Shallow Trenches

I have uploaded two photosets from my trip to Laos. Click the pictures below to enter the albums.

The first is of Luang Prabang, which I wrote about previously.

Luang Prabang:

The second is of our MCC regional retreat in Vientiane. Expatriate service workers living in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos came together for a few days in April to share about our respective work and experiences, to visit MCC projects in Laos, and to enjoy the hotel swimming pool.

MCC Retreat, Vientiane:

My photographs from India are finally online (I recently suffered a mild crisis of hard disk space). Clicking the picture below should take you to the album.

Alternatively, click here to go to the album on Flickr.

According to Martin, a German tourist I met last year on a boat in Halong Bay, the Lao city of Luang Prabang is one of the most spiritual places in the world.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect based this passing comment, as I do not consider myself particularly attuned to the spiritual world. I think the mental image I formed was of a town blanketed with an atmosphere of reverential silence. I was expecting to join quiet queues of tourists filing through ancient temples and pagodas. I was expecting a soothing and salutary two days spent amidst relics of Buddist history.

Instead I was reminded again of why it’s best to travel without expectations.

That’s not to say that Luang Prabang is not a peaceful place: compared to Hanoi it’s a veritable woodland clearing.  But the streets are full of tourists, the markets bustle with activity (though, mercifully, not with high-pressure sales pitches), and there are plenty of ways to exhaust yourself.

We started by kayaking out to the elephants.  I had pushed our group to take an elephant ride, not so much for the ride itself as to enable us to later make the claim that we had ridden elephants in Laos.  Our walk through the woods was slow, with the animals seeming to begrudge us their every step.  Our young elephant drivers kicked behind the ears of their charges to spur them on, occasionally resorting to beatings with a small stick, or plunging a sharpened hook into the skin of the elephants’ foreheads.  I can now say that I’ve ridden an elephant in Laos, and have the pictures to prove it, but I would neither repeat nor recommend the experience.

Our four-hour kayak trip down a river through the countryside, however, was majestic.  As we propelled ourselves forward beneath torrential rains, we passed scenes of such staggering natural beauty that I felt compelled to refuse their subjugation by camera.  (It was also pouring rain, and the dry bag seemed to be the best place for my camera.)  People from local ethnic groups cast nets in the river for fish as we passed, and we went miles without seeing any signs of the modernity that is slowly making inroads into the underdeveloped country.  That experience I would both repeat and recommend unreservedly.

The following day we hiked to the top of a waterfall, swam in the turquoise water at its base, and pulled leeches from our feet and legs, leaving trails of blood trickling down between our toes.

My German friend Martin’s comment about spirituality must have been made in reference to the very active Buddhism of Luang Prabang.

The temples in the city are not historical relics — they are home to dozens of young monks in saffron-coloured robes.  Rather than maintaining a distance, as I might have expected, the monks could be seen mingling with tourists in the evening market.

This posed an ethical dilemma for me: I wanted photographs of the monks, but I did not want to play the role of the culturally insensitive, obnoxious tourist with a camera.  A telephoto lens might have helped.  In the end, I cowardly shot them from behind.

We spent almost a full day in each direction travelling by bus between Vientiane and Luang Prabang, and only spent two full days there.

Still, while I didn’t rediscover my latent spirituality as Martin’s comment led me to believe I might, and while I suffered from a head cold for most of the time we were in Luang Prabang, the trip was worth it.

Next time, though, I’d take the plane.

If you don’t know much about Laos, fear not: you’re probably in good company.

Before we begin today’s brief geography lesson about one of Asia’s more obscure countries, a word on the country name. Laos is pronounced as one syllable, not two, with a diphthong resembling the pained expression ‘ow’. Enunciation of the ‘s’ is optional, as it is silent both in Lao (the official language of Laos) and French (the language of their former colonizers).

