Day 26 - Hill Tribe Trek in Sapa

I am wiped out.  T spent his childhood growing up doing stuff like this - trekking up hill sides, crossing streams, following narrow water buffalo paths along ravines.  Or almost stuff like this. He is cut from a more hardy cloth than I.  And he's wiped out too.

That is because we've just taken the night train from Hanoi to Lo Cai, another hour transfer by car after our 6 am arrival, and then hiked through 4 different villages over the course of the past 5 hours. 

I don't think I've ever walked 5 hours anywhere.  Seriously.  I am thinking about it right now.....mmm.  Nope, don't think so.  But this has been fantastic, rewarding and maybe the highlight of the trip thus far.

But first lets say a couple words about the night train.  I can hardly leave you to think that this was hard core in any sense.  They pulled out a red little mat before you boarded the train, had lots of liveried gents to help you with your bags, we had gotten a private cabin for us two, and it was trimmed out in dark wood and fluffy blankets.  

Somehow this was not what T was expecting though.  Included in his vision was a sitting room and at least a mini-fridge from which you could mix yourself a respectable martini.  No matter, because we were cosy enough.  And we were tired enough.  And as we pulled out of the station, we had the luxury of falling asleep to an older form of entertainment - the cityscape turning to countryside outside our train car window.  The train rocked back and forth.  It took a while to fall asleep.  We tossed and turned.  And before we knew it, we pulled into our stop.  

Finally, it was cool!  And it got cooler and foggier the closer we got to Sapa, which was only 35 km away but took over an hour to drive.  We cut back and forth across a large mountain, part of the Tonkanese Alps.  

From what I can tell thus far, Sapa is a backpackers' town.  For some reason, tourists began coming here 15 years ago.  Now there is a bit of an infrastructure to support it.  A nice hotel, with a hot tea to greet you on arrival, a lovely big breakfast, handsome fireplaces, free wifi in your hotel room.  Most restaurants advertise things like "Western-Style!" "Hot Coffee!" "Ice Cream!" in the windows.  

And yet it still feels real too.  Its still a very small town (only 3000 people).  The people still wear their native dress as part of their everyday custom.  Some of the Hill Tribe people speak English, which they've learned from tourists, but it's not to harangue you all day long to buy postcards or visit their shop.   And after spending the day hiking with four women from the Black Hmong tribe, I can honestly say that they are kind, funny, garrulous - wonderful people to be around.

So, our itinerary was described thus: 

You first sneak through the Sapa market and leave the busy town behind. After a couple of minutes, you follow a road going downhill to Cat Cat village. You will stop by a waterfall and a hydroelectric station for a while before continuing the trek on a dirt trail through rice paddy terraces. You also will enjoy spectacular scenery while walking along a narrow river. You eventually arrive in Y Linh Ho village of Black Hmong minority, where you can take a rest while you are served lunch nearby the river. After lunch, you head toward Muong Hoa valley. You will pass through Lao Chai village of Black Hmong minority and then Tavan village of Giay minority by following a very popular trekking route.

I envision maybe a couple towns, a bucolic little stroll through a rice paddy-- that's about it. But before long, we set off from the cobblestone steps in Cat Cat Village and started a proper trek.  It was breathtaking.  It is a world a way from any place I have ever been, and probably any place I will ever be.

Within the first half an hour, three women joined us from the Black Hmong Minority.  These three women where friends, the eldest one of which was Ye.  Our guide Cho told us that some time in the past 3 or 4 years, women from the tribes left their villages and started following tourists as a way of hopefully selling them some of their goods.

Now I don't know about you, but being jaded, this didn't sound very promising.  Thus far, having people follow you around trying to sell you stuff has proved to be a bit miserable.  Now, consider what Cho told us next.  These women will follow us on our trek today.  They know that tourists wont by anything from them at the beginning of their trek, because they won't want to carry it.  On the other hand, if they wait too long, someone else will come and start to follow you.  So it's bound to happen - if you walk around here, you'll always be followed by a small group.  And if other Hill Tribe women notice that you are "taken," they won't attempt to join the group, or to sell you anything.  They figure that if you won't buy from women who have followed you for 4 hours, you certainly won't by from them.

The women will follow us all day?? My skepticism faded quickly as we got along.  They talked among themselves.  Our guide, who spoke the language of the Black Hmong, translated certain things for us.  We met one of their son's in a village we walked though.  And as the terrain got more difficult and slippery, they were quick to help me out - even to help T out.

