Shadows of Angkor

Shalom,

As some of you may have noticed, I am usually starting with the “Hello” equivalent relevant to the country I am in.
I am in Israel now, it doesn’t mean I’m back in the west though, because it’s officially the “Middle East”

While this may seem as big news, it will not change the subject under discussion here – which is Angkor.
The kingdom of Angkor, was located at present Cambodia, southern Laos and the Mekong delta (which at present belongs to Vietnam).
Starting as a highly Indianized culture, the area developed and prospered through Hinduism, Buddhism and finally evolved into their own proud culture called the Khmer.
Ashoka, an Indian emperor who practically spread Buddhism to the world, referred to the Angkorian area as “The Golden Lands”.
I will start with a picture to catch your attention and then go on telling stories…

This is the southern gate to the citadel city of Angkor Thom – The Angkorian spiritual, political and intellectual capital.

As I have wrote in previous posts, the whole region today called “South-East Asia” is dominated and fueled by might rivers. The Angkorian empire’s power was drawn from a highly efficient agricultural base around the royal city of Angkor which too was fueled by rivers diverted by the Khmers into their fields.
A straightforward continuation of this can be easily seen in Khmer mythology, it is thoroughly occupied with water-related deities and characters.
I will show some of the these highly interesting deities… Starting with Apsara:

Apsara is the female spirit of the clouds and waters in both the Hindu and the Buddhist mythology, the western equivalent/translation is the “Nymph” or “Celestian Maiden”.
In Angkor, Apsara can be seen depicted or sculpted virtually on every wall, gate or window. Khmer traditional dancing is also called Apsara.

Unfortunately, the main Angkor Wat structure was under repair when I was visiting and so I don’t have good enough pictures to post, the ones I do have are with scaffolding. You can easily find photos of “Angkor Wat” on Google if you want to look at it.
Here are some interesting angles that do not show the scaffolding

The next deity is the Naga, a mythological water serpent with multiple heads. The legend tells that the Khmers are descendants of Brahman and a Serpent Princess from Cambodia(Naga Princess), thus the Nagas are a deeply instilled motif in Khmer art.
The Nagas exist in Indian and Tibetan mythologies, in the west they are best known as the sea dragon dwelling in unknown waters on old pirate maps…
Where is usually says “There be Dragons!”.

This is a bridge with a Naga balustrade, the serpent is deployed to the full length of the bridge and is held by statues of warriors called Asuras.

Prasat Bayon…
This is the main Mahayana Buddhism temple of the Khmer king Jayavarman VII… famous for the enigmatic stone faces sculpted into it’s towers. One of the best examples where words won’t do any good… here are some pictures…

The rock and the flower… for those who understand…

Here is an example of old Khmer script

Wall decorations around the complex… reminds of the Egyptian hieroglyphs as myths and historical battles are described through sculpting.

Smaller temples around the citadel

This is an old moat – inhabited by water buffaloes instead of it’s original man eating beasts…

An amazing fact about all of these structures is the amount of decoration – EVERYTHING is decorated. The only thing that remains to your imagination is are the flags, cloths and banners that must have been placed on these towers when all of it was alive…

Ta Prohm, the royal temple is one of the amazing eye candies in the citadel… Overgrown by mighty alien-looking jungle trees, there is a solid magical feeling about this place, it is truly hard to believe you’re not seeing this in a movie or any other kind of computer generated entertainment.

Here are some pics of us guys walking around the place, the steps leading up to most of temples are truly an experience as they are steep to the point it’s funny to even look at

I don’t know if king Jayavarman thought his project would still stand and astonish the world with it’s beauty after a thousand years… A thousand years of war and strife, governmental, cultural and religious changes, genocide, tomb raiding and on and on… (BTW, The movie “Tomb Rider” was shot here).
The fact is that the Khmer people still benefit greatly from Jayavarman’s heritage and the guardian still stands on his place.

I am having thoughts of continuing writing a blog, maybe with a slight change of title… I guess time will tell.
I want to thank each and every one who ever read it, I hope you enjoyed it. I sure enjoyed writing it and receiving your comments.

Shalom,
me.

Sophy Village

Hi everybody,

Following a moral quest to prove I’m not inflicting myself upon Asia, I found myself volunteering in a small Village in the Siem Reap district called Sophy.
The objective was obscure, I got the contact in the form of a name and address in Siem Reap, I knew it was something to do with going to a scholl and helping out with whatever they needed – and whatever we could do.
We started with a few failed attempted to find the contact man “Chaa” and in the meantime got ready for the mission.

As you can see – this is me, being ready for the mission

I was confused about what it is that I can actually do to help, I wouldn’t consider myself a teacher of any sort,
I didn’t consider myself even as somebody who has good access to children.
The confusion prolonged as Chaa wasn’t too informative about what we’re going to actually do there… He told us that once we’re in the village, we will meet the local teacher and he will take care of everything.

