Photos Online

Although I haven't had much time to write, I have been taking lots of photos and uploading them few by few, onto Flickr. You can browse the photos i've put online here.

Birthday Celebrations

I know I am seriously behind on my blogging. I will get some photos and stories up soon, I hope.

I'm not sure why, but I started thinking about my birthday (October 28th) quite early this year. I was thinking that although I've been in some amazing places for my birthday over the past five years (Singapore, Thailand, Canada, Nepal, Sri Lanka), I haven't really gotten into the spirit of things much. In fact I haven't really celebrated my birthday with the spirit that birthdays are meant to be celebrated since I was a child. I just happened to be in some cool places and enjoy myself, but it wasn't much different from being in those cool places, enjoying myself on any other day.

That got me to thinking - what could I do to make this year special? The idea of holding a party doesn't really appeal to me. It's a bunch of people over at your house drinking and talking - and how is that different than any other weekend except I'd have to clean up afterwards?

I started thinking about my life and what give me joy and what makes my days special and I started to get an idea...

Then, when I went to the big birthday party at one of the local schools, it all came together. My favorite thing to do, the highlight of my week and the time I have the most fun, is when I'm with kids singing and dancing. The best birthday parties I had were when I was a kid and we all just ran around playing and being silly. So this year, my birthday is all about kids and the things kids do: three-legged races, cake, prizes, games and dancing. Lots of laughter and lots of fun.

I think it's going to be really special because the kids I'm sharing my birthday with this year have never had a birthday party before and although they've celebrated the birth of lots of other people, nobody has ever celebrated THEIRS. In fact, sometimes it seems quite to opposite. So there will be 51 birthday cakes this year and a whole lot of joy.

You can read more about the event here including information about how you can participate, if you'd like. You could send birthday cards, stickers, party hats, balloons - anything you think children would love on their special day. The party is on October 31st and if you're in the neighbourhood (which is Thailand), please get in touch for directions.

That's how I come to find myself excited about my birthday for the first time in... well, a long time.

Nepal part 4: Out of the Mountains

The wind stopped as we quickly dropped in altitude but the trail continued down and down and down and down some more. One long section was a thin rocky trail down steep ridges, precarious drops on all sides. My feet started a quiet ache that became more and more vociferous the longer we kept up our downward way.

It was with bruised toes and great relief that we finally came a suspension bridge atop a ridge looking down upon Muktinath, our camp for the night. The valley was painted in autumn colors, with red leaves drifting in the breeze and prayer flags flapping in the wind.

I thought that we might feel let down after the great crossing of the pass, but the beauty of the valley kept my spirits high. The next day we took an easy and level stroll down to the next town, through apple orchards, stopping for tea in tiny stone villages, stepping over streams and strolling in the sunshine.

When arriving in a town at the end of the day, we usually go past the first few hotels and guesthouses and settle somewhere in the middle of town. When we arrived in Kagbeni, we strolled past what seemed to be the main tourist area, past the Yak Donalds, until the only hotel left was a place up many stairs called the Red House.

Our room was up more stairs, across an inner courtyard crisscrossed with bridges and stairways, and across an open space of roof where apples were drying. From the roof, we could see up the open river valley to the Mustang Valley – an area where trekking permits cost from $500 - $700 and therefore is a mysterious and hardly traveled place.

In the morning, on my way to breakfast, I surprised two sisters cleaning the old wooden floors. One girl sat on a pile of blankets while her sister pulled her around, polishing the floors amidst much laughter. After breakfast, our host asked as, “Would you like to see my shrine?” We were expecting a small family worship place, but the man drew aside a tapestry and opened a hidden door.

Inside was a narrow room with a high ceiling and a beautiful golden Buddha statue inside. It was over 500 years old, mysterious and beautiful.

From that day on, though, time sped forward, every day bringing us closer and closer to leaving the mountains. We entered apple country, where apple cider, apple juice, dried apples and the most amazing apple crumble were all cheap and delicious. More and more trekkers appeared on the trail. A road was being built so that we often had to pull over to the side of the gravel trail and let jeeps pass in clouds of dust. One morning we picked up a local woman walking to the next town looking for company and walked together for a while. We stayed one night in an extremely strange guesthouse which cost about 50cents a night and looked like it hadn’t seen a guest in the last twenty years.

We stayed one night in stone bungalow in a garden full of orange trees. At the end of the garden was a set of stairs leading down to a natural hot springs where we gladly soaked our tired muscles for the rest of the afternoon, taking advantage of happy hour beers and popcorn for the first time in weeks.

Two days later, we were walking uphill for the first time in days. It felt as if we spent all day walking uphill. In the morning at 5am, we woke early and kept climbing, to catch the sunrise from the top of Poon Hill with hundreds of other hikers gathered for the same spectacle.

From there we had planned to head into the mountain range we had spent the last two weeks circling, into the Annapurna Sanctuary. We had the choice between continuing our trek in that direction, or heading back to civilization and exploring the ancient temples of the Kathmandu Valley. Unfortunately, Dengue Fever robbed us of the ability to do both. We opted for civilization, our desire for steak weighing heavily in on our choice.

