Smoky Mountains

Hello!

So sorry I didn't write anything yesterday, but nothing worth reporting happened. We stayed at a pretty shabby hotel in a pretty shabby town and were very happy to leave early in the morning. When we got downstairs to the car lot, some very nice fellow drivers had decorated our Toyota with ribbons and a poster for my birthday. I thought that was very sweet. Thank you Simon.
We drove a lot over the last few days. Around 500-600 km per day, a lot of it on twisty mountain roads. These remote roads would have afforded us some spectacular views of the mountains and today of the mighty Mekong river that flows down here all the way from Tibet. But the problem is that everyone is busy burning brush and clearing forests with fire that that entire northern part of Thailand is covered in a blanket of smoke. You can't see at thing--even the tropical sun could not overcome the dense dirt in the air. The government is trying to stop this, but with no success. The amount of pollution that is produced here must be of global concern.
This could have been an amazing view of the river snaking its way through the mountains of northern Thailand, but the smoke was so dense, we had a hard time breathing.

We arrived in Vientiane, Laos, around 2.30 pm. It's a pretty nice little town, on the edge of the Mekong river. We'll spend one night here and tomorrow drive on to Luang Prabang, still in Laos. 

Interesting trivia:

"Balls of light are observable from time to time rising from the Mekong's water surface in the stretch of the river near Vientiane. These are sometimes referred to as Naga Fireballs. The locals attribute the phenomenon to Phaya Naga, the Mekong Dragons."

Rally-itis

From conversations with fellow drivers on this trip who have done many of these long rallys I have learned that we all go through a sequence of mental stages on these journeys. in the beginning, the excitement and mystery of things to come dominates and everyone is busy, organizing and learning the ropes. The first few weeks, we are all focused on getting from location to location without getting lost or breaking our gear. Towards the middle of the event, people start suffering from rally-itis. You're a bit tired from driving, you miss things at home, the quirks of your car- and roommate start getting to you and you still have a few thousand miles to travel. Closer to the end of the journey, you realize that this adventure is going to be over soon and it's clear again that this is a non-reoccurring opportunity to experience places most people can't get to. A bit of sadness in the face of the end of traveling sneaks in. The most intense period of trips like these, I've been told, sets in when we are all back home and our brains relive our experiences in the comfort and safety of our familiar environments. I wonder what this will be like and if it is all true. For now, we have a lot more traveling to do and the next few days will take us through Laos and then Vietnam, probably the most basic countries on our trip. Away from highways and cosmopolitan accommodations.

Very zen...candles sitting on golden vessels floating in reflection pools. 
Even here, at the end of the world, you can't escape the globalization of American "culture": McDonalds and Starbucks in Chiang Mai. But I must admit that that grande latte was pretty good.
Of all the hotels we've been at, I think the Chedi here is my favorite. I'd like to return here one day if I can.
A picture from our probably last buddhist temple visit. There are seven buddhas, one for each day of the week. You pour oil into the lantern corresponding with the buddha of the day of the week you were born. That is supposed to bring lots of luck. There are so many rituals in buddhism that are intended to extend life, bring happiness, guarantee love and create wealth that we participated in that I should be set for life :-)

Day off in Chiang Mai

A novice monk and me...in Buddhism, you can be a monk for a day or your lifetime. Monks in training wear orange robes, teaching monks wear brown robes. 
The temple in Chiang Mai...lots of bells here. 
Gold leafing is a sign of religious sacrifice in Buddhism. I was able to buy 100 gold leaves today...I'm looking forward to using them in my work when I get home.
We visited a Chinese pharmacy in Chiang Mai. They had an amazing variety of herbs and spices there and blend them according to ancient recipes for all sorts of ailments. The herbs then marinate a large bottle of whiskey for at least three months until the liquid becomes potent. Maybe this ritual is just an excuse for people to drink a lot of booze.

Pachyderms and Zen Hotels

This is one sweet place! We are now at the Chedi Hotel in Chang Mai, after we spent last night at a dump in the middle of nowhere. It is beautiful here--well deserved after a few days of hard driving covering hundreds of miles. We will be here for three nights. 
One the way here we stopped at a place called the Thai Elephant Conservation Center. It is a very well maintained facility complete with elephant hospital that keeps a large number of animals under great conditions. They put a special show on for us today. 
Elephants have very prickly hairs on their skin.
Since it is so hot outside here the elephants get to go in the water 3 times a day. They love it in there. 
Ok...I promise this is the last temple picture. We have seen so many buddhist and hindu temples, I think we had enough for a lifetime. This was actually a very beautiful ancient temple site called Phimai. It was a huge maze of statues and temple buildings on a big lawn. Very pretty. 

Off roading from Angkor to Korat in Thailand

Our last night at Angkor ended with an amazing dinner outside at the 1000 year old temple of Kravan. It was an unforgettable experience to dine in these ancient ruins. 

Now I know why we shipped a 4x4 over here from Florida. We could not have done today's drive without it. 100 miles of very rough dirt roads. You think the road is getting better and you speed up...and here comes a huge hole. Our car did great...nothing broken, just really dirty.