And we needed help indeed.  T was the first man down, but only because I had the help of three women clucking over me, holding my hand as we walked down a steep, sandy incline to the river bank.  We arrived at the river basin.  It being not yet rainy season, there was a promising enough looking path we could make, hopping from stone to stone.  Suffice to say, T slipped off one stone into the water and managed to wade several feet with water up to his ankles, swamping his shoes, his socks, his pants and all! Here comes Ye to the rescue!

We are all laughing.  T is making comments about being the only man and yet being the only one to end up in the drink.  But I think that was preferable to what happened next to me.  Just 15 minutes later, we are walking along the border of a rice paddy when I manage to plunge most of one foot into a very muddy mess.  Another one of our friends to the rescue, making some sort of comment about me being muddy like the water buffalo. 

Over the course of the next 4 hours, the road gets steep, gets narrow, follows along paddy embankments, through stands of bamboo, over little bridges.  We see water buffalo, we see lots of pigs, piglets, pregnant pigs, ducks, chickens, chicks, dogs, puppies.  Little cats sitting on the occasional roof.  

We see people weeding the paddies, sowing the rice seeds, building up the paddy embankment, creating bamboo fences to protect the rice shoots from the free ranging buffalo and pigs. Paddies! Terrace after terrace, steep and narrow on land that hardly looks like its worth the time to cultivate, and wide and sloping, down closer to the river bank.  For these families, none of the rice will be sold.  It is their one crop of the year and will all be used to feed their families.

And at the end, I was very happy indeed to buy some of the things these women had made.  It was the exact opposite of all the disappointing tourist trap floating markets, walking markets, night markets we had yet seen.  Unlike the undistinguished faff at those places, these women had made the little things they had carried all along in their bamboo baskets.  All day long today, they would prepare the hemp, stripping the fiber with their nails, splitting the fiber, twisting it with another strand, and wrapping the growing ball of hemp in their hand.  They did this all as we walked.  They would then boil for 3 days, make soft and pliable with wax, weave and dye.  So it was personal - these women had prepared the hemp, woven the fabric, made the indigo dye, embroidered their designs.  I was only too thankful for their company.  And to have something to remember them by.

Hanoi, the "Hilton" and Ho Chi Minh

We arrived last night in Hanoi at 8pm.  Having been here less than 24 hours, I've seen enough to form the opinion that this is a bit of complicated place.  Complicated, charming and truly different.

Lets start with the traffic here.  Its not "traffic" like traffic in Bangkok.  Here I am talking about wide boulevards, bordered by three or four story shop houses stretching out all the way to the airport 45 minutes outside of town.  Run down, but not dirty.  The first thing I noticed about drivers here is the Hanoi Honk.  Its a polite little honk, sounded at any potential juncture, to be interpreted across a wide variety of scenarios.  For example, you honk to take a left, to take a right, to go straight.  To make sure the one of a million motorcyclists is not caught unawares.  You honk to say hi.  In 45 minutes, our driver honked about 45 times.  

But then again, he drives here and it makes sense to have ones wits about you.  To err on the side of caution.  To over-communicate even.  You see these are the most egalitarian boulevards I have ever seen!  Cars and motorcycles of course are to be expected.  And bicycles too - no problem on the highway - in the middle lane even.  In fact, two wheeled modes of transportation are even afforded extra accommodations it seems!  Wrong way down a one way?Exiting on entrance ramps?  No problem!  Crossing a median to go the other direction, pulling out in dead of night into oncoming traffic?  Eh, just a bit of a problem!  

This place is a gem.  None too shiny.  Maybe one of those old ones with a rose cut.  The old Hanoi Metropole is french and beautiful, it's belly fired with the hum of a good bar and jazz in the evenings.  No hint of mega-malls encroaching.  Kids, sitting on low-slung stools eating dinner, spilling out out of the open-fronted noodle shops and out into the street.  And from what I can tell, these people are live in a very different frame of mind.

We started our day with a half-day tour of the city, guided by quite possibly the most ill-suited tour guide known to man (I would think to be a tour guide, you should like to talk).  In half a day, we visited the Ho Chi Minh complex, the Hoa Lo Prison, the Temple of Literature and got noodles in Old Quarter.  This feat of course was made easy by the sheer fact that our guide a) sprinted ahead of us, b) rushed us if we lingered and c) didn't explain anything.