The car stopped and we spilled out of it into the front yard of a wooden house, standing on 2 meter high poles, with some hammocks hanged under the house and a horde of children and animals roaming around – bearing systematic havoc.
It didn’t sink, it looked like another village, another guesthouse, more people you can’t really talk to, more of the usually beautiful country side images with nameless faces on them.
We met the teacher and he took us for a walk around the village while food was being prepared for us. He told us in general about the school and the village. A very nice guy, my age, it’s not too often that he gets out of the village.
The food was delicious, seriously one of the best cooks I’ve stumbled upon in my whole trip.
And thus she became our new Mama(or Gi – for the Hindi speakers that read this), her name is “Tai”, later it turned out that she’s the Head Mistress of the school.
We would get a far-too-big meal everytime we would come back from school and vitrually at the moment we woke up.

My pink cocoon mode

Breakfast

In the morning we marched to the school, not yet knowing what is supposed to happen.
The teacher explained in two sentances that there’s no plan, mostly what he needs from us is talk to the kids so they can hear the right pronounciation and practise understanding and talking.
I found myself standing in front of a class of 49 cambodian kids, aged from 6 to 13, gazing at me with expectation and excitement…

Then it became clear, what is going on here is not some sort of organized program that defined the rules and criticised your moves according to them.
This was an effort, nobody there knew how to make it happen, it was just a group of determined people with good intentions – a most powerful combination as it seems.
I started talking to the kids, because that’s what you do when you stand in front of the class…
Starting with an unsecure “Hello, How are you?”… The kids were so excited by our presence, they were going out of their mind to get attention, to get to say something… You could see how cute were the ones that were too shy to speak but at the same time too fascinated not to!
So it went on and on, talking about colors and animals and food and every possible subject that crossed our minds…

Before every lesson we were completely oblivious as to what we are going to do. We talked, played games and sang songs… everything worked at the moment your got into it. The kids were overjoyed with any activity whatsoever, including sitting quietly and staring at us trying to figure out what to do now. It is clear now, in retrospective, that all we actually did was smile and talk. The learning part was a side story, the main story was curiosity… and love.
Those kids loved us for being there with them, we would recieve a thick pile of drawings in the end of each lesson (that is what they were really doing besides staring at us). The drawings resembled the usual repertuar, princesses, houses and english captions over flowers, trees and the sun.
The breaks between the lessons were all about shaking endless tiny hands and throwing paper airplanes at each other.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes, knees and toes…

and….. the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhwcrI1vPts

Then, after the lesson was finished we would get picked up a bunch of kids and led back to the house holding hands and singing songs…

By the time we would arrive home (which was about 100 meters away from the school), the front yard always looked like a playground for the hyperactive

Now, I don’t know if I’m weird, but at this point I had an inner conflict to overcome. I was always a little bit afraid of children, usually I would use the fact they cannot explain what’s wrong when something is wrong… and then they might start crying… and then I wouldn’t know what to do.
In addition to that, there’s the danger of hurting them or them hurting themselves – and that is one scenario I believe no one wants to participate in.
In this case, I couldn’t talk to them because most of them didn’t really speak enough english for us to communicate properly.
This conflict was not resolved with any amazing spiritual insight, I was picked up by a bunch of kids… and they made me spin them and carry them around, chase them and be chased by them… so intense was this action that it made all of these thoughts from before completely irrelevant.
They were like little springs driven by an endless engine and emitting love to every direction!

Now, I tend to beautify my stories, I admit. But what I am going to say now is 100% true although it will not sound believable.
In all the time we spent in the village, I didn’t hear a single child crying! I was surrounded by them every single moment of the day except for when I was sleeping. This seems to be the generally true about asian children, at least everywhere I have been.
I don’t know what is their education secret, beside the fact that they seem to treat their children as small people unlike the westerners. In the west children are treated as second class people, they are screened from parts of life (for the purpose of their own protection of course).
In Asia you see babies on motorbikes, on public bus rides that are dozens of hours long, piled on cargo carts, tied to their momies while they are working in whatever job they have… At some point of their life, their mother puts them down on their feet… and they never climb back.
They stay on the ground, like all the others… just small people.

I overcame my fear of children, if I could be promised asian-style educated children, I would like to make some right away
The amount of love they are capable of giving is overwhelming, I was ready to adopt a couple of them…
As cheesy as it may sound (and it does sound very cheesy) I completely fell in love with them.

So, for all the ladies that ever doubted my parental potential, for my mother and mozes… here are the some happy moments with the kids from Sophy:

A couple of pictures from the celebration at the local Pagoda (Temple):

Nothing I can write will ever describe the feeling of having this smile directed at you…. just look at her…

I would like to thank Anne-Sophie, you made it all possible, I wouldn’t be experiencing these feelings now if it wasn’t for you.
You are an exceptional person, an Agent of Good.