It's a different world here. Our cars driving by the homes along the dirt roads caused quite a stir. These kids working in the mud probably have probably never seen anything like that...25 4x4's driving by in one day. 

Stuff is still transported by cow and carriage in this part of the world. Here is our fellow driver Sir Terence English and his partner in front of us in their Land Cruiser.

Angkor Temples

The stupa towers of Angkor Wat. These huge sandstone towers are also the national symbol of Cambodia on the country's flag.
Lots of elephants in Cambodia, in tourist places, but also wild in the forests. 

The over 200 large face sculptures in the temple of Bayon make you feel like you are watched anywhere inside this big temple. 

The temple of Ta Prohm in the Angkor complex was my favorite. It has not been restored and the forest had 400 years to overgrow the site resulting in incredible views. Somehow the massive plant growth makes the age of the buildings more tangible and impressive.

You can drive through a lot of the temple areas, they are so large!

Yummy fried tarantulas

The Cambodian countryside offers a lot of interesting sights. It is a totally different world out here. People's activities revolve around farming and hauling basic materials from a to b...small horses pulling carts filled with rice or bamboo chicken cages, mopeds with baskets strapped to them filled with small pigs, tuc tucs with bundles of live ducks tied together by their feet. The concept of animal cruelty definitely does not exist here.

We visited a rural market on our way and found a local delicacy: fried tarantula. Piles of large fried spiders on platters...and some buckets full of live specimens, big and hairy. I am somewhat of an arachnophobic person, so this sight really got me. No, we did not try them.

No matter how rural you get here, the children leaving school on their bicycles all wear uniforms. Blue skirts or pants and nicely starched white shirts. It is a beautiful sight. 

We are here at the Raffles Grand Hotel D'Angkor now, a very nice old palace close to the temples of Angkor Wat, which we will visit tomorrow. I'm very excited to see this temple of all temples here in Cambodia. A 1000-year old massive site in the middle of the jungle.

Links to other trip blogs!

Some of our fellow travelers also have their own blogs covering our journey. Check them out!

Tim Franey:

singaporetomacau.blogspot.com

Paul Wignall:

paulwignall.blogspot.com

$290

We explored Phnom Penh today. The way to get around here is by Tuc Tuc, which is a moped with a carriage attached to it that can very slowly carry up to 4 passengers. So my father and I took one of these to the Russian Market, a typical very basic bazar...similar to what you can find in other developing countries of the world. A mix of raw meat hanging from hooks, dried fish, little shops filled with all sorts of spare parts for mopeds, tourist t-shirt shops and buddhist paraphernalia. Counter to our expectations of a total tourist trap, this market was authentic and also a place where local Cambodians went to buy groceries and the occasional Moped cylinder block. When we exited the market, we instantly got approached by numerous Tuc Tuc drivers who wanted to take us somewhere. We discussed for a few minutes what our next adventure should be and decided that we'd like to get back to the hotel. So we agreed to one of the Tuc Tuc drivers to take us. But he was second in line to some older guy who had been ahead of him and proceeded to rip the guy's key out of the ignition. They got into a major argument...we had to switch to the other Tuc Tuc...the old guy drove us for 15 minutes and then stopped and turned around to communicate to us that he had no idea where the hotel is. Anway...the point for me was: the Tuc Tuc ride was $3, and we didn't even bargain. It was a 20 minute ride. Right afterwards in the hotel I had to pay $30 to get our internet activated for another day. That made me think...one day of internet, that's 10 Tuc Tuc rides for the guy...

1 Tuc Tuc ride, 20 miuntes: $3

2 T-shirts at Russian Market: $5

1 Day of internet access at our hotel: $30

1 Year's average income per capita in Cambodia: $290

1 Night at our hotel: $400

My friend Darvish's blog

I am very lucky to have found a fellow artist and friend who is also traveling in our group: Darvish Fakhr. He's a great painter living in London, check out his website and work at www.darvish.com. 

Darvish is also writing a blog for our trip: seasiarally.blogspot.com

Brother number One

One eventful day! We made our way for hundreds of miles through rural Cambodia, a lot of it on dirt roads. For the first time on our trip, my cellphone did not work and our GPS navigation system did not have any maps of the area available. As we finally approached the country's capital, Phnom Penh, we detoured to the Genocide memorial center at Cheung Ek. 

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot ("Politique Potentielle") took power in Cambodia. Pol Pot and his communist party believed in the Maoist idea of the supremacy of the agrarian working class, the "agrarian communist utopia". In order to achieve his idea of the perfect agrarian state, Pol Pot forcefully evacuated all major cities and executed more than 26% of the Cambodian population. Every teacher, doctor, lawyer, scientist or person affiliated with the former government was captured, hauled off to a nearby killing field, forced to dig their own mass graves and then hit in the head with steel bars or farming tools until they were dead. Bullets were considered too "capitalist" to be used for this purpose. Babies and children were held by their feet and their heads slammed into a tree, which is still standing there, until they perished. At Cheung Ek, where we were today, 20000 humans were exterminated in this incomprehensible manner and the traces of these relatively recent events are still visible. 300 were killed every day until the Vietnamese liberated the place in 1978. Some had to wait until the next day in nearby shacks because the killers were exhausted for the day. Bone fragments, clothes of victims half buried in mass graves, a building stuffed with 9000 skulls, most of which show fractures and other signs of blunt force. After all that, there were no teachers, doctors, lawyers or educated citizens left in Cambodia and it took until now that these systems are established again. 

