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.

Home Sweet Home

I had just barely unpacked my bags from my trip to Canada when I began packing boxes. Actually, I had started to pack up my house into boxes before leaving for home, and as a result, my house was in a state of total disarray, festooned with spider webs spun in my absence and littered with gecko droppings.

I didn’t even have time to clean, really. A day after getting back to Mae Sot, I had a job interview and was offered the position. I let myself get swept along in their desperation and need and accepted, telling myself that I needed a job. Really, what I felt like I needed was at least another two weeks of vacation.

Instead, I packed my boxes and within a week, found myself driving a truck through the rain back and forth between my old neighborhood, centrally located within minutes of the market, to my new neighborhood, which is two kilometers from town, surrounded by rice fields.

It took until 10pm to finish moving, not because we got a late start (we didn’t) or because we have that much stuff (I certainly don’t), but because of life and the way it is so good at throwing up delays, problems and petty distractions in one’s path. It was a long day, and by the end of it all my muscles were vibrating from the strain of constantly lifting and carrying, as well as from a slight adrenaline rush gained by driving a large truck in Thailand for the first time, shifting with my left hand instead of my right and navigating tiny roads full of almost invisible bicycles, unpredictable motorcycles and all manner of craziness.

The next morning I was up at 6am to make coffee and breakfast and get on my bicycle for the 10kilometre ride to my new job. It’s about two kilometers into town, the length of the city, and then out of the city, past the bus station, past the airport and another few kilometers down the road to the school. The worst part is getting to the airport. I get that far and my brain can’t help but think that this is as far as any reasonable person can be expected to bicycle. At the same time, there is a slight uphill incline to battle and to make matters worse, the pedestrian overpass which marks my turn off the highway isn’t even visible along the straight flat road, it’s still so far away.

The bike ride has the benefit of waking me up in the morning more effectively than any cup of coffee. The fields near my new house are unbelievably beautiful, even in the morning’s early hours, particularly at this time of the year when the paddy is young and unbearably green. If it’s not raining, the sky is usually a deep purple that contrasts brilliantly with the green.

The other benefit is that I am getting regular exercise. In fact, this week I was told by a nun that I was looking “slim and sexy.”

The nun, incidentally, is my co-worker because the job I took is teaching at the Catholic school just outside of town. I teach four mornings a week, to boisterous classes of grade four, five and six children. On Tuesdays, after the flag has been raised, the national anthem sung, and prayers recited, I lead morning assembly for the whole English Program (Kindergarten to grade 6), which generally involves singing a song, or playing a simple game.

I was on the job for all of two days before I had to call in sick. I had a new house, a new job and a new cold which knocked me off my feet and kept me there for the rest of the week. While I should have been unpacking and learning the ropes at school, I was stuck in bed napping and blowing my nose.

The new house is mostly unpacked now, and looks absolutely beautiful. It’s quite large and spacious, with a huge kitchen, two bedrooms and an enormous yard and garden. Behind us there is nothing but rice paddies, ponds and fields, all the way to the mountains. In the afternoons, when I sit on the balcony and read my book, I can hear the wind in the bamboo chimes, the croaking of frogs and the calling of birds.

For the first time since leaving my family and going to University, I feel that I am living at home. There is art hanging on the walls, comfortable furniture, shelves lined with books, a fridge full of food, and someone to welcome me home at the end of a long day.

Missing something... something missing?

Today, just briefly, I find myself missing my middle class naïveté. The way I used to be able to so easily tell the difference between wrong and right and see clearly the line that divides the two.

It started with landmines, interestingly enough. I remember sitting in a classroom in university studying the various makes, models and deployment; taking notes of their effects and knowing definitively that the use of such items is plainly wrong. It’s not a moral certainty anymore.

This week, I found myself listening to a story on my balcony, sharing a meal with friends, sharing stories and talking about our work and the people we know. We were talking about children, and those who are unable to have their own, and adoption.

