Unkie Herb

Sometimes you get disgusting reminders that you are in Thailand.

I was feeling pretty sick a few days ago, as I mentioned, but I managed to drive out to a waterfall outside of town. When I arrived at the parking lot, I saw that there was a 150 meter uphill trail to find the waterfall. It wasn’t going to happen, so I lay down on a bamboo shelter to stack up the energy reserves.

A few minutes passed and a young Thai guy, maybe twenty, approached the shelter.

“What yo name?”

I rolled my eyes… Are we really gonna do this? I thought to myself. Just another local guy wanting to practice his English and make a friend. Harmless, but I just ain’t in the mood.

“My name is Evan, my man, how about you?”

“My name, Em.” He replied, pointing at himself in case I didn’t understand English.

“Cool dude, now I’m sorry man but I’m pretty sick, so I’m gonna lie here for a while.”

At this point he looked at me a little more seriously.

“You wan sic?”

“No, dude, I am sick, I don’t want sick.”

“I wan sic.”

“What? No you don’t, man, its pretty shitty.”

“Yes, I wan sic.”

I was starting to get pretty confused at this point, but my brain was still not on cue, and I hadn’t put two and two together. I still had a naive angle going on this whole conversation, and wasn’t prepared for what Em would do next.

Which was, I swear, point at my crotch and say: “I wan eat dis.”

Umm… what? Oh… shit man…. “No dude, sorry, I want to sleep. Please leave me alone.”

So Em did, saying “bye bye” and driving away on his motorbike. I wonder how often his system is effective…

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Well, for the first time since I began this little project, I have been absent for a few days not because I was enjoying myself. No, instead, I was cocooned in my blankets in my bungalow for forty-eight hours, nursing a vicious sinus cold.

There’s a funny little ritual that goes on in southeast asia when a fellow traveler falls ill. The inevitable questions about fever or chills emerge, all centered on that unspoken menace: malaria. I’m sure my mom does not find this quite as humorous.

I figure I began developing the sinus ailment during those three days of wicked altitude and temperature changes as I cruised mountain roads at high speeds. After arriving in Pai, an uber-chilled riverside town, I went out for a night on the town with some French people I’d met around the region and an English guy who I’d met in Laos who happened to be in town. Let’s just say I had half a Singha (Thai beer) too many and woke up the next morning with several medicine balls jammed in my skull.

Let’s go Thai, however, and look at the bright side of everything: I didn’t eat for forty-eight hours, so I saved some money and lost some weight (wait, is that a good thing for me?). I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol, and so probably added about twenty-five minutes on to the end of my life. I didn’t wear any clothes, so I will have less laundry to do.

There. It was a blessing.

It doesn’t help that this town is nearly thirty in the daytime and, once the sun dips behind the mountains to the west, the temperature drops below ten degrees. That cold highland air descends on the valley like that “firesnake” from The Thirteenth Warrior - you know what I’m talkin about. I’m still loving my decision to “borrow” that blanket from my guesthouse in Chiang Mai.

That said, tomorrow I will return to Chiang Mai and have to somehow sneak the blanket back into the guesthouse without arousing suspicion. It’ll help that I won’t be spending the night there. Instead, I will be hightailing it on the overnight bus straight down to Bangkok, skipping several semi-planned stops along the way.

I will apply for my Burmese visa and then kill the seven or ten days wait time by bumming around in The Big… err… Mango and then heading out to Ko Chang, an island near Cambodia.

Back on the beach, sailor, for the first time in, well, six weeks…

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Well, it’s decided. I’m now addicted to driving motorcycles, and will probably buy one when I return to Canada. Yes, I realize it will be undrivable for at least a month or two each year, but I’m counting on global warming to shrink that period considerably.

Now, there is the issue of finding pristine weather and curvy mountain roads in the Toronto area, but I figure the Appalachians aren’t that far, are they? Northwestern Thailand is full of them, as well as remote mountain villages, waterfalls, and national parks.

I left Chiang Mai on my sweetheart (yes, I’m lonely, and no, she doesn’t have a name yet) with my big bag strapped on and riding behind me and my small bag strapped to the steering column and riding in front of me. After a spontaneous stop at a hilltop Wat (Buddhist temple), I made a very indirect beeline for the top of Mount Inthanon, Thailand’s tallest. There I was awarded unbelievable views that my camera couldn’t do justice to, of course, and I realized how cold 2500 meter elevations are, even in tropical Asia. Luckily I had a couple of long sleeved shirts and my newfound used clothing treasure, a Chinese Army Jacket (my name is “Hong”).

