religion (including the caste system- so fascinating! and very much a part of everyday life) its relationship with India, etc.

Getting on a night train to Calcutta tonight. Our last train trip and destination in India. There are some unique things we have seen here on the Sub-Continent that we have never seen anywhere else before, we've been making a list in our heads the last few weeks...

Things We've Never Seen Outside of India (and Nepal)

1. Urban Monkeys (Yup, in cities of even 10 million people, multitudes of monkeys make the buildings and parks and temples their homes)
2. Urban Cows (They block the roads, the bridges, you can find them in crowds of hundreds of people- they are sacred here and accepted as part of the urban fabric)
3. Bicycle Rick-shaws (Apparently in Calcutta, where we go next, there are still rickshaws pulled by people on foot!)
4. Hawking (People clear their throats and noses and spit at the most amazing of decibels, all day long, men, women, children- everyone!)
5. Drivers (The best drivers on the planet! The things they do! The way everyone shares the road, weaves around each other, merging together in ways no Western driver ever could, passing huge trucks on mountain roads with guard rails, etc!)
6. Preponderance of Electrical Switches (I need to ask an Indian about this. Every hotel room we have stayed in has a row of at least 6 to sometimes 20 electrical switches - often all in a row. It is a major guessing game to figure out what, if anything, they connect to. I have often pressed a switch, unknowingly, that rings the front desk who then calls us up and I have to tell them in very basic English that "no", I do not need anything right now)
7. Hindu Temples and Stupas (They are everywhere: in the most unlikely and inconvenient of places. Giant, stone temples, on top of hills hours and hours from any road. a Stupa is a kind of pagoda-like Buddhist temple that can be of any size from 1 foot to 300 feet around and is our new favorite word: Stupa!)

Kathmandu and Around

We arrived in Kathmandu 5 days ago after about 10 days in Rajasthan (state) in India and returning to Delhi for a couple of days before flying here. We had originally planned on traveling overland from India, by way of Varanasi, to Kathmandu but when we went to buy our train ticket, we struck out entirely. Trains from Rajasthan to Varanasi were booked solid for weeks. A disappointment. But we had been lucky, as we have met other tourists traveling in India who had booked their train tickets months in advance, from their home countries, in order to get where they wanted to go. We, on the other hand, were lucky in that we bought tickets the day of or the day before and didn't have any problems until we tried to go to Varanasi. Train travel in India is great! Very comfortable and easy and inexpensive- a great way to see the country. They even serve good food in the first class cars...India, overall, is a relatively easy place in wich to travel. People speak English widely (though there are daily frustrations and miscommunications about nearly everything). Even Delhi, which originally seemed charmless, hot and hectic, has really grown on us by the time we returned to it. We had some great interactions with Delhi-ites; cab drivers, hotel staff, people in restaurants, etc, were funny and kind and curious about us. Great food, nice parks, and temples and monuments (truthfully, though, we are getting a little "templed" out; these ornately carved, gold or marble-topped 700 year old buddhist or hindu temple in a lovely setting? we've seen too many of them!). And the hawking (people trying to sell things and services) is not nearly what we had anticipated from people who had traveled in India before. Another wonderful thing about India: there are many tourists and tourist sites, but us foreigners are a drop in the bucket compared to Indians. There are a billion people, and they like to visit the tourist sites, too. We are always outnumbered, enormously, wherever we go, by Indians and Indian tourists. Refreshing. And unlike Nepal, which I will get to next...
Nepal is gorgeous. The Himalayas and green hills and mountains and valleys. They grow everything here. It is lush and pleasant and sunny but cool at night. Great for sitting outside and walking around- which we have been doing a lot of! We spent the last 2 days in Nagargot, which is on a ridge about 30 km outside of Kathmandu. From the top of our hotel (on the 5th story was a little lookout tower), we could see a huge swath of the Himalayas, when they were not covered in clouds. They are powerful looking and enormous, breath-taking. Yesterday,we walked from Nagarkot, along a ridge and down into the valley almost back to Kathmandu. We walked along small paths, through towns and fields and temples. We walked by people bathing their children, washing their clothes, harvesting rice and millet, enjoying the view from their porches and lookouts, and everyone, everyone smiled at us and greeted us with "namaste". The children and the dogs accompanied us on our walks. This was a real highlight of our time here. The downside is that Kathmandu, particularly the section called Thamel, is a tourist ghetto! There are so many businesses catering to tourists. All the signs are in English and almost the only Nepalis around are those employed by those businesses. Nepal is a poor country (but poverty looks very different here than it did in Africa, for example. Clean, running water, a gorgeous natural environment, decent roads, electricity and larger houses and more complex buildings are things which make it different. It reminds us somewhat of mountainous countries in the Americas, like Guatemala and Bolivia: ancient and complex societies in beautiful surroundings). People here generally cannot afford the food and services that us tourists demand by the thousands and thousands each year. We feel conflicted about our role in this beast that is global tourism.
One more highlight about Nepal: food!!! Who knew? We are finding it spicier than Indian food (which is a plus for us) and a really wonderful combination of Chinese and Indian spices. We have been loving the Tibetan/Newari soups: hearty, vegetarian, with dumplings, noodles, beans, fresh veggies, chillies, ginger, garlic, etc. And momos: little dumplings with Indian-flavored veggies inside and a great, spicy, Indian-style dipping sauce. Yay!