It seemed like almost a moment later that we were climbing down thousands and thousands of stone steps, back through rice terraces and flowering orchards and down into river valleys. Villages came closer and closer together. The final descent seemed to go on forever. There were steps and more steps and even more steps. Then, in no time, the steps were over, we were in a village, walking along a ride, waiting for a bus, throwing our bags on top and speeding off into the distance.

From our vantage point on top of the bus, we could see the mountain peaks we had become so familiar with vanishing into the sunset, the red peaks glowing brilliantly at the end of the day and then fading into the darkness.

We were out of the mountains.

We spent a few days in Pokhara recuperating. We slept a lot and ate even more and spent a whole day renting a boat and drifting around a lake searching the shores for a monkey population we never sighted. I lay back and read a book while Jay paddled us slowly along the shore but I watched the sun in the leaves more than the pages before me.

When I think of historic places, I am conditioned to think always of Europe, which for North Americans, has so much more history than our newborn cities. I forget just how ancient the civilizations of Asia are and how rich their history, which I never really learned anything about in school.

What I loved most about the places we visited was how alive they were. I am used to history preserved behind glass, not the kind that weary porters rest their packs on and morning vendors stop at in prayer. We climbed the steps of ancient temples and watched prayers and devotions at crumbling shrines through the morning mist. There was no separation between the past and the present, the two lived dynamically intertwined.

One day we took a bus to a city just an hour from Kathmandu, Baktapur. Because we took a local bus, quite by accident, we missed going through the tourist entry to the ancient city, where there is a $15 entry fee. We had no idea this was the case until we were talking to other tourists much later in Kathmandu. Because the fee is so high, many tourists don’t visit and we had the place mostly to ourselves. Those who do visit, generally go back to the capital to spend the night, so we had trouble finding reasonably priced accommodation. We did find an amazing local restaurant (Mini Momo Max) with ridiculously cheap and delicious food (and only two tables) as well as the local specialty, home made yogurt. Known as “curd” and served in clay bowls, the Baktapur yogurt was the thickest, richest, creamiest yogurt I have ever tasted.

We walked through Kathmandu one day, crossed the sacred river, which was a black oozing field littered with garbage and exuding a great stench, to climb the many steps to Bodhinath, one of the city’s holiest temples. It was full of tourists and touts and stalls selling trinkets and monkeys.

I sat with my back against one of the temple buildings enjoying the sun and the view down upon the city and the great birds circling in the updrafts, watching Jay take photos. All of a sudden, a group of monkeys appeared in the area, moving purposefully across the paving stones. They reached the far side and swung up on the railing, then started moving along it. The first monkey reached a young boy who was sitting up against the railing enjoying the view with his family. The monkey grabbed the boy’s shoulder and started shaking him, then jumped off into the jungle. The second monkey grabbed the boy’s shoulder and started biting into it. The parents just stood there a little shocked. Then, in an instant, all the monkeys had vanished and the boy was crying.

Another day we went out to Bodhinath, a very holy place just outside Kathmandu where a large Tibetan community live. Bodhinath is a large white stupa which to me, compared with the crumbling brick temples we had been visiting, had very little architectural poetry to it. The real magic of the place is evident at sunrise and sunset.

Near the end of the day, hundreds of people come to the stupa and walk around it, all traveling clockwise. There is a path around the stupa and the stupa wall is lined with prayer wheels. Some people turn them as they walk, others count prayer beads. The truly devout practice prostrations as they travel around. The prostration includes an upwards salutation, then spreading your body entirely prostrate upon the ground and rising to repeat. Some people take three steps between every prostration, others only one.

During the day, there are people walking around the building, and some practicing prostrations inside, but at night there are hundreds and hundreds of people participating. Some are deep in thought and prayer, others walk with family and friends, talking and laughing. In the morning, there are boys and girls in school uniforms on their way to school, walking in circles for a while before going to catch their bus. Many of the older women were in traditional Tibetan dress.

In the misty morning, my feet making circles around the stupa with hundreds of others, I pause to buy fresh, hot, yeasty Tibetan bread from a vendor. At night, we walk amidst the glow of hundreds of butter lamps.

Another day, we walk a few kilometers to a famous Hindu holy site, Pashupatinath.This is the place where devout Hindis most wish to be cremated. We watched a pyre burn by the water and the family bathing in the river. We wandered amid ruins and watched monkeys feed in a frenzy in the forest.

In the morning, we had trouble getting back to the city. All the taxis wanted a high price and the busses weren’t running. There was a riot, we were told. We eventually shared a cab with some other people and got back to our hotel, walking past paving stones left in the middle of the street where the day before they had been thrown at riot police. A picture in the paper the next day showed the same road with tires burning. A general strike had been called for the day and all the shops were closed. The touts were off the street and everything was empty and strangely deserted.

But gradually through the day, a few shops opened and by the following day we had no trouble finding a taxi and making our way to the airport. Almost before we knew it, we were in the air, watching Everest fly by outside the window, streaking across the sky back to Thailand. After five weeks of traveling, we were both ready to head home.

Nepal Part 3: the Summit

The truth is that I could write about Nepal and out travels there almost endlessly. While there I filled pages and pages daily about the sights, the scenes and the things I was thinking. It is an absolutely magical and marvelous part of the world. I knew that when I first started hearing people talk about it and I hear the same wonder in my voice when someone gets me on the topic now.