What did glean, however, that people truly revere Ho Chi Minh.  I think the only parallel I can draw is to how devout Catholics revere the Pope.  He is the country's great liberator and man of culture.  He sacrificed for his people (he never married).  He lived a simple life (in a simple home built for him by his people).  He predicted the end of the American War (before his death in '69).  And against his dying wishes, his people embalmed him and put him on display, so that the South Vietnamese could pay their respects to him once their country was reunified. In fact this is still being done, as many Vietnamese consider it important to make the pilgrimage here to pay their respects before they die.

Now, I was not allowed to go see Uncle Ho due, I am told, to my "exposed armpits."  Eh??  I did get to join up with a million school children from the countryside, and parade around and past the house he lived in.  And I went into the Ho Chi Minh museum.  

Being uninitiated, I thought the people would be hard pressed to fill a giant museum with the memorabilia of a single person, but fill it they did!  With bronzes.  With memorials.  And my personal favorite, pictures of memorials in other places. Snapshot and inscription: "Uncle Ho in Budapest." "Uncle Ho in Moscow" "Uncle Ho in Hue." 

The thing I don't get is despite being Communist, they get none of the free stuff.  No free medicine.  No free schooling.  They do get to vote however, for the one guy the one party nominates for election.  And all this we learn from our guide, without any sense of irony, sarcasm or incredulity.  We are far from New York indeed.

My point is not that these people are backwards or a bunch of chumps.  They have over 30 universities, for example.  Their art market is thriving.  There city had integrity.  They are gracious hosts to the Americans and the swarms of French who come to visit, even while memorializing  the scourge of the Imperialists in various museums like Hoa Lo prison.

Coined the Hanoi Hilton by the American fighter pilots captured during the Vietnam war, the museum made on the site of the Hoa Lo prison was as interesting as a set of historical facts, and as a living representation of their interpretation.  Most of the museum memorialized the first hundred years of the prison's use, mostly by the French to imprison and tourture political insurgents leading up to and during the French War.  There were several rooms dedicated to the brief period where they used the prison to house American POWs.  These were filled with nice sweaters, cigarettes, an example of an American "Begging Card," campy pictures of pilots feasting, decorating a Christmas tree, opening packages from home.  They even displayed John McCain's flight suit in full regalia.  All very weird.  And weirder still, despite this place being dark, dank, and completely outdated, the prison continued to be used until 1993.

We then went to the Temple of Literature, which was founded in the 11th century by the Mandarin Royal Court.  It was pretty, it was dedicated to Confucius, it was the first university in Vietnam.  Wish I could tell you more - that's about all I could get out of our guide.

After a busy morning, we got ourselves a lovely $2.50 meal of beer and

steaming Bun Bo Nam Bo.  Wheat noodles, sour beef, bean sprouts, peanuts and lime.  Good stuff.  Real good stuff.  I am happy to report, that "Fancy Food" is back in full swing.

Day 22 - Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom

For our last day of touring in Cambodia, we saved the best for last including sunrise at Angkor Wat, and the second largest complex Angkor Thom.   

T and I were to rendezvous with our guide at 5:20 am, so we could make the drive and arrive early for a good seat to catch the sun rise. As I put on my touring togs, I was reminded of a great line in the second book of Little Dorrit. Dickens is at his best, pillorying a certain type represented by the young Tip Dorrit. Tip along with his family has recently come in to an inordinate amount of money after spending twenty-some-odd years in debtors prison.  Now being wealthy, the Dorrits make up for lost time by taking a European.  The book opens with them in the Alps, and with Tip at his most haughty, condescending to converse with a fellow traveller by the fire. And Dickens roasts him indeed, describing Tip thus: "He was dressed in the very fullest and completest travelling trim. The world seemed hardly large enough to yield him the amount of travel proportionate to his equipment." Oh Charles, oh Chuck.  How funny you are!

But it got me to thinking about travel attire.  There are many factors to consider: 1) the damn heat, 2) the damn mosquitoes and 3) the damn steep stairs and tiny treads that the Angkoreans sadistically employed to connect galleries (i.e. floors).  Apparently the harder they are to climb, the more analogous they are to difficulty of attaining heaven.  For me, this means I should dress as a cross between Indiana Jones and high school version of myself.  Khaki pants, t-shirts, and Patagonia tied around my waist.  Top it off with my hair stuffed under my husbands explorer hat (Sorry Rye and Jen, I have a bad habit of making good use of T's gifts).  And my tennis shoes.  After an hour or two in the late afternoon heat, the outfit coalesces into what I consider to be a proper sweaty mess.