Pushkar and more...

Erica and I are sitting in a little internet cafe in Pushkar, India at the moment. Apparently, there are 5000 hindu temples in a town with a population of 14,000 people. All the buildings are huddled around a smallish lake which was created by damning a river. It's pretty touristy, with much of the main drag feeling a bit like Haight Ashbury, but you can certainly see the draw once here. We're on a day trip from Ajmer and heading to Udaipur tomorrow...

Our short time here has been one of the most thought provoking of any visits I've made. There are constantly images and views which jolt me : today locking eyes for a moment with an old woman wearing an impossibly bright pink shawl over her head and a huge gold hoop through her nose. walking behind a cow which appeared to be dancing (trotting?) through a tight bazaar at night just blocks from the Taj Mahal while music played at ear splitting level. while coming home (from the "Monkey Temple") in a rickshaw in Jaipur, we passed a line of men who were all lighting candles with a water fountain behind them at dusk, all wearing amazingly bright white clothing. I wish I had the energy to try to capture most of them in words to help remember them for later. I wonder if evenutally one gets desensitized to such sights. I can't imagine it.

Racing through the streets, especially at night, in a rickshaw can be easily listed as one of my favorite activities at this point. It's a great way to see a great deal at a relatively rapid pace (when you aren't stuck in gridlock with diesel fumes blowing your hair back), with the always exciting addition of slight to major chance of bodily harm. I love the way traffic moves in this country. It appears chaotic at first, but it is an amazing dance (to me, I think Erica is less impressed) which results in a tremendous number of vehicles getting where they are going much faster than I could've imagined. On more than a few ocassions now when we've taken a rickshaw to a temple or tomb or reallyoldbuilding of some kind, I've found the ride to or from to be almost or definitely better than the sight itself.

So far we've been lucky and managed to stay healthy. As Erica noted today, at this point in Senegal, we'd both been sick, healthy, and then sick again. Given what we'd heard for the past however many years about travel here, I think this is something to be very happy about.

Yesterday we took our first non-tourist class or regular class train ride. Pretty mellow overall, but I'm glad it was only 2.5 hours. I wish I could speak even a lick of Hindi as the only conversations I could have were largely like charades. I would act out what I was trying to say and then my luggage rack mate would answer in english. I believe Erica slept nearly the whole way.

We've yet to figure it out, and I'll upload some pics later, but for some reason Erica is attracting some occassionally significant attention from Indians with cameras. We haven't been able to figure out if they are laughing with her/us or at her/us, but at this point she's had her picture taken 4 times with a variety of different people.

All for now...