The most intensely emotional part of the journey for me was going over Thorong La Pass. It involved gaining almost a kilometer of altitude to the summit of the pass and then descending more than a mile on the other side. It was a long day.

Getting there was slow, hard and wonderful. As we reached higher altitudes, the air thinned and with less oxygen it didn’t take much to lose breath. My heart rate sped up, my feet slowed down. There were times I felt like I was crawling across the surface of the earth.

It’s not such a bad thing to be forced to slowly plod across the particular section of this earth known as the Annapurna Mountain Ranges, I have to say. It’s not even a bad thing to have to stop often to catch one’s breath, since such stops afford a nice long look at the mountains soaring around.

It is an amazing thing to be 3500m above sea level and to see mountains still towering thousands of feet above your head. Dizzying, in face.

When at altitude, your body needs time to adjust to the different levels of oxygen in the air, so we walked slowly and traveled just a few hours a day. The amount of time you can walk is limited to how much elevation you gained. From where we were, the path went continually upwards, so we couldn’t go far.

One day we pulled in before noon to our destination, a town which is only inhabited during the summer by yak herders. There were two hotels, one on either side of the path, and the women working there were the only ones in the area this late in the year. We took the path on the upper hill side, which meant a few more steps, but an amazing view. A group of nudist European trekkers took the downward slope and proceeded to get naked in the winter sun, despite the extremely traditional dress of their hostess and oblivious to any discomfort they may be causing.

We had our hotel to ourselves and spent the afternoon drinking tea in the sunshine. We both had books at hand, but spent the majority of our time lost in contemplating those gorgeous mountain ranges spread out before us. I flew my kite, or tried to, but the uncertain gusts of wind teased but didn’t deliver. Jay took his camera into the deserted village, chasing a yak through the streets in slow, high altitude motion.

I had a book of my favorite poetry with me, but even that couldn’t compare to the beauty around us. The mountains were intoxicating. They were poetry written large across the sky, lines of verse carved into long sedentary rock formations undulating across the mountain range. The mountains were a song , great booming orchestra of silence. It was impossible not to feel a happiness akin to elation floating around among it all.

The next day the walking was difficult, but I knew we didn’t have far to go and that we had a whole day to get there, so I just kept putting one foot a little in front of the other and focusing on keeping my breath coming. We stopped for tea at Thorong Phedi, a popular camp, but instead of staying the night, we tackled a steep slope straight up the rock.

It seemed to go forever. My feet seemed to hardly move. My lungs heaved. And yet, every stop I made was incredible. At every switchback the view changed; a little more was revealed, something fell into shadow, something was hidden, something else came to light.

So I came, almost unbearably slowly, to High Camp – a wooden building on a steep rocky hill in the middle of dust and rock and snow. Plain, ugly, gray, brown, and incredibly powerfully beautiful.

We revived in the lodge’s sunroom over soup and then set out to tackle the small peak just outside the lodge. At the top was a cairn of rocks stacked up high enough to lean upon and festooned with prayer flags. The wind was strong and cold and the view unparalleled and completely worth the climb. I got dizzy and dropped my camera, sticking close by the rocks after that.

There was no fire in the hall that night, but the bodies of so many trekkers packed together kept us from freezing. Still, we were snuggled in our sleeping bags at 6:30pm just to stay warm. The night was dark, with the most brilliant pinpricks of light overhead. They stopped me in my tracks when I darted out to the outhouse in the middle of the very cold night.

In the morning, snowflakes were swirling in the wind and the clouds walked among us. We were the last trekkers to set off in the dark, walking across the desert wasteland through the dawn. As we climbed, the clouds descended, the sun rose and then pierced the clouds. There was no doubt that we were on top of the world.

It was long but not as difficult as some of our other days climbing and suddenly I saw Jay up ahead, waiting to take my hand. “This part, we do together,” he said.

So we walked forward across the snow, just the two of us up there on top of the world, the wind flapping strongly around our heads, the cold biting at our flesh, feet and backs tired and sore and hearts full and overspilling with joy.

We arrived at that place, the pass between huge peaks, together, hands entwined, a hundred prayer flags snapping against the gale and tears pouring from our eyes. It seemed incredible to be there, to feel so alive, to have overcome the dengue and the altitude and everything else, to stand there, in that moment, that hand in mine.

I couldn’t stop crying.

There was a hut at the top with tea and a fire and we huddled there for a while but eventually it was time to go. We had to drop down a mile and hike for another several hours before we’d be in the next settlement and the wind was too cold to bear. So, facing outwards towards a magnificent river valley, we put our feet forward and kept on walking.

Nepal Part 2: Stage one of the Annapurna Circuit

One of my last errands in Mae Sot was getting my head shaved. It had been more than four years since the last time I had done it and I figured my opportunities were only diminishing with time. After all, I can't put off getting a real job forever and it can be quite difficult to get people to take you seriously when you're a young woman with no hair.