Thank you people for reading my blog,
I am coming back to Israel in less than a week… see you all soon!
me.

Sea & Sand

Suosadai,

I’m in Cambodia, been travelling along the coast from central Vietnam, the Mekong Delta which is Vietnam today but historically is a part of the Khmer empire… and now along the south coast of Cambodia.

It’s a world of sea and sand, but not the usual world of sea & sand you’re imagening….

A vietnamese fishing armada:

A Lotus

Nature seems to go a little bit crazy around here… Instead of a little water in the desert, there are sand dunes surrounded by lakes with floating fields of lotus. Unexpected patches of sand in the middle of forests and plains.

White sand dunes, surrounded by lake and river

Diana taking photos from the top

Red sand dunes, surrounded by a sub-tropical forest

Get ready for this picture… It’s really unbelievable!

How much better can it get?

The whole gang: Dez, Diana, me, Charlotte and Liam

Good times in the sea… this is a genuine party boat, there’s everything you can possible think of on board.

It’s cruising all day, you’re free to jump in the water whenever you choose to…

and now, for a big announcement…
I know it was long since I said something of content – This is my new girlfriend & me:

“Ve etmaser eleiha, ve ashir la,
Ve ekana la – lo emas ba leolam,
Ve eshavea le mifgash ita kol laila,
Ve la mikdash evne ba hol asher al sfat ha Yam”
(Sorry, I do not have hebrew installed on the computer here…)

It’s quite amazing to see the differance between Vietnam and Cambodia in terms of the general vibe,
I’ve been traveling through the same geographical and ecological area, but the feeling of travel extremely varies from one country to another.
It felt like intense premediatated travelling in Vietnam and intense degenerative chilling-out in Cambodia.

The Khmers looks a lot more like the Indians, it warms my heart
Look! I can count to five in Khmer: Mui, Pui, Bai, Buon, Pram.
The khmers count in sets of five, they don’t always use the decimal system… so 6 would be Five+One…
Pram Mui, Pram Pui, Pram Bai, Pram Buon, Dub.
Dub is a nice word for 10
In addition to that, the word for “yes” (if spoken by a female) is “Jaa”.

We have Dub and Jah… maybe it is possible to build a reggae nation here!

Have a great day,
me.

Back in ‘Nam

Sin chao!

Vietnam was a highly exciting country to get into… instantly after you cross the border – you already have “When I was back in ‘Nam…” stories!
The first thing that poped into my mind was that brilliant line from family guy:
“When I was back in ‘Nam, I saw some things and some stuff and some shit…”

One of the first and most noticable things once we arrived to the city of Hue was the massive communist propaganda… The Soviet style creeps out of every street sign.

Unfortunetly, behind these cool pictures stands the “cultural revolution”. I do not intend to discuss the pros & cons of communism here… for the protocol communism is Vietnam is dead anyway – long live single party dictatorship.
The reason that it is unfotunate is that the revolution destroyed much of the authentic culture and unique religion the Vietnamese used to have.
As a traveller, a huge difference lies between visiting places that used to be something and places that are still something.

The story begins with the Hindu kingdom of the Chams that existed around central and southern Vietnam, it’s high was around the same period as the Khmer Empire(or Angkorian Empire – now in cambodia). The Chams believed Shiva was the protector of their kingdom and worshipped him as their main god in addition to other local dieties. Their culture was mainly drawn from the southern Indian Hindu kingdoms (like Hampi) – this includes architecure, art and language.
The Vietnamese equivalent of Angkor Wat is called “My Son” and is in fact the ruins of the Cham Empire spiritual and political capital. Unfortunately, the american was did not spare this monument as supposedly VC forces were hiding in the ruins and so the americans leveled most of it to the ground. To start with the site is a lot smaller than Angkor Wat and what remains of it today (although restoration works are underway) is just a few half ruined temples – most of the intact statues were taken away to museums around Vietnam.

This is called “Shiva Linga” – it is the symbol of male energy… doesn’t leave much space for imagination, does it?

Traditional Cham-Hindu dance:

Then came the Ashokan messangers and brought Buddhism.
Surprisngly enough, the Vietnamese Buddhism belongs to the Mahayana school, which comes in contrast to the rest of the countries (Thailand, Laos and Cambodia) in the region which are Theravadic Buddhists (Hinayana).
The Theravada Buddhism school or “The Ancesteral Buddhism” is a form of Buddhism that clings hard to the original scriptures that arrived to the area from both Burma and Sri Lanka.
The Mahayana school is strongly associated to the Tibetan version – which contains many additions and clarifications to the original scriptures.
One of the stronger sects in Vietnam is the famous-in-name-but-not-in-essance “Zen Buddhism” – which emphasizes it’s practice mainly on meditation.