A bit late but...

here's some notes which have been sitting on our little laptop for a shortwhile. we're in Jaipur right now and really enjoying it.

sooo... after a couple of weeks in the US which seemed like so much more, we landed in london after what seemed like a few minutes (due to some snoozing), to be greeted by a man with a sign reading “erica & joe”. I haven't had the pleasure of having someone waiting with my name on a piece of paper at the airport, and it was quite nice. we had a wonderful few days spent with Heather & Ian at their amazing abode in Surrey, and spent one day walking around London a bit. We then got on a plane bound for Kuwait...

Entering the airport in Kuwait City was a lot of fun. prayer rooms, smoking rooms (although everyone was smoking everywhere anyway), many people in traditional dress, and of course... a mcdonalds. we had a little exchange rate confusion, as the kuwaiti dinar is worth a lot more than I expected or had read or something. I was confused, but we ended up exchanging a 5 pound note for 2 and 1 quarter dinars, which was good for 1 strawberry juice and a blueberry muffin. not a screaming deal, but a lot of fun. the guy doing the exchange conversion was simultaneously working on some huge transaction with our tiny tiny one, so we both thought we were about to get a truckload of dinars. Because the currency board didn't have any decimal points, we didn't know what the rate was so, it was a little scary. he counted out about 200 notes (at which point I was hoping that people in the delhi airport really like kuwaiti dinars) and then eventually turned around and gave us 3 with a little receipt.

I awaited India with a fair amount of trepidation. We landed at around 5:30 am, and were lucky enough to have another man with a sign reading “Erica Blake” waiting to take us to our hotel. The ride from the airport took nearly 30 minutes, and gave us a pretty solid driving tour of the city. embassy row was beauitful, and the energy in the street is infectious. it was all somehow less overwhelming than Ivhad imagined. The colors are wonderful, and the driving is incredible. touts are less touty than I had expected, or we haven't really seen any yet. At this point, I think that west africa might have been a good warm up for ... well, the rest of the world, but certainly for India. More on India soon....

Incredible India!

The title of this post is the Indian Government's tourism slogan, and so far, we tend to agree: India is Incredible.
We had been told (and were anxious) that we might be met with overwhelming heat, potential tummy sickness, pushy touts and taxi drivers and challenges finding things and arranging travel when we arrived in India. Of course, we just arrived this morning but so far, things are going smoothly. Our hotel-arranged cab drive was waiting for us at 5 a.m. when our plane got in and took us straight to our hotel which we would have never found ourselves as it is down windy roads through a bazaar in Central Delhi. The hotel air-conditioning works well and we took a nap after watching CNN (CNN would have been quite a luxury in Africa!) and catching up on the bad worldwide economic news. : (
The streets of Delhi were quite manageable when we went out today. We went to the pharmacy and stocked up on things we might need if we get sick, we went to the train station and bought train tickets to Agra where the Taj Mahal is for a day-trip tomorrow and for Jaipur, in Rajasthan the next day. Then, we took a bicycle rickshaw (not very far! and we paid him extra! but it was an experience) to a recommended restaurant for lunch where we did not recognize anything on the menu but were helped by a kind English-speaking Indian woman at the table next to us. Aftewards, we took an auto rickshaw to Hanuman's tomb, which is a set of buildings that looks like the Taj Mahal a bit, on beautiful grounds, dating back to the mid 16th century. We walked around there as the sun was getting low in the sky- it was magical! Now we are exhausted and going to bed!

Visits Home and to Surrey! Yay!

Joe and I just picked up our travels again (arrived in Delhi, India this morning and so far it is great) after 3 and 1/2 much treasured and wonderful weeks in the Western World- and at home!
We were in NJ (and made our way into NYC and beloved Brooklyn a few times) for 2 weeks, staying with my parents and sister Caroline and preparing for and celebrating my brother Patrick's wedding to Erin. It was such fun. Great to spend time with the family, see the extended family at the wedding, visit the Jersey shore and spend time with my graduate school ladies in Philadelphia! And not worry about getting stomach sick or being understood when speaking English!

We also attended Joe's friend Andy's wedding to Jen, which was a fun and artistically beautiful wedding at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center. Joe wore a tux! And Andy seemed so happy. Then, we were off to Sanibel where we spent time at Joe's mom's house and with his grandma, uncle and cousin, lounging at the beach and by the pool. It was 90 degrees and beautiful in FL which was good preparation for our arrival in India.