T has the additional consideration of also acting as our dromedary.  You name it, he's toting it - my cold medicine, Off wipes, sunscreen, maps, passports, wallets, blackberries, receipts, the hotel card, sunglasses case.  Luckily enough, he got an appropriately named "Ex-Officio" Traveller's vest from his valentine, bought at the only Orvis inside of 5 Burroughs.  Don that bad boy over a Nike workout shirt recently acquired on the cheap.  Pull on some linen pants--the subject of a breakdown in Barney's when purchased (I think it had to do with the pants having an exposed drawstring?).  A voila.  A second proper, even sweater mess!

We had the morning by the reflecting pond at Angkor Wat waiting for the sun to rise, to cultivate a better understanding other's interpretation of travelling trim.  There are some who chose the nylon route, or the high-healed/mini-skirted route as chronicled in T's Post-Postscript yesterday.  But there are also those who have -- how should I say -- decided to go "native."  This usually includes a combination of a) Angkor and/or Singha Beer Tee b) purple swami pants, with the inseams meeting somewhere be the knee and ankle, c) flip-flops, and d) pointy rice patty hat, bought at the nearest tourist trap.  Typically, this is accompanied by a beard if a man, and a headscarf if a woman.  Never mind that this version of a hot sweaty mess has almost nothing to do with the actual native togs of the countrymen from which they were purchased.  Do borrow a bit from Dickens, there would hardly seem to be a backpack big enough to accommodate the stereotypes from which this equipage was drawn.

Oh good fun.  

But the view was splendid, the temples were interesting and our guide was marching us along as intent as ever.  Angkor Wat itself was large, with the whole of the first gallery being carved sandstone with various Hindu epic scenes, images of Vishnu, of the Naga, of Garuda, etc.  It was said that 7,000 slaves labored for the 40 or so years it took to build this complex.  That the amount of Sandstone quarried from 55 km away was equivalent to the amount of material used to build the great pyramid.  That if the same complex were to be built today, one team of engineers estimated that it would take 300 years.  And that the Khmer Rouge had hid in the complex during the civil war.  Despite being atheist, they didn't destroy the religious images, but rather used its galleries and halls as hideouts.  Americans dropped a bomb nearby the temple, which caused one of it's south towers to fall.

Angkor Thom, and specifically the Bayon temple within it was my favorite

 of the 10 or so we saw over the course of our 3 days.  It was the first place I really felt like I understood the term "Mountain Temple" used to describe this style, with is representative of the Hindu belief about the mountain at the center of an ocean representing heaven.  The temple had massive stone faces at the top of its many towers, successively on higher galleries towards the center.  Climbing up the galleries, you could walk between narrow alleys, looking up at the faces above you and the blue sky above them.  

Day 21 - The Minor Wats

Yesterday we were run ragged, touring the lesser known wats, palace gates and other ruins. Most of the 200 ruins and temples in this area were built by the Khmer people as Hindu temples dedicated to Vishnu between the 9th and 12th century.  During most of that time, this area was considered the capital of the Khmer empire.

The World's Biggest Pool

We started our day at the royal swimming pool. Gigantic in scale, it was excavated by hand in the 11th Century.  Filled with rain water, it was used by the royal family only as a place to bathe and be ferried about by boats.  

For some reason, this pool really seems to speak of this civilization's wealth. Unlike the other ruins which we were to see later, this was not built for some higher purpose -- like walls and gates protecting the city, like temples to house libraries, funereal crematoriums, or in honor of the gods Vishnu or Buddha. This was pure bravado and indulgence.  And the Khmer king seemed to have done it in a big way.

It was at this testament to earthy pleasures that our guide filled us in as to the intricacies of the royal family.  The king was said to have 300 concubines (hence the big pool).  The concubines were volunteered by the villages to curry favor.  Unlike those Thais, though, the king only had one wife, and only she was allowed to give birth.  

