Our first week in Thailand

We have been in Thailand for just over a week now and I while on intend to comment on this, first I need to backtrack a bit to our week in Portland with Sandra and Sean. We headed back to relative calm in comparison to Mexico to share a few moments with them before the baby arrived. They have been furiously preparing for the wee one and have received an amazing heap of goods to ensure the child will be bedded, clothed, wiped and entertained for the rest of his life. It appears that are well armed for their biggest life mission yet and seem to have a comforting sense of serenity about them.

It also happens that we arrived just in time for a winter snow storm. Our year of summer took a turn as a lovely cascade of white blanketed all of Portland. Sean and I used this unique moment as an opportunity to cross country ski through the neighborhood to the local park filled with merry families sledding, making snow men, and generally in wintry bliss. There are moments when I love global warming!!!

It was a wonderful reprieve from traveling to be with family and to see my sister's blooming belly. She is really such an adorable pregnant woman. In fact, both of my sister's have been graced with lovely little bodies and are the kind of pregnant ladies that you can't even tell are pregnant from behind. And, .....what an exciting auntie moment to feel the little bugger kicking about in her belly.
My mother arrived full force on the last night we were there to take our place as the token family baby monitor. Sandra states she has been a working machine getting the baby room ready to go. Unfortunately, with just over a week until her official due date sandra has developed a nasty cold. If any mom's want to send her good mommie sick advice or if you want to wish her well on the upcoming "big moment" you can email her at sandraloewe@hotmail.com

And now on to Thailand. As ian stated in his last blog, our experiences thus far has been a fascinating exploration of extremes. Bangkok in all it's glory was a blur of sensation and opposition.... Wooden shacks nestled along the winding river canal against a backdrop of an hyper modern city and the juxtaposition of women in high heels, perfect toes, sleek hair, ultra stylized clothes, toting their channel knock-off bag off of the rickety wooden long tail boats along the muddied canal. This list continues with monks on cell phones, a row of Buddhas positioned on a table facing the famed red light district, and leaving behind the smell of rotting fish, urine and trash at street level to arrive at the shining floor of the sky train. Out the windows of the sky train progress runs rampant while far beneath along every canal and river way families labor along the banks to meet their basic needs. I have yet to configure the co-existence of all of this in my little brain.

Onward from Bangkok we loaded onto a dusty rattling train towards Northern Thailand. Out my window passed mountains in the distance, yellowed farm fields, palm trees intermixed with brown leaves hanging limply from parched trees, sullen cows with rib cages visible and flaps of skin hanging listlessly from their bellies, and the endless line of mopeds packed with families running along the highway out on the horizon. We spent 3 days in Sukathai to take in the ancient city of former kings and then farther on, we have traveled to Chaing Mai, a city filled with travelers, trekking tours, every course imaginable, and lovely little markets.

On Tuesday we will be going to Wat Suan Dok for a two night stay at the monastery in the hopes of scratching at the surface of this Buddhist faith that reigns over all of interactions. Culturally speaking we are neophytes wandering aimlessly about through ruins, wat after wat, and gazing upon Buddha in every position, shape while retaining very little. Armed with such little knowledge, I wonder how to break the front glass that has me peering in from the outside like a window shopper. Time is one factor in my ignorance. Determination to know more shall be my best defense.... oh, and I suppose a little patience wouldn't hurt either.

photos to go with the last blog

I tried to post these last night, but it wasn't working...they go with the blog below...

And moving on from Bangkok

Bangkok is truly a city unlike any other. At least not any other that I've been too. And i guess i haven't been to that many. But i still think it MUST be unique. We left this morning. As always, a little film of the city.

As unique as it is, getting out was sort of a relief. I can breath again, for one, which you simply can't in Bangkok. You always sort of feel like you aren't getting enough oxygen to the brain because... well, because you aren't. How could you, when most of what you are taking in is diesel smog? and then there are the canals...