But before we touched down in Delhi, we spent four blissful days with my dear old (ASL) highschool friend Heather at she and her husband, Ian's, lovely house outside of London in Surrey. We ate at the pubs in their village and went on walks in the fields and woods near their home and also combined the two in an extended walk in Box Hill, Surrey, where we walked through the hills and forests before making our way to a 16th century pub for lunch!

Thanks to everyone who took such good care of us and made our time home (and in England) memorable and comfortable! We sure miss you when we are away.

Penguins, Baboons, Ostrich and Other South African Adventures

We arrived in South Africa nearly 10 days ago, after some hellish last few days in West Africa...We contracted parasites (giardia!! ugh!) during our last meal in Bamako, Mali, before heading back to Dakar, Senegal. We then holed up in our hotel in Dakar for four days, miserable and unable to go anywhere until the day arrived that we were to get on our flight to South Africa. We were so ready to leave West Africa, yet we blew it by arriving at the airport too late to get on our flight! We spent the last 24 hours in Senegal, attempting to negotiate African airport chaos and determine whether we would be able to get on the same flight to South Africa the next morning. We did!
And we are here, in Cape Town! We went to a doctor soon after arriving, got on extremely strong meds and are now feeling well...Cape Town and the surrounding area is absolutely beautiful, stunning and amazing. There are elememts of its natural beauty, architecture and scenery that remind us of New England, Oregon, Northern California, Ireland, but then there are baboons and ostriches and penguins in the wild! We had a great wild-life viewing day yesterday where we saw all three of these animals up close. The penguins were awesome! A whole little colony about 20 feet away from us, on Boulder Beach south of Cape Town. We rented a car and drove around the Cape south of the city for the last few days. The Southern part of the Cape is all national park, it is stunning. We rented a cabin in the gorgeous little town of Scarborough and saw incredible sunsets...
It is wonderful to be able to communicate with people in English again. I can now take care of making decisions, paying for things, making calls, etc, rather than relying on Joe to be source of communication with the outside world. We have been eating good food, drinking good wine and going to see movies...The weather is mild (low 70s during the day and low 50s at night) and it is nice to not be hot and sweaty all the time. Joe is now watching the South African national team play New Zealand in rugby, at a local bar. Apparently, many black, South Africans support the New Zealand team because up until the end of Apartheid, the South African team did not allow blacks to play (and the team is still largely white). In a nutshell, this captures a lot of the on-going conflict of life and politics in this country. It is so incredibly different from West Africa, but there are major challenges facing this country, even while its economy is the powerhouse of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Tomorrow, we start our ventures into other regions of South Africa. We booked a ticket on the tourist bus, called the Baz Bus, which will allow us to get on and off the bus from here to Durban (about 1000 miles up the coast) for the next 2 weeks. We have our route mostly planned out and it sounds incredible. Our first stop will be Stellenbosch, in the wine-growing region, where we will go wine-tasting. Joe says it looks a lot like Napa there. Afterwards, we head to the town of Wilderness (love that name), on the Garden Route of the Indian Ocean, where there is a 27 km long, undeveloped beach on a national park...More from there!

Reflections on Mali and Burkina

-Erica, Bobo-Dialassou, Burkina Faso
I haven't written anything in a while, so I thought I would just get some thoughts down here, quickly. We just arrived in Burkina Faso 3 days ago and will just be here a week before heading back through Mali and to Senegal from where we fly to South Africa in 12 days. I am excited about South Africa and the prospect of a nation of many English speakers where we will be able to buy books, watch movies and TV in English, etc!