There are all kinds of conversation topics, but especially those one has at social dinners, which are entirely predictable. There are a range of acceptable responses and one selects from them and voices some variation of the words and everyone nods and we all go away satisfied, or at least reasonably sure that we’ve done our social duties as best we can.

Instead of the range of responses I was familiar with on the subject of adoption, somehow, I was hearing about this woman who got pregnant for the sixth time. Within a month of giving birth she was back on the streets again, where she pushes a metal cart, picking through trash in garbage cans. She can’t afford another baby and you don’t know what a tough life is until you have glimpsed where the street people live.

So she sold her sixth baby, because she didn’t have enough money to feed the other five, even working as hard as she did every day.

I had to ask.

“How much was she paid?”

Three thousand baht. About one hundred Canadian dollars.

When I heard the price, my heart dropped.

If the baby was bought by a Thai person, a woman could take it to the hospital within seven days of its birth and have it registered as her own child, provided that the doctor at the hospital isn’t someone who knows her personally and hasn’t witnessed her un-pregnant at some point in the past few months. With a Thai citizenship and a family ready to bring it up as its own, the baby is at leas guaranteed food to eat, a safe shelter to live in and access to a health and educational system.

It was strange because after I stopped thinking about the price and the economics of child birth, I started to see how the situation might just turn out happily for everyone. This idea I have in my head, this romantic notion of motherhood, is what makes strong and loving families in some cases, but not in all cases. In other situations I can suddenly see how it is just that, romantic. If five children get fed, and another gets a well off family to feed and love it, instead of six children crying while their bellies bloat, while they experience illnesses born of malnutrition and while some watch others starve, how can that be wrong?

Of course, children get sold every day into terrible situations and believe me, it’s something I fight against firmly. But no one buys a baby to raise it into a whorehouse, it’s just not economical.

I like this ideal I have where children get raised by their families, where families love all their children and where all the children get fed and I’m clinging to it but I cant help but wonder, if it isn’t just an ideal, and if in the real world where only practical people can survive, alternative arrangements should not be judged so harshly?

Canada in June

It’s Friday afternoon and the air is cool and filled with the energy of a pending thunderstorm. Outside my window, the banana leaves bend in the breeze but memories of Canada are still very fresh in my mind.

I returned to Canada for three weeks in June just in time to enjoy a Canadian summer and celebrate my brother’s birthday and graduation. I also went home in order to learn more about and acquire a new insulin pump, which is a machine which helps me regulate my diabetes.

I haven’t had much luck with insulin pumps in the past. Perhaps it is the life I live, which admittedly, is not the average lifestyle. Who knows if the pumps were designed for tropical living, trekking through monsoons and slogs through the jungle? I started pumping with a company called Diesetronic. When I had problems with that pump I was told by one of the company executives that “mechanical machines can and will fail.” To illustrate the point, I was told about this time the man’s Mercedes had broken down, stranding him beside the road.

For non-pumpers out there, when an insulin pump fails, things can go wrong with your health very quickly, like within hours, quickly. It’s not like driving a Mercedes at all, except that when the car crashes you could die and that’s true with pumps, in a way, too.

Diestronic never admitted my pump had a problem but they later issued a general recall of the model I wore, which is frightening really.

I wore a Medtronic pump for several years. The pump I bought was waterproof, only the company later sent out letters informing customers that it wasn’t in fact, accounting for several pump failures I had experienced. For some reason, the company, in producing a $6500 machine responsible for medical functions, failed to safeguard the pump against the static electricity generated by the average human body. So basically, my DVD player is better equipped to deal with static electricity than the machine I wore on my body daily. Weird, huh?

When the Medtronic pump’s screen went blank and no alarm went off, I was seriously alarmed and even more so that customer service was calm about the whole affair. I decided it was time to give pumping a break and go back to needles.

At first, I kind of enjoyed the physical freedom of going without my pump. An insulin pump is the size of a pager and connects, through a tube, to a needle which delivers insulin continuously into a person’s body.