How is it possible that a human loses all humanity? We found a few answers. The killers were mostly indoctrinated teenagers who didn't know better. Plus, if you did not want to do the killing, you were killed yourself. But still...it appears that mankind has this potential to turn into animal stored somewhere, readily available.

This is a very current topic, as some of the surviving perpetrators ("Duch") are now on trial at a UN war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh. We are here for two days in Phnom Penh and I'm sure we will learn more about this. 

Pol Pot died from "natural causes", guarded by the Thai military in his own home, age 72, in 1998. Well done indeed. 

Crossing a Chasm

While geographically neighboring, Thailand and Cambodia feel worlds apart to me. A few hours ago, we arrived at the Kho Kong resort right at the border between the two countries, on the Cambodian side. The hotel here is a huge post-communist palace with slot machines, gambling tables and lots of marble. Gone are the days of Ginger tea, warm smiles and Lotus flowers. Things are a lot harder here. I feel more watched here than in Thailand. Maybe my view of it all is tainted by what I know happened here 30 years ago. Or maybe it is possible that certain events and experiences can permanently change the collective consciousness in a country and therefore how we as visitors experience the place. Tomorrow will be my day for dealing with this: we'll be in Phnom Penh. We will visit the genocide museum at Cheung Ek...the killing fields where during the Khmer Rouge regime Pol Pot and his insane communist followers killed 2 million people. I hope I can manage to see past the image of this awful history and find beauty in Cambodia. 

Venice of the East

Our morning started very early today with a 6.50 departure on a traditional Thai long-tail boat. We first spent about an hour exploring the many canals that weave their way through the city and gave Bangkok the title of "Venice of the East", although the water is much dirtier and the way people live along these canals is a lot simpler than in Italy. From the canals you have a very good view into the Thai homes there...people in bare rustic homes preparing something in their kitchen, nursing a child or playing with a dog. It was a very unique view, away from what you'd typically see as a tourist. 

After the canals, the boat took us to two important and huge Buddhist temples in the city. The largest and most famous Buddhist temple here in Thailand is the Grand Palace, which houses the Emerald Buddha, an ancient statue carved out of a block of jade that is the palladium of the city of Bangkok, the sacred thing that keeps the city safe. It was nice to see all this, but there were so many fellow visitors around us plus the temperature was around 95 degrees and our visit was a bit of people and temple overdose.

We then took the boat to the Royal Barge Museum. The museum houses the gold-covered long tail boats that the royal family here uses on the Chao Phraya river for special ceremonies. Incredible boats..120 feet long all carved and gold plated...

After that, we continued our to in an air-conditioned van (thank god) and we were driven to a huge jewelry market where an army of pushy salespeople tried to talk us into buying expensive gifts. We left as quickly as we could...ran back to the Oriental Hotel and indulged in a 90-minute Ayurvedic massage-the highlight of our day so far.

Tomorrow...driving driving driving...out of Thailand, into Cambodia. Let's hope they cleared all the landmines. Take care!

Nirvana?

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism

Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering.

Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or people that we consider the cause of happiness.

Suffering ends when craving ends, when one is freed from desire. This is achieved by eliminating all delusion.

Reaching this liberated state is achieved by following the path of the Buddha.

Our long journey today took us up North into Bangkok. The first 100 miles we drove along the Thai coast through very simple little fishing villages. We saw little harbors, fishermen scraping dried little fish that looked like sardines off the tables in the sun. The air smelled like a blend of fish, incense and garlic everywhere. 

At the end of our coastal route we climbed up a hill to a beautiful Buddhist temple, the temple of Khao Thongchai. Based on the size and quality of the temple buildings this must have be a very important site in Buddhism. A 60-foot golden Buddha sits in front of the temple, overlooking the Thai sea. 

My father and I agreed that Buddhism and the celebrations of this religion we have witnessed so far don't really feel like the religions we are used to. The temples and shrines don't intimidate. Their churches don't instill fear. There are no depictions of suffering, men nailed to crosses and hellish demons on the walls. The images that are on the walls depict life in the village. The people getting together and celebrating something as a group. People are smiling on these pictures in the temples, working, talking...it seems like this is a religion from a person (Siddhartha Gautama) for the people. No fear of hell here.

We got un-enlightened pretty quickly when we approached Bangkok on a 6-lane highway. This monster city of 10 million people must be the reason why we have holes in the ozone layer and global warming. The whole place is covered with a blue-grayish smog cloud that makes your skin tickle, gives you a dry cough and a bitter taste in your mouth. You feel like you're sucking on a truck exhaust when you walk around here. But the Oriental Hotel that will be our home for the next two days is a very nice oasis in all this chaos here.

Tonight we're going to the Suan Lum night market...we were told to be very careful here. Lots of shady tourists and even shadier locals. More tomorrow!