• We had some rough days in Mali. We abandoned the private taxi method of getting around that we had adopted in Senegal and took some very long, hot and crowded local transport around the country. It is amazing how many people and goods can be squashed into a station wagon, Land Rover, bus, and how slow these things move!
• It is harder to get things done in Mali. Communication with locals is more challenging (less people speak French there than in Senegal; a lot of local dialects are spoken instead) and there are more would-be guides and craft merchants than anywhere I have ever been. It became comical.
• We met more English-speaking and tourists back-packing like us in Mali which made for a lot of fun times, laughing at our shared predicaments of trying to get from place to place and avoiding the touts, etc.
• We spent our last few days in Mali in Dogon Country, which is a part of Mali where people used to construct dwellings and villages in the cliff walls, as in the American Southwest. Now, the Dogon people live on the flat lands below the cliffs, but the original villages in the cliffs can still be explored. We hired a local guide and went to Dogon for 2 nights with a Peace Corps volunteer from Maine who we met in Mali. We hiked about 15-20 km a day through very beautiful country and slept in the villages at night. We had a lot of fun but were ready to get back to civilization after 3 days because the food was pretty bad and we wanted to take showers!
• After a long travel day from Dogon, we arrived in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, a couple of nights ago. We treated ourselves to some good (French-owned) restaurants there and went to see live music at the most local live music venue we have been to since arriving in West Africa. We were the only non-Burkinabés there. It was super fun.
• We are now in Bobo-Dialassou, Burkina's 2nd largest and very chill city, from where we will head to the smaller, tropical town of Banfora and rent bikes to see some hippos (that is what all the tourists do there and it sounds good!).

Mali, Dogon and on...

• 
  

It's been too long, but internet has been hard to find. Since the last post, we went (in Mali) from Bamako to Segou to Sévaré to Dogon Country, with a couple day trips to Djenné and Mopti. We're now sitting in a "cyber" in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Where to start? The picture at left was taken from a restaurant in Segou, of a boy polling along the pirogue while his father put out a net. Watching the sunset over the Niger with a beer was a highlight. As we've mentioned, travel has otherwise been hard. There is clearly a heavy tourist trail most everywhere we've been, but not many tourists as its the down season. The result is there are far less tourists to garner the attention of would be guides, curio hawkers; etc. It gets old after time - with almost any walk of any distance involving a significant amount of repetition. After being here for weeks, I would love to know how many people (in Sénégal and Mali) have asked us to take a look at their wares "juste pour la plaisir de les yeux" - just for the pleasure of the eyes. I think we're nearing the triple figures on that one alone.

But on to some quick impressions :

• Segou - the Niger is beautiful there, and when we weren't being followed/spoken to, it was fun. Unfortunately, that wasn't for very long...
• Sévaré - We did mellow out a bit in Sévaré. Its a bit in convienient, but centrally located. Not much shaking, but we did get our day trips in to Djenne and Mopti
• Djenné - this unesco world heritage site with a large mud mosque built in 1905 has sewerage running down all the pathways in open streams. The mosque is certainly unlike any building I had seen before, but after taking 3.5 hours to get there, we were very glad we would be leaving that day.
• Mopti - After being told that it is the "Venice of Mali", I took a day trip out there with some friends we'd met in Djenné while Erica sat it out. We got to see a great thunderstorm come in to the town, and the pinasse and pirogue activity around the river was fun to watch, but I couldn't muster the strength to tell Erica she'd missed much.

Dogon country requires much more than a bullet item. It is certainly the main tourist draw within Mali along with Timbuktu. After having a bit of a rough go attempting to secure a guide into Dogon Country, we tagged along with Nick, a Peace Corps volunteer from the Gambia who had a connection via some Peace Corps Mali volunteers. After a SUV ride to the first village (wonderfully pronounced "jiggy-boom-bo"), we started walking down the falaise (french for cliff). It feels a bit like one half of a valley in the Canyonlands, but as its the rainy season, there's a fair amount of greenery with an occassional palm tree. I wish I could upload pictures as they would assist me here. We stayed for 2 nights and hiked for 3 days.

Music....

Although we're somehow unable to stay up past about midnight, we've managed to check out the following live music so far on the trip :

I've forgotten his name, but we saw a great group @ Just 4 U in Dakar. The band consisted of a lead acoustic guitarist, drums, bass, trombone, & bongos. The lead singer didn't come out for a few songs, and the band played some great stuff - mixing is some covers we recognized with some senegalese music. The band was great, and I really enjoyed listening to the guitarist. Later the lead singer came out and played some great songs as well. I only recognized a Fela song (Mama Africa), but they all sounded wonderful.

