Here's some photos from our two day voyage down the Mekong River from the Thai/Lao border at Huay Xai to Luong Prabang! Our boat was a rollicking, overcrowded vessel full of good-natured partiers. There was a young Dane playing Johnny Cash favorites to drunken applause, people perched on rice bags, car seats, and cushions, and amazing scenes of untouched jungle. We made some friends on this boat that we have continued to run into throughout our travels since, an Australian and a bunch of Canadians. We purchased our first street food that we couldn't finish in PakBeng (purportedly fish in banan [View Full Entry]

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As I wander away from town, the paved roads fade to hard packed red earth and the bamboo which lines the road becomes densely clustered and shoots up fifty feet in the air. Segments of fallen bamboo husks litter the road, curled into browned squid-like carcasses, broad-backed and muscular. There is a huge dog marking his territory in the roadside reeds. His white and black cowl, Asiatic eyes, and aggressively lean size suggest Siberian husky and wolf blood. He smiles at me and trots off. The town's no-nonsense concrete architecture also dissolves, replaced by small straw-thatched ro [View Full Entry]

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I'm sitting on the porch outside our little bungalow in Mae Salong eating a sweet orange bought ten minutes ago, probably picked this morning on the side of the hill. Our porch sits back from the road in a small collection of cottages in the midst of a garden populated with peach-colored datura, roses, and leafy trees. In classic Thai style, orchids, affixed to the side of trees with coconut shells, cling to the trunks like regal jewelry. About six inches to my right, just on the underside of the coffee table is a bug the size of my hand. [View Full Entry]

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Sukhothai Loy Krathong Festival and Parade -will write more later-We're so behind with photos we wanted to get something up! please check back for more illuminating details. [View Full Entry]

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When you get off a tuk-tuk at the bus station in Thailand, you never have to worry about knowing where you’re going. People descend upon you like hoards of mosquitoes out of the open air transport market: “Where you going?” “Where you go?” They will urgently usher you into a line, which, indeed sells tickets for where you need to go. The catch is there are usually at least four other companies operating out of the same bus station that also offer tickets to your preferred destination. People are paid to scoop up overwhelmed tourists like stunned frogs and toss th [View Full Entry]

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Ayutthaya boasts a burgeoning little guest house area locally referred to as “Little Khao San”. Thankfully, this street was far more charming and relaxed than its clammy, dry-heaving namesake. Little cafes featured LIVE JAZZ!, two sweet Thai teenagers earnestly crooning Sinatra era tunes and plunking away on their keyboard, bikes rentals were 30 baht a day (under $1), and most establishments offered free wifi. Yahoogle! We rented said bikes for a trip back to Ayutthaya’s glory days, to the splendid wats that ring this moated city. We hauled our bikes onto our shoulders [View Full Entry]

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After two sticky days in Bangkok, I felt trapped in some sort of drug-induced stupor. I wandered about town, trying my damnedest to devote appropriate awe to the city’s historical wats and Buddhas and to relish the colorful chaos of the markets, but the humidity was kicking my ass. Bangkok is a wet, busy, grimy town- and its admirable inhabitants were intriguing-but my New England lungs took the wallop of wet heat like an armadillo to an aquarium. Any sense of a north-bound, sun-baked, UNESCO-rich game plan melted and oozed out my ears. In a mad leap toward any sort of [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Bangkok around 1 AM and shared a cab into the city with an awesome Portland, OR airport baggage handler named Pam who was on her way to a ten-day silent Buddhist retreat. Apparently, when you work for the airport, you get to travel as much as you want for free!! The traffic was wild as we wended our way under serpentine overpasses into the pitch of this exotic, Blade Runnerish cityscape. We encountered a bad accident, around whose grisly exterior scores of Thai people swarmed with cameras raised high to try to capture the gory details on film. [View Full Entry]

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Nikko- the home of the shrine of Tokugawa Ieyasu and his descendents after he claimed divinity to deepen his power in Japan Train ride through beautiful mountains-our first glimpse of rice paddies and true Asiatic peaks Onsens-divine hot springs and making broken Japanese conversation with charmingly friendly locals during soaks Shrines and shrines and shrines Lake Chuzenji Hiking up a bamboo-laced mountain to have o-nigiri in an alpine botanical garden above the lake Riding a bus through crazy switchbacks (Automated announcement: “The bus will soon begin to sway. Plea [View Full Entry]

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The road that curves from the downtown section up into the hills flanks Zenpukuji, a temple constructed in 824. Starting in 1859, Zenpukuji temporarily served as home to Townsend Harris, the first American ambassador to Japan. The temple was chosen due to its high ceilings which more readily accommodated the height of the American ambassador. Ceilings in Japan are all around higher today, due to increased heights resulting from a more protein-rich diet. Alongside Zenpukuji, climbing into the hillside is an ancient, meandering cemetery, the centerpiece of which is a giant ginkgo tree with [View Full Entry]

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