The Indulgent Adventures of Bubbs and Bubs

Fullfilling my lifelong dream

2009-01-15T00:52:00.000-08:00

It all started back when I was young. I seem to remember it as being when I was in 7th grade or so, but an internet search shows it as March 1991. National Geographic ran an article about the discovery and subsequent exploration of the Lechuguilla Cave. I remember being glued to the images and actually reading the text of the article (as opposed to doing what most of us do which is to only look at the pictures). This was something that I wanted to do when I grew up! Find a new cave, keep it a secret, and spend some serious time exploring, mapping and and discovering a new world right here on this planet. Who wouldn't want to do that?
As readers of this blog might already know, a lot of my time in Thailand has been spent searching out limestone areas and obsessing over scoping out new caves.
The good news: there are tons of caves in thailand.
The bad news: most locals know about all of them.
The good news part 2: In general thai people are afraid to go inside caves because they are full of ghosts.
The bad news 2: There are plenty of people who aren't afraid to go in them.
The good news 3: While on a motorcycle ride (see article: Tour de Rain) in an area where hardly any cave hardy tourists go, I scoped what I thought to be the future of caving in Northern Thailand.
The bad news 3: I ran out of time in Thailand to get the opportunity to go back and see what lay underground.

Well... here I am back in thailand for a 6 week vacation and I was able to talk my buddy Josh into going up to this area to see what we could find. He speaks fluent Thai which was helpful when talking to the farmers. Almost everyone we talked to knew of a cave in his orchard or of a cave on that hill over there. We spent two days following creeks into the hillside. We found lead after lead of potentially new stuff, the most promising of which was an enormous entrance with a creek gushing into it and a big drop 1/4 mile into the cave. When picking apples from a heavily laden tree, you might as well pluck the low hanging fruit first, eh? We can leave the other river flowing into cracks for later.

We put together a team of 4, grabbed every static rope we could find and headed back up last week for a 3 day event. Like me, Josh was giddy. The possibilities that lay in this cave were massive. During our scoping adventure, we had stood at the edge of a drop with water pouring down and a steady breeze at our back (for cavers, a breeze indicates ongoing passage- the air has to be going somewhere, right?). What was down that drop. Where did the water go? Would we be able to find the basement level of this system with some massive underground stream flowing into Burma? How big was thing going to be? Were we the first to ever go in here?

I won't give a blow by blow, but we found what is for sure the deepest recorded cave in thailand and might just be the longest (we were lazy and didn't map it). Three days of exploration resulted in rappel after rappel, the longest of which is a 65 meter free hanging tube plunging straight down into earth. It took a rock 3-4 seconds to hit the ground after we threw it off. That's long enough to not be able to see the bottom from the top using our headlamps. The system holds untold complexity.

We found fossil passage that hasn't been altered in what I think to be really long time (100,000 years). We found large bat populations and animals that live off the bats and bat poop (giant translucent cave leeches, blind cave crickets with 10 cm long antennae, wacky cave centipedes with extra long legs). We found enormous mud cracks positioned on mud with large stalagmites growing on top, a utah style slot canyon that goes on for 2 km or so, giant columns, cave pearls, 100 meter high rooms 500 meters below the surface of the earth. We left untold booming passages unexplored (for now).
It was 3 days of what I would consider to be absolute underground bliss. Often, we would have to stop for a second to look at each other and remind ourselves of the coolness of what we were doing. This was it, for three days I couldn't think of anything else in the world I'd rather be doing. I had been dreaming of this moment for most of my life. We found the holy grail for cavers. Massive unexplored passage. We figured we were the first humans on the planet to see these rooms and it wasn't just a puny cave. It is huge!
In 56 hours, we were underground for 29. Many of our friends asked if we got an itch to see the sun after being underground for 8 hours. The answer is a resolute "no." I could have easily camped in this thing and stayed under for days on end. The only thing that made us turn around at the end of an 11 hour day, was that we told a guy on the surface that we would check in with him at 10pm. We were focused and our hearts were gleeful.
Eventually, we were expected back in Chiang Mai. We cleaned up our ropes and rolled back in, stopping occasionally to buy a can of beer. We sat in the car, talking excitedly a moment and then silent and thoughtful the next. We were pondering what we had just done, and the fact that so much more adventure lay ahead.
I head back to America on Saturday, and for me, this cave will have to wait for the future. But my list of things I must do before I die is now a bit shorter. I still need to open that goat farm. Maybe I can do it at the mouth of this cave.

[Saluting a great flow feature. Actually, we were holding down the "ultra-bright" buttons on our lamps to get more light for the photo]

[Squeezing through a narrow section- the inner canyon is only about 5 meters deep, but the cave is around 40 meters tall here (at least we think- we couldn't really make out the ceiling)]

[Packing up gear to go into the cave. Next time, we will definitely sleep in the cave but this time we stayed at the killer place called the Happy House. 50 dollars a night rented us this enormous house with private patio and fire place]

[A big bat on the ground. He was alive, but couldn't seem to fly. We felt a bit guilty because it was probably us who caused him to fall to the ground. After all, they aren't too used to seing anything in this cave.]

Click on this photo for a slideshow of lots of images from the trip- captioned even

26 hours in Seoul

2008-12-09T17:52:00.000-08:00

We originally were supposed to fly to Bangkok from Seattle on November 30, but about 2000 people in Bangkok decided they didn't like the democratically (and massively corrupt) government and thought it a good idea to shut down the Bangkok airports in order to get their point across. This meant we couldn't fly when intended. The protestors eventually got what they wanted in the form of a judicial coup when the Thai courts ruled that the current political party in charge was put there illegally and that there will have to be new elections. All very frustrating to someone trying to fly to Bangkok and apparently for the rest of Thailand who like having tourists fly to their country and spend money. I read a poll that said 75 percent of thais were embarrassed by what went on in Bangkok and didn't agree with it.
Anyway, we scrambled to reschedule out tickets and decided to take Bangkok out of the picture all together which meant flying to seoul, enjoying a nice 25 hour layover, and then going straight to Chiang Mai.
[Korean toilet] Normally a 25 hour layover would be torture, but not with Korean air. We arrived tired and hungry in Seoul around 8:45 at night. I was particularly tired because we weren't able to reserve seats on the flight and got plopped down right in the middle of the "kids section" of the airplane. And let me tell you... there were a lot of kids. In front of me was a cute Korean kid that smelled of poo and to my left was a 2 year old girl who is going to be one hell of a firecracker when she is older. She basically screamed and fought for the entire 12 hour flight. Amazing stamina. Fortunately, the aircraft was new, had comfortable seats, and had around 50 movies to choose from. I watched 6.
[merry christmas from Seoul] So we arrive in Seoul, go to the Korean air desk (our luggage was checked straight through to thailand so we had nice light bags) and get all our little vouchers. A nice old man throws us into his minivan and off we go to a pretty sweet little hotel. It had one of those super cool toilets with a heated seat, front and back warm water sprayer and blow dryer to dry you off after the squirting. Soooooo goooood.
The next morning, we jumped on the incredibly efficient subway and cruised into town for the day. We ran a count of how many white people we saw and I think we counted 28 for the entire day. I'm pretty sure we were the only tourists in town. And here is why... it was around 15 degrees fahrenheit. The kind of cold where my breath would instantly freeze to my mustache. [the seoul tower] This would have been ok except that we were headed to thailand and didn't really have warm clothes. So we'd go out, tourist for a while and then have to jump in somewhere to warm up. "Oh look... a free photo gallery with pictures of germany in 1935. That looks warm." "How about another cup of coffee." "That kitchen supply market looks like it is warm inside" "Maybe if we stand next to this bathroom door, warm air will come out." That kind of stuff.
[artistic...] We walked around, ate when we could, and hiked up to the Seoul tower. Seoul is a big city surrounded by rocky hills and has a big hill in the middle of town. There are trails all around this hill and a big space needle like tower on top. So we walked all around it, saw a cool 400 year old archery range where you shoot arrows across a canyon to targets really far away and enjoyed great views of the city. After getting nearly hypothermic we finally finished up our time in seoul and hopped on our plane to Chiang Mai.
[the archery range] We were picked up at the airport by my friend Josh and immediately felt like we were home. After having lived here for two years this place feels more like home than even seattle does. I'm trying to figure out why. I think that in Seattle I am trying to scheme on how to go live somewhere else. I love seattle and the community of people that we have there, but ultimately, when I am there, I want to leave. But in Chiang Mai, this is where I want to be. It is the fun experience that I looking for when trying to leave seattle. So in that sense, I feel settled here. [our friend Black... we have people friends too] Our friends in Chiang Mai are fantastic people and it so fun to be here again. And then there is the food. Mmmmmmmm. I've gone to about half of my favorite haunts here. After I finish this blog, I think I will go and get some Kao Soy from my favorite place over by the 3 kings monument.

No post forever

2008-12-09T17:19:00.000-08:00

[our new condo] It really has been a long time. A very long time. What all has happened: We came back to the states, I freaked out about it, we went on a month long climbing trip in Utah, Megan and I threw 8 events for Gore-tex all over the country, we witnessed the crash of America and then the pride of a democratic revolution in the states, we bought a condo in Seattle, and we got stressed out about a non-democratic revolution in Thailand. And then... we went back to thailand. Never a dull moment really.
[the bathroom in our condo]

Tour de Rain

2008-05-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

So Megan returned from Ecuador, went straight back to work, but then promptly had a 4 day weekend. Hmmmm, what to do?

Motorcycle trip. That would make sense. I had spotted a road a while back when we were up looking for the "cave where animals do not come out of." I kind of wanted to head up there, but that is only a day trip. Out comes the map and for hours I study it and try find a cool route. I managed to work out a big loop that would act as a guideline for where to go. The exciting part was that we didn't really know what we would encounter since it seems the maps in thailand are all pretty much sub par. Either they don't have all the roads or they invent roads. I spent 2 hours in various bookstores around chiang mai trying to find a good map and pretty much give up. I even emailed a map maker guy who lives in chiang mai to see if he had a prototype secret map that I could at least look at, but he told me to wait for 6 months and he will have one coming out.

Without a good map we had two options:
1) Use the map I have and follow the roads that are on it. These roads tend to be only the major roads meaning that we would have to stick to the big roads and not venture out to the little ones
2) Screw the maps and just take off on roads that look like fun. In Thailand this can lead to roads that turn into trails that turn into nothing more than a track and then end at some hilltribe 50km off the main road. Now this is fun, you never know where you could end up, but we were going to be on our little 125cc Hondas which can certainly handle any road that thailand can dish out (with two passengers, 1 dog and a weeks worth of vegetables) but we are a delicate bunch and too long on a rough road gets quite tiring.