Unfortunately, needles are all but free. Not only does one have to eat meals at regular intervals, but the meals should consist of certain types of food. Routines are really good for people on needle therapy and I have always been anything but routine.

So after six months, I decided to investigate and try a new company, so back to Canada I went to invest in a new insulin pump. The Deltec representative was incredibly friendly and accommodating, fitting easily into the busy home schedule of meeting people, seeing old friends and spending as much time as possible with family.

Only a few days after hooking up to my new pump and going through all its buttons and programs, I was in the mountains of British Colombia with my parents happily hiking away.

My parents had just bought a new canoe while on a road trip in the States and they were dying to get out in it. I hadn’t been fishing in years, so I was eager to get on the lake as well.

For years, my family has gone fishing at Blackwater Lake. We never get very big trout, but we always get some of an edible size and we always have fun. One memorable trip included my brother and a friend on an inflatable raft that we discovered all too late wasn’t so inflatable. My friend jumped overboard and swam across the lake in her lifejacket while my brother and I paddled like crazy to get across, arriving almost in the lake ourselves.

I took the front of the boat, Dad the back and Mum crouched in the middle. It was an amazing three hours of fishing, with the afternoon sunlight staying forever in the sky and fish jumping, even skipping across the water. We saw a muskrat in the rushes by the shore and wallowed in the tranquility of floating on water surrounded by nothing but forests and mountains.

I caught the first fish but Mum soon caught up with me. Dad didn’t have much time to fish since he was baiting Mum’s hook and taking her fish off for her. But the three of us were having a good time. Every time Mum got a fish on her line, Dad had a tendency to get very excited and Mum would get nervous, feeling like she didn’t know what to do.

“Bring it in! Bring it in!” Dad would should, and Mum would do her best to bring it in, whatever that means.

I was slowly reeling in my line when I felt the tug of a bite. I heard Mum say excitedly behind me, “I’ve got one!”

And Dad: “Bring it in! Bring it in!”

The next thing I know, the boat was rocking wildly.

What happened was this: There was Mum bringing it in, when suddenly the fish was out of the water and flying towards her face. Startled, she fell backwards, losing her balance.

Mum and Dad hit the water first but I wasn’t long after them. One moment I was there enjoying the mountains spread out majestically before me, the next thing, I’m hitting the glacial water with a splash.

It takes a moment to adjust to the new environment. The water is so cold, it squeezes your lungs, making it hard to breathe and you panic a bit, until you remember that you have a life jacket on.

When we’ve all calmed down, Dad says: “Where are the fishing rods?” I have no recollection of what happened to mine. The last thing I knew there was a fish on the end of it somewhere. How Dad put his in the boat before tipping out, I have no idea, but Mum and I had totally lost ours.

Then Mum looks at me with wide eyes: “Where’s your pump?”

My hand darts down to my stomach to feel if the needle is still there. In the shock of tipping, the tube could have caught on something, the pump could have fallen out of my pocket, it could be drifting, as we spoke, down to the muddy depths of that cold cold lake.

But no, there it was, still firmly attached to my body. Waterproof, and happily pumping away no worse for wear.

We, on the other hand, couldn’t say the same. My tropical body was shivering madly and we weren’t able to get sorted out and back in the boat for almost half an hour. We were a rather bedraggled crew when we struggled up onto the shore but we still somehow still had our catch of fish, a sunburn and an amazing story to tell.

Escape from disaster

Somehow I didn’t get to the embassy until the day before my flight to the north. On the day I arrived, it was too late to drop off my application, then it was the weekend, then we had things scheduled during the day. It was my last chance. We flew the next day up north and would come back the day before our flights out of the country.

I took a taxi to the embassy. It was on a side street with guards stationed at the entrance and at the gates. There was a crowd of people waiting outside with numbers. I got an application and realized I had forgotten to bring photos. Why they need photos for a tourist visa, I still don’t understand. I got a new taxi and went to a photo store. My taxi driver waited while they started the generator to turn on the lights and the printer. Thirty minutes and several dollars later I was back, application filled in, waiting in line.

