"And so this is Christmas"

And so this is Christmas, Mr. Lennon. Or it was yesterday, anyway. And what have I done? I have been quite busy, quite busy indeed.

Last I left off Vanya and I were in Ko Pha Ngan, awaiting the full moon party. The Full Moon Party. Oh, what a big, big party it is. It was the reason that Vanya and I traveled across the Thai peninsula and ferried out to Ko Pha Ngan in the first place, and the build up to the Big Day was tangible: every day more and more boatloads of backpackers arrived, and Hat Rin (the town where the whole thing takes place) filled to capacity. The sun was out during the day, and the evening breeze carried the noise of thumping dance music all the way from beach; these people could not wait.

Unfortunately, though, this party-hardy feeling was not to last. Two days prior to the full moon, wind, rain, and waves descended upon the island, and everyone turned indoors or under cover. To top things off, the night before the full moon party happened to be the King's birthday, shutting down all of the bars in town. What a downer.

The storm finally broke, though, the evening of the party. Most people I spoke with put the number of party-goers at somewhere around 5,000, although it wasn't the seething throbs of humanity that you might imagine. The beach is, by my guess, about a half-mile long, leaving plenty of space for people to mill about. Along the beach are a number of bar/clubs, all of which want you to dance to their music, so it is loud. Most of the music had a heavy house/techno feel to it, but apparently it was with this type of music that the full moon parties began. Vanya and I walked along the water side of the beach for quite a while and people-watched, which may actually be as fun as dancing. Drinks at Hat Rin are served not by the glass, but by the bucket, which had the effect of making quite a few party-goers very sleepy; the unspoken consensus of the evening was that the sand made for the best pillow in town. There was a lot of fire: fireworks, fire-breathing, fire-dancing. There was a whole heck of a lot of debauchery.

According to Milan, a late 40s-something Berliner who Vanya and I befriended while hiking a few days earlier, these are no longer "the good times." Milan had first been to the island eight years earlier, when the event was not so "commercialized." Apparently in the past, the parties were measured for success based upon how many foreigners died at the event -- this could be by overdosing on drugs, poisoning themselves with alcohol, or going for a leisurely midnight swim after a few buckets. If a couple of party-goers washed up on the shore in the morning, well, that must have been a very good party! Obviously this is no longer the case. There was a noticeable police presence, both uniformed and plainclothes, trying to sniff out illicit drug use (for which the fine is $1200). They also have an area of the beach roped off with mats for sleeping.

On a flight last week, Vanya and I were talking to an Irish dive instructor who had been to the party a year before. He said that, in his opinion, he'd "been there, done that, bought a shirt." I wouldn't necessarily echo this. It's just a big party, but it is also a really big party. Take it or leave it.

From Ko Pha Ngan we made the unforgiving trip westward across the Thai peninsula to Ko Lanta island (van, ferry, bus, bus, mini-bus, passenger ferry, passenger ferry). Ko Lanta is a decently large island with row after row of beaches, as well as hoardes of Swedes. How does this happen? Why Swedes? Vanya and I came to the conclusion that Thailand is to Sweden what Hawaii is to Alaskans. Vanya was approached a few times and addressed in Swedish, her features looking Scandinavian enough to warrant the assumption.

(A quick interlude, here: Americans have a tendency to criticize other Americans as bad travelers, or as "ugly tourists." From my own experience, this is not the case. Whoever is the dominant travel group in an area comprises the "ugly tourists," at least in the eyes of the local population. On Ko Lanta, locals were not crazy about Swedish tourists. In Khao Lak, Thailand, where Germans are everywhere, they have a bad reputation. Universally in southeast Asia, Israelis are the least-liked tourists, though this has more to do with groups of guys coming on military leave. So breathe easy, we're not so bad.)

We really did not see Ko Lanta at all. Vanya took a PADI open-water SCUBA certification course, and I took an advanced open-water certification course, occupying a full four days. Vanya's course involved four dives, and mine six, which took us on (separate) dive boats out to the outlaying islands days. The diving off of Ko Lanta was incredible: visibility was 100 feet, which is about as good as it gets with diving.

The reason for all this diving was that Vanya and I had signed up for a three-day liveaboard diving trip the following week (for which Vanya needed a certification) out of Khao Lak, Thailand to the Similan Islands. After the tsunami, there was a series of side-by-side satellite photographs showing before/after images that were printed in a number of newspapers -- before it was green, afterwards it was brown. This was Khao Lak, two years ago to do the day. You really wouldn't know it at first glance, though. The tourist amenities are back on their feet, but I really cannot speak for anywhere besides that.

