Chaos in Tejas

Yee haw Texas. Armed with warnings of how red neck/superficial/conservative (choose your judgment) Texans are, I rolled into the Lone Star state excited to meet a "real-live Texan". The woman who checked me into my hotel was Indian and the guy who took my order at dinner was Thai. So much for my preconceived notions of Texans.

I spent a few nights on a "big cat farm" in North Texas and got a kick out of teenage boys calling me "ma'am" and then headed to Austin - which I found very friendly and very non-Texan. Friendly as in a woman I almost plowed over at a cross walk threw me a peace sign instead of the other well known and expected hand gesture, and non-Texan as in almost everyone has relocated here from another state.On my last night, I met a team of roller derby girls! They were from a hill billy out skirts town but were in Austin practicing with the local team who had trained Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page for "Whip It". Those were some gritty broads...before I knew who they were I was listening to them share stories about bruises from "falling down" and I thought they were part of a battered woman's conference.

There's some good raw food going on here - I found an amazing local juice bar, two raw restaurants, and the ORIGINAL Whole Foods. Of course, I made a pilgrimage to see this holy flagship and it was beautiful. The non-raw food that I sampled wasn't really exciting enough to mention. Lots of meat (barbeque) and mexican - which is usually cheap and satisfying but nothing to rave about.

Next stop Fredericksburg - a Texas/German settlement! In the 1840's the Republic of Texas was having problems populating West Texas because it was so well... unpopulated! and vast and wild. So they made a deal with Germany - for a cheap price you get a ticket over to the US, 10 acres of wild Texas pasture, and 1 acre in town for your "Sunday house" so you could go to church and trade over the weekend. In the middle of Texas you can tour the Vereins Kirche, eat schnitzel and drink hefe-weissen.


This area of Texas is known as "hill-country" and while the name suggest what type of terrain to expect, you'd have no inkling of how green TX can be. It was just beautiful hills with winding roads and wildflowers, butterflies and cows. Definitely not the desert and tumbleweed landscape that I had pictured. Heading further west it got more ancient flat seabed and mountainous instead of hills and I swear I've never sweat so much in my life. Every rest stop I get out of my car and my shorts are drenched through the butt and thighs. How do these highway maintenance guys do it? Wearing jeans, long sleeved tees, vests, hats and gloves, standing on the blacktop all day in the sun. Those are some hardy Texans. Yee haw.

The Travelling Continues...

It's very odd to be travelling in your own country. Travelling not just in transit and not on a vacation, but being a traveler. Staying in hostels, talking to other travelers (mostly all European) and seeing your country through their eyes. A French girl says America gives her a feeling of insecurity that she didn't feel even travelling alone in Columbia. I've never thought of the US this way. So now it's time for me to take my learned travel skills and turn the gaze inward to my own country - to observe the people and landscape as I would in a foreign country. My very first thought is IT'S EXPENSIVE HERE! How can people afford to travel for 4 months in the states? Cheap hostels are $25 a night ( as opposed to $8 in Thailand for a personal room) and I can't even begin to think about getting around without a car. My $1000 a month budget in Thailand will last me 10 days here. But this nuisance aside, I think it is important to know one's homeland. And that is what I am going to try to do for the next month or so - get to know my country! Finally!

Some pictures from St. Louis Missouri, Arkansas, North Texas (Redneck central!!) and Austin will be up shortly.

The Conclusion

With no public finale or fanfare my trip (but not my adventure) has come to an end. Since I've been pretty lax on keeping this blog updated, I'll just give you a quick rundown of the last six weeks - the highlights.

a 10 day silent meditation retreat

a 5 day live aboard in the Similan Islands - a National Marine Park that is reputed to be the best diving in Thailand. There were a couple magical moments - swimming with 3 manta rays for 50 minutes, playing with bioluminescence at night underwater, and being within arms reach of a leopard shark

a 7 day fast on Ko Phangan (the island famous for its Full Moon parties) where I drank clay shakes and experienced my first colonic

The two biggest gifts I received from this trip were this: traveling alone is a phenomenal, beautiful thing and I love it - the freedom to pursue exactly what you want and the lack of pressure that provides the ease to listen to your heart at all times is a powerful realization. The second gift is that travel breeds more travel. There are exponentially more places I want to visit and things to see and do. I'm already planning my next trip and this time it's a one way ticket...