In Saint-Louis, we caught a local band playing what I think is more straight-up Senegalese music, with a similar instrument selection. The guitarist was again very very good, and it was great fun watching this group as the venue was filled with locals who were really enjoying themselves and the music. A few songs in guys from the audience got up and switched with some members of the band for a few songs as well, which added to the vibe a bit. After this place, we went over to a jazz bar and listened to some more standard jazz played by a trio - drums, bass & keys.

Night before last, we caught some wonderful music here in Bamako at La Savanna. Lead guitarist, backup guitarist, bassist, drums, 1 guy on a single bongo-style drum, and another who would alternate between a couple stand up bongos and a tranditional percussion instrument, which erica described as playing a pumpkin with chopsticks... the lead guitarist was really impressive, and we had a great time listening to these guys.

Finally, last night we caught an extremely informal guy playing a kora who was later joined by a guitarist at another restaurant here in Bamako. We were basically the only people in attendence, and I'm not sure if they continued once we left, but the music was really cool. It was fun to watch and learn a bit about the kora as an instrument, as I wasn't very familiar with it previously.

All for now...

Zebrabar Days and Moving on to Mali

Joe and I spent five chilled out days at a Swiss-run campement (a tourist hotel), called Zebrabar in northern Senegal, very close to Saint-Louis, before heading back to Dakar for a couple nights and flying out to Bamako, Mali this morning. Zebrabar was such a welcome retreat from the hot, cities and tourist beaches of Senegal where people so frequently wanted to sell us things or guide us around, etc. The owners of Zebrabar bought the land 12 years ago when they decided to relocate to Senegal permanently from Switzerland. The couple now has two children, but just the dad and the 6 year old son were there when we stayed there (the wife and daughtere were in Switzerland). The land abuts a lagoon and the Senegalese National Park of Langue de Barbarie, which is a series of barrier islands and lagoons separated from an unpopulated part of the Atlantic by a thin strip of land (the Langue de Barbarie). When the owners bought the land, there was nothing there. Now, there are bungalows for rent, a campground, a main building with a restaurant and a large house for themselves. They run off of solar energy, which is an anomaly (but shouldn't be as Senegal is prime real estate for solar power) there, for sure. There were kayaks and a windsurfer for our use and a variety of travelers who passed through while we were there. We had communal dinners outside at night (the food was so good, it was a treat! the owners had taught their Senegalese cooks to make incredible European food, including salad with sterilized vegetables that we could eat!), with a changing group of Belgians, French, Germans, Senegalese, and Americans. The common language was French, of course, but people would humor me and speak English from time to time. We met several Europeans who are ex-pats in Senegal and it was incredible to have a glimpse into their lives. Many of them drive home to Europe in the summer and drive back with supplies, taking a ferry from Spain to Morrocco and making the trip in anywhere from 3 days to a few weeks to Senegal. Each day we kayaked to the ocean, across the lagoon. We didn't do much else, aside from read, walk into the village (where the kids would follow us around and ask us questions and call us "toubabs", of course) for lunch or bread or soda and drink beers on the roof (great view!) at sunset. While there, we didn't check email or have news of the outside world for 5 days, which was strange, but good.
We traveled back to Dakar with the owners of Zebrabar and a new friend, Alexis, from Albany who was at Zebrabar with us (and who will be travelling to Mali in a couple of weeks, so we might run into her again!). Dakar is just kind of crazy. Lots of traffic and energy and attention on us. We stayed in a wealthy beach neighborhood this time and it seems a stretch to call it wealthy- there is extreme poverty next to $500 a night hotels.
This morning, we flew from Dakar to Bamako, the capital of Mali. We had met several aid workers in Senegal who were working Mali and everyone told us how much less developed and poorer Mali is than Senegal. This is apparent as soon as you leave the airport. But we like it here so far. Everything is brown (from the buildings and houses to the river and streets) and green and wet, as the rainy season just started here. The Niger River (one of the longest and widest in Africa) runs through Bamako and most of Mali and it is beautiful - with green islands dotting it. We are staying in the neighborhood that is frequented by ex-pats (there are a ton of development/aid workers from a wide variety of nationalities in Mali as it is one of the 4 poorest countries in the world according to the UN development index), and there are several live music venues nearby. We plan to hit up a few of those in the next couple of nights (this is one of the reasons why we came to West Africa- to see live music in Bamako!) before hitting the road to head further south and east into Mali. We are planning on going hiking in the famed Dogon Country that we have been hearing about from every tourist we've met in the region.
- Erica, Bamako, Mali

Thoughts a week in to this thing...