Laos is a land-locked (or, in the positive parlance of politicians, land-linked) country bounded by Thailand to the west, China to the north, Vietnam to the east, and Cambodia to the south. Like Vietnam, it has been a one-party communist state since the end of the “American War” in 1975. Also like Vietnam, the Communist Party of Laos has opened up considerably through a series of market-oriented reforms in recent years.

Per capita, Laos is the world’s most heavily bombed nation. As part of their efforts to disrupt the flow of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the United States dropped more than two million tonnes of ammunition on Laos during their escapades in the region. Unexploded ordinance – bombs that didn’t go off upon impact and remain volatile – poses a major danger to the country’s six million inhabitants.

None of that background information, however, is immediately relevant to the long bus ride between the current capital, Vientiane, and the ancient seat of the monarchy, Luang Prabang. I just threw it in for free.

Crossing the mountain range that separates the two cities, the bus ride from Vientiane to Luang Prabang is at once spectacular and nauseating.

If you buy your tickets too late, as we did, you’ll end up seated at the back of the bus, unable to see the mist-covered mountains as the tail of the bus wags in exaggerated arcs around vicious curves. If you happen to be on the KING OF BUS, you will also discover that the bolts securing the rearmost seats to their frames are missing, and that reclining causes the cushion beneath you to slide forward and fall to the floor.

For ten long, headaching hours, I was unable to sleep, unable to enjoy the scenery streaking past, and unable to converse with civility, thanks to the nausea.

The most enjoyable moments of the journey occurred when the bus driver pulled to the side of the road to relieve himself, allowing passengers to briefly enjoy a view of what, at that precise moment, might well have been the world’s most beautiful mass urinal.

Those of us with antsy shutter fingers snapped off frame after frame, reminding ourselves that digital photography is cheap, and forgetting that our hard drives are already full of pictures we’re too lazy to delete.

We finally arrived in Luang Prabang around dinner time, having lost the best hours of the day to the road, and caught a tuk tuk – a modified pickup truck with benches and a roof serving as a taxi – into town to find a guesthouse.

I am perched in the brief window of time between my return from India and my departure for Laos tomorrow afternoon. I am back at work in body, but my soul remains with the School of Peace just outside Bangalore, India.

I plan to write my experiences with the School of Peace (SOP) into a report in the near future, so I won’t go into too much detail here. In short,

The purpose of the SOP is to encourage engagement between peoples of different faiths in Asia. This is done through bringing together approximately 20 young adults from conflict areas of Asia who share different faith perspectives. Through lectures, exposure visits, and interaction with one another, the participants are able to learn about other faiths, and the importance of living with one another in peace. (Source: APEN)

I know there are those for whom the word peace brings to mind images of bell-bottoms, flowers and LSD, so I feel obligated to point out that the school is not teaching passivity or disengagement from a dangerous world (though I think this might be a misrepresentation of what the bell-bottomed LSD-trippers were about). But the “School of Structural Analysis and Social Transformation” would be a rather unwieldy name, especially as the students are not native English speakers.

I joined half of the students on a field trip in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where we spent the week engaging with and learning from a non-governmental organization called AREDS. AREDS works primarily with the most historically disenfranchised segment of the Indian population, the Dalits (or Untouchables).

At the end of a week spent learning together with Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians from seven Asian countries, I was entirely unready to leave them and return to Vietnam.

For those who are interested in reading more about my experiences with the School of Peace and AREDS, I hereby promise that my report is forthcoming.

I suspect more people are interested in seeing pictures. Unfortunately I don’t have enough time before Laos to edit and process the more than 1,000 pictures that made it past the first cut (a quick review on my camera’s LCD screen). I promise to edit significantly before I post them here.

Here’s a preview of what’s to come:

A market in Karur, Tamil Nadu.

Young villagers in Tamil Nadu watch a rural education drama

In the Christmas narrative, Mary and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem to find that there is no room at the inn. I am sure every traveler who has experienced the same situation has reached for this comparison; please bear with me as I do the same.