Thai Political Unrest

Thailand is in a political turnover. The red shirts (United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship or UDD) are camping out in Bangkok demanding that Parliament be dissolved. The army chief has given in to this demand, saying that is will be dissolved by the end of the year. The red shirts claim the current Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, was not elected by a popular vote (he was put in power after the current government, the yellow shirts or the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) staged a coup in 2006 and instilled him as PM in 2008). The protesting reached a head this Saturday when the yellows tried to retake a certain area of Bangkok where the reds were camped out. The yellows used tear gas and either live or rubber bullets (conflicting accounts) and the reds retaliated with petrol bombs. 21 died - 17 civilans including a Japanese reporter from Reuters. Up until this point the protesting has been peaceful. In late March the red shirts gathered 10 cc of blood from each participant and threw it on the steps of the Government house as another protest. They have been camped out in Bangkok for almost a month.

Most red supporters are poor, rural farmers from the North and Northeast. They support the return to power of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra- who is seen as a sympathizer of the poor. He was deposed in a coup by the yellows in 2006 and has been exiled from Thailand since. He now calls himself a citizen of the world and he resides in London and Dubai, although he holds passports in Nicaragua and Montenegro.

The current PM, Abhisit, is English born and educated (Eton and Oxford) and was one of the youngest ever members of Parliament. He is very handsome but is criticized for his lack of charisma, often giving bland addresses to the people.

Doesn't Thailand have a king? Yes, Rama IX (Bhumipol) has not issued any comments regarding the unrest - but he usually stays out of situations like this, excepting a few very tense moments over his 60 year reign where he had to diffuse political tension.

As a reaction to the violence that took place on Saturday, yesterday a parade of coffins took place through the streets of Bangkok - mourning those killed. All of this on the eve of the biggest holiday in Thailand: Songkhran. Where for three days no one works and everyone participates in a huge water fight in the streets.

This information I've collected through various online media sources - I haven't seen anything firsthand other than an obvious display of force with more policemen patrolling the streets of Bangkok when I was there March 28-30th. I'm currently in the south and the only time this movement is mentioned is when running into travellers who have just come from Bangkok and couldn't get through the streets where the reds were protesting. You'd never even know anything was going on down here. I always assumed coups and protests were huge events where the whole country is in chaos and confusion, but you wouldn't even know a single thing is going on from the way things are down here. Thais are going to work and foreigners are planning dive trips just like any old day. I just hope they don't close the airport when I want to fly out.

I don't have any pictures of this but BBC has some good ones here if you want to see them.

A Short Venture Into Lao

Holy smoke! Smoke smoke smoke! I can't even see across the Mekong which is 100 m wide! Agricultural slash and burn is smogging this city! It's muggier and more humid and I need another shower already. The longtails on the Mekong are using lights! It's 5:15 in the afternoon, sunset isn't for another hour and a half! It's so hazy I feel like I'm stumbling through a drug trip. I write this after 10 short days in Lao, and I want to tell you guys what my experience was with the three different cities I was in.