I like option 2 but there were also places that I really wanted to see, so option 1 will get us there. O.k. so how about taking option 1, but if a good road seems to beckon, then we should take it. One thing that I have learned about traveling is that the best experiences come when you least expect them. You can plan all you want to, but its the surprises that you remember. I'd hate to miss out on surprises.

Friday morning sees the sun shining bright and it is hot. Around 100 degrees or so (which isn't that hot compared to what it was in April). We get a quick tune up on the bikes (4 dollars), fill up the tanks (1 gallon for 4 dollars which will take us about 150 miles- gotta love the 125cc engine- it is amazing to think that people drive alone in trucks with 6000 cc engines) and head off east into the mountains.

The first stop is at a village at around 1400 meters (4500 feet). The air is cool and the jungle is thick. Ban Mae Kom Pong is a town (Ban means village) that about 20 years ago decided that rather than cut down all of the trees in the surrounding hills, they'd keep the forrest intact, practice sustainable farming, and invite tourist to come and stay in their homes to live the rural life. The jungle around here is breathtaking. They just recently they added a canopy zipline tour around the area which has partnered with Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures. I work for CMRCA so this gives me a bit of a connection in this area. Especially since on was on the doomed expedition to find the grand hunting cave (see previous post). We pull into town in the afternoon, look at some trees and boulders, go play in the waterfall and then find a place to stay for the night.

We decided to settle into John's House for the night. Tourism business models in Thailand are quite different than they might be in the states. There are "resorts" everywhere in Thailand. Some are nice, some are quite nice, and others are astonishing. The nice and quite nice category seem to be more dreams than actual working resorts. Generally there is a rich person from Bangkok who has always had a dream to own a resort somewhere up in the mountains. Labor is super cheap in Thailand, so he builds a resort with 5-10 bungalows and landscapes the grounds and then is satisfied that his dream has come true. The point is, he doesn't actually need to have people come to his resort to make it work. It was just a dream anyway and for 10 dollars a day, he can have a staff of 3 maintain the grounds and be on hand just in case someone happens to stop by to stay the night.

[our bungalow] There are a few weekends of the year when resorts do get crowded (New years, thai new years, a weekend in November) but otherwise they sit empty.
To get this right, I have to say that these resorts are intended for Thai tourists. Foreigner tourists have their own circuit (generally dictated by the guidebooks) and these are busy all year. The homestays in Ban Mae Kompong have traffic all year, but John's Place is not. I think we were the first guests in 2 weeks.
We chose our favorite themed bungalow which is built high up on the hill and has giant picture windows that looks out over the valley. No sooner had we plopped our stuff down when lightning started striking and the rain started coming out of the sky in sheets. Little did we know, but this was the start of what we were to experience of Cyclone Nargis. Tragically, as we were opening our first beer and playing backgammon, Nargis was touching down in Burma (about 400 miles away).

Saturday morning started with rain and more rain. As we ate rice soup we wondered if the rain would stop. I had planned to head over the 1800 meter pass, through 50km of windy and steep jungle road, out into the plains and up a few hundred km towards Chiang Rai. We did it, but it rained a lot. Dressed head to toe in my Gore-tex Proshell, I have to say that I stayed happy and comfortable the entire way. The gear I was wearing isn't designed for going 60-80 km/hr for long stretches and a little water blew up underneath my jacket, but for the most part, I actually forgot it was raining and just enjoyed riding perfectly paved roads without any traffic at all and splashing through stream crossings when we came to them.

[megan on the road] We had a few navigational issues and had to ask for help on occasion, but mostly we just cruised all day on some great roads. Some were windy, some were straight. Sometimes it rained, sometimes it was cloudy. Sometimes we got hungry, so we stopped to eat snacks. Sometimes there was a temple dedication ceremony with marching elephants, sometimes we would just stop and look at the scenery and smile.
At some point in the afternoon, we made a quick left turn and followed signs to the Chiang Rai winery. A winery in thailand? We had to check it out. After tasting 4 different sweet fruit wines (and realizing that they don't use grapes for their wine) I asked the guy if he knew a place to stay around here. He pointed to a traditional teak house on stilts in the middle of the fruit orchard and said that we could stay there. Why not? So we moved in for the night, bought a bottle of mangosteen wine, cruised down the road for some dinner and pie at another local resort, then came back for a very quiet night all alone in the middle of a fruit orchard.

One thing about this place. We were sleeping upstairs and the bathroom is outside and downstairs. This is no big deal, except when we were brushing our teeth, we heard "doonk" sound and looked up to find a Tookay staring at us. A Tookay is a large (about a foot in length) gecko that makes a very distinctive "Toooo-kaaaaay" bark. They are famous for having strong jaws that once they find something to clasp onto, they never let go. They are green with red dots all over the body and have the coolest looking feet of any animal. And I'm scared of them... and Megan is too. Needless to say, we peed on the field that night.

[marshall on the road- we only got the camera out when it wasn't wet] Sunday morning and we were off again over a mountain pass in Seattle style constant rain. It never rained too hard, but it was foggy and always wet. We descended after a couple of hours of riding another perfect road with no traffic) into the working town of Fang. Nestled in the mountains in the far north region of Thailand, Fang seldom sees foreigners.
We saw a sign for some Hot Springs, followed the road, convinced the guy at the gate to let us in for Thai prices (I was pretty proud of myself for negotiating the entire thing in Thai) and found ourselves at a perfectly manicured field of granite boulders with geysers sprouting 100 feet into the air and hot pools for the basking. Very lovely. After our massages (where i was patted down with yellow herbs making me look jaundiced), we head out for what I hoped would be the highlight of the trip. Check out this animation from google earth of the roads. The animation starts at the hot spring, goes through Fang, south a bit, and then up into the mountains to Doi Angkan. It then follows the road that we took the next day down to the Burmese border. If you have google earth on your computer, you can go to this link (Link to the google earth file) and get the .kmz file. In google earth, you can push the play button and watch it on your computer. [a screen shot showing what to adjust and where to push play on google earth] I recommend going into the preferences panel of google earth and setting the "driving speed" to fast. You can also stop the Google earth animation anywhere and look around. I warn you, I spent about 5 hours the other day "looking around."

[The Amari Resort from above] Doi Angkan is another one of the areas that must be busy over New Years but then sits completely empty the rest of the year. We pull into "town" look at some of the rustic accommodations and decide that because there is a 5 star Amari resort in town we should at least check it out. The woman at the resort must have taken a liking to us cause the price went down from 150 dollars a night, to 60 dollars and she put us in the best room they had. I suppose it wasn't a huge stretch for her since again we were the only guests that night, but it was nice of her.

[Megan in the Rock garden with green houses below] Doi Angkan is a model agriculture project. The King has what are called "Royal Projects" all over thailand. This is an initiative to convert all the opium fields in thailand to organic farming fields. Doi Angkan is the model project. The King has a house up there that he visits on occasion and therefore unlimited money gets pumped into this area. It is gorgeously maintained. We spent hours walking through the Bonsai/ Limestone Rock garden.
[you can't see the cat, but look how happy she is] We ate at the Royal Project restaurant and had incredible organic veggies. For Megan the cherry on top was that there was a cat at the restaurant that sat on her lap for the entirety of the meal. Here is a photo of Megan being about as happy as she can possibly be.

[me overlooking limestone valleys and mountains] Monday morning and we were back on the road. This time on the dramatic ridgetop road through limestone hills and valleys. I could hardly stay on my bike as I looked around for possible caves. The potential up here is incredible. Here is a video of us riding the roads.

We get down out of the mountains and take the road back to Chaing Mai.

[me in limestone] We had travelled 800 km in 4 days of windy roads through rain and jungle. It was fantastic.

If you really are a geek like me and want to see the entire route, you can download this file and do an animation of the entire trip on google earth.
The Complete Tour de Rain

No cave to be found

2008-05-07T01:14:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back Martin, Josh, Taw and I went up to where the Flight of the Gibbon is (the mountains over by Crazy Horse crag) to try to find "The cave that swallows up all the animals every night." We arranged to have a local guide (we ended up with two old thai dudes who are tough as nails) meet us up in the closest village on to take us to the cave. We loaded up our packs with ropes and everything and set off through the jungle to go try to find it. It is 3000 feet higher than chiang mai so the temps are not nearly as hot and then jungle is pristine and incredible.
So off we go up a steep old logging road for a couple of kilometers and then finally turn off it and start to head out through the bush. We quickly drop into a really steep ravine and start plunging down towards the drainage. As we are hiking along we find out that our guides have never actually been to the cave and the only beta that they have is that it is at the base of a white cliff. So we are tromping around looking for what looks like a white cliff. Of course, me being the geologist am looking at my feet and trying to scope the topography looking for limestone. All I can see is granite and nothing out in the distance that looks like limestone. But what do I know, these two old dudes know the area like the back of their hand and if there is cave out here, then they will find it. We finally get down to the creek in the bottom, scratch out heads a bit then head upstream for 5 minutes through dense jungle bananas and thick bamboo. Nope, wrong way (and still no limestone anywhere). We turn around and head downstream. Josh is behind me and I hear him yelp a bit. I ask him if he is o.k. and he says he is fine but that he found a leach on his shoe. No big deal, he brushes it off. After a bit, we come to an incoming drainage that head steeply up a ravine and towards "the white cliff" Ok. up we go.

Still no cave and I was starting to become pretty damn sure that there is no limestone at all in this ravine. It would just be impossible to have any based on the landscape and what I know of how limestone is deposited. Still we press on. Finally we leave the leach infested (josh pulled two off his leg) gully and head up the slope to find a cliff. At this point now, I think we had all decided that we were not going to find a cave today but the guides still wanted to go look around the corner. I was game because it was quite pretty and there is always a chance we could find a cave. After more climbing and discussion the guides mentioned that what we were looking for is a rock cave. I don't know how that translates exactly but I'm think that we are now looking for a talus cave. Could still be cool, but certainly not going to be the grand new cave discovery of thailand.
Well after more scrambling and traversing we start to break out of the brush into orchid filled open forests with a gentle breeze and plenty a shade trees. Taw said "yen sabai" cause it felt so nice to have cool air blowing on us. A first in weeks.
So after a while we summited the peak which turn out to be the tallest peak for at least 100km in every direction (we looked at a map later). Despite the haze it was quite lovely and we had a good snack when this big full round leach falls out of Josh's pants.
Where did that come from? We all looked at each other and josh started to feel around his legs for more. As he is bending down, we notice a bloody patch on his butt. Sure enough Jetzl (as the leach became known) had found a nice spot in between Josh's cheeks to suck a little blood. Leaches use an anti-coagulate to allow them to draw blood and when they are finished they leave this stuff behind. So the blood patch on Josh grew larger and larger. It looked a bit strange.