Most of our getting around we did either via the sky train, which is an elevated public transport system, and by the canals. The canals are navigated by long-tail boats - diesel (those diesel engines are everywhere!) powered boats, about 40 feet in length, that are also built narrow so they can squeeze by each other in this canal network that runs through the city. The canals are the most fetid, stinking bodies of water i've ever seen in my life, and stink like crap. In fact, at times, you can actually see crap in them. So the boats come equipped with these special screen things that you pull up when the boat is in motion since it is EVERYBODY's greatest fear to get even a small drop of the canal water on them. It would mean near certain death from a staph infection.

Those two "dirty" stories being told, Bangkok is really surprisingly clean. I think that we were expecting something along the lines of Mexico City, but found ourselves quite amazed for the most part. Our biggest "Holy Crap this place is freaky clean" moment came while visiting what must be the biggest, creepiest mall in the world in Siam Square. We knew we had entered a different realm when we took the elevator to the fourth floor of the mall and found four different high end car dealerships, complete with full showrooms. Ferrari's, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins, etc. on the fourth floor of this mall. Asia at its most classic - the world of contrasts. That mall was the most high end place I've ever been to. Serious. We thought we were in Tokyo or Seoul or something. The kind of stuff you see on the TV in the states. All glass and shine and spit clean. Needless to say, we didn't buy anything.

Bangkok is famous for scams and we experienced a few, though nothing that parted us with more than a dollar or two. Sometimes we felt like people were scamming us just because thats what you do there - they didn't seem to be after our money, but were just telling us fibs about this or that just to do it. We still don't quite have that one figured out. My favorite scam, though, was the Pigeon Scam. Yesterday on our way to visit the Grand Palace we walked through a giant flock of pigeons and, in the midst of chaos I was accosted by a couple who forced bags of corn kernels into my hands. When I said no, I actually didn't want to feed corn kernels to the pigeons at the moment, they took it a step further and dumped the bags of corn into my hand. Now i had a bunch of raw corn in my outstretched hand, with no where to go and nothing to do with it, and the pigeons started going APE SHIT. They were all over me, like some b show horror film. So i hucked the corn. And then I had to pay for it. Just to get away from the scene I gave them full asking price - 120 baht, or about 3 and a half dollars. A full rip off, done well, and we walked away laughing our asses off. Or i did. Christine wasn't that impressed...

So, for the trivia question of the day for you asia buffs - a singha to the first person that can tell us HOW THE HELL the economy works here. How can near everything be so cheap, but still so nice...How does a two dollar meal including a full plate and a beer live alongside a fourth floor lamborghini show room in the middle of the city? How does a $10 hotel room, with air conditioning and hot water, live alongside an excellent, clean and highly efficient and well built public transport system? Inquiring minds want to know

if you tell us, you win the award...

ian

A safe arrival in Bangkok

After an epic 21 hour flight from Los Angeles we arrived last night in Bangkok, safe and sound, and made our way via a late night taxi ride to our hotel, the PJ Watergate (reccomended by my sister - the place is plush!). We spent today mostly exploring the city (on foot and via the water taxis), trying thai food in thailand (they have it here, too!), willing away jet lag and general travel exhaustion, and getting used to an entirely new experience. We also exposed ourselves to our first thai massage treatment, which was a VERY rewarding experience.

In many ways Bangkok feels similar to any other city that we've been to. The big difference here, of course, is that everyone talks in completely indecipherible code. They are able to write in this code too. I think that they primarily use this code to make great fun at the many goofy travellers that fill the city. I know that I would if I could speak in this code. As promised, though, most folks know enough english that we are having no problems getting around, feeding ourselves, and avoiding sleeping in the street. That being said, I WANT TO LEARN THAI! And Malay, Vietnamese, Mandarin... You get the idea. Travelling w/o learning the right code is just that - travelling w/o the code. So today we learned how to say "hello" and worked on "thank you". We will see what tomorrow brings. Trying to figure out which language to devote time to is a puzzle here, where each country has a different one (or ones, in some cases).