Apparently it can also be difficult to get people to make you a young woman with no hair. I went to three salons and got the same response each time. Since my Thai vocabulary doesn't encompass conversations related to head shaving, I just found the clippers amoungst the hair things and did a miming routine. Each time it was greeted with horror and a vehmenant: “Mai chai, mai dai, mae rue!” Roughly translated, this means, “I can't, I won't, it can't be done!” To this I replied, “You can, you will, you will do!” To no avail.

Eventually I liberated myself from my locks at my favorite barbershop where I have taken many male friends for a shave and a haircut. Though surprised to find a woman in his chair and doubtful of my request, I got what I wanted.

I appreciated my new haircut almost immediately. Of course, its nice not to have to worry about sweaty disgusting hair when you are sweating with a fever but as soon as the dengue was gone and we were out in the mountains, the lack of hair really began to work to my advantage.

The trail, for us, started in Besi Sehar, because that is where my boyfriend Jason, began his trek around the Annapurna Circuit eight years ago when the town was nothing but a single strip of dirt road and some shops. It's developed quite considerably since then, he says. Although the paved road ends in Besi Sehar, it is possible to take a jeep further along, through another few towns.

If I write about the whole trip and if you read it all, I am sure you will tire quite quickly of my overuse of the word “beautiful.” But it was impossible for me to grow accostomed to the beauty I saw in that country. The first day began with the warm morning sun falling obliquely through stands of bamboo trees and across golden terraces of rice paddy ripe for harvest. Every morning brought us something new though, as if the whole word were unfolding and recreating itself around us day by day, or as if we were only beginning to open our eyes and explore it.

Nepal is a country of suspension bridges and it really is amazing how much work the government has put into developing this important aspect of the country's transportation system, especially considering that in remote areas, all the materials for the construction of these great metal spans has to be brought in on the back of a human or a mule, sometimes for great distances over high mountains.

Our first encounter with a bridge, however, was not one of the sturdy metal suspension bridges that span chasms and canyons, but a small bamboo bridge over a shallow stream. The next morning I spent a lot more time carefully packing my bag to make sure it was better balanced and the straps were properly done, but that first day, in the rush of setting out, things were off. Which is how I came to find myself crawling on my hands and knees over a rickety bamboo bridge with a serious tilt to the right while my bag threatened to tip me over in the same direction.

We ate lunch in a beautiful open field full of golden grass, eating chapatis and potato curry with our socks off in the sun.

Its amazing what your mental state can do for your health. Because of all the beauty around me and the happiness I felt each and every day, I can honnestly say that the hiking and the climbing proved far less difficult for me than I had anticipated. I felt very little pain.

But that first day, my mental state worked against me. In the afternoon, the trail dwindled to a tiny goat track where we were forced to perch precariously as mule trains shouldered past us. We climbed and climbed and climbed and our climbing brought us to amazing terraced rice feilds, stacked one upon the other on impossibly steep slopes. As the afternoon aged, the sunlight grew more mellow and the light fell lovingly across the hills, enhancing colors that were like clear deep notes in a symphony.

We spotted a village far in the distance, up higher and probably about a thirty minute walk from where we were and we told ourself that it was our destination for the day. Of course, when we reached that village, it wasn't our destination at all, nor could our destination be seen. Eventually, we did spot another village, which surely, I thought, must be our destination. Of course, it wasn't. Ours was higher still.

It's funny how when you settle yourself into a slow rythym with a distant goal, it feels like you can go forever and suddenly you find yourself at the end of your day as if it were almost effortless. But sometimes when you feel like you are so close, those steps can drag on forever. Especially when you keep being so close so many times, only to have to keep picking up your pack and continuing onwards.

The final stretch of trail before our first stop was an incredibly steep incline on a dusty hill crisscrossed with switchbacks. Compared to the hikes we had ahead of us, I see now that it was almost nothing, but it was probably my most challenging part of the hike. I was tired and sore and dusty and very glad to make it to the top.

Already that night, the cold began. Although it wasn't nearly as cold as it would become, I still wore my jacket after the sun went down and had a quick shower.

After leaving Besi Sehar, every guesthouse, lodge and hostel we passed advertised the wonders of its solar hot shower. My favorite signs said: “24 hour hot solar shower available!”

The thing with solar showers is that the sun only hits them for a certain part of the day and warms a certain amount of water which only stays warm for a certain part of the day. If you hit the showers after a trekking group has been through, or late at night, forget about it.

I saw women walking that trail with beautiful long hair and I didn't regret my haircut for a moment. I was in and out of those mostly cold showers as long as we could bear to have them and glad that I could dry off and get warm as quickly as possible.

On this first section of the trail, we didn't encounter many trekkers. The path we walked was fairly narrow, winding its way gently along hillsides terraced with rice.

On our third day of hiking I hit another challenge: I had my first low blood sugar. My pack was full of fast acting glucose tablets as well as granola bars and jelly beans that my boyfriend kept eyeing now and again. We had a long climb that morning among rocks and apart from feeling my muscles get tired, I started to feel strange.

What frustrated me was that I wasn't far from the top of the hill, where I knew Jay would be waiting for me. However there was no way I could physcially walk to the top of the hill. When my body speaks, I have no choice but to listen. I had to swallow my frustration and put down my pack on a nearby flat rock, pull out the sugar and a granola bar and enjoy the morning sunshine and the beautiful day. Every time a hiker passed me on the hill, I itched to join them. But I sat and waited.