So no cave. We descended back to the truck (there was a nice semi-direct ridge to the truck).

We get back to the village and talk to the flight of gibbons people a bit more. They offer to send us on the canopy zipline your for free so off we go to go zip around super tall trees.
As we were zipping around, we talked with our zipping guides a bit about what we had done and they told us more about this cave.
It turns out that one of the guys had talked to the guy who had found the cave and that it was a hole in the ground that when this dude came to it, a dear ran out of it. He looked around a bit more and found bear and tiger tracks (i doubt the tiger part) and he went back to the village and told people he found a great hunting spot because all the animals go to this place. People were excited about our trip today because we were going to go in the cave and find out why the animals were going into the cave and if indeed it was a great hunting spot.
What I think is that there is little hole where some rocks make a small talus cave and that for some reason animals go there to get water or to get out of the heat. So we were following a legend that is really just a hunting story. Oh well. Seems like we should have asked around a little first, but still it was a great hike through an area that is truly wild.

Josh Miller's Blog on China

2008-03-29T23:48:00.000-07:00

Josh also wrote a little and posted a bunch of photos

Blog

Photos Click on the link on the left that says "Mar 2008 China"

Looking for answers in China

2008-03-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

I left for china a few days after all the business in Tibet was taking place. My friend Jeff, who is doing the website for Students for a Free Tibet and who was the media guy for a direct action in Tibet last spring, asked me to find out what the people in China were thinking about the current uprising. Now, I didn't know much about China (I still don't) but my assumption was that I wouldn't be able to hear or see anything about Tibet while I was there. I had always heard that China censors the internet heavily and that the big propaganda machine keeps any outside information at bay. However, I was quite surprised when we were able to pull up Jeff's site in China.
Going to Yangshuo and saying I've been to China, is a bit like watching Transformers and saying that I know something about artsy independent films. Yangshuo is the most popular tourist spot in all of China. One upside is that it is frequented by Chinese tourists 50 to 1 over foreigners. However, there is still something about a touristy place that makes it touristy (think Sun Valley- is this a slice of America?).
Yangshuo is near Guillin which is in the South Eastern part of China. It is famous the world over for all the limestone towers that litter the area. I heard that there are 50 000 of them. I wasn't able to justify this answer personally, but after having looked out into the expanse, I can certainly believe it. It is really quite an amazing place. It sort of reminded me of Southern Utah except with limestone instead of sandstone, lushness instead of desert, and agriculture instead of wilderness. O.k. so it wasn't really like Utah at all, but something about the unlimitedness of it all and my desire to look behind that tower to see what was beyond, made me think of my trips to the desert.
Picture towers as far as you can see. The qwack of duck farms interspersed with the sounds of chinese farmers egging their water buffalos on in order to plow the rice fields terraced throughout. Rivers crisscross between and around (and through) the towers with stone houses spotting the landscape. Old woman on bicycles dodge busses with horns blazing (Chinese drivers use their horns a lot- I mean a lot). Meat dogs run wild with climbers trying to pet them. A great scene really.
One day we are walking out to a crag named The Egg. On this day, we were doing an exchange of new routes with a Hong Kong climber, Paul Collis, who has done a lot of the new routing at Yangshuo as well as having wrote the guidebook. He was in Chiang Mai a few weeks previous and had managed to get the first ascent on a route that i had drilled. He felt a bit guilty about this, so he offered up a first ascent to a route he had just finished drilling at The Egg. As we walked out there we passed a farmer and his Water Buffalo. One of the guys we were with (known as Shanghai Bob) speaks fluent Mandarin (Chinese) and muttered something to the farmer. The farmer replied with a big smile and muttered the same thing back. In Thailand, when you see someone randomly, the accepted greeting is "Gin kao ru yang" which means "Have you eaten (literally eaten rice) yet?" I figured this must be somewhat the same greeting, so I asked Bob what it was he was saying. He told me that he commented that the farmer was working hard and that the farmer replied, smiling, that he was indeed working hard. I asked Bob what this was about and he says it stems from the communist days when hard work was stressed as the most important trait a person can have. In thailand, eating is the most important aspect of life (as the shoddy workmanship can often show) and in China working hard is everything.

Climbing can be hard work. Especially when it rains a lot, and rain it did. Out of the 11 days in China, we had about 8 of rain. One might think this would stop a climbing trip in its tracks, but one would be wrong. Yangshuo has lots of overhung climbing. Unfortunately, due to my ongoing shoulder injury, I wasn't in the best of shape for this trip, but we managed to get our butts on some really fun climbs. I think my favorite area is the sweeping White Mountain cliff. This cliff is massive with routes ranging from 5.10a to 5.14. On one of the days we were there, some of the best female climbers in the world were climbing there Lisa Rands and Emily Harrington. Cedar Wright of Yosemite fame was also on hand. They were all being photographed by Tim Kemple. We also had the pleasure of climbing with a great guy buy the name of Nick Martino. Funny story here. Tim was all rigged up and ready to photograph Cedar on a 8a+ (13c) when yours truly decided it might be fun to climb a 7b (12b) climb right next to Cedar's line, meaning that he couldn't climb it without also getting a lot of photos of myself climbing my wicked project. Ooops. Not that they own the crag or anything but I realized that I had snaked in front of Cedar as I approached the 3rd or 4th bolt. All of the sudden I was very aware that everyone was waiting for me so I kindly asked for some beta to speed my ascent and got the full beta blow down from Cedar and Tim and everyone else. I fell a few times and then came down feeling a little sheepish for making everyone wait. I just didn't really think outside of my bubble very well when I jumped on it. Although, it was kind of fun to get beta from a photographer hanging a few feet above my head as I pulled through the crux.
So climbing was fun. We met some great climbers, hung out with the Hong Kong crew (see my post on Hong Kong), and ate some amazing noodles. On one rest day, Josh and I managed to work our way out into the countryside where we went into my favorite of all favorites, a cave. But this wasn't just any cave, this was a deliciously decorated cave lit up by colored lights and all. After having poked my way through some really dark caves, a colorfully lit friendly cave was pretty nice. Some of the features were absolutely incredible. I kept thinking how excited I would be if I had been caving with my friends and found something like this. Oh well, the hordes of tourists and signs saying "Don't Beat" will have to do.

As you can see, I had a good time indulging in outdoor pursuits while in China, but I still was not able to answer Jeff's question of what Chinese people think of the Tibetan uprising. Hmmmm. Maybe a trip to the local market will get me intermingling with the locals. The trip started out well enough. After purchasing some "Hong Kong House Wife Buns" we strolled through the vege and fish part of the market. No problem. It kind of reminded me of Thai markets which I am now very used to. Open stalls everywhere. Live eels and fish heads smattered across the floor. Colorful mounds of yellow flowers hawked by ancient ladies using generations old balances as scales. Nothing new.
We finished our buns just about the right time as we then strolled into the meat section. (this next part is a bit graphic) Thai meat markets are a little gory with pig heads next to gory animal parts but Chinese meat markets are a bit of a step up. Rows of freshly killed ducks, cages of live bunnies awaiting the axe, water buffalo heads half torn apart, strings of intestines hung up to dry. Then we came to a stall with jaws scattered about. But what did these jaws belong to? And why were they selling live dogs at the market? Ohhhhhhhhh. My mind connected it all together. Those cages of dogs are not for sale as pets. Then we saw the small cage. We watched as they loaded a cute fluffy dog (who seemed very mellow about what was to happen) into the cage, put the clamps around its neck and bludgeoned it with a mallet. At this point I looked away, but Josh watched as the first strike seemed to only stun the pupster. They lifted the dog out of the cage, gave it few good whacks and then slit its throat. So I guess the dogs wouldn't be able to tell me what they think of tibet, and I didn't get a sense that I could start up a conversation with the market sellers. Actually, language is a fairly large barrier in China. Not that many people (at least where we were) speak much English. We got good at pantomiming our needs.
Time went by, we had some fun adventures (including having our bike tires slashed, riding in the back a tractor truck, dancing the robot with a large crew from a chinese bank, developing a relationship with our noodle lady) but I still never got a feel for China. I guess i wasn't that worried about it.
It became time to leave so we boarded a taxi to take us to the airport. It is about a 100 minute ride to the airport and we ended up sharing it with Shanghai Bob. Bob has lived in China for 25 years. He seems quite well read and has that feel about him of a long term expat. Fluent in the language, comfortable with the customs, and pretty much jaded to anything that can happen. He also happens to read a lot of books about China. What a perfect guy to ask about Tibet.
This is what I learned from him. China's biggest public office is the Office of Propaganda. These guys are masters of controlling the thoughts of the masses. They've been doing it for a long time and in Bob's opinion it is somewhat necessary to do it. There are 1.5 billion people in China. This is a lot of people that need to get along nicely and compete for resources. It is much easier to govern a group this big if you can get them to buy into the "dream." The dream of getting along nicely and working towards a common good. The idea of economic Communism is now gone in China, but the social aspect is still very much alive. So the media is controlled by the government to keep the peace. I asked Bon what would happen if I talked to someone on the street about Tibet and the fact that the Tibetans don't want China in there. He says that the Chinese would disagree with me and that Tibetans do actually want the Chinese to occupy them because of all the benefits they good. That the Tibetans who are protesting are just a fringe group and that China is doing Tibet a favor. It really isn't an issue. If I try to argue with the Chinese person they would just laugh and say I don't know what I am talking about (they are right, I don't really know what I am talking about with Tibet). If a Tibetan were to talk with a chinese person, then there would probably be fist-a-cuffs.
So there we go. I talked to one person who has lived in China and I learned all about how China feels. I do find it interesting about mind control and China. It makes me wonder what kind of mind control I have grown up with under the guise of freedom. It is hard to say from my perspective.
Bob did say one thing that I thought was interesting. "If you visit China for 6 months, you can write a book about China. If you live in China for a year, you can write an essay. If you live in China for 5 years you can't write a single thing." I find that true for myself living in Thailand. The longer I live somewhere, the less I realize that I know about a place. Point in case, I was in China for 11 days and I wrote this incredibly long blog. Thanks for reading it.

stuff I've been up to

2007-12-15T19:35:00.000-08:00

Besides riding a mechanical bull at a food fair (pictures to come later), I went out and ran a 10km run the other morning.