-Ian

Back in the u.s.s.a

Our return to the United States, entering through Phoenix on Thursday the 12th of January, was highlighted by President Bush’s remarks to the nation regarding Iraq, which we caught on an airport TV just before our flight to Portland. It was apropos, and thought-provoking in the extreme, as many of our intercultural interactions have centered on the role of the United States in the world. As a nation, we appear to have more of the same to look forward to, with a desired outcome that seems as mysterious to me now as it did when the U.S. entered Iraq. A “free” Iraq as a goal of the U.S.? I fail to decipher the meaning of that. The great sadness, I believe, is that our nation has no other option than to stay in Iraq, while those that initiated the war move on to corporate boards and wealthy retirements, perhaps hoping to continue profiting from the outcome.

This subject is the talk of the “town” – if you consider the “town” the entire world, and our greatest learning is that we, as individuals, are as powerless to change our painful circumstances as any of the citizens of the countries we’ve visited. Is that our own vaunted “freedom”? It is difficult to render criticism to my own country, especially given the blessed circumstances that I now find myself in, many of which are a direct result of my nation’s wealth and security. But we believe that we are being hurt by our own government, our security and wealth threatened. We believe we can be better.

But before we go there, lets digress from the weighty subjects of foreign policy, and look at the fun stuff.

We’ve used our time in Portland to relax and enjoy Sandra and Sean, marvel at Sandra’s growing belly, re-organize our travel kits, and purchase some new clothes and goods. I also found the opportunity to finally upload all of our photos from every leg of our trip to our photo gallery. Additionally, our website now links directly to our video archives on youtube.com. When you follow the “Video Archive” link on our website it shows you ALL of our posted videos to date. There is a new video posted using some of the clips from our bike trip. We lost all of our videos from the north part of the trip to an Ipod meltdown, but had plenty from south of Monterey to put together a nearly 7 minute short. Find it here.

Phase 3 of Hitched and Away drew to a close last week when we arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, made our way through customs and immigration, and re-entered the United States. Now we have only to marvel at the procession of sights, sounds, thoughts and smells that have inhabited us since we left San Diego on October 25th. In preparing ourselves to board a plane in Mexico City we found a mixture of excitement for what we are moving on to (The 4th part – SE Asia!), and a dose of relief to be leaving the over-insistent taxi drivers, clouds of diesel exhaust, and the ubiquitous tragedy of central american poverty. But overall we feel a sense of a trip half-done, with much more to see and learn of the region, riddled with gratitude for what we’ve been offered.

We are, essentially, engaged in the briefest survey of just a few of the globe’s regions. We could easily have passed our year in any one of the places that we visited in Mexico or Central America. We likely would have found in that travel strategy rewards that we can only imagine, measured in friends made, perspectives contemplated, language learned and experiences treasured. This constant effort to determine the best way to pass a year of travel is, I believe, the single greatest difficulty of the trip. Our friend Rosie wrote us encouraging us to include some of the “bad” in our blog. A traveler herself, she mentioned that if we did so it would help her to battle her own constant desire to hit the road again. We’ve tried to include some of the challenges: Who could enjoy gut-tweaking, out-of-both-ends gastrointestinal distress, or a taxi robbery in Managua? Overall, though, these “bads” of this journey rarely are worth dwelling upon. We are accompanied at every step by the realization that we are fortunate beyond any reasonable expectation to be able to even conceive of a journey like this. That being said, though, I find the biggest source of apprehension to be the constant struggle to believe that we are selecting the right way to travel. We are blessed and cursed with the ability to go and do nearly anywhere. Are we using our time rightly?