The embassy charges $30 for the visa and only accepts US Dollars. I had a hundred dollar bill with me. I waited in the paltry shade of the only tree on the street until my number was called and proceeded through the lines to the payment counter.

“Do you have another bill?” the cashier asked, carefully scrutinizing the minute crinkle in the bill where it had, just once, been folded.

I shook my head.

“I’m sorry. I can’t accept this bill.”

People love US money, but in this country, they only love it if it is as pristine as if it had just come from the mint. God forbid it had ever changed hands or been put in a pocket. Folding is definitely forbidden and the tiniest of tears renders a bill, no matter what it’s worth, completely unusable. It’s only one of the many ridiculous things happening in the country and not even in the running for one of the most strange.

It was 11am. The counter closed at 11:30. I was directed to a nearby hotel which would change the bill for me.

I walked quickly to the end of the street, bolted across the mad rush of traffic and stumbled over uneven pavement stones until I got to the hotel. I paused a moment at the entrance, catching my breath and trying to look cool, collected and richer than I was, then went in.

I had no problem changing the bill, and successfully insisted on getting crisp, new-like American bills for the embassy. I stumbled down the street, sweating profusely, darted through the traffic, rushed past the guards and paid for my visa application.

I noticed, while the cashier carefully examined every inch of my new bills for a tear, a sign posted in the embassy that read: “Closed: March 27^th”.

The cashier handed me a receipt for my passport and said I could come back tomorrow afternoon after 1pm.

“I’m leaving the city tomorrow for about a week. Is it ok if I pick it up on March 28^th?” I asked.

“Of course, no problem,” the cashier replied.

I left, congratulating myself on noticing the important sign. How awful, I thought, not to have noticed and to have made travel plans involving picking up my passport on the 27^th, only to find the embassy closed.

I flew out the next day and spent the week travelling. All went well. I rolled back into the capital off a highly uncomfortable night bus on the morning of the 28^th. I would spent the day in the capital, exploring a famous temple I had not yet seen but which was conveniently located near the embassy. I would pick up my passport and get on my plane the next day.

I spent the morning wandering through the city and caught a bus up to the embassy. The rush of traffic was the same, but something was different. There were more guards stationed at the entry to the street and less people waiting around the gate. No people, in fact.

I arrived at the gate and found everything shut and not a hint of a person anywhere. The guard behind the bars of the entryway saw me and came over.

“It’s a holiday today,” he explained. “Please come back on Monday.”

I shook my head wordlessly. “Yesterday was a holiday,” I said, senselessly.

“Look at the sign,” he said, shrugging and walking away.

I looked at the sign. It now read: “Closed: March 27^th & March 28^th.”

“Wait!” I called in to him. “Surely there’s a mistake. Last week I was told I could pick up my passport today.”

The guard was firm and clear. The embassy was closed. Absolutely no one was inside, he said. Someone important had flown in and everyone, every single person from the embassy, had left to meet this important person at the airport.

“But that’s not fair,” I said. “You can’t just decide to close the embassy suddenly like that. Last week I was told I could pick up my passport today. My flight is tomorrow!” My voice was starting to rise. My heart was starting to race. I felt events slipping terribly out of control.

The guard just looked at me and sighed. “Can’t you just come back on Monday?” he asked.

The problem was that I couldn’t come back on Monday and not just because of my flight. Flights can, of course, be changed, however inconvenient that may be. The problem was that I had been on a very tight budget. I had planned every day very carefully and was standing in front of the embassy, on what I had assumed was my last day in a country with no ATMs or credit card facilities or foreign banks, and I had $5 in my pocket and no hope of getting more.

There was no conceivable way I could survive as a tourist in the country with that much money. I would have to pick up the passport on Monday afternoon and wouldn’t be able to get a flight until Tuesday morning, which meant five more days than planned in the country on $5. It was a disaster.

“Please,” I begged. “There must be someone you can call.”