The liveaboard dive-trip was very, very, very good. Vanya and I opted to go with the only budget dive-boat in town, a boat owned by one of the most well-respected dive shops in Khao Lak (Sea Dragon, if you care). As Andy, one of two-divemasters on the boat, explained, "there is not much personal space" on the boat. There wasn't, but I think it was actually beneficial to the experience: we all got to know each other well, and not much time was actually spent on the boat, anwyay. There were four Germans, two Englishmen, and Vanya and me. The sleeping arrangement was complicated, but I will try to explain it, anyway: mattresses were laid on what had formerly been the flat, top of the boat, but which was now covered with a half-cylyndrical canvas "tent" to protect the sleepers from the elements. It was nice. There was always a sea-breeze at night, and the boat rocked us lightly to sleep. At times during the day, though, we would go through sea-sickness inducing swells, some to the point that it was difficult to walk around. Most amazing to me was our chef, a Thai woman. She would prepare hot, delicious meals (western breakfasts, Thai lunches and dinners) right in the middle of these rollers. Her favorite cooking shirt read "Half-court shootout '94."

The "100 foot visibility" advertised for the Similan islands dive-trips by every dive-operator in town never materialized; it was usually closer to 30 feet. I could list the many different families of fish, of which we saw dozens of sub-species, but this would mean nothing to most people. We did see the following, though: manta rays, leopard sharks, octopus, cuttlefish, napolean fish, sea snakes, many types of eels, crabs, lobsters, a sea turtle, blue-spotted rays, and so on.

A word on manta rays. They are big. When you first see one underwater, you will remember that moment. Manta rays come in a close second to whale-sharks on the "things divers want to see in Thailand" list, but many do not end up seeing them. Dive-operators, of course, do their best to take divers to the sites these animals frequent, but ultimately it is up to the manta rays to show up. Dive-masters actually have to brief divers on making sure to maintain neutral bouyancy when watching a manta ray: seeing a manta ray inevitably makes your heart rate go up, in turn causing you to breathe faster and increase bouyancy, and more than a few divers have inadvertantly ascended to the surface.

On our first dive, all of us, of course, were constantly checking around us to look for them. Finally, our dive-master began pointing to the blue (they literally come "out of the blue"). A manta ray with a ten foot wingspan, looking like an underwater alien spacecraft, flapped his wings and went swimming past us, making a "flying" motion. Looking back at the dive-master, next I saw him pointing at me. It took me a second or two to realize that he was, in fact, pointing behind me, and turned to see another manta ray, mouth open, swimming directly at me. I quickly grabbed Vanya, who spun around, and then proceeded to latch onto my arm ferociously at the sight. Manta rays are filter-feeders, but it is still disconcerting when they swim at you that with the mouth wide open. It's not possible to be "weak-kneed" underwater, but I think the term is still applicable, here. With a slight shift of the body, he swam above us.

On the last dive, I looked into the blue every minute or two, often doing 360 degree turns, hoping to see them again. Finally I saw one coming from behind us, and began the painful process of trying to alert everyone else. Above water you would shout "LOOK!" Underwater this is not possible, and it all happens very, very slowly. I got the attention of all four divers, who were then agape (figuratively) watching the manta ray, while our dive-master swam along, obliviously looking at the rock-bed. The manta ray swam past us, went over the top of our dive-master, hung above him for a while, turned to the left and dissappeared. Our dive-master never saw it. In total, we saw manta rays on three of the nine dives. They are the highlight of most dive-trips, and they were the indisputable kings of ours.

From Khao Lak we took a mini-bus south to Phuket, where we caught a flight to Bangkok. We only had two days in Bangkok, which meant that we weren't going to see the city. So we didn't even try! One of the days we had an excellent lunch with Vanya's uncle and his family at the corner of Democracy Monument, followed by painfully good Thai massages. Another day we played video games and went bowling at the MBK shopping center and did some street shopping. We didn't see anything! I would argue, though, that you can feel Bangkok as well as see it. One of our stranger experiences happened one night as Vanya and I were walking in the middle of a Bangkok side-street, a street temporarily lacking in traffic. Suddenly, the electricity went out and the city went black. Completely black. The lights were probably only out for one-half of one second -- not even enough time to realize it cognitively -- before, just as suddenly, they were all back on. I don't recall hearing a single sound during that half-second. Vanya and I agreed that this must be very close to what it feels like to die. Lights out!