The current one, (smokey Luang Phabang) is a UNESCO World Heritage city, with small brick lanes and alley ways of families - kids playing, women grilling chicken and men riding up on motorbikes. Hazy market stalls in every glance selling mahjong sets, opium pipes, ancient coins, Hmong silver, handwoven silks, of Lao sandwiches, stir-frys, and shakes. Coffee and pastry shops lining main street with wooden chairs and tables on the terraces. Lao used to be a French colony and that is still represented in the food. Lattes and baguettes everywhere. The most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen in my life. Wine bars! Old wrinkled women selling birds in cages and families (women with three children) setting up their stalls. Two dark skinned Lao girls selling Hello Kitty helium balloons to overjoyed pigtailed kids. Since it's a World Heritage Site, everything must close down at 2300 - bars included - which means there are a lot less drunk people - or people drinking to get drunk, and the town is quiet at night instead of thumping loud disco music. Twice I've returned to my guesthouse around midnight and the front gate and doors were locked, with the front desk boy asleep on a mattress behind the desk on the floor and huge pink mosquito net strung across the room. How charming - I love it here!

The capital city, Vientianne, has the same coffee and pastry shops but without the charm. Dirty guesthouses but a wide variety of cuisine. Nothing to sight-see but bulldozers running along the dried up bank of the Mekong. What do they do in the wet season? Mostly I was here for a visa (the Thai embassy is here). There is a 3 storied mall with a crowd of goldsmiths pounding, burning and cooling small trinkets into toothpicks of gold outside. So much French food around! Who would have thought I'd be eating ratatouille and salmon rillette, all after a sweaty cramped 12 hour bus ride where I was cuddled by the drunk guy next to me? I thought Asia was all about tea, but here it's coffee - Lao coffee, latte, and the ever popular NesCafe - with sugar and Carnation goodstart. This city is the site of the most amazing sauna I have ever been in. I now regard the herbal sauna as almost a holy experience, bringing me to the depths of my consciousness and leaving me dazed and peaceful. When I open the door to step inside, I push aside a heavy, drenched curtain keeping the steam in, and immediately I start to cough because the steam is so thick. Not only thick, but fragrant. Like walking into a pot of chai. After 15 minutes my breathing becomes very labored. In between showers and sauna sessions, I am served a hot, bitter red tea. Men and women are separated, and while I only saw local women, I did see two Western men visiting the sauna. The women were all rubbing their skin with a lightening solution - some were even homemade from tamarind, milk, and honey. I have never sweat so much in my life I kid you not. The YMCA sauna has absolutely nothing on this place.

Babylon, Sin City, Gomorrah, or Vang Vieng. I felt like Ulysses with the Lotus Eaters, you can't leave once you arrive, you are gravitationally held in an apathetic emotionally dulled limbo of no ambition and a desire to get more fucked up. There really are a few things to do here besides party, but the town sapped my enthusiasm by surrounding me with pretentious zombies high on the power of their money, behaving badly because no one is frowning upon them here (Lao people expect Westerners to be assholes). The scenery was beautiful, huge mountains straining up in pillars of rock hovering over the town, but I couldn't separate myself from the debauchery and it made me sick. I really didn't like Vang Vieng and I wouldn't want to go back there.

All in all, the beer is cheap and good in Lao, they have delicious local coffee, the people are friendly and speak Thai (whew!), the landscape is probably the most beautiful I've ever seen. It's just a tiny bit more expensive than Thailand, and they accept US dollars, Thai baht, or Lao kip. When I returned to my guesthouse today around 5 pm, the front desk boy was letting his friends play FIFA on his Xbox or Playstation in the lobby. How endearing is that? A bunch of teenage boys greeting me at my guesthouse by jumping up to help me open the fridge. How sweet. I'm sad I didn't get to spend more time in Lao but I made my choice of what I want to do next and I'm very excited for it. I'm going to the south of Thailand (think beaches) to do a 10 day Anapanasati meditation retreat at Wat Suanmokkh. I hope I learn how to clear this mind and find some inner peace, wish me luck... woo hoo!!!!!

A Day In The Life

Wow. My last week has been amazing. It's almost impossible not to be healthy and mindful where I am. I'm staying on an organic farm just outside of a really hippie/tourist town called Pai. I want to describe it but it's just better to tell you about a typical day.