Throughout many ages of history, the Vietnamese people stood firmly upon their differences with their gigantic neighbour from the north – China.
They have had numerous wars, which included many Vietnamese victories, but still more than a thousand years of Chinese occupation. It seems that China has regarded Vietnam as a rebellious province while the Vietnamese were fighting for their freedom and their definition as a seperate nation.
Freedom or not, a thousand years of occupation and a neghbour so culturally active left their mark on the Vietnamese ways of life.
One of the boldest examples is Confucionism. Confucius was a chinese philosopher who dealt with the questions of ethics. To this day, either you are christian, muslim, buddhist or secular – the Vietnamese look back to the confucian code of ethics when it comes to family life and the relationships of man-to-man and man-to-nature.
A Confucius Temple:

Then came the european traders… and soon enough with the european traders came the christian missionaries. The success of the christ missionaries in Vietnam is second only to the Philipinnes in this area of the world. It can be generally said that most southern Vietnamese would define themeslves as christians if anything.
It is quite weird and surprising to see so many crosses on traditional-architecture built graves.

After the end of WWII, the french protectorate ended and North Vietnam was left to be taken over by the Viet Minh (later to become the communist party).
The communist north was led by Ho Chi Minh (or as they call him “Uncle Ho”) and the south was led by the Nguyen Dynasty and was in fact a kingdom with christianism as it’s official religion!
It is for that reason(supposedly, without talking about world-drug conspiracies) that the south Vietnamese requested the help of the Americans. At that point, south and north vietnam were seperate kingdoms for many centuries. Thus, there was no feeling of unity and surely neither was ready to be controlled by the other.

The American war – as horrible as we know it, with all it’s political slime and the countless innocents that were massecared… the vietnamese have quite a surprising approach to it. Whenever I encountered something written about the american war, there followed a comment that compared it to their long strife against the Chinese and how the American war was a small obstacle in compare to the everlasting Chinese threat.
This is a drawing from the Vietnamese Art Foundation Centre in Hue city…
The style might look very familiar to all those who ever visited “Yad Va Shem”.

There is a lot of War-Tourist in Vietnam, one can go to battle sites, massacare fields that still have bones scattered around them, climb tanks and play with all kinds of left over military equipment around the country. I did not find this kind of attractions to attractive – so to all you guys that were expecting cool photos of the Vietnam-American war related stuff, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
I do have a picture of a cool cannon from Hue though

Traveling in Vietnam can bring mixed feelings, on one hand, the people are extremely nice(I find them second is kindness only to the Tibetan), on the other hand the tourist route is very contained. You will go on quite a narrow path through the country, you will see almost only what they want you to see.
The government gives out special permits to hotels which are allowed to accommodate foreigners. So there are no small family guesthouses and furthermore – there is no going to a small village that is out of the main touristic track. You have to stay in quite big central cities and mostly in very solid looking hotels.

But don’t lose hope! There’s always a solution, the trick is simple, you hire a motorbike and head out into the mountains… there you will find the views you’re looking for, the villages, the super-friendly and curious kids, the crazy foods and everything else your soul craves. Some pics from the biking days in Dalat:

This cute girl just stopped me on the street of her village, got on my bike and showed me a super-cool way through the fields down a beautiful lake… It was amazing how kind she was, she showed me around and I could see she was genuinely excited to show me around here village… We sat down by the lake, bounced some stones off the water – all without exchanging a single word!
Then she led me back to the bike, pulled a branch out of my wheel and walked away… I yelled “thank you” in vietnamese, she turned around, smiled and disappeared behind the overgrowth

This is a “wine” (maybe more like a super-spirit) made of pickled seahorses!

Life support:
The food is amazing, I regret I didn’t adopt Avner’s habbit to take pictures of everything I eat… (Be carefull not to drool on your keyboards now).
It starts from crab&mushroom soups, goes on to Coriander intense bowls of noodle and crispy pork, BBQed scallops & shrimps with garlic and onion… oh my god
Food is much better and cheaper than both thailand and laos.

Shopping:
Ladies, listen hard… There is a town on the central coast of Vietnam, that is called “Hoi An”. This town is famous for their tailors. Basically, it like this: you walk into a cloths shop, you sit down, they give you a fashion magazine (with about 800 pages each), you pick what you want – whatever you want… And the next day you come back and it’s ready… measured especially for you.
You can make any piece of clothing possible, from g-strings and evening dresses to heavy coats, any kind of shoes, bags… you get the idea.
The prices are brilliant, it is possibly 10 times less than on the magazines themselves and maybe even more if you actually want to make it custom for you.
It’s a women’s paradise, they walk around(or should I say “hover around”) going “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god” every couple of seconds… Most of them look like their eyes are going to pop out even they get even slightly more excited.