But the guard was deadpan and steadfast. “No,” he said. And to every question, every plea, every idea I had of how I could get my passport from behind the counter just meters away beyond those bars, “No. No. No.”

So I did what any person who is helpless in the face of disaster would do. I cried. I couldn’t help it. I was tired from the long uncomfortable bus ride the night before and helpless and had no ideas of how to move forward from those embassy gates. So I didn’t. I collapsed on the ground right there in a fit of tears which also quickly went beyond my control.

I admit, I got a bit hysterical. I just didn’t know what to do.

The guard put up with it for a short time then approached again. “Excuse me,” he said tentatively. “Could you please move away from the gate?”

“No,” I said, echoing him and getting back to crying again.

After a few attempts at getting me to move, a man approached me from my side of the gate. He was well dressed in a crisp white buttoned shirt. “What is the problem?” he asked. “I am a police officer. I would like to help you.”

I explained the problem.

“Can’t you just come back on Monday?” he asked.

I explained the problem with that.

Even in my hysterical state (to my great embarrassment, I couldn’t stop crying, even when I was explaining the situation to the man), I noted the very ironic nature of the situation. Many people are afraid of undercover police officers in this country. They are generally keeping a low profile and keeping their eyes open, or in other words, spying, and one can only imagine why this one is stationed outside the embassy of a neighboring country where many people are trying to obtain visas so that they can leave this one.

I don’t know what happened next. The man had a radio and spoke with the guard and the radio. The guard was speaking to someone on the phone. But a few minutes later, the man gently asked me to step away from the gates because someone was on their way.

It was really only a few minutes before two women in crisp black business suits angrily took my receipt and handed over my passports. I thanked them profusely but they only looked at me with total disgust. I thanked the guard profusely but he turned away in embarrassed disgust. I turned to thank the undercover police officer but he was already gone.

Then the gates were closed and I was out on the street, brushing away my tears, trying to catch my breath and feeling like I was emerging from behind a cloud of cotton wool into a remarkable day. You cannot escape disaster without feeling blessed and the sun sparkled on the temple’s golden walls and the wind blew through the temple bells and it all happened with such clarity and beauty that I felt alive and free and wonderful.

There is an important lesson here and I learned it and that is to always, always, always carry and have access to extra money when travelling anywhere. One never knows what is going to happen, whether it is a medical emergency or missing a plane, so it’s best to be financially prepared for any eventuality.

I caught my flight the next day at the airport, clutching my passport happily and stamping into the neighboring country with my new visa and a huge smile upon my face.

Recent Travels

It’s an amazing country, the one I recently visited at the end of March. For two weeks I lived in a kind of 1984 world, where DoubleSpeak is an important element to every day life, propaganda is rife and cars with steering wheels on the left side share the road with cars with steering wheels on the right side.

In two weeks I filled an entire journal with my thoughts, observations and feelings, with detailed descriptions and a thousand words trying to capture a fraction of the million things happening all around me. I wrote more than I would normally write in two months and yet was unable to put to the page most of the things that made the deepest impression on me for security’s sake: conversations with people, meetings, chance encounters even, names, dates, anything too specific.

The picture of apartment buildings in the capital sums up the majority of the experience for me. Every inch of space is packed with detail. You can walk as slowly as possible down the streets and still be unable to take it all in. In addition to the imagery, there are the noises: inevitably traffic, horns, screeching tires, but also people talking, shouting hello, chatting over tea tables on the sidewalk, a baby crying, someone yelling down from an apartment above, the tinkle of a bell on the wheel that crushes sugar cane to make juice.

The country is full of things crumbling: roads that were never built properly, buildings that were never maintained. Colonial ruins stand beside ancient rubble and Chinese concrete constructions tower above them all.

The scenery everywhere is spectacular, enchanting, almost magical, but it is nothing compared to the people there. I can’t speak highly enough of those I was fortunate enough to encounter. Waiting for a bus on the streets of another city, I practice my local language skills with a woman selling betel nut. We talk about our homes, our families, simple things, big smiles. Everywhere the taxi drivers, the fruit sellers, people on the street, teachers, parents, young people and old people are dealing with some of the worst economic conditions on earth and getting through each day with a smile.