Traveling with two Canadian friends in Thailand, we decided December 30th would be a perfect day to hit the beach. Our trusted Lonely Planet guidebook suggested that we would find two neighbouring beach towns three hours south of Bangkok by bus. The town of Cha-am was first along the Gulf of Thailand coast, and finding a budget guest house there was decided upon as Plan A.

But Plan A unraveled quickly as we wandered up and down the streets of Cha-am, being told at every turn that the town was full. We did find one room available, but we weren’t quite ready to settle for the stable, at least not at hotel prices. The room was a dingy, dark sauna on the fourth floor, with one bed and a shared bathroom. The rate we were quoted almost made us spit.

And so Plan B took us half an hour further down the road by bus to Hua Hin. Too tired and hungry by this point to walk around looking for accommodation, we entrusted our search to the blue-vested men at the bus stop whose job description we couldn’t quite determine. Still, they seemed genuinely motivated to find us a place to stay, so we sat on a bench in the middle of the bustling oceanside town, contentedly drinking coffee in the early evening while mobile phone calls were placed on our behalf. It was perhaps an hour later when they told us of a place around 5 km out of town that would rent us two rooms for the night. By this time I was already formulating Plan C, which involved taking an overnight train south, hopefully in a sleeper car with mattresses.

But sticking with Plan B, we took a taxi to see what kind of place still had room for us. The price for a room was slightly above our budget, but as long as we could put three people into one room, we weren’t going to sweat it. We eventually arrived at a hotel tucked away from the main road, where each room had its own carport with curtains that could be drawn behind your car for privacy. Young children reading this blog should just accept that we had reasons for not wanting to stay there, older readers can use their imaginations (as we did) to understand why such privacy might be desired by the target clientèle of this establishment.

And so we went back to scheming up new plans. We were discouraged from pursuing Plan C - the overnight train - by those who assured us that all southbound trains were as solidly booked as the hotels.

Plan D was to sleep on a bus headed to either Surat Thani or Krabi, destinations in the south of Thailand that we believed would be less busy on the holiday weekend. But we met a young couple at the bus station who told us of a wonderful island far away with long, sandy beaches and endless beach resorts with plentiful rooms for all. Overnight buses departed for this dream destination hourly. Thus was Plan E born, the plan that would take us to the island of Koh Samui over New Year’s Eve. The 9 and 10 o’clock buses were full, but after a long period of sitting anxiously at the bus station, we boarded the 11 p.m. bus and tried to catch some sleep.

From Thailand Trip

And we did indeed find a beautiful island with available accommodation and long, sandy beaches. We also found a lot of rain, and the most dangerous fireworks display I have ever witnessed. May this blog post inspire someone on Koh Samui to regulate the sale of fireworks to drunken foreigners on New Year’s Eve. We were fortunate not to witness any casualties, despite seeing a few wayward explosions.

It was an exhausting experience, but we ended up with a place to sleep, and found ourselves reasonably close to Krabi, the rock climbing Mecca of Thailand, where we would later spend two days abusing our bodies on some beautiful climbs.

From Thailand Trip

I would like to wish a belated Happy New Year to everyone who took the time to read to the end of this long, unwieldy story.

While some participants in the SALT program were being thrust headlong into their assignments, meeting their host families and starting new jobs with uncertainty, I spent my first week in Vietnam on vacation.

Here, fellow SALT participants Rachel, Anna and I pose like the tourists we are outside the ancient Champa ruins of My Son in Central Vietnam. Click the photo to see the whole photo album from our week, which took us through Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue, Dong Hoi, and out to such classic attractions as Marble Mountain, My Son and the caves at Phong Nha.

It was the MCC Vietnam staff retreat, and I arrived just in time to come along: our 16-hour train ride south (longer than the advertised 12 hours I cited below) left Ha Noi at 11pm the same day I landed in Vietnam. I slept well on the train and on subsequent nights, and really didn’t feel the jet lag I was anticipating.

I’ll try to keep these blog entries short and relatively thematic so that people who don’t particularly care about me can more easily skip the information they find excessive. You can learn more about our travels through the photo album linked to the pictures above.