This discussion was in contrast one we had the day before about the state of marital relations in modern Cambodia.  Here, the women's family pays for the wedding, however the men must pay a dowry to the woman's family.  I have it on good authority that a wife from the city "costs" $10,000, while a wife from the village might only run $1000.  "They are different" said our guide.  These differences includes such things as level of education, the darkness/lightness of their skin, and apparently their smell.  

Things get weirder from here.  

For example, if the man has a good job, he gets the woman for free.  If he's a doctor, they woman's family throws in a set of Ginsu knives, retail value $339. "What if he gets fired?" I ask.  "Then he must pay the woman's family."  And in the city, the younger generation live together "European style."  But this isn't smart - "If its easy to get, its easy to lose."

Other elements of sage, familial advice: The youngest child inherits the belongings from their parents, as they are the ones that will be expected to take care of them as they age.  If a child neglects this duty, there own children will neglect to take care of them.

Ta Prohm: Wat of the Woman with Big Lips

But enough of modernity.  What about Angelina Jolie's temple?

Like in America, people here are interested in Ms. Jolie. Visiting Ta Prohm was not the first place I encountered this. While in Chaing Mai, we had a 10 minute discussion about her Lanna-style tattoos while on our Culture Tour.  You know - one for each kid, a tiger for prosperity.  Yadda yadda. In Cambodia, she is referred to as "The Lady with Big Lips." While I'm not up to speed on all the details, I think she adopted her son from here after staying in Siem Reap for one month while shooting Tomb Raider.  

During the course of our tour, we overheard many guides referring to this late 11th century temple as site of the Tomb Raider.  Like - This tree was in the movie.  They put a camera here.  This shot was in there too.  Take a picture here, like Angelina.  Had I gotten off the wrong monorail stop?  I wanted to go on the Land Before Time, not Universal Studios.

For all these moments, it was truly magical.  Ta Prohm had been built for the king's

mother.  Since then, countless trees sprung up around the temple, in the temple and on the temple.  Fallen trees smashed arching gallery walls.  Roots wedged themselves between the rocks, forcing them to topple.  Sometimes the tree even has grown to keep parts of the temple in place. But for all the ruin, its was lovely and even more otherworldly.  

In a million years, I'd never have probably taken the time to watch Tomb Raider.  But after this, I just may....for the main attraction, all built in the name of a woman born a thousand years before the Lady with Big Lips.

Days 20 - Cambodia's Tonle Sap

I've never been to a place where war has so recently raged. Sixty-percent of the population is under the age of 20.  The story of our tour guide is a good example.

His father was a high ranking general in the army and was killed by the Khmer Rouge after its rise to power in the mid 1970s.  His mother's land in the city and the country was taken.  She fled, working in the rice patties.  Her 4 children were placed in an orphanage, and were raised there.  Our guide told us he lived with 100 other orphans, and every morning, the older orphans would go out and bury the others who had died in the night.  He left the orphanage at the age of 13.  

In the mid eighties, he joined the army.  He was wounded in the army.  He caught malaria.  His mother bought the expensive anti-malarial medicine needed to cure him.  I asked him how it is that he survived between the war and disease.  He said many people in his troupe died, that he prayed for good luck, and that he would avoid going into battle if he had a nightmare the night before.

In the mid-nineties, he left the army and worked for a year clearing land mines alongside a Dutch non-profit organization.  He quit after he saw his boss lose a leg by stepping on a mine. He tried to study to be a nurse, but it was difficult to get a job at the hospital.  He became a teacher instead.  He said that teachers, army and the police all get paid the same, but through extortion, police can make more.  Teaching was hard he said.  The kids don't respect the teachers any more.  Some of the parents are indifferent.  Only 9% of Cambodians go to schools at the high-school level.

And after that, he became a tour guide.

* 

The city of Siem Reap, where we are staying, is nearest to the most famous of the more than 200 temples in this region - Angkor Wat.  "Siem Reap" is Khmer for "Defeated the Thai," referring to battle in the 17th where they had overthrown Thai invaders that had long laid siege and then occupied the area.  

Within our first two days here, our guide frequently enumerated various grievances against the Thai including, but not limited to: stealing temple treasures like the Linga (phallic image worshiped in Hinduism) and Buddha; laying claim of rightful ownership for the Angkor complex; deporting migrant workers who have gone to labor in Thai rice patties; selling them bad fruit, which Cambodia has too little irrigation to grow for themselves; profiteering from the civil war, including levying heavy taxes on the weaponry imported by both the Khmer Rouge and the national government.  