Pictures from tourist attractions and other adventure from Hue and Hoi An:

A place called “The crazy house” in Dalat – it is inspired by Alice in Wonderland:

Vietnam is the only country in South-East Asia that is using Latin script, they had quite a few apostrofies and accents added to it. Like in any other group of languages that share the same script, you get funny things…. like this:

This was a long post…
and now it is time for our traditional ending, this sunset is from Dalat:

Sin Chao,
me.

Leaving Laos

Sabai Dee

This post is a retro-active summery of Laos – land of the Mekong.
In the beginning I naively thought I was traveling in laos, but now when it’s finished I realize that I was mainly traveling along the Mekong river…
Most of laos’ cities are built along the Mekong and the river basically creates and sustains the eco-system of the whole region.

Mekong fauna:

Mekong flora:

The widest waterfall in Asia (Si Phon Don area):

The people of laos are an intriguing case, the whole population nation consists of only 5 million people.
They are famous for being the most laid-back people around the globe…
Reading into the ancient history of the area, you will find a slow inhabitation process by migrating tribes from the north (south China).

Why am I writing this?
I stumbled upon an interesting thought…
Imagine the world before it was over-populated, imagine the times when people could migrate into UNINHABITED areas of the earth, adapting to the new regions’ climate, vagitation, wildlife and so on… Now imagine being there.
Traveling over unfamiliar mountains into unknown territories… accompanied by not many but your extended family.
How do you think people felt towards each other? How did they treat each other?
Sharing destiny with only a few dozens – how precious is human life?

It seems that the point at which people turned away from valuing each other is when they were no longer on a quest for survival…
Once they got comfortable and secure, they abandoned their alligence to life, that basic alliance they joined by being born human. A void has opened up in their life and soon it was filled by competition, greed and selfishness – what eventually led to voilence towards each other.
How unnatural it is to not cherish each and every one of the people you share your home-town with…

Again, why am I writing this?
The reason is that the lao people seem to be different, it seems like they stopped at some point and said:
“Why should we take this road? We are safe and comfortable, let’s just live”.
And so they became laid-back, it may sound like laziness, but in fact… what are our ambitions in life?
To be safe, to be loved, to have a family, to be generally happy?
The avarage lao man seems to spend most of his day swinging in a hammock while the river waters his rice paddies… then twice a day he takes his boat out to see if some fish were cought in his net… stopping for a few visits to his friends, have an occasional lao-lao drink…
That’s it.
They never developed a marvelous culture, they never embarked on great conquests, they never produced any revolutionary arts… they just seem to have settled in this breath-taking land along the great Mekong – and are trying to live there in peace.
I may be wrong, for sure I am exadurating… but the general vibe I got from this land and people is this.

Enough of this,
A week after I landed on Don Det there was a boat racing competition! The small bank village of Nakasan was full with festivity, hordes of children running around with toys and sweets, music everywhere and A LOT of LAO-LAO.

The boat race and people drunk on lao-lao, happy days:

This is a manual amusement park for children, there was a genuine feeling of a happiness about this place… I could barely stop myself from connecting to the child in me and trying to get on the caroussel

and now… for the traditional ending…

Now I am in Vietnam, I have stories that start with the sentance “When I was back in ‘Nam…”

The bus ride from Laos to Vietnam was quite an intense experience, the bus was stuffed with massive rice bags that didn’t leave any space for feet… The tricky part is that you cannot raise or flex your feet because it is conidered very impolite to point your feet at people in buddhist buddhist countries.
In addition to that, I have discovered that small cartboard boxes containing chicken produce quite a lot of smell… especially if they break out of the box and shit on your bag.

This is the last Sabai Dee…
From now on it’s Sin Chao.
me.

Si Phon Don

Sabai Dii

I am in an area called “Si Phon Don”(4,000 Islands) in south laos and finally I feel like I’ve arrived at the right place…

This place looks exactly as you would fantasize a tropical island!
It looks like all of these fantasies you always had about jungles, rivers and super-slow life are actually based on truth!
look:

My Bungalow

This is the widest point of the great Mekong river, it straches to a width of 14km (!!) – and creates a unique system of thousands of river-islands ranging from big and populated to an mere underwater elevation with a few plants on it.

Several times I have heared people comparing this place to Vang Vieng… when in fact it’s nothing like it. There are tourists, but everybody leads a very peaceful way of life here… There are no late night parties and too loud music and the alcohol culture is not the dominant one

It’s wonderful around here… you can see the white people trying to connect back to nature

People fishing all day… day, night, sunset or sunrise… all photos just look great

Of the 4 thousand – 34 islands are inhabited with small river-bank villages, there’s quite a lot of water traffic. There is cars only on one island (The big one “Don Khong”)… and when I say “cars” I mean about 5 of them.