This applies perhaps most obviously to language acquisition. We find that language is the first key to unlocking culture and we both have set, as a primary goal for this year, to learn language, especially Spanish. Our learning curve has been steep and, while Christine still struggles with her numbers and I with comprehension, we can now call ourselves Spanish speakers, if only novices. More time would bring us greater degrees of fluency, but we are leaving, at least for a time, that pursuit of spanish, traded for a hoped for interaction with other cultures, other landscapes, and other histories. It is, in the end, a surprisingly difficult choice to make. A year seems such a long time to see and learn, but we find above all, that the world is immensely vast.

It is better to leave, though, with a feeling that there is more to be done, than one of good riddance. We are happy to find that we are the type of people that would find it hard to leave no matter the length of time we passed. We must take and cherish what we’ve already acquired, and hope for more time later in our lives to expose ourselves to this region. What we’ve done is travel overland some estimated 4000 miles, visiting west coast beaches, cloud forests, coral reefs, and colonial cities older than any in the U.S. We’ve engaged in discussions to compare and contrast politics and culture in various countries. We experienced parts of two contentious elections, learning from each details of public will and democratic involvement that we believe would never have been reported to the U.S. We were reminded, once again, how the U.S. is viewed both as a welcome ally AND as a force of economic and military imperialism to be distrusted, with a history of untoward intrusions in the domestic affairs of other countries.

I have often been accompanied on this trip by the question, “Why do we do this? Why do we spend the money, and give up our comforts and the “knowns” of our life to expose ourselves to this?” We travel for two reasons. First, we do it simply because we have the capacity. We are fortunate to enjoy the strong currency and money-making potential that allows us, while unable to afford good health care in our own nation, to take a full year off to travel around the globe. Two, I believe that we travel because we find that we can’t trust those that feed us information to always feed us the correct information. Thus, if we want to learn lessons, about cultures, countries and perspectives, that we might use to improve ourselves and our own society, we must GO and try to learn it firsthand.

We also travel so that we may carry with us lessons offered by other people. We discover that our nation is not always at the forefront of the world, as hard that may be to believe. We find that we wish to apply elements of other country’s advances in health care, public aesthetics, public knowledge of global politics, maintaining strong family connections, building effective and inexpensive transportation systems, promoting democracy through strong voter turn out, and the power of a stroll in a park. All of these are recommendations to us to improve our own society. We live in a time when our society, despite projecting power around the globe, makes stunning little effort to learn from the world. We hope that our experiences, however small, might somehow become further fuel to the flame of cultural improvement in our own society.

With that, we come to the end. We arrive in Bangkok Thailand on the 20th of January, at a perky 1 am in the morning. From there, we have little planned. As always, though, you can expect our constant recounts.

Our best to all...Ian and Christine

A bit of a mix up

Okay, so these are the photos of capula and morelia. the ones below here go with the oaxaca post. you get the idea...

photos to go with the last blog

Sorry about the delay, but here are the photos to accompany the last blog...

Getting Near the End Now...

We just returned from three days in Capula, a small town about 30 minutes outside of Morelia. This is the very town where Christine went with groups of kids in 2004 and 2005, and she stayed with the same family both times. So we went largely to visit them (see the photo). It was a truly fascinating experience, and we had a great time. Unlike our family in Nicaragua, who were relatively well to do, this family is quite poor. Capula is known for its ceramics (see the photos), and we did a bit of shopping. We also experienced our first Dia de los reyes, in which the family got together with these cake type things that had dolls baked into them. Each person in turn cut a piece of the cake (see the photos), and if you got a doll in yours, you were picked to cook dinner on February 2nd. Not sure why, that is just the way it was. We were fortunate that we didn´t get the doll in our piece of cake, as they were demanding that we either return to make tamales, or send them in the mail if we couldn´t make it.

We were feeling pretty cocky about our language skills before this night too. There were about 15 family members in this little room, all making jokes and talking to us at once. We counldn´t understand a thing. AFter three months of travelling and studying spanish it was a bit humbling. All you can do is sit back, put on your gringo face, and enjoy the ride.