(I am struck, while listening, that we never heard about this antagonism while in Thailand.  The Khmer hate the Thais, the Thais hate the Burmese.  And as it follows, each of the former had been occupied by the latter.)

As a people who have lived through much, there are many such opinions - about the police (corrupt), the French (arrogant), the Vietnamese (recently chummy), the Koreans (bad tourists), the old king (disgraced), and the current political system (still, the walls have ears). 

*

The morning of our first day, we go out on the largest fresh water lake in Southeast Asia - the Tonle Sap.  Between the wet and dry seasons, water levels vary so dramatically that in the wet season, the lake is fed all the way from the Himalayas in the north.  In the dry season, the Mekong actual changes its directions and flows into the lake from the south.  

Many locals make their living from the lake.  Many live literally on the lake.  We visited two such villages, Chong Khneas and Kamong Khleang.  

Roughly 9000 people live in floating homes in Chong Khneas, which is closest to Siem Reap.  There are tourist catfish and crocodile farms, homes that have TV antenna for their battery operating TVs.  A bar and a floating restaurant.

T and I make for a longer trip.  Our boat goes for an hour along the distant coast. Along the other side of the boat,  only the occasional hand-motor powered boat or fish-trap anchors punctuate the horizon.  

We come across the Kamong Kleang village.  "Visitors during the dry season are universally awestruck," according to one guide book, "by the forest of stilted houses rising up to 10 meters in the air. In the wet season, the waters rise to within one or two meters of the buildings." T and I were struck by that, I guess, and other things too: the "new" hand-crank telephone, the women peeling dried shrimp caught 

yesterday in the river, the girls selling us half-eaten pencils to donate to the school, the garishly painted new Buddhist temple, the young monk, drenched with sweat, crouched over the tiles he was laying.

Days 17/18 - Chiang Mai

Chaing Mai was founded in 1296 as the capital of the first independent Thai state, the Lanna Thai, or the Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields.  Rice is everywhere here, and is a central staple --especially sticky rice -- of Northern Thai food.

On our first day here, we took a "Curry Paste" Cooking class.  Before taking the class, I had always thought that the curries of Thailand were the same as those in India. Apparently, however, Thai curries are very different than Indian curries.  Thai curries - typically green or red - are based on a curry paste made of red or green chillies, sweet basil, dried shrimp, fish sauce, little toes of unpeeled garlic and various other goodies.  Any good Thai makes their own paste, which can keep fresh for one or two weeks, and is the basis for many types of dishes including said curry!

So yesterday, we took our own course in the hopes of being able to bring back some of these new found skills to NY.  I think we may need a larger kitchen to accommodate all the appropriate accoutrement - wok, steamer, rice maker.  But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So the menu of the day included:

• Thord Mun Pla-Krai: Deep fried fish cake patties served with cucumber relish.
  

This was not as tasty as it looked, and despite being promisingly deep-fried and puffy looking, actually seemed to have a bit of a soft and sponge-like texture.  The "relish" was more like cucumber and chili syrup, with several cups of sugar and vinegar going into the mix.

• Hor Mok Ta-Lay: Steamed mild seafood curry mousse 

Tastes exactly as it sounds.  Maybe worse?  I think this is a version of the Otak-Okak fish spam we had in Malaysia - only tasteless, with chunks of chewy squid in it.

• Geng Khiew Waan Khai: Green Curry with chicken, eggplant and sweet basil
  

Chalk curry up as another one of T's specialties.  In addition to all things on the grill, braised meats, chili, cocktail making and laundry, we can add curry to this list!  With green curry paste, chicken stock, fish sauce, palm sugar, basil and kaffir lime, red and green chilies, his came out thick, rich, sweet and spicy.  So delicious, I jettisoned my bowl and had seconds from his!

• Tub Tim Krob: Chilled water chestnut rubies in sweet coconut milk

I am not sure why, but I think desserts are the most foreign elements of a cuisine.  Maybe just Asian cuisine?  In a million years, I never would have thought of making a dessert with water chestnuts. In fact, I am not sure I would have willingly thought to do anything with a water chestnut.  That being said, not only was the chestnut central to our dessert, but we then soaked it in a red syrup, coated it with tapioca and boiled them in water till they floated.  Add this, plus some diced jackfuit (imagine day-old cantaloupe), into a soup of coconut milk and sugar.  Top with crushed ice.  Even more surprising, it was delicious! 