I cruised back down the mountain and at a small turn off I saw a sign advertising accommodation. Not knowing where I was going, I followed the sign for a few kilometers down the hill to a valley with a few bungalows, a restaurant, a waterfall and a campsite. Eleven dollars later I had a bungalow in a forest beside a river. Soon I met up with a Canadian and four people from France for some food, then drank whiskey and beer with a Bangkok taxi driver (retired Army engineer), his wife, and five pharmacy assistants. They had mixed English abilities, but all had no problem with complicated pharmeceutical drug names. And so I asked them questions about imaginary illnesses, and they, in adorable Thai accents, told me that I would need metrodinazol or ibuprofen. Hilarious.

Today I set out and grinned the whole way to the provincial capital, Mae Hong Son, as the road was simply spectacular. It’s difficult to describe how amazing mountain road driving is on a motorcycle to people who have never tried it, but perhaps you can imagine the thrill and beauty of it all. I remember reading in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” how special motorbike touring can be. You truly are one with the road and your bike, as turning is a matter of weight shifting and you feel the smallest imperfections in the asphalt. As well, the wind and the lack of windows or a roof brings you much more in touch with your surroundings. I feel like car windows relate the scenery in a similar manner to watching it in a movie. Anyone else?

 At any rate, here’s a map of northwestern Thailand, the black dots highlighting my route so far. I plan on spending a day touring around to caves and villages tomorrow, then making for Pai, a tourist hotspot, for a few days before returning to Chiang Mai.

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Please read the post below and check the video, it’s incredible.

But, that said, away I go again. I’m in Chiang Mai, Thailand right now but I’m about to head off into the mountains on a 125cc motorbike I’ve rented. I’m doing a loop south and west to Thailand’s tallest mountain (over 2500 meters) and then north along the Burmese border to Pai, a tourist hotspot in the extreme north. The loop will bring me back to Chiang Mai from the north, and will probably take a week to ten days, giving me lots of time for chilling in out of the way places and meeting people.

I’m very excited and this should be incredible. Even though Thailand seems less authentic than Laos, its nice to have locals who speak English. Despite the tourism here and its out-of-proportion-ness, Thai people are beautiful and peaceful and very, very kind, and I am loving “Amazing Thailand” already.

I will try to keep posting as I ride, but I intend on getting thoroughly lost in the mountains! I have already bought myself an extra sweater, gloves and a Chinese army jacket from a secondhand store here, and I “borrowed” a blanket from the guesthouse I was in last night, although they don’t know it yet.

Vroom vroom…

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First of all, click here to begin downloading the video. Come back to site and continue to read until you hear the video begin to play (you’ll hear me exhale), then go watch the video in the new window. 

I first heard about the experience while I was in southern Laos. Rumour of it was bubbling through the backpacker scene long before that but, like all good rumours, it was elusive and always popped before I could lay my hands upon it.

At the Reggae Bar on Don Det, however, a bearded backpacker from Vancouver Island informed me that he had experienced twice, and even if it were twice the cost ( which is currently $130 US for two nights, all inclusive) it would still be worth it. I cut him off as quickly as I could. Nothing was going to ruin this for me.

And so I made my way north. In Vang Vieng I met up with a Dutch girl who was eager for the experience as well, and so we (with some difficulty) managed to make a booking - be warned, it fills up quickly so book at least a week, more likely two, in advance.

We arrived in Huay Xai (hoo-ay sigh), a small town across the Mekong from Thailand, a day in advance, and spent the night partying with a crew of English, Aussies and Americans who had just completed the experience. We did our best to dissuade them from telling us too much information (or I did, anyway) but of course some of the incredible details slipped out.

Our experience, however, far outshone anything that could be recounted or explained.

Essentially, the Gibbon Experience is a three day, two night, jungle canopy experience. You live in one of five treehouses built in a forest reserve in extreme northwest Laos. In order to traverse the thick jungle, one straps into a harness, clips on a roller and zips along wire cables through and above the treetops. Because the region is mountainous, one can climb up the mountainside path, zip into a treehouse, zip across a valley to the mountainside, climb again, and zip across, climb again, etc etc. There are ten or fifteen ziplines in all. Some are small, ten or so meters above the ground and forty meters long. Others, such as the one in the video, are about three hundred and fifty meters long and cross valleys a hundred meters below.

My treehouse, number one, has four floors. It has three big beds, capable of sleeping nine if you’re friendly. The toilet is simply a porcelain squat hole thirty five meters above the valley floor. The whole structure is built between thirty five and forty meters up, in an epic fig tree. This thing is truly a guardian of the forest. We were very lucky to have arrived right as the figs were ripe, and so our home was surround by birds and half meter long giant squirrels during the days, and a whole crew of two meter long civet cats (think long, sleek raccoons) at night.