[pre-dawn start] It is hot here so runs start pre-dawn. Which makes it kind of cool because you get going and the sun is rising and then the endorphins start kicking in and life is pretty good.

[Kat finishing] Josh had called me the day before asking if I wanted to run a 10k the he just found out about. My thought process went like this: That sounds like fun, I haven't run at all in at least a month, last time I ran, I had to stop because my shoulder was hurting me, when am I get to do this again, o.k. I'm in.

[Standing around with our medals]

[After the race, they serve Rice Soup, which has never tasted so good] So we ran it. I actually got a pretty fast time for me, but then I couldn't really walk for two days. Very exhausting.

Forrest Visits Thailand

2007-12-12T03:25:00.000-08:00

Forrest came and visited for two weeks. And for two weeks we did something somewhat intense everyday.

We did some touristy things like going to temples. In this picture, Forrest is releasing birds for good luck. I snapped the image seconds too late, but you can the debris.

Here are some monks.

And then we went to Cave Lodge for two days. Cave lodge is one of my absolute favorite places to visit in Thailand. It isn't actually in a cave, but it is very tastefully done and is in the area of Thailand that is completely littered with caves. It is owned by an Australian, John, who moved out to Thailand something like 20 years ago and decided that caving was his thing. He is the ultimate resource for caves. In fact, he has done so much caving, that he is known to just hand over virgin caves. On my first visit up here last spring he told us where to go and within minutes were pushing open leads with blind fish and all.

[Drinking coffe on the ride up to Cave Lodge- we didn't bring a camera into the caves so this will have to do]
On the first day up there, we ducked into Christmas cave which is short, but very intense. A lot of scrambling, then a complete duck under. What this means is that there is a pool of water. A curtain of limestone comes down and dips into the water meaning that if you want to go further, you have to hold your breath, go under the curtain and find air on the other side. No so bad... in theory. But in practice it is quite scary. Especially when the other side only enough room to put you lips above water. Then you have to go like this for another 2 meters or so. Beyond that is a big rappel, some serious threshing, a 100 meter tummy crawl down an oval tube (aesthetically pleasing), another scary scramble down, and then a pool with blind fish. You can go on further from here, but it is a long long long duck under into what might be a room with bad air (high CO2 content). So we stopped there. We came out and into the night with a full moon which was pretty cool.
After feeding ourselves, it was time to go into the small town of Sappong for Loi Kratong festivities.
Loi Kratong is a buddhist/ animist holiday. Kind of a big deal around these parts. The tradition is to create a little raft with the trunk of a banana tree, decorate it with flowers and a candle and then float it down the river, along with all your bad feelings and worries. People still do that, but fireworks have taken over as the weapon of choice on this holiday.
[trying to win a beer] Sappong is a crossroads of sorts for all the different hill tribes in the area (and there are a lot). Think of it as a trading post. So you can imagine that on a big holiday like Loi Kratong, everyone from all over comes into town to drink and be merry. But what happened by the time we arrived, was that all the beer had been sold. The only beer left was attainable only by throwing darts at balloons and hitting 8 out of 8. At 20 baht (65 cents) a try, we tried and tried, but could never quite win a beer. As we were playing this game, we noticed a loud noise and a giant plume of fire spewing up behind us.

I'm not exactly sure how the fireworks are made, but I think it has something to do with buried bamboo and about 900 000 things that make sparks. The kept lighting them off in front of the temple one after another. Here is a video of the sparks. The video ends by looking up at a bunch of fire balloons that are quite lovely, especially when there 1000's of them in the sky. Never mind that they are made of plastic and that what goes up must come down, but this is thailand.

The next day we went into a forbidden cave that had 3 km of passage, is a through trip and has a high passage section with some of the most incredible features that I have ever seen or will ever see. There is a blue stalagtite (colored by copper) of which there are only 3 or 4 in the world so far. Amazing.

Ok... enough of the pansy stuff. After cave lodge, it was time to dust off our underwear and get the testosterone out. So we picked Hal up at the airport (he flew up from Singapore for 4 days), drove to the motorcycle rental place and rented real motorcycles. We ended up with Honda XR 250s.

[figuring out where we are- thai maps are sometimes not so good] I will save you the details, but after two days of riding around northern thailand, we were all pretty much hooked on motorcross (sorry to anyone I ever told that motocross is not so cool). We also thought that we were pretty bad ass cause we rode without any major accidents and we aced the long dirt rode section coming back. Big Kudos to Forrest and Hal who had pretty much never ridden a motorcycle before, let alone never driven in Thailand on the left side of the road with road rules that equal the physics rules set out for rivers. Talk about a steep learning curve.

So we came home safely from this trip and were immediately planning another, more technical, motocross adventure. Forrest reserved big bikes again and on Sunday morning off we went (this time with Megan) to drive around to the back side of Doi Suthep (the mountain the looks over Chiang Mai) and then back over the top on what looked like small dirt road. No big deal because we were experts, right? Off we go, right some dirt roads, right some slightly more techincal (read bad condition) dirt roads, eat some lunch, then head for the main objective, up and over. The only beta we had was that it was going to take a while to get over the top cause it was full on, but that advice was given to us by a friend who rode the trail during rainy season, and besides, we knew what we were doing.
[Forrest riding a bank] Riding along, the road starts to get worse, but it is fun. We are heading up a steep section and Megan falls off her bike. We were going quite slow at this part so she is fine but she breaks the brake lever slightly. Forrest and I laugh and feel all superior because we didn't fall down.
Minutes go by and then we decide to make a quick stop to check in on each other. Unfortunately, I was on slippery mud with no way to control my bike and it goes down. I jump free, but my clutch lever snaps off. Hmmmmm. I pick up the bike, play around with it a little and realize that I can still use the clutch, but it is tricky. O.k... I only really need the clutch when starting from a stop and I can sort of get it to work so I think I can go on.
We push on and the road turns into single track. Fun. Then it starts getting really rutted. Less fun. Then I find myself driving on a pedestal with two ruts on either side of me meaning that if I screw up, I'm going down far and hard. Hmmmm. We pull through this section into a wide part and park the bikes. We need to assess.
It is getting on in the day, we don't really know how much gas we have, Megan and I have both fallen down, my clutch hardly works (it is becoming apparent that a clutch is quite useful on technical terrain), and the trail ahead just gets worse... way worse. Forrest wants to push on, I feel the need to go back and Megan is up for anything. We make the decision to turn around. Back on the bikes, start up the engines, and Forrest's bike won't start.
[Forrest excited about his broken bike- notice the clutch cable sticking out]His starter engine just won't do anything. O.k... use the kick start. No kickstart. O.k. compression start. We think it through and decide that on a dirt road we will need two people on the bike to get enough weight over the rear wheel to compression start the bike. I climb on the back and down we go on the raised pedestal that I just referenced. We need to get speed so I just close my eyes and hope Forrest knows what he is doing. He does and his bike starts up.
No we are cruising on increasingly better roads feeling a bit defeated but also feeling like we made the right choice. Megan and I suddenly realize that Forrest is no longer behind us. We turn around and go back to find Forrest standing over his bike scratching his head.
He had gone down and jumped free of the bike, but had completely ripped his clutch lever off the cable. [Compression starting the bike the second time- I am jumping off the footpegs in the photo] He had absolutely no clutch and no starter engine. O.k. we can compression start his bike but once he gets his bike moving he won't be able to stop meaning I can't get on the back to add extra weight unless I stand on the foot pegs. We do it, it works and send Forrest off. Now we have to catch up with him to hold traffic when he comes to intersections cause he really can't stop. In my efforts to drive fast on rocky rough roads (and pass a little Honda loaded with three people), I end up going down one last time. This time kind of hard. No damage to the bike, but my knees hurt like hell and what is that sizzling sound? Oh yeah, that is my calf on the exhaust. It doesn't hurt right then, but about 10 minutes down the road, boy howdy.
[Healing our wounds]
After a few more epics and some heroic driving by Forrest, we make it back to Chiang Mai, through Chiang Mai traffic, and get the bikes back to their homes. We pay our fines for breaking parts (mine cost 2 dollars to fix) and decide that we know very little about motocross. We are humbled which is a good thing.
So... what better way to nurse our egos than by buying a large bottle of whiskey, checking into Bully Sing-a-long (private themed room Karoke) and singing our hearts out for 2 hours. Good times.

We did some more caving, climbed Anxiety State Crisis (one of the wackiest sport routes in the world) and continued to go non-stop until Forrest's departure. I was sad to see him go, but my body needed a rest from going hard pretty much everyday for 2 weeks.

[A Burmese python on the trail- Jeff isn't so brave as it looks, this guys was dead, but it still gave us a huge startle when we saw it on the trail].

Part 3: The Bangkok and its cars

2007-11-19T17:15:00.000-08:00

Note: This is the third part of three. Scroll down and start reading at part 1 then make your way back up the page. Also, you will notice photos in this post which have nothing to do with it. They are from the Bangkok trip, I promise... just not that relevant to the post.

Sometimes to make myself feel really far away from the states, I turn on Seattle's KUOW and listen to NPR. Interspersed through the Broadcast are traffic reports. It is fun in the morning to listen to afternoon traffic in Seattle. "You are stop and go on the bridges and will find yourself in a real mess on the ship canal bridge." I sit back, remember the days when traffic seemed important to me, think of Chiang Mai traffic, and then feel like I'm living someplace far away from what is familiar. Not that Chiang Mai doesn't have traffic, but when you commute around on a little 125cc scooter, traffic doesn't seem to matter too much. Most the drivers here leave a space between the curb and themselves which creates an unofficial but still relied on extra lane that all motorcycle drivers use to zip up through the traffic. In fact one of the hardest things to get used to when I was back in states this summer was not being able to zig zag through traffic even when I was on Megan's motorcycle. The ethic just isn't there in the states, but here... anything goes.