It was a great way to spend the morning, although feeling like you were with food-baby all afternoon as you lay in your bathing suit by the pool was less than comfortable!

*

Today, we tried some sustenance of a more spiritual sort by making an early morning of Wat Phra That Doi Suthep.  We arrived at the base of the Doi Suthep mountain around 6:30 in the morning to make merit.  The temple was nice at the top of the mountain - we lit candles, burned our incense and made an offering of our lotus flower.  We honored an old monk, long dead and gone, who had helped build a road up to the temple. 

But what stuck with me were the monks we met.  Unlike the handful we came across in Bangkok (all middle aged, one on a cell phone, one smoking a cigarette), these were mostly boys.  Maybe 11 or 12 - the age of my little brother.  And they looked it too, in that sweet way that has an air of being rarefied because it will all-too-soon be gone.  

 As a young monk, they follow ten precepts, one of which was that they collect all their food from the charity of their community.  Shaved heads, flame robes, walking without shoes as a way of meditation, they would approach you if you asked to make an offering.  Wait with a head bowed over their alms bowl, as you placed a little bundle of food in.  And then they would chant together - the three or four you gave your parcels to - a teaching in unison.  

Most of these boys are from the local village.  Our guide said that most of them likely knew each other; that they would stay at the temple for two or three months; that if they had a friend who was not at the monastery, he may still come and play around the temple.  We saw one mother and son outside the temple, both dressed in white, the boy's head already shaved.  His mother had brought her son to initiation day.

As we watched these boys, the familiar crept in.  Like this mother and son. Was this like my mother taking my brother to sleep away camp with his friend Ben? Was he itching to get going, she a bit nostalgic and proud at once? Would her house be as quiet as ours is when he is away?

Like the two monks emptying their small alms bowls into a larger plastic bag, the packaged foods crinkling and crackling like a mound of candy wrappers being poured into a pillowcase? For these boys, was there the little bit of excitement, of anticipation and chance of trick-or-treat?  Did they groan at the homemade rice?  And brighten at the pre-packaged cream puff I placed in?

I am not sure if this is the magic of travel or not.  Do I need to go so far away to recognize the familiar in the exotic?  Or even more, to appreciate the sweet tenderness of my everyday?

Day 17 - I'd Pass on the Floating Market

May I add two more lessons to those learned in Bangkok?

Lesson No 4: What they say about the Floating Market is true.  

Yesterday, we got up at 6:30 to make a trip out to the floating market south of Bangkok.  Aside from an interesting food market we stopped at along the way, the 4 hours worth of driving, and 2 hours worth of ingesting long tail boat exhaust fumes was not worth it.  In fact, I'm not sure it was even worth getting out of bed for!  We walked along the flotsam and jetsam of tourist rubbish, most made somewhere else where labor is even cheaper than here, all the same from stall to stall. It was a bit depressing.  There really wasn't any craftsmanship to appreciate or enjoy-- only machine made purses, resin happy Buddhas, tea lights and the occasional phallus, just in case that was how you wished to remember the city.  But I also felt badly, being pulled along in our boat by the vendors in each stall lining the canal, all the while saying "no" or avoiding eye-contact as they asked me to stop and look.   "The economy is so bad.  No one wants to buy," a man said in Thai to our tour guide. The economy is bad enough.  At the same time, I can't think of a time where it was good enough to waste money on products that no one took the time or effort to think about whether it was worth selling in the first place.

That's why I am always happy to buy food - aside from the

obvious reasons.  There is something personal about it.  Someone took the time to make the little coconut pancakes, the fried banana fritters, the "dry" noodles with fishballs and young coconut juice.  I am happy to spend my tourist money of something personal, experiential, and something that I'll remember much longer that a natty "silk" pillowcase.

Lesson No. 5: Don't ever eat at a roof-top anything. 

And while local food can save a tourist trap from being a complete waste of time, sometimes it can just as easily go the other way.  We decided to eat at a roof-top restaurant recommended by our tour guide on our last night there.  Sixty-two stories above Bangkok, the scenery was nice.  The rest, however, was not.  Miserable "western-style cuisine,"  a see-and-be-seen vibe of old men with their red chests hanging out of a barely buttoned shirt.  Fishy scallops, a burger-like concoction of duck.  Shame on me really, for letting the last night get away from us.  I should have known better.