It normally takes about ten minutes for fast acting sugar to get in the bloodstream and fix a low blood sugar but I was exercising, which means my sugar levels would continue dropping while I sat and ate, and continue dropping if I continued exercising. Twenty minutes later, I shouldered the pack and started up the hill, my physical limitations tainting my mood.

But just over the hill after that one, we passed through an archway announcing our entry into the district of Manang and the town of Tal.

We had been in the valley until then, amidst dense trees, in a world that was full of green things and sunlight and shadows. We stopped through the archway and suddenly the world opened up before us in silver and shining grey and the most startling aqua blues. The tiny town of Tal sits on the bend of an alluvial flood plain. The glacial waters of the river are a brilliant blue, the misty waterfall behind the town a soft white. The trail is built out over the water hugging a cliff at one point before it finds the town and passes between stone houses and a closed building painted with a promise of Fosters beer.

Almost every town we passed through had its own charm and beauty. Tal was special but there were so many places we could have imagined ourselves putting down our packs for a few days, or a few months. Instead, we would stop for a cup of sweet black tea, or creamy chai, sigh, then pull on the back and start taking more steps down that road that would take us to the Thorong La pass.

Nepal Part 1: Dengue Fever

We bought our tickets to Kathmandu months before the trip, but like usual, the reality of the vacation didn't really sink in until two days before I was set to leave Mae Sot for Bangkok. Of course, at that point, I still hadn't started packing, I had exams to mark and grades to complete for my job at the Catholic school and I had to make a visit to Umphium refugee camp. I worked until 6pm on my last day at the school, filling in the endless, repetative and largely pointless piles of paperwork required. The next morning I was up early and in a car travelling along the windy road to Umphium for the day, walking from boarding house to boarding house, up and down muddy hills until it was time to walk along the road and hitch a ride back to Mae Sot on one of the public trucks.

I hit the ground running. I had errands to run in town and flew around on my bike trying to get it all done. I picked up dinner on the way home and entered the house at dark. I had a bus to catch to Bangkok at 8am the next morning and a bag to pack.

It was 2am before I finished all the things I needed to get done. Not only was my bag packed with a carefully planned selection of medical necessities, the laundry was done and folded, the kitchen was cleaned, the garbage was taken out, all the shutters were closed and locked and another million tiny household tasks required before leaving for a long time were done.

In the morning, I caught a motorcycle taxi out to the bus station and bought the last seat on the 8am bus to Bangkok. Eight hot, sweaty hours later, I arrived in the city.

After a day of shopping for last minute necessities, we headed to the airport. Everything was fine until just after we checked in. We were grabbing lunch before heading through immigration when it hit me. Suddenly my body felt like it had been hit by a ton of bricks. My back, in particular, all of a sudden developed a terrible ache, not a good portent for the beginning of a trip which involves hiking through mountains for weeks on end with a pack on your back.

I had resolved early on to minimize my complaining on the trip. However tired and sore I might be while hiking, I decided, I would try to keep it to myself as much as possible. Never the less, when we finished eating, I suggested we go to our gate right away. All I wanted to do was lie down.

By the time we got to our gate, I was shivering, but I told myself it was just the overly airconditioned environment in the airport. I lay down across several chairs while we waited for our flight to be called and closed my eyes.

Once on the plane I called for a blanket and paracetamol immediately and spent most of the flight cuddled under the blankets asleep. The paracetamol did its job because by the end of the flight I had managed to convince myself that I was just under the weather, but that I would be fine.

Off the plane, it became quickly apparent that I would not be fine. We waited more than half an hour in the queue for our visa-on-arrival. When I could no longer stand up, I sat on the marble floor, using every ounce of my willpower to stay sitting and not lie down like my body wanted me to.

By the time our time came to get a visa, the situation had deteriorated even further. Forced to stand, I became nauseous and had to focus my attention on not throwing up all over the visa officials. They must have noticed.

“You aren't well, are you?” they asked, peering at me intently and moving back a little from the counter.

I was not well, indeed, but I managed to stay on my feet long enough to collect my bags, change money and get into a taxi.

I remember that the sun was setting as we entered Kathmandu and that the city seemed much less crazy than I had imagined it. We were taken to a hotel in the tourist area beyond our price range and ended up making the rest of our journey on foot. I remember the first street where we started out from, but beyond that, the tangled maze of Thamel, the tourist district, remains murky to me. Jay did all the work in scouting a place to stay, I merely plodded behind him, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and staying upright.

At one point, someone was walking next to me, asking me if I wanted some marajuana or hash, then he was replaced with a speeding motorcycle which almost clipped me. I knew we had to stop and soon, so we followed a tout down a dark street, up a set of dark stairs and into a dark room.

It wasn't a bad place to stay, really. It had a bathroom three steps from my bed, which was about all the steps I could take for a couple of days and it was clean and reasonably priced. It was also dark and dingy and the water was often shut off and the electricity was often cut. It was all I saw of Kathmandu for the next week.