[Me and a hand made metal alms bowl maker] After leaving Hong Kong, I had three days planned in Bangkok. We met up with Megan at the Suvurnambuhmi (pronounced Suvrumbum) airport in Bangkok and then attempted to hop in taxis to take us to our hotel in the heart of town. Or at least in the heart of the part of town where we needed to be. The four of us couldn't all fit into one taxi, at least without a major argument from the taxi liason that one must use in order to get a taxi at the airport. Josh and Kat got into one. Megan and I into another and off we went down the express way paying tolls as we pass them but at least cruising.
Then we got off the tollway.
A dead stop.
[The yellow flag is The King's flag, the other flag is the Thai flag, and I'm hiding in the shade looking at Bangkok below] In America, most traffic lights are timed and automated, and for the most part we wait around for 3-5 minutes at the very most for the light to change and then get some movement. In Thailand, computers are expensive and police are cheap. Every intersection has a cop sitting in a little booth who manually switches the lights whenever he sees fit. This could work quite well if there was any coordination between intersections, but as far as I can tell. There is not. So what happens are major, and I mean 1-2 km long lines behind lights as the cop lets one (usually of four) direction of traffic go at a time and tries to wait for it to clear out.
[Cool mother of pearl door] I have literally sat at the front of a line waiting for the light to change for 15 minutes. Now imagine being at the back of that line. Now imagine you are in Bangkok (in Chiang Mai we don't have that many lights) and you have to go through 10 of these intersections.

Welcome to Bangkok. After one hour of sitting in a taxi (at least it was air conditioned) and moving about 10 blocks, Megan and I decided it might be better if we just walked to the hotel. However, the taxi driver wouldn't let us out of the taxi without paying a 150 baht (about 30% of the fair) fine because he knew that he was going to have to sit in this traffic for another 1-2 hours, because for some reason, it is impossible to turn off the street he was on (which is true- don't know why you can't but once you are on some of the roads, there is no way off for a long while- this could explain another source of the traffic) We payed our fine, got out, and dodged mayhem on the road (a familiar Thailand kind of mayhem with beggars, food stalls, t-shirt shops, stray dogs, hookers, and random building built into the sidewalk). But this was better than the traffic as it hadn't moved an inch for the whole time we walked beside it. As far as I know, that poor taxi driver is still on that street trying to get off.

Welcome again to Bangkok.

[Bangkok, the ultimate test for the ultimate man] Bangkok is a great town with lots going on and plenty to see and do. But here is my overwhelming impression of Bangkok (as a visitor who was staying downtown): Getting around in Bangkok sucks. It is almost completely crippling. Walking around is no good because there are no emissions controls and half the cars are detuned to allow huge amount of unburnt fuel (experienced as huge plumes of smoke coming out of tailpipes) and feature no mufflers. Riding in taxis is no good for the reasons stated above. Tuk-tuks are all dishonest and have completely killed their own market by never taking you where you want to go. There is a sky-train and a subway line, but these only go to a few places and you have to take a taxi from the stops anyway. There are motorcycle taxis which have the ability to weave through traffic at high speed, but they have the ability to weave through traffic at high speed which isn't the safest way to go. Besides, they end up driving down the sidewalk half the time and I don't want to give money to support that. So there you have it.
As a local, I'm sure you learn to plan and deal with the traffic, but as a visitor, I'm not quite sure I enjoyed it too much.

That said, Megan and I did some cool stuff. We went to an insanely huge market that features jeans, bags, puppies, fish, shirts. fighting cocks, and lots of food. This market is about 1km square and goes on and on and on. [A long reclining buddha] We went to a nice giant reclining buddha and adjoining temple. We payed 18 dollars (a godly sum in thailand) to go see a movie, but here is what you get: A private pre-movie lounge with a bartender who thinks a martini is 1/2 vodka and 1/2 vermouth (the lounge was nice though), a movie theater with only 50 seats all of which are electric reclining leather lazy boy style recliners, and attendant who unfolds your blanket and fluffs your pillow, and an amazing screen and sound system. This is high life movie watching. [Cats and a statue, the start of Megan's critter pics] We went to the Bed Super Club and drank amongst Thai celebrities. Climbed at enormous outdoor climbing wall that wobbled when you were at the top and where they just switched all the lights when it was time to go. We ate some good food. And we hung with good company.

I can't say I love Bangkok, I can't say I hate it. But I will say that I am not dying to get back there anytime soon.

When I finally came home to Chiang Mai after all my travels to Macau, Hong Kong, and Bangkok all of which have extremely different feels, it felt good to be back in a city that is just the right size, with just the right amount of craziness, and extremely friendly people.
Chiang Mai feels like home and that feels good. I have to admit that it is going to be very difficult to find a place to live that I could like more than here. I sort of hope that I do tire of this place by June because that is when we are leaving, but I'll worry about that when I need to. Like in June. For now, I will continue to live my life day by day and enjoy the present. Life is good and I really have nothing to worry about... except trying to heal my shoulder.

[Dog clothes for sale at the market. Now that it is cold season- meaning it gets down to 60 at night- all the dogs wear clothes]

[Critters at the market]

[Megan's favorite puppy at the market]

Part 2: Hong Kong from awe to professional

2007-11-19T03:20:00.000-08:00

How do you describe the shock that a country bumpkin like me gets when arriving in city like Hong Kong. Let me describe my six days of amazement in Hong Kong.

Day 1: Friday Night. We take a boat over which drops you off in a big mall. It is night time. There are lots of white people everywhere and there are lots of Hong Kong people everywhere. There are lots of people. We are met by Josh's friend, Kevin, who when sized up for a first impression, sports a stylish bleached out spiky hair cut, dresses formally cause he just got off his finance job, is obviously not at all fazed by the ultra cosmopolitan whiz around him, but still sports a bit of an air of climberness in the way he hold himself relaxed and quite open. We follow him around the mall, end up at a long taxi line and eventually jump into the one of what must be 100,000 taxis driving around Hong Kong. Up the hill we go, zig zagging up concrete canyons, my nose stuck to the window as 30 story building is followed by 50 story building is followed by 43 story building and so one for a good while. We step out into the cool night in front of yet another tall building which looks unimpressive from the outside. Up the elevator to the 10th floor, through a door and into an ultramodern swank bachelor pad with white couches, oriental rugs, nice artwork, and a very chic kitchen.

[Kat on the boat to Tung Lung] Day 2: Time to go climbing. I didn't know it too much before, but Hong Kong isn't just a big city. It is a very narrow (and tall) big city with "mountains" (read hills) surrounding it. Hong Kong is actually a series of islands with the majority of the city built up on small sections of two of them. The cool thing is, the city stops abruptly and then it is wonderful wooded hills. And it has climbing. Lots of it. This link is built by a Hong Kong climber Stuart. We managed to hook up with him and climb two days while we visited. Very friendly and has created a great community in Hong Kong.
[Hiking to the crag] On this day, the plan was to go to Tung Lung Island and climb at the Technical Wall. Hong Kong has this wonderful mix of organized cosmopolitan city with rustic Asian chaos. We took the escalator down the hill (more on this later) hopped a taxi in front of starbucks, went on the modern freeway along the water, and then jumped on a little chinese ferry/ fishing boat for a 30 minute ride out to the island. A very nice ride with views of the modern skyline and sleepy islands. Off the boat, hike a path for 15 minutes, stop at a ramshackle hut for dumplings and lemon tea, then hike another 10 minutes back down to the water to Hong Kong's premier sport climbing and social scene. [At the crag] The cool thing is, this crag is right on the sea cliffs with waves smashing up against the cliffs. Every minute or so there is a massive explosion of water no further than 2 meters behind you. Very exciting. We climbed on very compact Volcanic Tuff for the better part of the day. Fun routes for sure although my shoulder was bugging me from some yoga I had done a week earlier and this kept me from climbing as hard as I would have liked. Oh well.
Hiked out, took the boat back home. Went out to some chinese food. Yummy.

Day 3: Off to Tsuen Wan boulders. Another surreal place with boulders hovering over the suburbs of Hong Kong. Only suburb here means 30 story buildings back to back. Sharp rock, but cool problems although I couldn't climb too much cause my shoulder was really hurting me. Everyone else cranked though. However, the setting was just so very nice that it felt great to be out with friends doing cool stuff. In this photo, you see Me, Kat, Kevin (blond hair), Stuart, and Indie the dog.
O.k. I like dogs. In fact, being with Megan has given me a love of all things animals and for the most part, I get along splendidly with almost all critters. Indie is the exception. Call it wisdom, or call it humor, but Indie doesn't get along with Americans. Brits- no problem. Hong Kong folks- no problem. Americans- now we have a problem. I spent a better part of two days trying to get this dog to like me. His tail would be up and wagging as he stood around the crag letting people pet him and give him snuggles, but when I come within a foot of him, the tail drops, the ears flatten, and jowls lift up. I back up, the tail goes back up. He would let me pet him, but he sure didn't like it. I tried offering him food, give him gentle pets, petting him when his owner Stuart was close by but nothing worked. Same thing with Josh and same thing with another American in the posse. He broke my heart.

[Fish in a bucket]
Day 4: Tourist Day. I was told one thing I had to do while in Hong Kong was hike up The Peak. The Peak is the hill right behind Hong Kong. The city stops and the forest starts and it is all very lovely. The beta I had was to take the escalators up to the top. And then turn right (or was it left) and find your way up.
A brief note about "The Escalators." Hong Kong is very dense. It is on a steep hill. There are a few small roads that wind their way up. However, they don't seem to have much traffic which seems strange since there must be roughly 1-2 million people that live on the central hill. Why is this? Because some genius figured out that Hong Kong could install a whole series of escalators that go down the hill in the morning and up the hill the rest of the time. Want to go up a few flights? No problem. Want to take the whole thing? No problem. Elevated walkways over most of the street mean that there is no backup waiting to get across roads. What a great way to move people around. Just picture yourself grabbing your coffee and Hom Bow in the morning, hopping on the escalator and riding it down to work in the morning. This is the greatest thing ever.

So... after some struggle, Josh, Kat and I made our way up the peak to the Peak tower. There is a shopping mall near the summit. A few escalator rides up to top of the mall and there is a look out which one must pay an addition 3 dollars to go see. I was feeling cheap and wanted to spend the money on coffee instead so I didn't go, but Josh and Kat went up. I waited downstairs for a while. Waited a little longer. Sat around for a while. Watched the water fountain and then finally saw the two of them coming out of the mall looking pretty cute together. I asked them how it was and they looked a little awkward. Finally Kat tells me that while they were up there, Josh asked her to marry him and that now she doesn't feel like Kat anymore but like she is living in a dream. It felt great to be around them. The energy was quite exciting. [Minutes after the big moment]
The rest of the day was spent checking out touristy things, eating noodles and going to Mong Kok, the Chinese part of town for dinner and climbing anchor hardware. Below are a bunch of photos of the area.

[Did he choose the right career?]

