Reflecting…

I guess I covered too much territory and tried to do too much. I feel pretty wasted. I lug around a lot of weight but don’t really work out on trips, so get out of shape. I was shooting pictures seriously, buying silks (also seriously), and doing the blogs, and all this didn’t make for much relaxing. I spent a lot of the trip in cities (Bangkok, Saigon, and Phnom Penh), which, even if stimulating is exhausting. (Am I whining here?) BUT, there’s a glimmer in my mind, that maybe after a few days it will all seem worth it. I might just bounce back and have some great results for the effort.

Book on Southeast Asia

Which leads to the fact (forget if I mentioned this earlier) that we’re going to do a book on this part of the world. Similar to Home Work, with material from me as well as others. So if you know people who travel to Thailand, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, or Burma — and if they take pictures or have communication inclinations — put them in touch with us. We might be working on a book like this in 2007 or so. Working title: Southeast Asia in the 21st Century: Traveler’s Tales.

More Coming on This Trip

I saw a lot that I haven’t communicated, I have a bunch of notes and I’m motivated to tell a fuller tale than the blogs could encompass. Also, there are the photos, which are better than the words in describing what I saw. It’s just too much trouble to add them to the blogs from the road.

End of Trip

I wrote the list of this from the Tokyo airport yesterday, but lost it twice on the airport’s lame-o coin-operated Internet setup. Christ, can’t the biggest airports in the world get an online setup comparable to, say Phut Quoc Island, a tiny place out in the Sea of Thailand? So I’ll reconstruct it now that I’ve been home for 24 or so hours.

I ended flying in at least 8 airplanes on this trip, from two-engined turboprops of Lao Airlines to a new 747-400 I took from Bangkok to Tokyo two days ago. I just about went crazy on the flight(s) to Asia, they seemed to take forever, and they were of course, packed to the gills. But the new 747 was a fabulous plane, with, can you believe it, adequate leg room in economy class. The flight crew, based in Tokyo, was sharp. The head guy was compact, early ’50s, witty, good-looking. He was mildly like a Samurai. The other flight attendants were charming and helpful. Time went fast. I had 5 hours to kill in Tokyo and after the blog/computer debacle, I rented for this cool tiny room with bed and shower for $10/one hour, took shower and slept for 45 minutes. The facility is called “Refresh,” and it does, All airports ought to have these facilities.

The flight to SFO from Tokyo was one-third full! When was the last time you had this happen? We all had 3 seats apiece, so it was almost as good as first class. Except the flight crew, American-based, was sour. Not top quality. What a difference in attitude. I watched 4 movies, read a third of The Da Vinci Code, which I love.

The California air smelled good! The Bay Area looked so uncrowded compared to the big cities (and much of the surrounding countryside) I’d been in. It’s always a thrill to get home, my sense are sharpened, the sights I’ve seen on the road put everything at home in fresh perspective. My heart sort of leaped when I saw Mt. Tamalpais. We stopped at my regular waterfall spot on the way over the mountain and I splashed water on my face and head. Home!

Women Power

The other day in a Mekong riverside restaurant, having lunch with my French friend, about 10 local women came in and sat at a table. Maybe 30s-40s, they seemed established, secure, happy with each others’ company. Energy was high at the table, lots of jokes and banter, there was this energy of strength and good will emanating from the table.

Woman Power

I walk pretty fast, almost always pass people in front of me. Walking up the street in Luang Prabang the other day a tiny (under 5') woman was in front of me and I wasn’t gaining ground. Thing is, she had a piece of bent bamboo on her right shoulder from which hung two baskets containing papayas and mangoes, she must have been carrying 70 lbs. and she sprang up the road.

Sloggin’ with the Bloggin’

I have a bit of a … uh … communication problem. I can’t keep up with all that’s happening, can’t get 10% of my adventures written up. Plus it doesn’t help that I stupidly lost an hour’s worth of blogging last night by hitting the wrong button. I’ll just try hitting a few highlights of the last few days, thumbnails as it were:

• Allan Maxey met me at the Phnom Penh dock, where I had come by boat up the Mekong from Chou Doc, Vietnam. Allan’s a heavy duty traveler, very experienced, very together and he looked cool and relaxed in fresh khakis, neat shirt, hair pulled back in pony tail. He had a fourth-floor walk-up corner room in a small hotel for $4, fresh breezes blowing through windows and sunset view over a monastery. His medium size backpack was so well organized I got him to lay out its contents on the bed and I shot pix. This will be of serious interest to serious travelers. We spent the next day riding all over the city, going to the three big markets, and then at night to watch the sunset at Phnom Penh’s lake. We’d ride the two of us on the back of a moto. Yee-hah!
• The kids are so friendly. “Hel-lo,” they sing out with the first syllable a higher note. They are all having such a great time. Even in dirty neighborhoods in cities, they’re having FUN. A Frenchman who’s lived here for 10 years said to me, “They don’t even know they’re poor.”
• Last night at the street weavers’ market (at least a hundred women display their weavings — it’s mind-boggling) I got out one of my books on Lao weaving to show to a woman I’d just bought some scarves from. Her neighbors converged on the book — they hadn’t seen it — and a 12-13 year old girl (weaver) just bored into the book and its color photos of different patterns.
• The best place to eat anywhere in Asia (or most likely the world, for that matter) is in the heart of the big markets. There’s such vitality, the food is fresh and cooked fast, you’re out of the gringo loop and seeing real life, it’s cheap … Allan and I had a delicious bowl of soup and iced coffee in the O'Russei market in Phnom Penh for about $1.25.