My camera broke down last week… It just stopped responding.
I looked for a place to try and repair it but there’s no place to do that in all of laos… only in Bangkok.
So I ended up buying a new camera (A590IS), it was quite cheap and it works fine… but only I am starting to realize the difference in quality… So, I am sorry if the quality of the photos will go down.

We are coming up to the visual section of this post… Sunset…

The colors of the sunset here are truly amazing… I have never seen colors in nature in such a crazy contrast. As you can imagine, it’s completely impossible to capture it on camera… The most amazing part is the color of the water… it turnes from mud-brown to dark blue and then to golden-green – with slpashes of red reflecting from the clouds… aahhh!!!

This is an attempted night shot:

The highest light (that looks like a bright star) is planet Venus!

… and here is how sunset looks on Venus

And a few more poetic photos…
This is what is called “The Good Life”:

and this is an insight about the shape of the Lao P.D.R:

Wish you all a good day, a good week, a good month
and a happy new year!

Sabai Dii
me.

A Million Cocks and a White Mosquito Net

Sabai dii

First of all, I want to thank everybody for your b-day congratulations, it’s very nice to get all of this attention

I’ve been traveling in northern laos for the last week, after Luang Prabang I headed north to a place called Mouang Ngoi.
It is accessible only by river, has no road and thus no motorized vehicles, no internet and electricity sometimes comes for a few hours in the evening.

It’s probably not new to all of you who grew up in a small village,
a kibbutz or so… so I will try to tell about with as much enthusiasm as I can so you can enjoy this too..

Village life, what would you expect to see?
Small traditional houses and bungalows on the river bank…
A small dirt street with a few shops and simple places to eat at…
People carrying goods from the boat landing using wheel-carts and their own backs…
All of that can be expected, though still what you see exceeds your expectations… at least it exceeded mine.

Pictures from the way to Moung Ngnoi:

View from the boat

View into the boat

I was amazed by the number of small creatures in the street… small children running around playing with stones and broken parts of ANYTHING they could find…
Chicken, Ducks, Gooses, Dogs and Cats… each followed by a highly disciplined row of tiny versions of themselves… running around everywhere… like a horde of mini-scavengers.
It’s an endless amount of unbearably cute tiny beings…
You can’t walk out to the street and not find yourself playing with some children or puppies… EVERY TIME!

Every couple of days I seem to find new puns about the “million elefants” part is laos’ name… This time it’s chicken! to be more precise and for those who would prefer this word: Cocks.
Laos – A Land of a million cocks.

First of all, I want to break the legend about cocks performing their infamous “koo-koo-ri-koo” scream at dawn… once and for all:
It’s a lie, these naive looking creatures are evil at heart,
they never shut up… you can hear their screams coming from all direction throughout the whole day.
What is right is that they MAKE you get up at dawn… because they start screaming at about 04:00AM… by dawn they break your spirit and you crawl out of bed.

Here is an especially large cock…
walking proudly down the main street

Some more pictures of village life…

Children seem to be much more adult in the village, they roam freely starting from quite a young age… I saw a tiny kid, maybe 3 years old – come out of his house, go to a shop, buy himself a sweet, go back petting a dog on the way, then he came back after a few minutes and paid! It was amazing to see his cool behavior… it was completely natural for him.

Luckily… I got a GREAT photo of him… I hope you like it:

The mountainous area behind Muang Ngoi is inhabited by different ethnic minorities that live in small villages… Unfortunately we did not get the chance to trek up to the villages because of a cash problem some of the guys had.
Here are pictures from the way to Ban Ou which is a small Kammu-Lao village – of which I don’t have any pictures

A cave’s entrance

You can imagine the beauty that a camera can’t catch…
Walking in golden rice fields, surrounded by jungle-overgrown mountains… on a perfect not-too-hot sunny day.

There is no way to overdo with attempting to explain the beauty of this place… but I will try to exemplify this with two photos:

Sunset from my bungalow:

And if we zoom in on it a little bit…
It looks like a pic from Disney’s Lion King… fantasy:

We went to try our pedaling skills on the great mekong, pedaled ourselves for about 300 meters upstream and were caught in quite a strong current… after a few minutes of full power pedaling I noticed that the ground isn’t moving at all… we were pedaling just hard enough to NOT MOVE – but not nearly enough to actually progress somewhere.
We landed on a small island in the middle of the river and proclaimed it our own because it isn’t inhabited… after a few hours we got visited by a pack of baby pigs… I still wonder how they got there

After enjoying doing nothing for my birthday, we went back to Luang Prabang.
Went to take a look at the Pak Ou Caves… turned out the cave is extremely ancient, people have been living there since the area was first occupied by homosepiens. In different time they were practicing different religious ceremonies there, starting from spirit worship through Hinduism and finally Buddhism. Today the cave contains hundreds of Buddha statues and a small stupa.