The project is designed to create tourist income for the minority villages in the region, thereby discouraging them from poaching, logging and farming in the reserve. It has the full blessing of all the villages and the Laos government. All the guides, cooks and maintainence workers are local villagers, and are learning English quickly and using their knowledge of the forest and its idiosyncracies to full effect. In order to begin the project, its foreign mastermind approached all the villages personally and requested they ask for permission from the forest. As the tribes are animist, they believe in the spiritual nature of animals, trees and jungle itself. And so the foreign dreamer and the local medicine man spendt a night together in each tree before treehouse construction began, meditating and asking for permission from the tree’s spirit.

Needless to say this is an unbelievable experience, something that is very likely impossible to pull off in most places in the world. There is almost complete freedom to navigate the forest by zipping or walking at your discretion, as the guides simply let you go where you will. Still, I found myself spending a lot of time sitting in the treetops and absorbing the sights and, most especially, the sounds of life on top of a jungle.

On our final morning, we heard the unmistakable, haunting calls of gibbons, those most acrobatic of apes. Feeling slightly stomach bugged, I still jumped into my harness and flew along several ziplines toward the whooping. I knew I was close as I slipped my roller off, standing on a platform in a tree, but other trees were obstructing my view. I clipped on and zipped again, turning myself as I flew across a valley. Far below on the valley floor I could see treetops moving. I reached the mountainside and swung my binoculars up to my eyes. Across the valley the calls ended, and I watched two black gibbons swing easily through the trees and disappear over a ridge. My whole group heard them, but I was the only one in the right place, at the right time, to catch a glimpse.

What an experience.

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After a few days in the jungle and a night spent with a hill tribe (rice whisky with the chief!), I now move off to live amongst the gibbons.

 I have two nights in the trees, more when I return…

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First of all, it’s pronounced “low” as in rhymes with “cow.” In Asian languages, ‘ao’ is used to spell out the sound we westerners use when we are hurt (”ow!”). It makes sense, because if you quickly say an “ah” sound followed by an “oh” sound, it results in that particular exhalation. In addition, the “s” is silent, as it was added by the French during colonization, and with all single “s” completions in French, it is not uttered.

Secondly, that’s pretty much all I have time for right now. I am somewhere in the backwards far north of Laos, only sixty kilometers from the Chinese border. I am going to do an overnight trek here, spending a night in a minority hill tribe village. Should be great.

I have been updating my maps frequently, and just recently revamped the “Maps, barber, maps!” page on the right sidebar. Check it out, along with the “Where am I now?” page. Both give you a glimpse into this region’s geography. Not sure about you, but before I started researching this trip I had never heard of “Lay-os.”

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Easily my favourite country so far. Unlike Vietnam and Cambodia, there isn’t as much “madness” when dealing with the locals, which is a wonderful thing.
In the south, the people are much the same as they have been for a hundred years. Televisions are slowly working their way into more and more homes, but in general subsistence farming is the name of the game. On Don Det (in the Four Thousand Islands), farmers have simply built restaurants and a few bungalows on their property. When one stumbles into the morning sun for a baguette and a coffee, one maneuvers through chickens, pigs, ducks and sometimes goats or cattle. I once disturbed a full grown water buffalo who was eating from the trash behind a bar. A little intimidating, they are.

I spent Christmas down there and had a fantastic time. With a large crew of people assembled at the guesthouse (from England, Holland, Finland and Germany) we met up with an even larger crew of people from around the island for the big pig roast. That afternoon, two large sows had been very noisily slaughtered out in front of the restaurant to big ovations from the tourists. Some people I met that night told me they were glad they weren’t there, but I figure that if you can’t watch an animal be slaughtered, you shouldn’t be eating it.

At any rate, it was a beautiful night with everyone in good spirits, and a phone call on the internet to my family back home was a highlight. I love you guys, happy holidays, everyone.

Moving north, the local people lost some of their traditional charm. Sarongs, headwraps and handmade clothing began to be replaced by jeans and t-shirts. Instead of “pay later”, I began to hear “pay now”. Little twists in the attitude of locals that stem directly from increased foreign presence. Still much more relaxed and peaceful than Thailand or especially Vietnam, there seems to be a divide between places north of the capital and those further down the Mekong.

Granted, I have not gotten off the beaten path yet in northern Laos. So far I have been to Vientiane (the capital), Vang Vieng and now Luang Prabang.

Vientiane is a small capital, only 200,000 people, and is very quiet and dusty. It reminded me much of Kingston (Ontario, not Jamaica), in that it is built around a charming old core town with a much less picturesque outer area. As well, distances and scale of the town are similar. I rented a motorbike and cruised around for two days, and really enjoyed myself. Dinner and Beerlao sunsets by the Mekong, and days spent in markets or cafes. There are also some wonderful sites around the city. With cement donated by the U.S. for a new airport, the communist government built a Paris style Arc de Triomphe (named the Victory Arch). Massive and excellently detailed, it can be climbed and offers great city views. It is affectionately known as the vertical runway.

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