As Erica has alluded multiple times, and I must repeat : Senegalese people are the warmest, kindest, most ready to smile people I've encountered. I particularly enjoy our interactions with guys who's primary purpose is to get us to buy something from them (a tour, a curio, seafood, etc.). Some are pretty driven and will stay on message (i.e. sell, sell, sell), but for the most part, if I start asking questions about what they are talking about, or move the conversation at all tangentially, we end up just having a brief conversation and say goodbye. I just get the impression that they would obviously like to sell something, but would prefer to just talk a bit, which is great fun.

Along with soccer, the national sport here is wrestling. We saw many kids wrestling on the beach, and I hope to catch some of it on tv tonight. Coming out of the water on the beach last week, I was jogging up to where we were sitting, and crossed paths with thing youing Senegalese guy. He stopped right in front of me and put his arms out straight at me sorta like a kickboxer and said, "mon ami, tu veut faire un peu de combat avec moi?" (my friend, would you like to do a little combat with me?" - with a huge smile on his face. I started laughing immediately and thanked him for the offer. He laughed a bit and continued on jogging down the beach with his friend. It was just a great quick interaction that I really enjoyed. Later that evening, I was taking a picture of Erica on the beach, and another young kid says to me, "you want me in there too, right?" with another huge smile. I dig it... I can't remember being anywhere else where people are so happy to joke and laugh with us. Solid fun.

I got 3 more minutes on me internet so will drop off for now. More later...

How does the CFA being pegged to the Euro effect West Africa?

After spending about a week here in Senegal, I'm extremely curious to learn what the on balance effect on the local economies the CFA being pegged to the Euro has. The positive aspects, I would think are :

* - the currency's value only fluctuates with the Euro, and not due to local economic conditions
* - the governments are unable to devalue their currencies themselves
* - eases trade with the Euro zone
.... etc.

Given the recent rise in the Euro, however, I think it would fairly negatively effect the region's exports to any non-Euro countries. So, given just the few things I've mentioned, I wonder if overall the peg is helpful or harmful to these individual economies.

Toubabs in Saint-Louis

4th of July.
Senegalese people call white people "Toubabs." We hear it several times a day. Yesterday, a woman leaned out of a bus, patted joe on the head and said, "Bonjour, toubab." We are constantly amazed by how nice everyone is here. Children stop us on the street to shake the toubabs hands, everyone waves at us, etc.
We are now in Saint-Louis, Senegal; a city on the North Atlantic Coast, near the border with Mauritania. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The city is on an island in the Senegal River. It was the French administrative capital of French Colonial Africa for 200 years. It is beautiful and the architecture is picturesque but also looks like it is falling apart. The food here is great - all over Senegal, we have been impressed by how good the food is. The hot sauce is incredibly, mouth-burning, too, which is fantastic! In Saint-Louis, we are staying at a beautiful hotel on the river- La Louisiane. We are currently the only guests. When we arrived, a Dutch family traveling with their teenage daughter for 2 weeks (and all by public transportation- they are an inspiration to us!) was also there. We drove north from the southern Petit Cote to Saint-Louis 2 days ago. We paid a driver 180 dollars for the 4 hour cab ride (Felipe Orrego told us that we were going to have to get a driver in West Africa but we did not take him seriously at the time, we thought we were hard core public transport travelers, but the busses here go so slow and look so packed!). We still have not braved public transport, but are thinking we might try it next week when we go back to Dakar to fly out to Mali.
Saint-Louis is famous for its Jazz Festival every spring. We missed it but are going to see a jazz show tonight. It will be the first time we are not in bed by 10 in a week! Happy 4th of July!
- Erica, Saint-Louis, Senegal