The thermometer in my first aid kit measured my temperature over the next few days ranging from 38.5 degrees to almost 40. My blood sugars rose to help my body combat the infection and we battled to bring them down. I quickly developed keytones, a sign that the blood in my body was becoming acidic. Except when people woke me up, I slept almos constantly and when I wasn't sleeping, I was in pain. My body ached pretty much everywhere pretty badly. My head and back and legs were the worst. I took paracetamol every two hours. It kept the fever from getting over 40, I suppose, but it did little to alleviate the pain.

There is no treatment for dengue fever. It is important to keep patients hydrated, as dehydration is often the cause of death for those with the illness. In 5% of cases, people develop hemorragic dengue, a more serious version of dengue in which platlet levels in the blood drop to dangerously low levels and can lead to death.

Our guidebook said that there were hospitals in Kathmandu but they should be avoided at all costs. As a diabetic patient, I have a fear of hopitals in developing countries. Even in Bangkok, there are very few young people with type one diabetes. I went to Mae Sot hospital once to get insulin and had to convince the doctor there that it was for me and that I knew how to use it myself. I can see myself being admitted for something simple, like dengue fever, and ended up seriously ill, because of missed insulin shots. But after several days of dengue, a friend told us of a clinic. I was getting better by then, but the tests confirmed that I had dengue fever, that my platlets and white blood cell counts were low and that I was mildly dehydrated.

It was only after the visit to the clinic, when I thought I was getting better, that I got the tell-tale symptom of dengue fever: the “rash.”

The “rash” is actually exploded blood vessels. For some reason, dengue can cause small hemmorages which you can see on your skin. I first noticed it on my ankles, then on my hands, but it spread up from my ankles to cover my legs, all the way up to my thighs. I couldn't look at my skin without shuddering.

The dengue fever took a week from our five week vacation and had a pretty serious impact on our plans. My Mum and Dad arrived in Kathmandu the day after our flight landed. This is the first time I have not travelled alone, and what a good thing. I would not have been able to meet my parents at our arranged location if I had been alone, but Jay left me for a few hours and brought them back to the hotel. I have vague memories of our time together, snippets of our conversations in between bouts of sleep.

We had planned for the four of us to hike together on the Annapurna Circuit, a trail which takes at least 17 days to complete. My parents had a much shorter vacation planned and each day they spent in Kathmandu waiting for me to get better was one day less they could hike in the mountains. Finally, they had a choice to make and they left Kathmandu after I visited the clinic when I was awake and walking a little and getting better. I was still a long way from shouldering the pack and hiking in the mountains, so they shouldered their own packs and headed out to a shorter trek in the mountains on their own.

When I got better and made it out to those mountains I couldn't help regretting that the incredibly bad timing of the illness. I have been living in a dengue zone for four years without getting sick. Jay has been sick with it three times, as has my neighbour. Of course, being sick in Kathmandu is definitely preferably to being sick somewhere days away from medical attention in the cold mountains, but I missed the opportunity to spend so much time with my family and share such a great experience with the both of them.

The Jones Family Festive Vest Extravaganza

This year, for the first time in a long time, the Jones family clan will not be gathering to celebrate Christmas. Instead we have picked names to trade gifts from afar and will be celebrating in our respective corners of the world. But just to keep things fun and interesting, this blog is a reminder to all that this year is the first Jones Family Festive Vest Extravaganza!

Every year, when the holidays roll around, Mum pulls out her festive sweater vest and puts the rest of us to shame with our lack of festiveness, but no more!

This year, every member of the Jones clan is invited to respond in kind, by begging, buying, stealing or making the most festive Christmas vest possible. All members of the immediate family are strongly suggested if not required to submit their entry. Let's see what you got punks!
Members of the extended family and complete strangers are also more than welcome to compete, but quite frankly, I think any of you stand a chance (except maybe Aunty Pam... or maybe Nanny Joyce...).

The contest works like this: sometime before December 20th, take a photo of yourself in the festive vest and email it to me. Let me know if you don't want the photo posted on the blog, otherwise its open game.

The winner will get some kind prize, likely something which matches in proportions the festive nature of your vest. It's September, so there's plenty of time to get festive!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Laos: There

My idea of a good vacation involves lots of walking, lots of eating, sleep and a good book.

Exhausted from my overnight journey across the country, I checked into a hotel, took a shower and resolved to get out and explore the capital. My first stop had to be breakfast though, and as I stepped out from the hotel, the heavens opened and the rain began pouring down, indicating a perfect time to sit down and savor some food.

Laos is famous for spicy meat salads but I was after something a little more tame. I settled for a bowl of hot noodles, the perfect fare on a rainy morning. Negotiating food, I realized I had three languages to work with in Laos; Thai - which is very similar to Laotian, French – the colonial language of the country, and English – good for tourist spots.

I thought I had successfully communicated leaving peanuts out of the noodle dish and used all three languages just to be sure, and to be fair, there were no crushed peanuts floating on top of the dish. There was, however, a dark paste in the soup, which contains what else but ground peanuts. For some reason, in the hierarchy of deathly peanut allergy attacks, ground paste or sauce is the worst (boiled peanuts in curry seems to cause the least severe attacks). I dosed myself with powerful antihistamines I carry around for this very purpose.