I saw simple acts of kindness which are committed with a kind of routine nonchalance that inspired me. I found all kinds of examples of people with very little sharing with they had with others who had less. I’m under no idyllic impression that the humanity residing in this one particular country are somehow ideal or blessed, but I saw in my short experience there echoes of what I see in many people here in my work: a charity which truly comes from the heart.

It was amazing to explore ancient temples, to walk sun soaked stones amidst the ruins, to stroll the streets and explore the pagodas of the capital, but it was a blessing to meet and speak with the people I did, to find inspiration in their lives and words and most of all in their smiles.

Room to Grow Foundation

Despite making it my goal to blog more this year, the days keep slipping by without me writing anything. One reason is that I have been quite busy: travels and work and having fun on hot afternoons.

The other reason is that I have been blogging for the new organization I helped set up and now work for: Room to Grow Foundation. So if anyone is interested in what I'm doing with my time, they should check out our blog.

And anyone interested in learning more about our work can check out our website, which is still a work in progress but which is happily up and running and online.

As for Buddhist new year celebrations and travels abroad, I promise to post more pictures and adventures soon... really!!

Rat babies, rats and corpse disposal

On the first day of this week, the cat I rescued from starvation in a refugee camp gave to me:

One tiny rat baby...

On the second day of this week, the cat I rescued from starvation in a refugee camp gave to me:

Two mice a meesing,

and one tiny rat baby...

On the third day of this week, the cat I rescued from starvation in a refugee camp gave to me:

A BIG ASS RAT!!

Seriously. My cat, Frankie, is always bringing in geckos and leaving lizard parts all over the floor. She eats cockroaches and even once brought a live snake into the house. But this week was the first time she caught a mouse. I was all proud of her but a little worried because unless she ate the whole thing, I can't find the body and she's always leaving bodies around in gross places...

I spoke with my brother on the weekend and he teased me.

"Seen any rat babies lately?" he asked, referring to a story I told him recently about my friend and her strangely numerous encounters with baby rats.

I hadn't ever seen a rat baby myself, actually. Not until Frankie brought one in the next day. She left the body near the kitchen door so I scooped it up and threw it out the back window.

But last night I'm sitting in my indoor hammock reading a book and Frankie walks in with this thing in her mouth that's half her size. She starts playing with it on the floor near my computer, which is her favorite place to play with the animals she brings in and all I could think of is how I need to get this thing out of my house, now!

It was so big I couldn't' even sweep it or scoop it. This, my friends, is a task for a loving boyfriend to handle, as much as I'd like to say otherwise. But the loving boyfriend is in Bangkok all week at some conference at the four seasons, having cocktails while I dispose of rat bodies.

And all the while that I'm thinking "what the hell do i do?" Frankie is having the time of her life and I can hear the rat body thumping on the ground as she throws it up in the air and it hits the floor and rat blood is getting everywhere.

Finally I pluck up my courage and grab a plastic thing and the broom and i make it work, carrying the body out to the balcony. Frankie goes crazy manic "Wheresmyrat?wheresmyrat?wheresmyrat?" running around in circles meowing. I take her out to the balcony and close the door so she can't get back in with the rat. But i can still hear the thumping. Then I can hear the cat fight as some other cat tries to come over and steal the juicy prize.

About an hour later, I open the door to let the cat in, hoping she disposed of the copse. Nope. She's sitting there with it in her mouth, looking so happy and she starts trying to drag it back in again. I close the door for another hour.

When I go back out, Frankie has decapitated the giant rat, leaving it in two pieces on the balcony and she's happy to leave it there and come in for the night. But i am not happy to leave a rat corpse on my balcony so i have to screw up my courage again and push it into the plastic thing and fling it off the balcony. Unfortunately, I didn't fling it too far, but hopefully some dog smelled it, came and took it off to his lair.

I'm through with rat bodies! ...I hope