[Look closely at the text- this whole district was a "paradise"]

[crab fried in garlic and chilis... and beer]

[I liked the glove on the post. I was trying to take this photo and the guy who owns the shop also thought that it was funny that there was a glove on the post. He came over, moved it around a bit and started yelling at everyone and laughing]

[Of course, we had to have champagne that night]

Day 5: Wake up. Pack up the backpacks with climbing gear. Take the escalators down to the financial center. Dodge people in suits. Get on the subway. Ride it under the water through the city and get off, where else, a shopping mall. Funny story here. Josh and I really wanted coffee when we got off the subway and looked all around for a coffee stand. After searching and searching, we realized that only place to get a cup was at the McCafe. This is what is it called and you know what, the coffee was pretty good.
We jumped in a taxi which took us to the base of Lion Peak. After a very sweaty 45 minute walk up Lion Peak, we arrived at Lion Rock. A very nice 60-80 meter high chunk of granite on top of Lion Peak. Great climbing with an amazing view of Hong Kong.
We finish climbing reverse the commute back into town, again dodging people in suits and arrive at Kevin's in time for some yummy chinese food at this little dumpling place.

Day 6: Another tourist day. This time alone. I listened to my Jimmy Jim (code word for ipod shuffle) and walked all over the place. I think the greatest thing was seeing the candy mall (there are malls for everything- radio controlled cars, guns, shoes, cooking supplies)... no wait. [Plastic bowls with fresh fish. One of these kept jumping out of his bowl. I tried hard to capture it but missed the shot before he was cut in half by a large knife] The greatest thing was going into the wrong bathroom at the huge public park. It was the man's room all right, but it also had a secondary mission as the bathroom to "tap your feet in" when you are in the stall. I was checked out like a library book while visiting this local haunt.

And then on the 7th day, we left Hong Kong. We took the boat back to Macau which now felt very sleepy. Took a taxi to the airport. Had 3 mimes help us with our luggage (Macau just has too much money- they hire mimes to help you at the airport). And jumped a plane for good old Bangkok.

Good bye civilization, hello bedlam.

Part 1: Where is Macau Anyway and Why Was I There

2007-11-17T01:14:00.000-08:00

A trip seemed in order. Having been in Thailand for about a month with almost no job and not whole lot of direction, I needed to do something to kick start my life again. Megan had a break in late October and she was planning on going to Cambodia but for whatever reason, I just wasn't that interested in going to Cambodia right now.
Then I heard about the right trip. A friend of mine, Muad, has been training for the last 5 months to compete in difficulty climbing at the Asian Indoor Games in Macau. Macau you say? Now here is a city that I have heard of... I think... but seems like a place I might want to go. [Inside the Ventian Casino] So what is Macau? My first guess was that it is somewhere in SE Asia, but up to about 3 weeks ago, that is about as much as I could have told you. Well, since you are obviously curious now I will tell you that it is a 1 hour boat ride away from Hong Kong and is an island just off the coast of Southern China. It was colonized by the Portuguese way back when (in fact I think it was the first place to be colonized in Asia) and still holds a lot of European charm mixed with a touch of Chinese chaos. It would still be a nice lazy fishing city with a little commerce if it weren't for the fact that in 1980 it was opened up to gambling. Now it is a quaint Euro/Asia city with a major dosage of Las Vegas thrown right in the middle. It actually earns more gambling revenue than any other gambling city in the entire world, Las Vegas included. Because the international climbing community is small, and because there is a great community developed in Macau/ Hong Kong, I hooked up with a Macau climber, Christine, who works as a flight attendant for the private jet owned by the Venetian in Macau. Christine told me that the guy who owns The Venetian makes more money in one year from just his one property in Macau than all three of his properties in Vegas combined. And these aren't small properties. I was told by someone in Hong Kong (none of this is verifiable) that the Venetian Macau is the largest building (I'm guessing floor space) in the world. The Sands Casino in Macau payed for itself, it actually payed off the entire building, after it was open for only one year. The who city is nuts and you can damn well believe that it is going to grow like you have never seen in the coming years. There is a lot of money to made by taking poor sucker's money. Anybody want to open a Casino with me?

[Muad and Kat watching the speed climbing competition] Besides walking around town and pretty much digging the mixes of cultures, eating killer chinese noodles, fantastic portuguese clams, and wowing at the absolutely over-the-top architecture of the Casinos, I spent a lot of time at the Macau University for Science and Technology. More specifically at their brand new gym which holds a brand new 18 meter massively overhanging modular climbing wall. Pretty cool structure and one I would have like to climb on except that I couldn't because the Asia Indoor Games had their climbing comp going on. This is kind of like the olympics except that it is just for Asian countries. Competitors came from Iran, Indonesia, Mongolia, Korea, Khazikstan, and Thailand to name a few. It felt cool to sit between the Iranian team and the Malysian team rooting on a climber from Japan. Muad didn't do too well, he fell off low on the first round because his hand slipped of a hold as he was trying to do a hand/ foot match. [Muad on the comp route} He really shouldn't have fallen, but it was just one of those things that happens when you are climbing. You never know when you can just slip off. However it was fun to watch a comp and see the different abilities of these guys trying to onsite some pretty cool routes.

Then it was off to Hong Kong

Proof of climbing in Maple

2007-09-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

[Climbing one of the cruxes of Orgasmo] We did actually climb some great routes in Maple this year. At the end of the three weeks, Ben and I had sent most of the projects that we had set out to send, gotten back into shape and had pretty much the best time we could imagine. Ben even managed to snap some photos of climbing.
For me, I was pretty excited to finally redpoint Orgasmo. This is a 12c that I had worked on last year, but could never manage to fight the incredible pump that builds up towards the end. The climb has 3 distinct cruxes, two of them being hard boulder problems and the third being a steep section of slopers and finger locks right at the anchors. If one were to hang right before entering this section, it would feel pretty easy. But approach it after 80 feet of overhanging 5.12 climbing and I never could seem to find the strength to pull the final moves. I kept falling one move before the anchors, which after a good 20 minutes of strenuous climbing can be incredibly frustrating. I would fall off and then immediately want to be back on so I could figure out what to tweak in my body to make the move possible. Unfortunately, I would have to rest for an hour and then climb up all the way to the end to experience that split second moment when I am about to fall and have to move my butt 3 degrees to the left in order to allow my body to move up and over the roof. Anyway, I finally got it on the end of the trip and boy did it feel good.
[Me on Deliverance] I was able to put down a few other climbs as well which felt satisfying at the end of the trip. The only project I left open was "Deliverance" which is another 12c/d, but this one is much shorter and much more bouldery than orgasmo. I had it all wired and could do it with one short hang, no problem, but by the end of the trip, I had run out of opportunities to get on it while feeling well rested. Oh well. Next year.

[Wendy on Dry Times] We climbed with some great people on this trip. Here is Wendy climbing a 12a/b called dry times. It has been described as the only "real line" at Maple Canyon since it actually follows a crack up the edge of a cave. Guy is a fellow from Texas who spends more than half the year on the road with his dog Mica. I think I wrote about Guy and Mica last year. Megan fell in love with Mica. We ended up camping in the same site as Guy for almost the entire three weeks. The only time he left was to go over to Canyonlands and ride his motorcycle around the 100 mile White Rim Trail. His big plan is to ride the Baja 500 next year. Oh yeah, and he climbs 5.14. [Guy and his dog]

Last Sunday, we took a rest day and ran into the Australian Shepard Dog Show in the city park of Mt. Pleasant. This girl owned these three dogs and was more than happy to explain all about them. She even let me give them a treat. I was kind of afraid to pet them because I didn't want to mess up their coat for the big judgment, but they were cute. Her little brother had a cool tie on. He kept getting into the cage and running around with the dogs.

And then, the last camping night, a Thailand sized beetle wandered into the Van. This thing was two inches long and make a horrible squeaking sound like pieces of broken glass being rubbed together. Yuck. I swear it bit my leg and now I am turning into super beetle.
So now I am back in Seattle for three weeks to do some work. I return to Thailand on September 24th. Funny, it seems so far away.
Marshall

I almost bought a new car

2007-08-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

Ben and I were walking the streets of Ephraim one afternoon... just passing time, when we came upon a striking 1975 Ford Thunderbird parked on the side of the street. 8 mpg, 7.5 liter V8, 220 Horsepower, all luxury. For sale 1000 dollars.

This being Ephraim, the car was unlocked, so we climbed in and felt all the luxury that the Ford motor company could pour into a car at the time. Green plush seats, Wire thin steering wheel, more space than my Thai house, and plenty of room in the back for all the ladies we were sure to pick up.

We popped the hood just to marvel at how an engineer could possibly fill up all the space on the front end of a vehicle and both had to take a step back. Somehow they filled it. I did, however notice a coffee can with hoses coming in and out of it. Upon closer inspection under the hood I noticed many hoses that just seemed to end. Maybe this was Ford's idea of keeping emissions down (put the nasty exhaust out into the engine compartment, not out the tail pipe), but it seemed a bit fishy to me. An engine like this has power to spare, but I need my hoses to go places.

Crying and in fits, we walked away from the deal. We probably couldn't have made it back to Seattle in this thing, and when it comes down to it, the Eurovan is a bit better to sleep in.

Megan is posting lots of photos

2007-08-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

Megan opened up a photo posting account on Smugmug. It makes me miss thailand very much to look at her photos.
http://meganjepson.smugmug.com/

Marshall

When Life is Like a National Geographic Article

2007-08-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

Let's see. It has been something like 100 days since I last posted, but never mind all that. Lots of stuff happened. It was cool. I came back to the states late June. Worked in Seattle in July. Saw lots of people which was excellent. Then went to Utah to my favorite place for the month of August. And here I am back in Maple Canyon.
Like most trips, the thing you go for (in this case climbing great cobbles) is tons of fun, but it is the small side things that impact me the most. In this case, it is rest days that find me getting my slice of culture.

Thursday, August 23. Zip Code 84642. A Derby like none other.