The drugs do their job, which is to slow and stop my allergic reaction. They also have a tendency to make the world slow down and become wrapped in cotton wool. It is recommended that people who take these pills not drive or operate heavy machinery. Most days I just go to sleep, sometimes for up to 14 hours.

I didn’t have 14 hours to waste in Laos, so I spent the afternoon floating through the gray city feeling like a ghost. My only aim was to find a new book as I had finished mine, and a herbal sauna that I had heard about.

At the sauna, I booked a Chinese massage for an hour. For the first 30 minutes I got my muscles kneaded to a pulp, which, after untold hours on busses, was simply divine. Then came the suction cups.

The masseuse holds a flame under a glass cup. The flame consumes the oxygen in the cup, creating a small vacuum. If the cup is quickly placed on a surface, it acts as a suction cup. In this case the surface is my back and the cups are arranged over pressure points determined by Chinese medical practice. I have about 15 of these glass shot glasses stuck to me when I fall asleep and start drooling on the masseuse’s pillow.

The feeling is odd. I could feel the skin pulling in strange directions and the weight of the glasses in some places. I felt like a porcupine, a heavy, fat, stoned porcupine.

After some time, the glasses are taken off and changed. After my hour is up, I leave feeling refreshed and far more alert than before. My back certainly felt better.

As a former French colony, Laos has a few things that Thailand does not. It has fashion, for example, fashion inspired by the French tradition. Far more importantly to me, Laos also has strong coffee and delicious pastries.

There are few places in Vientiane where it is not possible to get a baguette for breakfast, and not just any baguette. Freshly toasted baguettes are served up with locally made meat paste (a version of pate) and laughing cow cheese. Most sandwiches are also stuffed with some kind of local salad, like cold slaw. I wouldn’t eat anything else for breakfast and after the peanut fest, I wouldn’t eat anything else in Laos period.

Most bakeries sell baguette sandwiches and a few also offer strong coffee and every now and again you find one that also sells fresh fruit shakes. There is nothing like a mango shake or a creamy coconut shake for a sore throat.

I head back to my hotel, intending to lie down for a short time after my baguette dinner. There is a market that sets up on the banks of the Mekong, not far from my hotel, every night and I have heard that Laotian beer is the best in the region. But the moment my body hits the bed, my first day in Laos is over. I fall into a deep sleep that takes me all the way until morning.

Something in the mirror catches my eye as I am taking a shower. I turn around to get a closer look. My back looks like a spotted leopard. I am covered in black spots from the shot glass massage. Back hickeys… lots and lots of back hickeys.

My wandering begins. I wander to the baguette store for my breakfast and coffee and to the morning market, Talat Sao. I wander through the market up and down stairs, past electronics and textiles and cell phones and jewelry. I wander to the city’s most famous temple, Wat Si Saket, and pass slowly in front of the rows and rows of Buddha statues under the tiled roof of the ancient temple.

I make a mistake and walk all the way across the city before I realize I’m going the wrong way and retrace my steps. I spend some time in the shade of the Laotian version of the Arc de Triomphe, Patuxay.

Patuxay is in the middle of a large round about and from there I intended to walk up one of the connecting streets to the Thai embassy. Unfortunately I took the wrong one and ended up walking a long way through a very un-scenic neighborhood before I realized my mistake.

This time as I retraced my steps I spent more time thinking just what was going wrong with my head. The answer: water. So I sat in the shade of Patuxay for a while and kicked back a liter of water, sweat cooling on my body and the sun radiating from my skin.

There was no line to pick up visas, and things were quite calm when I arrived and scooped up my passport from the embassy counter. I flipped the pages and found what I needed: permission to stay in Thailand just a little longer.

I grabbed another bottle of water and walked back to the bus station where I found a bus to the Buddha Park.

The Buddha Park is this place on the banks of the Mekong where a rich guy with a little too much concrete decided to build a tourist attraction. He made a bunch of concrete statues depicting Hindu and Buddhist creatures. Falling into decay, with vines around the statues, it actually manages to look a little mysterious at times. However, the Mekong has risen in the past week and flooded part of the park, making huge stagnant pools that smell worse than crap. The park in the end, is just plain bizarre.

Because its bizarre, I love it, and laugh my way through the statues, the mud and the mosquitoes. I laugh my way back to Vientiane, over the dusty bumpy road and back to the baguettes.

I walk back to my hotel along the river, or rather, next to the sandbags set up beside the Mekong to stop the flooding. There is no market that night because the water has flooded out some of the market area, but I watch the sun set over the water and then take a bottle of Lao Beer home to drink from my balcony.

On my final day in Vientiane, I spend a lot of time drinking strong coffee (almost too strong to drink) and savoring baguettes. I walk up to the country’s largest market and spend a lot of time wandering through the aisles, past heaps of slaughtered meat and still jumping fish, past piles of mushrooms and heaps of chilies. I sit and watch traffic go by with a fruit shake for almost an hour.

But finally, I have to pack up, make the trip back to the border and get back to Thailand. I take an overnight bus that evening from Nong Khai to Bangkok, spend Sunday in Bangkok running errands and watching movies, and a night bus back to Mae Sot. I arrive at 4am back home, to the familiar land of cats and cuddles, ready to start work and begin teaching at 8am that day.