Now I am in Vang Vieng, this was once a small peaceful village…
Today it is a full time busy tourist town, every building is either a restaurant, an internet place or a guesthouse… or all in one.

People get re-addicted to series from back home…
There are pubs that play endless episodes of Family Guy, Simpsons, Friends and so on…

Fortunately, the landscape is beautiful! The valley is surrounded by mountains with sharp limestone formations sticking out of them.
I hope to get a motorbike, get out of town and explore the area…

Bonus picture – what you can do with some creativity and an unexploded bomb:

By the way… Laos is the most bombed country in history, during the Vietnam war – the US bombed the “Hoo Chi Ming Trail” (which is going from north to south Vietnam through laos)
with 2,000,000$ cost of explosives EVERY DAY for a few years in a row…. most unpleasant

That’s all for now,
A traditional ending to a post – sunset in Vang Vieng:

Merry Hanuka and Christmas to everybody
me.

Want to be a millionare?

Sabai-Dee…

At the moment we crossed the border and finished at the immigration office, we stood in the middle of that small border town’s(Huay Xai) main street…
A wonderful feeling gently crept back to my mind…
I’m back in asia!

The streets are joyous and filled with happening:
children running around –
playing with bicycles to hight for them to mount…
people transporting good on over-over-over-loaded
scooters, cars and tuk-tuks…
and occasional merchant passes by trying to sell stuff…
dogs making sweet love in the middle of the street…

Reception rooms/lobbies are actually the people’s living rooms,
the whole famility practically sits on the street watching TV in their pijamas…

This feeling that these people actually LIVE here and feel at home is so precious,
people don’t close themselves away from the street as we do in the west, the opposite: they annex the street to their living rooms!
There is not alienation between them and being in such an atmosphere does the same to you,
you lose your privacy concerns!

There is no problem with addressing each-and-every-one on the street, there is no problem with being addressed back…
I found myself wanting to say hello to every passing person… just for the purpose of saying hello.

From Huay Xai, we mounted a boat ready for a breathtaking fare along the great Mekong river – to Luang Prabang.
Here are some pictures from the way…

The boat trip turned out to be a lot more fun than the expected,
the view was spectacular and there was a never-ending party in the back of the boat…

My french picture… This is what happens to you if you speak with a french accent too much…

We stopped for the night in a small village called Pak Beng, we were picked up by the guesthouse keepers right from the boat,
given a cheap place to sleep, lao lao(Rice-Whiskey), weed, local lao coffee and bananas

Later it turned out that every guesthouse in luang prabang supplies free coffee, tea and bananas.

Luang Prabang has a very surprising atmosphere considering the fact it’s the second largest city in laos, it is as laid-back as can be imagined… feels like a tiny and peaceful town.
There is a beautiful night-market right in the center… and generally, it is not clear where are the residential quarters of this “city”.
Here are some pictures of Luang Prabang…

A Waterfall nearby…

A genuine cock-fight!

so… Who want’s to be a millionare?
Come to laos and experience the feeling of having a 7 figures
amount of money in your wallet!

Lao money is counted comes only in bills(no coins) from 500 to 50,000. The rate is 250Kip for 1Baht (1Shekel to 2,500Kip)…
so what basicaly happens is that everybody is a millionare

The country’s historic name in translation is:
“The land of a million elephants and the white parasol”
you can imagine in how many ways you can play with that sentance considering that the WHITE people are all MILLIONARES…

I had the opportunity to play with a pet monkey… she was very-very gentle and cuddly with me…
she even went through all of my hair on the head, arms, legs… she found a special interest in my eyebrows!
In addition to that, she is used to men around her and is jelous and aggressive when other girls are near…

she attacked charlotte when she approaches her… and even after charlotte fed her – they did not become friends.

A monkey hand… look how human it is…
sorry for the bad focus, she moves fast…

Tomorrow we are heading north to a place called “Old Muang Ngoi” (I think)… hope to find a wee peaceful village to settle in for some time… then head south to Vang Vieng, Vientiene and finishing in the 4,000 Islands.
But you all know what plans are good for…… nothing

Sunset on the mekong… from Luang Prabang…

I hope all of your plans change for the best… a million times…
and a white parasol

Khap Chai La-Lai (Thanks you very much in Lao) for reading.

me.

Not the same same same

Bonjour mes amis,

Ce poste sera en français, je m’excuse à l’avance avant toute personne qui ne peut pas lire ce.
Je pars demain pour le Laos et ce de façon aussi est le dernier poste en Thaïlande.

un petit apéritif pour commencer …
ces vues sont magnifiques de la région pai, partie des photos sur ce poste sont une gracieuseté de mon cher ami, Adam Bihari … le crédit est la vôtre.