[driving to Manto with the Temple on the hill] I'm down here with my friend from Thailand, Ben, and was joined on this seemingly normal day by my buddy from Salt Lake, Dan. Showers were taken at the Snow College Gym in Ephraim (pronounced ee-frm), chatted with Megan in Thailand at the College Library, $3.81 8" pizzas at the Pizza Place, filled up water and the fridge in Mt. Pleasant, BBQ turkey sandwiches in Moroni (mo-ro-nai) -this is the Turkey Capital of the US, and then an evening visit to the town of Manti (man-tai) for the Sanpete country fair. After stumbling through the blue ribbon entries of cabinets made from picket fences and 6 ton castrated Steers, we made our way to the main event for the evening: The Sanpete County Demolition Derby.
I have been to a few Demolition Derbies in my life. The most recent being a wonderful smash up time in Wyoming a few years back, but this was a bit unusual. I am in the heart of Mormon Country, and therefore alcohol is rarely consumed. As we carefully selected our seats in the bleachers (trying to find to rowdiest looking crowd) we noticed that not a single person had a beer in hand. How can you possibly have a smash up derby without at least a few High Lifes?
This is how:
1. Hold the Derby under the gaze of the Disneylandesque Manti Temple
2. Forget about overall safety and allow the flipping of cars.
3. Sit in front of people who seem to know every single driver by name and who are the top picks.
4. Place dollar bets on every round.
5. Have God smite thee for taking wee nips under the bleachers.

Round one: I placed bets on car 73 and 76 because the obvious winner to be, car 69 (complete with bad-ass flame paint job), was snatched up by Ben in preslection. 73 had her rear tires blown off and radiator involuntarily flushed so she was out (yes, she was the only woman driver in the Derby). 76 was completely flipped upsidedown by 69. He crawled out the back window and was o.k., but there went my dollar. The next two rounds went about the same for me and my cars.
However, we were anxiously watching a coming lightning storm approach from over the mountains. Round three ended, and no sooner did it start raining... it proceeded to hail. I've never actually seen dime sized hail before, but here it was. A quick 5.10 move brought us below the bleachers to get out of the coming onslaught. We and the rest of the crowd were found giggling and yelping as hail pelted us through the cracks.
We missed the "show-box" derby with smaller Japanese cars because we were under the bleachers but when we emerged we saw some of the most beautiful light I have ever seen.
Picture a lit up cathedral perched on a hill over you, with red and yellow clouds swirling around it. Down the valley crows feet like bolts of lightning streaked the black clouds with a boldly lit demolition derby full of cheering Americans in the foreground. What a moment!

The finals found me losing money once more, but it didn't much matter. We had lived it: The Sanpete County Demolition Derby 2007. 19 cars entered. 4 flipped upsidedown, 18 unable to drive of the course, and one upset god that we were indulging in it all.

Oh yeah. Below is a movie of wonderful smash up action taken by Dan's cell phone. This is about as loud as it really is.

Marshall

The Hero Party

2007-06-13T22:02:00.001-07:00

To celebrate birthdays of June, we are having a Hero Party. Come as a hero and you will be treated like one.
Things to remember:
It is this friday, yes, very soon. Come around 8 or 9.
Bring a bottle of booze to share. I will be bartending.
Invite anyone and everyone.
Come in costume, or else.
We will have some BBQ snacks. Bring some food for yourself if you want.
Leave a comment on this blog to let me know if you are coming. That way I can figure out how many mixers to bring.
Contact me at mabalick [at]gmail.com if you have any other questions.

The directions are below. It is a bit hard to find. Look for Hero party signs at the key turns.

Marshall

1 month in 100 words or less

2007-04-09T02:52:00.000-07:00

[The crew in Krabi] I haven't posted for a while so here is what I have done:
Went to Krabi for 10 days and climbed. We met up with some Seattle friends, Hal (who lives in Singapore now), Frankie and Karin. A bunch of photos were taken. Here are a few which I was able to steel from Karin's site.

Frankies Wonderful Photos
Karin's Corageous Pics

We spent one day deep water soloing which was scary but fun. I was terrified to go any higher than Mike is going in the photo at the top of this post (that's me down below). No way man. But... by the end of the day, the falling wasn't so bad. [Bubbs looking for Bubs] I can see how one could get into it. The main thing that I got out of it is that deep water solo doesn't necessarily strip away all the gear and make climbing pute and simple. You have to rent a boat. Then you have to take kayak to the edge of the cliff (it is next to impossible to climb out of the water, and besides...), once you get wet, you are wet and your hands are wet and everything is slippery. However, you get to play around on some cool lines and scare the crap out of yourself in relative safety.

My sister met up with us down in Railay. She scuba dived for two days while I went climbing. Even though it is crowded, and even though there are more dreadlocks than sunburned bellies, and even though the rock is a bit greasy, and even though it costs four times as much as the Thailand that I live in, the climbing kicks serious butt and I had a good old time.

We flew back to Chiang Mai with my sister. My friend Tom from Seattle showed up the next day and we spent the next two weeks seeing things in Chiang Mai that I haven't done yet. We went to some Wats (temples), took a Thai cooking class, Char and Tom went up to the Elephant Nature Park (see previous post), we ate lots of good food, I learned more about Buddhism then I have up to this point, and I got to hang out with my sister and Tom. It was cool.

Besides that, I have been teaching a bunch to make money. Megan took off for Borneo for three weeks leaving me a bachelor so I have been forced to do bachelor things. Things like drink beer in bed, go caving with friends, create a proposal to install a Via Feratta up a waterfall to benefit a hill tribe (more later on that), get a Thai drivers license, put up a new 7b climb at the crag, avoid blogging, and clean the house and have it stay clean for a week (ok, so that is an anti-bachelor thing, but sometimes I can be a neat freak).

As the spring rolls on (and heats up- it is about 100 degrees outside as I write this... how cold is it in Seattle?)) we are looking at coming back to Seattle in late June. The plan now is to stay in Seattle through July and then come back to Thailand for another year.

So now I have to go pick up my motorcycle from the shop. I'm getting the oil changed, replacing the steering column bearing, getting a new front tire, replacing my choke cable, and hoping to get that annoying stalling thing fixed that causes my engine to die when I start up from a stop. It should cost about 30 dollars for the whole thing. I love Thailand!

Marshall

Elephants, take three

2007-02-21T01:48:00.000-08:00

We have been to MaiSa elephant camp (baby elephants), Lampang elephant camp (elephant hospital) and now to the Elephant Nature Park.
So here is what I have been learning. Not all elephants camps are good for elephants. There are degrees of friendliness. Mai Sa had the elephants performing, and pretty much only exists to make money (except that the elephants are generally well looked after)-the capitalist camp. Lampang, which has a free hospital, so the healthy elephants perform to raise money so that sick elephants can receive free care- the socialist camp. And then there is the Nature Park, where the elephants do not perform at all, they get to run free on the property, and tourists get to interact by paying money, feeding the elephants, learning about elephants, and helping out by doing things like washing the elephants. This is perhaps the Utopian camp
[babies playing in the river- they aren't doing what you think] The Nature Park is the only one of its kind in thailand that is like this. I sincerely feel that there is room to transform many of the camps away from the capitalist style camp, to the utopian or at socialist camp. Most spectators want only the best for the elephants (this is why we go to the camps) and want to be with these amazing creatures. Since 99% of the camps have elephants performing, we go to these because there is no other choice (sort of like buying an inefficient car in the states- there aren't a lot of other choices). Additionally, most people don't know what goes on behind the scenes, and well hey, it beats extinction. So just as I truly feel that car companies are crazy to not create super efficient cars for the public to buy, I feel that elephant camps should restructure their ways to be more friendly to the animals. There is no reason not to except that the momentum exists to create camps that have elephants who are submissive and doing a show.
We went to the nature park with our Thai friend Sian. He knows a woman who works there. How could we pass that up?
The day began by driving in his truck to a local market and buying many many kilos of sugar cane to feed the elephants. As Jeff and I carried said sugar cane through the market, there was a steady stream of giggles from all the thai folks in the market, I'm not exactly sure why the entire market thought it was funny for two farang to be carrying loads of cane, but I can only guess that it was a rare site. It was pretty fun.
Then we drove up to the park with guavas, pineapple, watermelon and cane to donate to the large beasts. The elephants park is in an incredibly picturesque valley (exactly what you might think of when you think of a valley full of asian elephants). There are elephants everywhere. Elephants eat something like 6 million kilos of food everyday, so our small donation was nothing much, but it was like being the ice cream man since our treats were some of the elephant's favorite types of food). Actually, the ice cream analogy goes a bit further. After feeding the elephants our treats, the visionary behind the camp, a woman named Lek, bought a bunch of ice cream bars, and proceeded to feed them to the elephants. Apparently orange popsicles their absolute favorite food. Jeff even got a kiss in exchange for the popsicle.
Then we learned a bunch about these sweet creatures and how they become amazing friends. There is a blind elephant who has been adopted by a younger healthier elephant and in the last 5 years, they have never been more than 100 meters apart. As we were watching the elephants, we heard a loud elephant roar as the caretaker elephant realized she was 50 meters away, and took off across the field to be close to her blind friend. It still makes me weepy to think about it. What an amazing sight.
[Jeff and I washing them down] It was then bath time, and we all dove into the river along with the elephants to scrub them down. They love being scrubbed and the either sat there patiently as you rubbed them down, or they would gently play with you by splashing about or rolling around in the river. As big as they are, I always felt like they are super aware of where I am in relation to me and that they would never run into me. It is a cool feeling to be so close to them.
[looking for more to wash] The whole day was an incredible experience and I can't wait to go back. So if any of you come to visit, we will schedule a trip up there and perhaps even stay the night. Apparently, elephants can snore quite loud.

I'm a working man

2007-02-21T01:46:00.000-08:00

I know this may seem hard to believe, but I actually worked 4 days last week, and it is looking like I will be working 4 this week. I seriously need a vacation. Fortunately, I am headed down to Krabi to climb for a week in early march.
Last week, I had the pleasure of substituting in a high school for an ESL class. I taught literature and Social Studies to a mix of Korean and Thai kids whose english is not yet up to par to fit into the main part of the international school. It was a blast. It is amazing how easy it felt to work with High School aged students after my short stint as a kindergarten teacher. I mean, I could actually reason with the students as opposed to resorting to jumping and dancing. And get this, they had an assignment to do, and they actually did it. I'm not saying that all kindergarten students are a bunch of miscreants who nothing more than to create bedlam, but I am saying that I have no idea how to work with those little dark angels.
I think the rowdiest part of the time was when we had about half and hour to kill and played a fun game of "Where's Pruie." This is a game that gets kids to close their eyes, walk around a room, and essentially try to figure out who is who. It is an opportunity to touch each other, which has its own set of red flags, but is also quite good at breaking down barriers.
[A good round of Chalk talk to see what the kids knew] Anyway, good stuff. It isn't that it feels good to work again, but rather that it felt good to be working with kids who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. I didn't take any pictures, but you'll have to picture me sitting around in a room with 15 teenage thai and korean kids talking about things I should do and not do in Chiang Mai (the number one thing to do is to be patient. the thing not to do is to loose my temper- interesting that that is what the kids want me to learn).