Laos: Getting There

I left a classroom full on noisy misbehaved children on Wednesday and walked out to the highway to catch a ride. It was noon and I was about to begin my long trek across the country.

I took a minibus from Mae Sot to Tak, somehow snagging the most coveted seat in the front and sleeping most of the hour and a half through the mountains.

Buses are greeted at every station by touts: mainly motorcycle taxi and tuk-tuk drivers and representatives from various bus companies. “Where are you going?” they scream in your face in Thai. I mention my destination and get escorted to a ticket counter where I buy a ticket.

I wander off to buy lunch and when I come back, get shown to a rickety old bus with no air con or fan. Meanwhile, another bus, newer and with air con, is leaving for my destination with plenty of extra seats. What just happened?

An hour and a half later, we finally roll out of the station, and none too fast, either.

My next stop is through Sukhothai to Phitsanouluk (pronounced: Piss-on-you-Lok). It’s about 2 hours. I sit in the back, next to an open door with my feet stretched out, enjoying the rush of wind through my hair. To the left of the bus, the sky was a deep purple and the wind through the window smelled like rain and the promise of lightening. The rice paddies stretching away to the right of the bus were blissfully bathed in sunlight with white clouds racing through blue sky towards the mountains.

I read segments of a book by Alice Walker, pausing every few pages to savor the story and enjoy the view. Nothing reminds you of the wonder of living in Thailand like speeding through it on a bus full of wind.

The rain hit and all the bus windows got closed, but the coolness had entered the bus, making travelling a pleasure. Until a drip developed over my head, that is. Luckily there were plenty of seats.

I have only been in Phitsanouluk twice, both times in transit, both times I arrived at 6pm, as the national anthem was playing and everyone stopped everything to stand at attention.

This time I looked around and saw two counters offering tickets to my next stop, Udon Thani. The 6pm bus hadn’t yet arrived and was running late, so I sat down with some snacks and felt glad I hadn’t gone with the first counter I saw, advertising a bus at 8pm.

But by 7pm the bus still hadn’t arrived. When it did, the driver needed to eat, so we didn’t roll out of the station until after 7:30pm. We drove fifteen minutes down the highway to a gas station to fill up.

At first no one got out of the bus, we were all eager to get on our way. But after 15 minutes a few people got out. After half an hour, I joined them to stretch my legs. After an hour, the driver finally announced what was going on. The gas station was out of gas, he said, and we had to wait for more gas to arrive… from Bangkok.

Pretty much everyone got out, including one old monk and two nuns in white. I circled the pumps endlessly while others circled the aisles of the 7-11. Finally we were off.

Four hours later we passed through Loei and at 3am rolled into Udon Thani. I couldn’t even use the washroom as everything at the bus station was closed and deserted. Never the less, the bus was still greeted by a crowd of touts: all motorcycle taxi and tuk-tuk drivers. I climbed into a tuk-tuk with three others and headed off into the night.

The tuk-tuk dropped me by the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere. I sat in front of a fruit stand for about an hour looking hopefully at each bus that went by, hoping for one headed to Nong Khai.

I fell asleep on the bus to Nong Khai, which was only an hour long trip. When I woke, it was sunrise and I was on the border. I watched the sunrise through a rabid swarm of touts who chased after each arriving bus like maniacs.

I got dropped off at the actual border about ten minutes before it opened and spent the time in a nearby shop getting more visa pictures made. The crossing was easy, although slightly manic, the large portion of early morning crossers being fellow visa-fiends like me and eager to get across and get to the embassy.

The Friendship Bridge connecting Thailand to Laos across the Mekong River is about 2kms and so there is a mandatory bus to take travelers across. Therefor, no matter how quickly you get stamped out, you still have to wait for the bus to be full before continuing.

On the Laos side, applying for my visa on arrival (cheaper for Australians than for Canadians and very very expensive for Americans), the manic feeling only intensifies. I’m surprised no pushing or shoving has taken place.

That feeling of desperation seeps under my skin a little. After all, it is Thursday and if I don’t get my application in to the embassy that morning (the embassy accepts visa applications from 8:30am until noon or something like that), I will have to wait all weekend to pick it up on Monday, which will mean that I will spend a lot of money on hotels and food and be very late for class on Monday.

I grab a minibus for the trip from the border into Vientiane, the capital of Laos. I was told the visa was on the route into town, but the bus keeps going and going until I am at the bus station. I fling my money down somewhat angrily and go looking for alternative transportation.

My driver pulls up in front of the embassy and immediately a man tries to sell me a visa application form. I look past him at the crowd and that nervous desperate feeling is almost palpable.

At this point I have two choices, I can get in the back of the nebulous “line” and wait for hours with the crowd, or I can be pushy, like most people who are closer to the gates of the embassy than the road. Most of the time, I would just stand back and wait, even as I watch others push ahead.

But it wasn’t one of those days, and besides, I needed a visa application form from the desk. So I excused my way to the front and just as I was about to ask the guard for a form, the gates open and people madly spilled into the embassy compound. What could I do but spill with them?

I spilled my way almost to the front of the line where I still had plenty of time to grab a form and fill it it. That’s how, within moments of the embassy opening, I was paying my visa application fee and heading out into the all too hot Laotian morning.