Ok… I’m kidding about the french…
But it was fun.

I am deeply indulged in a multilingual existence, the current party includes English, French, Dutch, Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, slight touches of Flemish and Scottish slang
This reminds me of the post where I described the amount of musical instruments we were traveling with.
The days pass by filled with word-play, translation jokes and coolnesses (yes, it’s a word!), accents and abundant use of enchanting languages like Hebrish and Franglais(my personal favorite).
It amazes me to see how much happiness this brings to me, I can easily play with words all day and feel like it was a meaningful and contentious day at it’s end.

I am in Chiang Mai now, after spending a month in Pai… actually, I don’t like the word “spending”, let’s say “enjoying a month in pai”. After I came back from the Burmese border I took a bigger bike and went on exploring the seriously beautiful surroundings… Here are some more highlights:

This is my bungalow and the view from it at sunset…

This is my main evening activity:

The whole gang (except adam who is taking the picture):

I want to talk to you about dogs…
In Buddhism they talk a lot about enlightened beings… which can be roughly described as living creatures abiding in a constant state of emitting kindness towards everything and everyone around.
I believe dogs pose an inspiring example of how people could be… they express unconditioned kindness towards complete strangers, the idea of a dog being driven by prejudice or denying a person on the basis of him being different or even deformed is ridiculous. They give – simply and truly.
There is a reason to why dogs are man’s best friend, I believe with all of my heart that a dog’s company is not only an assistance in a certain task or merely an anti-loneliness measure…
There is a lot to learn from the interaction with a dog, I think it actually can help develop kindness in human beings. For me, dogs have opened the door to feeling affection towards animals and from there to any other living creature.

Tomorrow I plan to be moving on to laos, thus thailand’s chapter ends…

Explanation of the title: When I arrived to chiang mai I settled in a guesthouse called “Same Same Guesthouse” and sent adam a message with the name because he was arriving a day later… It turned out there is more than one guesthouse with the same name… and so it was – not the same same same

a tout a l’heure mes amis,
moi.

Pai

Hello everybody

I’ve been neglecting the blog for some time now… I’m sorry

I’ve have spent all this time in a place called Pai, it’s in northern Thailand, a few hours drive from Chiang Mai.
But first, some photos from the south…

Another amazing sunset…

My lovely family, enjoying the sunset

Some stuff you can make from sand

Another impressive view from the beach…

North thailand turned out to feel alot better, the vibe is less resorty, the prices are more reasonable and the people are much nicer.
Here are some of these nice people…

Pai is a cute little town, a little bit overrun by tourists, most of them thai… but very cute.
Everything is small, everything is quite close… there’s a general laid-back feeling about this place…

After a few days, I realized there’s no way to enjoy pai and the stuff around it without a motorcycle.
So I learned to ride a bike! It’s quite easy and most enjoyable… you get everywhere super-fast.
You can just go out riding aimlessly around… and it’s fun
As Mr. Pirsig said in his book… driving around in closed cars, looking at the world through a window,
is not much different than looking at yet another show on TV… have your world boxed down for you.
Riding a bike does feel like you’re really present at the place, there is no emotional distance between you and the road… or the buildings or mountains or rivers that are around you

Bike traveling around Pai and friends…
Featuring: Liam, Charlotte, Reut and Phii-Khaa the Dragonfly.

Yesterday I had breakfast in Myanmar(Burma) – I went up to the border to renew my Thai visa and ended up spending a few hours walking around the city of Tachileik…
It’s amazing how the vibe changes at the moment you cross the border, the myanmar side seemed so much more real… Finally things stopped being annoyingly tidy, the stones that make up the roads and sidewalks were crooked just the right way.
It looked a lot more like a city people actually live in.

Thailand gives a very fake feeling in compare to that, everything is so clean and tidy, it feels fake.
Most of Thailand is indeed new, development is very fast here and most of the roads and vehicles you will stumble upon are indeed from the last 2 decades or so.
It just looks like somebody lifted the Thai people in the air, switched the country under and put them back. I guess some of the magic was lost in this process… it is quite shameful, but true.

So, how should one take this in a positive way? I think the challenge of traveling in Thailand is exactly this – to see beyond…
Some people have trouble seeing beauty beyond the shit piles of India,
other people apparently have trouble seeing the beauty beyond the tidiness of Thailand…
The best of travelers would see both.

Currently I am waiting for a dear friend to join me, after that I plan to go to Laos.
I hope Laos is going to be beautiful and a nice break off the huge-two-floor-alien-looking-too-much-pink-light-emitting buses that park everywhere around Thailand…

Take care everybody… I love you all to bits!
me.