We went to a white trash party

2007-02-21T01:39:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures- party on Wayne!

Megan's critter pictures

2007-02-08T06:27:00.000-08:00

He followed us around the paddies for a while
Dog on a fence
Fat

We had a long conversation
Black
Scary Buffalo

Cat on a poll
this kid played with this cat like this for about 15 minutes, then the cat walked off

Tubers or Tubers

2007-02-08T05:34:00.000-08:00

Some interesting stuff has happened in the last few weeks: Megan got some flowers, we defined tubers; I understand what rabbit traps and UXO have in common; I figured out where dead race car drivers reincarnate; a monk made important predictions; muddy water, diesel gas and chicken can make you sick; and thailand suddenly seems quite sophisticated.

You probably already figured it out from the clues, but, yes indeed, we went to Laos last week. Just as aside note, why did the maker of the english language decide that Lao needed to be spelled Laos and that Lao people (who call themselves Lao-both singular and plural) need to be called Laotians. Lao doesn't even border an ocean (get it: Lao-ocean) and why add all those extra letters in? Why can't we just call it what it is called? We call people from Thailand Thai.

So Lao... it took a 12 hour bus ride, followed by a 1 hour bus ride, followed by a 15 minute Tuk-tuk ride, then another 5 minute bus-ride, then a 20 minute tuk-tuk ride, then a fun 5 hour bus ride to get there. no big deal. On the way, we passed through lots of thailand at nighttime, crossed the first bridge to go over the Mekong River, became quite confused at the border as to how one actually gets into Lao, Quickly passed through Vientiane (the Loa capital) and found ourselves quickly escaping from any sign of civilization until we arrived at our first destination of Vang Vieng. I have to admit that I didn't know much about Lao before going there, but it appears that Lao was once colonized by the French, secretly supported by America during the Vietnam war and then just as secretly deserted and left to massive decay under the Soviet regime, then became an independent communist single party government after the fall of the wall. The current government is still pissed at the remote hill tribes that America promised to support during and after Vietnam. In fact it regularly does sweeps and imprisons children whose families fought in the war. As recent as last year large groups of Hmong Hill tribe people give up and surrender themselves to the government for Guantanamo Bay style imprisonment.
So why would we want to go there? Because of tubers. Small potato like objects? Well, yes, but also because white backpackers have found this lovely spot called Vang Vieng where they can rent inner-tubes, buy some beers and float lazily down the river passing the day away and offending all the local people with exposed bellies. Actually, it looked kind of fun, but we were there to climb. See, since the tubers have taken over, this area has become a tourist friendly kind of place, and since some tourists like to climb, there have been some routes established on the beautiful looking limestone that frames perfectly set valleys full of rice paddies and smiling children.
We had heard rumors of rock climbing, but didn't know too much about it. Well, as it turns out, the climbing isn't the greatest but it is set in some wonderful locations. One such location happens to be right by the river where the tubers come floating by. Because these tubers tend to wash up on the shore and need a place to restock their beer, relieve their bladders, and jump off pretty rope swings, locals have set up bars along the river. We were essentially climbing in a bar that when we got there in the morning was a pretty sleepy place. But the tubers come down in packs, and when the employees see them coming, Bob Dylan is played at high volume to attract the tuber in. Megan and I wanted to make a sighting of a tuber in action, so we'd sneak along the cliff and try to make spotting. Then the tubers, would stop, or not, and float off on their way. The music would stop, the employees fall back asleep on the tables and we'd go back to climbing. Then suddenly we'd hear Bob Marley and it would happen all over again. Oh yeah, and the climbing was chalky and not so well protected, but whatever. We got to see tubers.
At one of the climbing areas we had to bushwhack through some jungle when I was reminded of the fact that there is some ungodly amount of unexploded ordinance (UXO) nicely deposited by foreign entities (including the US) over the years. As I was pondering the thought, I saw a strange log propped up precariously with thin wire and trough dug underneath it (i know this doesn't give a good visual, but it is too hard to explain, and we didn't take a photo). After closer examination I think it was a rabbit trap, that when tripped swings a giant log into the trench. Oh how treacherous. At least it took my mind off the UXO.
After three days of climbing, exploring caves (if you don't know, caving is about the coolest thing in the entire world for me- about the uncoolest for megan), drinking Lao coffee and eating wonderful baguette sandwiches, we departed Vang Vieng for Luang Prabang. For reasons I'm still not sure about, we found ourselves sitting in a Minivan tearing off down the road towards the ancient capital of Lao. Yeah, we wanted to take the public bus, yeah we tried to get out of sitting in the two fold out seats in the minivan, yeah the road is sort of paved, yeah it is only 200 km, but no it wasn't pleasant at all. Strange really, the driver would actually accelerate when he saw that we were approaching any one of the 30 or so hilltribe villages lining the road. I think he must of figured if he just laid on his horn, put the gas pedal to the floor and swerved towards the running children, we would think the ride was that much more fun and tip him more on arrival. At one point I hear megan apologizing to the person next to her, as her fold down chair unfolded under the g-forces of the tight turn and thrust her into the lap of the sleeping german tourist. But 7 hours isn't too long and soon we arrived. Strange though, nobody did end up tipping the driver.

Luang Prabang was lovely and we wanted to stay for a few days. We did need to be back in Thailand after a few days, so we decided to suck up the price of a plane ticket. But wait, no seats available for the next 2 weeks. Therefore, we could either travel back the way we came, probably a 2 day bus voyage, or take the boat up the Mekong River to the thai border and then a 4 hour minibus home. Unfortunately, this was a 3 day option, but worth it to avoid having to backtrack. This left only one day in one of the most beautiful cities that I've been to. Luang Prabang is about the size of Bellingham, right along the Mekong and Namkham rivers, completely full of old temples and somewhat built up by the french in colonial style. We rented bicycles and rode around lazily for a day playing with kids and soaking it up. Lovely place. I'd recommend it.
But what I wouldn't recommend, is taking the boat along the Mekong for two days and getting food poisoning during the overnight stopover in Pakbeng.
There is no road that covers the 200 or so km of mekong we travelled. In fact there isn't a road anywhere within a 100 km corridor of big chunk of it. Pretty remote wilderness except for the small villages dotting the river here and there. Lovely, and for two days we soaked it all in.

So that was our trip to Laos. One thing that did surprise me was how much like coming home it felt to return to Chiang Mai. Also, how sophisticated Thailand is compared to other places such as Lao. They have paved roads here, hospitals here, coins, and quite a bit of organization when it really comes down to it. Since it felt like coming back to a modern country, I can't imagine what it will feel like to eventually show up in the states. I'm certainly not ready at this point. That is for sure.

Oh yeah, I almost left out the details on the flowers and the monk prediction. Well, Megan caught the bouquet at a friends wedding, she tried not to catch it, but it really did just end up in her arms. She tried to give it back, but couldn't. She caught the bouquet.
The monk, well we ended up talking with a nice novice monk (he was 18) for a while in Luang Prabang and he predicted that we will have a son in the next year.
Hmmmmm... fat chance.

Marshall

dyed silk drying
another boat on the Mekong
bubbs and bubs

Do 6 year olds like to dance the Robot?

2007-01-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

As most of you know, I am officially trained to teach high school students. I have self taught myself how to teach adults. I date a woman who lives in the realm of 3-5 year old on an almost daily existence. However, I personally have no idea what to do in front of 12 six year olds who may or may no speak the greatest english.

On friday, I was granted the opportunity to learn how to do this. The American Pacific International School had an in-service learning day for their Kindergarten teachers. One of those teachers is our friend Connie so she asked if Megan and I would like to come in and substitute for two of the classes.

[Yao looking at the camera]
So there I was, nine in the morning, with 12 kids kneeling in front of me on a carpet and a whiteboard in front of me. I had a vague idea of what a "morning circle" is from Megan, but had never participated in one (at least not since I was 5). We did the date, the weather (I tried to crack a joke about how the weather is always sunny, but it went over like George Bush cracking a joke at Howard Dean's birthday), and then we wrote out the days events on the whiteboard.

Everything was going great because of the help of the Thai assistant, the wonderful Ms. Cherry. I read the epic novel "I like it When..." to the class and then we drew fun pictures of what we like and I helped the little rugrats to spell the words of what they like. We had a morning snack, did some more work on words that start with P and then Ms. Cherry went to lunch. That is when Hayden, Ken and Super (yes his name is Super- don't laugh Captain, Pimp and Poopy are popular names too) decided that counting to 100 is boring and that running laps around the room is much more fun. Now I have to admit that it probably is more fun, but it wasn't what I needed to be happening at that moment. Hmmmmm. What to do? I felt somehow obliged to continue with the lessons I was tasked with teaching, but it was becoming obvious quite quickly I would have to come with something else. And something somewhat physical. THE ROBOT. For some reason, dancing the robot came into my head. If I could get the class to follow me in a robot session, perhaps I could find the remote control for the robots and switch them all off. Or at least hit the slow motion button. And it worked... for about 1 minute. Soon I had a renegade platoon of robots scouring the room for robot food. One robot boy had lost his robot pants and electronic underwear and was terrorizing the laboratory.

[Super doing his things]
That is when Megan miraculously showed up. Her head popped in the door and I heard a "do you need some help?" I smiled a robot smile, she kicked me out of the class and sent me to her classroom where the kids were working quietly on a rhyming exercise. I was afraid to open my mouth in this room for fear of disturbing the peace so I hung back in the corner and pretended to have something to do. Ten minutes later, Megan comes back in and tells me to return to my class to help the kids clean up and get ready for snack. It was no peaceful refuge, but the kids were all working together to clean up the room.

Lunch happened, then they had a Thai lesson complete with a Thai pop song dance party and then one more hour of relatively uneventful game playing and spelling exercises and they were out of my care.

In the moment, it was a pretty stressful situation. After it was all over, I thought about how I might have done it all differently and almost look forward to the next time. I think I might have some new tricks up my sleeve, but those may go over as well as the Robot Dance. It will be fun to try.

Marshall

Over indulgence makes for a bad blogger

2007-01-16T20:17:00.000-08:00

I've been just about the worst blogger in Thailand for the last month. The only way I could have blogged less would be to erase other people's blogs.
Fortunately, I haven't and since my friend Tim Matsui is over here visiting and he is slightly better than me, you can find an incredible entry on discovering Thailand here: Tim's Matsui's Blog.

And since I promised to put more elephant photos up, here are some of my favorites.

Marshall