In the early morning on December 22nd, I left Bangkok to fly to Cairo. Later that day Vanya flew to San Francisco. Goodbye southeast Asia! I barely know you! You have the finest of tropical fruits.

Obviously, then, I am in Cairo. There is much to say about Cairo, but I am not going to say much of the much to say about Cairo right now. My overnight bus (confound it! They are the worst!) leaves at 12:15 AM, and there is still more to see, more to see. I will say this, though: Cairo is a challenge, and has a rough-and-tumble, New Yorker attitude. During this writing, there was a near fist-fight outside the door of the internet cafe. Two middle-aged Egyptians were yelling at each other, one pushed the other hard, and the push-ee, after some thought and the intervening of friends, maturely decided to ignore the aggrievance. This is the third such near fist-fight that I have seen in three days.

"Welcome to Egypt!"

The Animal Kingdom

So it has been a while. But since the last update Vanya and I have been, by my count, to seven different cities, spending a night in six of them. That is busy.

Last I left off Vanya and I had recently arrived in Luang Prabang, Laos, the former French colonial capital of the country and a World Heritage site, according to the United Nations. I could write a lot about the city, the sights, and so on, however the real attraction to the city is its cafe-culture and comatose pace. Most visitors (read "Vanya and I") do a per diem cafe-crawl over the course of their stay, tacking off a new cafe each morning. We did this, stuffing ourselves with pastries. I would also estimate that during our six day stay we played more than 30 games of chess. This is how the city operates.

I am explaining the lazy parts of our stay in Luang Prabang, but we also took two day-trips to outlying waterfalls, both of which had clear, blue swimming holes. Refreshing. Around the first waterfall, Vanya and I saw trails of chalk circling the waterfall trails -- the Hash House Harriers had been there recently. We were never able to track the Luang Prabang chapter down, though. The ride to the first waterfall was an eventful one, as our tuk-tuk driver managed to hit two vehicles -- a pick-up truck and a motor-scooter -- within two minutes of picking Vanya and me up. He laughed with us, and off we went.

From Luang Prabang we took a two-day slow-boat trip up the Mekong River toward a town called Huey Xai ("way sigh"), spending the evening in a nothing town halfway in between. On the first day of the trip I sat next to a Buddhist monk named Noparrat, who had just finished trekking in southern China and Laos. Subsiding on alms (as most monks and novices do), he had done the month-long journey on less than $50. He spoke English pretty well, and at one point pulled out a Samsung mp3 player and allowed me to listen to a "song" of Tibetan Buddhist chanting put to music. It was nice, actually.

Huey Xai is the launching point for a conservation project called The Gibbon Experience, located in a major Laotian forest reserve in northwest Laos. Visitors sleep in tree-houses, travel through the forest by zip-line, and go on treks with local guides with the objective to see gibbons. If this sounds like a unique concept, well, it is as far as I know, and Vanya and I were not completely gung-ho about the whole thing until we spoke to other travelers who gave unreserved recommendations. The funds raised by the project are used to hire locals to protect the forest reserve from poachers (gibbons, asiatic and sun bears, monkeys) and logging. In other words, the goal of the project is to make money from a forest without chopping it down or killing all the animals. It seems to be working. This is especially impressive in a country as poor as Laos, where the efforts of conservationists are typically in direct opposition to the guy trying to put food on the table. And the dinner that guy wants to serve tonight might be gibbon.

I will not go into too much detail about the project, but I would like to describe the scene Vanya and I were treated to upon arrival to the kitchen/base-camp of the project, a hut owned by a Laotian family. After all of us were fitted for harnesses, three macaque monkeys burst into the elongated hut and began to tear it apart. All the laundry was pulled down (some taken outside to be dragged through the dirt), fresh fruit and vegetables were eaten and tossed about, and the monkeys proved to be surprisingly adept at opening zippered pockets. We played with them for a while, and then, curious, followed them outside the hut. There we ran into an untethered, 150 lb. asiatic bear. Apparently he was rescued from poachers, and had reached the age where the family was trying to induce him to go back to the wild. He was a little bit too strong and a little bit too big to be comfortable to play with, but he loved the attention and took turns (bear)hugging legs, knocking people over, and softly (or not very softly) biting them. Next came a baby gibbon, scrambling out of the jungle (also a pet rescued from poachers), as well as a kitten.