I’m gonna go out and ride my bike around town. Between shooting photos (probably a 1,000 already) and buying and investigating weaving, it’s been a full trip. I’m catching a flight tonight to Vientiane, to get a flight to Bangkok tomorrow, to catch a flight at 7 a.m. out of Bangkok to Tokyo/SFO on Wednesday, Feb. 9.

On the Mekong

This morning I had an elephant’s ear and a frothy latte at a streetside bakery in Luang Prabang, the old capitol of Laos. No kidding! When the spirits are with me, life can be so exotic. (Oh yeah, an elephant’s ear is a large flat crispy sugar cookie.) I’ve been on a roll since getting to Laos. The people, the towns, the weavers — they’re all to my sensibilities. The entire town of Luang Prabang (with 70 or so Buddhist temples) has got good feng shui. Despite being heavily touristed. It’s at the conjunction of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers and these last few days, after some rains, the temperature has been perfect.

Yesterday a Frenchman and I took a boat upriver to see the Pak Ou Caves and also to visit two riverside villages. The caves — again heavily touristed — contain 4,000 Buddhas of various sizes, and the upper cave has a powerful feeling of serenity, maybe due to old Buddhas in it, that I looked at by flashlight.

The villages each had many stalls selling silk weavings, and I made contact with two weavers (I’d stop at stands where there was a loom) and I bought a bunch of scarves and a few shawls. The villages were clean and airy, the kind of place where you could spend serious time in a hammock looking out at the river.

The Mekong is almost as powerful as the ocean. It’s said to support a million people along its thousands of miles journey through Asia. Water and topsoil for agriculture; boats for transport; fish and seaweed for food, playground for village kids. On the way back to Luang Prabang yesterday I got the skipper to pull into a sandbar and stripped down to shorts and went swimming. It felt so great, was maybe 72 degrees, refreshing, swift moving, deep. I bonded with the river. If I’d had a tent I could have stayed there on the banks for a few days, swimming, beachcombing, lying in a hammock (that I would string) between two coconut trees.

The Magic of Laos

I just arrived in Luang Prabang, the old capitol of Laos. It has just rained and the air is fresh and sweet. I got here in a Lao Airlines turboprop from Vientiane (the present capital) and therein lies a bit of a story and an out-of-order from-the-road dispatch from my Southeast Asia travels.

I left Phnom Penh Friday (will get back to that wild place later), intending to get to the peace and quiet of Luang Prabang that day. Fate intervened and the flight to Vientiane was late arriving and the plane to Luang Prabang took off without 8 of us. Damn!

Vietnamese Airlines got us hotel rooms in Vientiane, the next plane was at 6 p.m. the next night. I was tired, still a little shaky from a few bad days of a food bug, so went to bed early. Got up at 7, went outside and immediately loved the place. It’s a city of 200,000 — manageable — with trees and old French villas and Buddhist temples along the banks of the Mekong. I got an iced latte and a pastry, got some directions (to the market, mainly), rented a kinda dorky bike with a basket and took off around town.

I’m here partially to buy silks, as I love the weaving that is going on over here, and I think it will sell in America. I ended up meeting two shopkeepers (stall-keepers) that had wonderful things, bought about 15 pieces, and made contacts in case I come back and want to buy in quantity. I’m interested mostly in scarves and shawls, but there are a myriad other wonderful items being produced in this part of the world. I surprise them by asking what tribe made the item, I usually ask, “Lao Loum?” and it gets me out of the category of casual tourist browser. The ladies really like the fact that I’m asking who made each item and what part of Laos is it from.

Then just as I was about to leave for the airport and the flight to Luang Prabang, I was pulled into a shop by stuff in the window, I just couldn’t go by, ended up meeting a designer and shopkeeper, and when I showed her my book on Lao textiles (given me by Lesley before the trip), she got very excited — we both did — I pulled out my Laos map — I ended up buying two of the women’s vests she designed (made out of Lao shawls), two shawls, all of very high quality weaving. We set some prices for me buying in lots of 5 to 10 of different items. I’m learning to see the difference in craftsmanship and finish.

Then after landing here, and chilling out for an hour in my room (in a very old building, with broad-plank, pegged-down oak floors and ceiling fan, I took a walk before dinner on the river (the Mekong, farther up) and got pulled into another shop. This was a couple from a small village and everything made in their village (at least tonight) looked exquisite. The guy spoke English and his wife (no English) was a weaver. I left my two Laos weaving books with them until tomorrow morning when the guy and I are going to meet and head up the river in (his) boat to the village…

A friend of mine used to call it the sequencer, like a sequencing of events, out of our control, that turn out to put us exactly where we want to be at the right time. My life seems so random at times, like I get bumped into doing stuff I would not have chosen to do, and it works out so beautifully. Hey, I’m just along for the ride…