Okay, enough from me. Christine says she wants to write as well, and claims that her writing will be superior. You be the judge...

Christine here, Not true that I think my writing will be superior only,... I was teasing Ian about his cake description. It is fabulous to be back in Morelia. It is even more lovely than when I last visited because the zocalo (Ian here...yep, see the photo. the one of the cathedral. that is morelia. Also, check here for a video of Christine providing a tour of Morelia´s center. I think i meant to put this one in the last blog and forgot. Here it is. ) is ringed in holiday light as are all of the colonial buildings surrounding the plaza. Finally, I have a stronger sense of the holidays with a nightly chill in the air where one simply wants to nestle into a chair with a cup of hot chocolate and enjoy the lights, music and the bundled couples strolling the plazas.

It was also really wonderful to introduce Ian to the families in Capula and particular the family I lived with during both visits there. Each time I am struck my their incredible generousity despite such poverty and it is in these moments where I feel strongly conflicted- a love for the ability to travel and guilt for my comparitive wealth. At times, I have felt so selfish for using money in such a self-indulgent way. Despite this lingering feeling, I also feel fortunate that people welcome us into their homes and are willing to open a small window into their world.
Being back in Capula made me miss my work with the Expedition Club students and if any of you are reading this please know I have been thinking of you, my fellow travelers, so much over the last several days. I visited with several of the families that hosted students and their faces light up when they talk about you.

That´s all for now.....


A quick note. Here is the third in the series of birthday messages, this one for my dear little nephew Silas. He will be four on the 12th. If you´ve kept up on this series you know that the last two were in spanish. this one is in english, though I hear that Silas is really taking to spanish quite nicely. Here it is. And yes, you can send him a special birthday message, via his ma, at rachel_joAThotmail.com

Another Beautiful Colonial City

We move from one to the next, each one seemingly more ancient and more beautiful than the last. We{ve arrived in Morelia, north of Mexico, in the state of Michoacan, and will remain here for the remainder of our time in Latin America. In terms of colonial ambience, and strolling the plaza, sipping coffee as you watch the world go by, wandering craft markets, I thought Oaxaca had it going on. But Morelia beats Oaxaca hands down. The center of this town is ancient and beautiful beyond description. I{ve never been to Europe, but this is just as I imagine some of the ancient european towns to feel. More on that later, after we{ve had a chance to explore a bit.)

Oaxaca was full of sites and sounds that will be hard to forget. As promised, we did a hell of a lot of shopping and spent a lot of time in the city{s various markets, and also made a trip out to one of the villages to do yet more shopping.

But we also did some other stuff. A highlight was new years eve. The town hosted a huge party, multiple live bands, and a fireworks show that beat anything i{ve ever seen anywhere in the states, hands down. It had the special touch that the firewords were set off virtually right next to the garthered crowd, and exploded directly over the 450 year old cathedral and the people gathered around. As i watched massive explosions followed by fiery debris raining down on both ancient structure and innocent by-standers I though to myself, ´´now there is something that you would never see in the states´´. The finale was a whole series of fireworks that had been hung on the cathedral itself. They were set off, outlining the building in fire. The next morning we woke to a new years day parade that consisted of a small marching band followed by EVERY single bus in town decked out in virgin mary regalia, all of them honking and jockeying for position. The line went on for at least an hour, filling the canyon street with diesel smoke.

We also made a visit to the ruins of Monte Alban, a hill top city of 20,000 at its prime. Wandering places like that and marvelling at the passage of time and culture in one place is the stuff that makes the arduous bus time, the barfing and those overly-insistent taxi drivers all worth while.

And finally, Oaxaca is made for walking and checking stuff out. I threw in a photo of the cathedral Santo Domingo simply because it was out of control. They don{t make churches like they used to.

Ian

well, photos won{t upload, so they will have to come later...