The scene was set. What happened next was nothing short of the most amazing sequence of events I have personally witnessed in the animal kingdom. One of the macaque monkeys -- they really are hell-raisers -- began tormenting the kitten by grabbing whichever leg was closest to him. One leg at a time, back and forth it went. The kitten hated this, but when the kitten would begin to run away, it would get yanked back by the tail for another go at it. There was a lot of hissing going on. Next, one of the other macaque monkeys actually leaped from a tree onto the back of the the asiatic bear and began to ride him. I don't think this happens naturally. The bear, not liking this development, trod off toward the jungle (the macaque leaping off), and accidentally came upon the baby gibbon. I'm not sure if you've seen a gibbon run, but it's arms are too long to run like you or I. Instead, the arms must be lifted straight up, vertically, while running. It looks preposterous, and I think it is the same way that E.T., the Extra Terrestrial, runs. The gibbon also made a noise as he ran, something akin to a cat's "meow." Away the baby gibbon ran, thinking his life in imminent danger from the bear, only to come upon the kitten. Now he was trapped between an asiatic bear and a kitten, both of whom, out of sheer boredom, probably would have had their way with him. He got out of this predicament unscathed, fortunately, by running back to his "mother," the proprietress of the house.

Did we actually see any gibbons in the wild? Nope. But we saw a wide variety of wildlife, spent two nights in a 140 foot tree house, and spent the afternoons zipping across zip-lines, the largest of which is 1200 feet long and 300 feet off the ground. I would recommend The Gibbon Experience to anyone who does not have an aversion to heights.

Next we crossed into Thailand. Thailand! It's not the same disparity as, say, the U.S. and Mexico, but the difference between Laos and Thailand is striking. Paved streets, no black-outs, efficient border crossing, western everything... Thailand is modern in a way that we had not seen since Malaysia.

Our first stop was Chiang Mai, where I promptly blew out my flip flop (no, not from a "pop-top"). Chiang Mai was not really a destination for Vanya and I, but more a stop-over to arrange transportation south, toward the beaches and islands. We arrived approximately 3-4 hours after all of you Americans had just finished eating Thanksgiving Dinner and, amazingly, Vanya and I found a western-style restaurant serving traditional, Thanksgiving Dinners. I finished dinner with two pieces of pumpkin pie, and was promptly put into a food coma. It was during this dinner that we met a guy named Jack.

Jack is a gruff, heavy-set, late 50's-something American guy. We met him because Vanya complimented him on his t-shirt, a Harley Davidson logo entirely in Japanese. This guy was as American as our Thanksgiving dinner, and loud. He talked to Vanya and I throughout the whole dinner, talked and talked and talked, continually explaining to us how he had "lived life." While traveling I try to be as inconspicuous as possible, a "good" traveler, I guess, and here Jack Sterling would yell across the restaurant, repeat whatever he had said loudly whenever he was not at first understood, and continually critique the food as being "microwaved." I felt guilty by association, but he was also a really nice guy. He explained that he had rolled with John Lennon back when, knew Sylvester Stallone, and so on. He had gone to Vietnam and had "come out with two holes in my body," never to go back to the United States. He now breeds Thai Ridgeback dogs, and has 81 of them at his home. After dinner, he showed us around town in his Ford pickup truck, and we rode in the bed.

He was an extreme example, but Vanya and I have met a decent number of "Jack's" in southeast Asia. I would characterize them as this: they are usually older men; they have a southeast asian girlfriend/wife; most are retired; they are irreverent; they have an old-fashioned attitude about women, girlfriends, prostitutes; they are burnt out; they have been away from the U.S. for a long time; they want someone to talk to, especially Americans. This is a broad generalization, obviously. But I have seen a lot of these guys wandering around s.e. Asia.

From Chiang Mai, we took the overnight, 10 hour bus to Bangkok. Overnight buses are awful. There is no form of travel (voluntary, anyway) that is worse, in my opinion. We arrived in Bangkok at the useless hour of 4:45 AM, caught a cab to the airport, and were in Krabi, Thailand by mid-afternoon.

Krabi, Thailand, is very much what I would imagine when I used to think of Thailand. White, sandy beaches; enormous limestone cliffs; European men in Speedos. It was beautiful, the Speedos tolerable. Vanya and I stayed on a tear-drop shaped peninsula outside of Krabi, with beaches on the north-west, west, south, and east sides of the "tear-drop," if that makes sense. The beaches are arranged unofficially by class-structure: the backpackers stay in the east and northwest beaches, the mid-range vacationers on the western beach, and those with money on the south beach. Entire days are spent exploring these beaches. They weren't perfect -- generally they were pretty rocky, and the water was actually too warm (not refreshing) -- but my guess is that this is the sort of complaint that will make you dislike me, since it's December. So I stop there. There is also some outstanding rock-climbing in this area, and Vanya and I spent a half-day rock-climbing and realizing that we would like to get more into rock-climbing.