0630 - wake up - watch the sun rise over the mountains sitting on the porch with kitty in lap
0730 - breakfast of bananas from farm, green tea and homemade soy chai
0900 - hitch a ride into tow on top of a water tank truck
0930 - return books to library, run into Canadian friend on his way to get a tattoo from a famous French rock star (whom I've never heard of)
1000 - yoga and meditation overlooking the river
1230 - wheatgrass shot and fresh coconut
1300 - internet and skype
1400 - internet connections shuts down
1430 - buy and eat fresh ripe papaya for 10 baht
1445 - browse, return and buy used books
1530 - eat coconut sesame scone
1545 - resume interneting
1800 - hitch a ride back to farm
1830 - go for short swim in pond
1930 - eat fantastic dinner of greens, veggies, bananas and rice
2015 - dishes, clean kitchen
2030 - hang around fire talking about The Life Of Pi and hot springs
2100 - retire to bungalow to read my new used book

Man... and that doesn't include the waterfall hikes, bamboo classes, or homebrewed kombuchas! How will I ever leave Pai?

Defying Gravity

"She flies through the air with the greatest of ease..." and then she slams into the guide, who is waiting to catch her on the platform. "Kaw toot! Kaw toot!" Excuse me sorry! The dude weighs 110 pounds and all my weight comes flying at him down a zip cord. I hope he gets paid well.

Jungle flight is an experience not to be missed if traveling in Northern Thailand. The guides are entertaining, the adrenaline rush is unbeatable and the scenery... I can't find a word that's not a cliche, but since it's true I can sincerely say it's beautiful.

I'm on a day trip with Jungle Flight - 7 hours of ziplining, abseiling and sky walks through the Thai canopy. I chose the longer course (the obvious choice) with 30 some platforms but there is a shorter 5 hour course with 23 platforms for $7 less.

The four guides - Jack Sparrow, Tom Cruise, Boston and Ting Tong (Thai for "crazy") are a mischievous riotous bunch. On the first abseil, Boston whips out a book with a handwritten cover titled "Jungle Flight Training Manual" and nervously flits his eyes back and forth between the book and the equipment. "Wait Wait WAIT!" he screams as he drops a Swedish girl straight down, while she squeals with glee and adrenaline the entire way.

The joking attitudes of the guides created a kind of summer camp feel - making us feel less like individual customers and more like a big group of friends on a camping trip (Swiss family Robinson style!) Even with all the joking, it was obvious these guys really knew what they were doing and that we were in good hands. I was always attached to some line or thick cable wrapped around a tree.

There had to be huge trust in these guys too. They clip you on and say 'go' and sometimes the only confirmation of your attachment is the whispered 'click' the carabiner make (you can't see them clip you when the line is attached to your back) and you are expected to jump off the platform faceforward...WAH!! The rush when you just let go, fall, and speed over the trees is intoxicating. Most people screamed with laughter the whole way and dazedly stared back down the line trying to catch their breath once they reached the next platform.

I can honestly say that the view is breath taking because I really did let out a sob while flying down the line, being so moved by the shapely mountains blanketed by green and tinged with a hazy cloud. Going through the lush forest could have been a multi-day adventure - there was so much beautiful climbing green, intertwining limbs, gray trunks with pale lichen patches. It took an hour long drive up a windy (thankfully paved) road to reach this place, but just an hour away there were no signs of being that close to a city while we were up in the treetops.

The only disappointment I suffered was the lack of wildlife. No exotic birds, gibbons or snakes. A lot of sparrows mainly. We were there for the hottest hours of the day when most animals would be smart to lay low, and probably the amount of human traffic through their habitat kept them at a distance from the track we were on. Other than this, the experience was phenomenal.

I would have guessed the whole group to be staring out our windows on the way back, looking up to the canopy marveling at how two hours earlier we were up there swinging through the branches. Instead, the whole group passed out in the air-con bus ride back to town, where we were delivered to the Chiang Mai Sunday Walking market. All that adrenaline really wears a person out! If you are ever in the Chiang Mai province of Thailand, make sure that you don't miss this chance to fly through the air :)