Startin off- in Senegal

This is our first blog from Africa. We have been in Senegal for 6 days. It feels like at least twice as long! Each day has been hard and tiring and fun and beautiful. We are continually shocked with how expensive everything is! The U.S. dollar is just killing us against the Central African Franc. As a result, we have not seen many U.S. or other travelers like us at all. The foreigners we do see in country are either ex-pats or people on a high-dollar, resort-type vacation from Europe. Upon arrival, we spent 2 days in Dakar. We saw good live music at the perennial Dakar music venue, Just 4 U. We ate good, African food, and watched the Euro Cup soccer matches (the Senegalese were all routing for Turkey and then Spain over Russia and Germany). We also went to the colonial island off of Dakar, called Ile de Goree. It was gorgeous there! Goree was a centre of the slave trade from West Africa to the U.S. during the 18th and 19th centuries and is now a U.N. World Heritage Site. We encountered a similar annoying phenomenon there as we had in Dakar, however. Everyone wants to sell us things! Crafts and jewelery, football jerseys and guide services- ugh, it is annoying. Since I (Erica) do not speak French, I feign ignorance and ignore these touts. Joe is stuck with the job of getting rid of them-usually with a smile and humor and friendly words (as is his way).
On our way out of Dakar, we intended to take a bus or shared taxi out to the beach (where we are now). We got in a cab outside of our hotel, Hotel Oceanic, and immediately, the cab driver offered to take us all the way to the beach- at least 2 hours. We declined and said we wanted to go the bus station. He kept telling us we did not want to go to the bus station and when we arrived, we saw why. I had never seen my husband change his mind so quickly! He told the cab driver to keep going and take us to the beach! I could not help laughing, though the desolation and ominous emptiness of the bus station was not that funny. There were no passengers in sight! The road out of Dakar included some of the most impressive traffic we had ever seen. I was so thankful to be in a taxi and not a crowded, big bus that would have gotten stuck in every traffic jam. We have basically concluded that public transportation is not an option for us in Senegal. We have been taking taxis, which are in abundance. Neither of us have ever travelled anywhere that we did not readily hop in and out of public transport, so this is a change for us. It is something we have gotten comfortable with, however.
Our next stop was in the small beach town of Somone, where we stayed at the Hotel Phenix (at 80 dollars a night we had sticker shock originally, but considering it had a kitchen, living room, and air-conditioning, we realiz now it was a good deal. The staff at Phenix was incredibly sweet and friendly. Joe made friends with all of them. The hotel was on the beach and we talked to the locals walking by and went swimming in the ocean with new, young friends all day long. I cannot say strongly enough how kind and open the people are in Senegal. We will be walking down a street filled with people who are not paying attention to us, who are just sitting outside their stores and houses and if we smile or wave and say, Bonjour, everyone lights up and asks us how we are doing. We also made ourselves sick in Somone; there is no one else to blame it on as we were cooking for ourselves. We alternate between blaming it on a raw (but washed and peeled!) cucumber or some funky, questionable (because it had travelled all the way from France to La Somone) cheese from France. : ) Our tummies are now on the mend after two days of chillin in the famed Petit Cote beach resort town of Saly. We do not like Saly. The beaches of Sanibel are 1000 times prettier and there are so many touts (would-be guides) and vendors of crap we do not want to purchase, that it is overwhelming to leave the hotel. Luckily, our hotel is an oasis with a pool and good restaurant (not that we can eat much because of our tummies) and about 10 young, beautiful Senegalese staff with great taste in music.

That is it from us today. 6 days into this adventure. Senegal has engendered complex feelings in us. It is way more expensive than we would have hoped from our first stop on our long journey, Dakar is overwhelming and was occasionally very bleak, the touts are way too numerous for our tastes, and yet we have been treated with such kindness at every turn and we make each other laugh 20 times a day (that my French is atrocious is constantly amusing to us! I speak Spanish uconsciously and hope someone might understand me).

- Erica; Saly, Senegal

This is excitingly apprehensive business

Dipping my toe into the shallow end of the internets over here. There may be more later, on that I'm certain.