It is now the beginning of high season in Thailand, which presents some problems. Prices go up a bit, which is tolerable, but worse is that guesthouses are suddenly filled to capacity. Our first night in Krabi, Vanya and I checked into a guesthouse that was 500 baht per night (roughly $14), which tied our record for the most expensive accommodation we have had in s.e. Asia. Whereas you would probably consider this cheap, Vanya and I found it expensive, and quickly downgraded ourselves to a place further from beach for $4 per night.

I bring this up only because we regretted this decision. The room, itself, was not so bad: it was made of bamboo, a few planks, and some palm fronds, and contained exactly one bed and one light-bulb. The owners also had a bizarre policy: marijuana ("dope" or "grass" for of you over the age of 40) was complimentary, and could be smoked with the owners at any time. Vanya and I actually felt awkward in declining their offer over and over again, as we were invited to smoke with them almost every time we walked down the flight of stairs. One evening I found the female owner in a smoke-induced stupor, and she remained in the same fetal position on her hut porch over the course of about an hour and a half. I suppose their policy makes sense, as I'm sure that more than a few backpackers stay longer than they had originally anticipated.

The reason we regretted our decision to stay there had to do with a resident cat. We never found out its name, but for the sake of clarity I will call it "Gremlin." We had met Gremlin for the first time just that day, and his "meow" sounded like something was wrong with him, so we kind of avoided him. Anyway, the night before leaving our bungalow guest-house, Vanya and I had gone to bed early, as we had to catch an early bus the next morning. We woke up in the middle of the night to booming, thumping music coming from the beach. The beach is a full 1/4 mile from our bamboo bungalow, and we both had earplugs in, so this music was pretty loud (but not untypical). The music had finally quieted a bit when Gremlin, offspring of Lucifer, got into a horrifying cat-fight on the porch of our bungalow and slammed into the bungalow wall. It sounded like it was actually in the room. I had no idea that the cat was even out there in the first place -- nor did I immediately identify the noise with the cat -- so I reacted to it as any grown man would: I yelled and jumped on top of Vanya. Vanya, who had only heard a large bang against the wall of the bungalow, felt my unidentified human form fall on top of her and thought that someone had broken into the bungalow and was attacking her. There was about three full seconds of uncontrolled screaming/yelling between Vanya and me before we made sense of it all. I have no ideas what our neighbors thought of this.

Worse, Gremlin didn't leave our porch after the cat fight, and, with the type of logic that only occurs in the middle of the night, we began to think he might be rabid. This was only further evidenced when I tried to force him off the porch, first by hitting him with a piece of bamboo, and then using the nail-end of the bamboo. He wouldn't budge, and I didn't want to actually make him bleed. Finally I got him to move by physically pushing him off the porch. We were not convinced, however, that he wouldn't somehow be able to penetrate one of the variety of holes in the cabin. Vanya spent the rest of the night (3:30-6:30 AM) too afraid to go to sleep. Morning proved Gremlin to be a regular old cat, albeit with a sick "meow."

Now we are in Ko Pha Ngan, an island off the east coast of Thailand. For those of you who have seen the movie "The Beach" or read the book, Ko Pha Ngan is the island that is shown as the antithesis of Richard's (Leonardo DiCaprio's) perfect beach. Loud music, bars, etc., it's all here. Vanya and I were not expecting much upon arriving here, but are probably going to have a difficult time leaving. Hat Rin, the town we are staying in, is backpacker central and has a beach on either side of the small town: sunrise beach, and sunset beach. Our cabin ($10 per night) is perched on the side of a hill, about 100 feet from the crystal clear, deep-blue water bay that makes up sunrise beach, and we are well isolated from town. It is probably one of the nicest places I have ever been responsible for renting, and from our porch there is always a breeze. Today I ate my first Snicker's crepe, a crepe I certainly never saw in Paris. As you would expect, it is delicious. "Why wait?"

Hat Rin is also ground zero for one of the biggest parties on the world: the full moon party. And if you look out the window, you'll see that the moon is just about full (or it was at the time of this writing, anyway). Apparently there have been upwards of 30,000 people in the past that show up for the all-night party, but I think generally about 3-5,000 people show up. So it should be an event.

I will end here, with more to come. I would apologize in advance for the delay between this blog update and the next one -- due to my being on Thailand's islands and beaches, of course -- as there will most likely be a lengthy one. But I'm not going to. I don't apologize at all, in fact! Hee hee!