Monday, February 26, 2007

Vang Vieng

"This place feels like a border town". I said it, but Alisa was thinking it as we pedaled in from the mountains to V.V. By the way, if you were wondering why I didn't blog about Alisa in the last post it's because we separated for a lot of the first days climb. Listening to her very good advice, I shipped at least 10 pounds of gear back to Bangkok so I could keep up with her. As a result, hmm... how can I put this politely, I kicked her ass up and down those mountains!! Bring it on Lance! Anyway, for the past three days we had been in the boonies and stayed in places where the tourists are not backpackers and not westerners. That always makes me feel superior to everyone else traveling. It's like I have it figured out and all these poor suckers are just along for the ride following mindlessly some route chosen for them by Lonely Planet. The fact that I am surrounded by them right now in an internet cafe is not lost on me, at all. But I still do feel superior...it's the curse of the low-self-esteem-afflicted I'm afraid. Coming back onto the backpacker circuit also has the downside of seeing how cheesy mass tourism really is. A few of us here and there eating noodles from some hole in the wall is one thing. But Vang Vieng is the antithesis of that...a town created for tourists by people who think (and quite correctly I'm afraid) they know what tourists want.
For example, bars. Not just a few bars to cater to the thirsty, but a main street that is bar after bar after bar. This town is a tiny, dusty hole with 2 main streets and maybe 30 bars. But it isn't Khao San Road with blaring, pumping party music. It's TV bars. Every bar has either a big screen TV or multiple TV's so you can watch from any table. The tables are low slung affairs with pillows on the ground so you can lie down and take in the show for as long as your high lasts. TV bars with themes. Like the one that shows only episodes of the smash hit FRIENDS. Over and over, day after day, one mind numbing FRIENDS show after the other. I was trying to imagine the hip LA english that the staff at that bar were learning by listening to Matt Le Blanc and Jennifer Aniston. But not for long because we passed the TV bar that shows the SIMPSONS ad nauseum...DOH! So this dusty town with nothing but guest houses, bars and internet cafes feels very border-esque. The problem is that the border is no where near here.
As the sun went down and we walked around, it hit us both how this is the new-milennium opium den. Pizza places can sell you a "happy pizza" with marijuana on top instead of oregano and you can get a magic mushroom shake. After that you can lie down and trip your way through Homer Simpson as long as you'd like. And people were...lots of them.
Today it is hot. Really freaking hot and the sun is out full strength. Not the filtered sunlight we've been getting up in the hills from all the slashing and burning...no it rained last night. The rain cleaned up the air nicely but took away the smoke filter and now it is really (did I mention) HOT! It is so hot that my pride followed all my strength and we found ourselves planted in front of a TV bar watching some excellent movie choices like "My super ex-girlfriend" and then "The Pink Panther". Thankfully the power went out before some other movie started, and we remembered that we were in Laos. As in S.E. Asia Laos... as far away from AMERICA as you'd want to go! So we left and walked down the street as the power came back on and we stared at the opium dens anew and felt instantly superior to the losers who could come all the way to Laos just to watch TV. That's why I'm here now at the internet cafe really getting my fill of Laos culture before dinner and the next movie!! It's all really just a hoot and only gets obnoxious if I judge it, myself, or anyone else for that matter.

Sabai Dee!

The grass really isn't greener. Not always. The past 3 days have been some of the hardest cycling yet in the lost mountain ranges of N Laos. I wouldn't change any of it for a second. Riding up STEEP hills that go on forever with sweat stinging in my eyes? Love it. Coming around a bend in the road only to see the asphalt snaking up the side of the clear-cut, burned out hillsides and disappearing into the smoky distance? Love it a little less. Making eye contact with some tourist, half my age, looking bored out of her mind as her bus passes? Priceless. As hard as the last few days of hot and humid riding have been, I feel like a million dollars just sitting here in this internet cafe. I am alive. I am tired. I have just accomplished something that was worth doing. And my ass is killing me.
The road from Luang Prabang to the capitol city, Vientiane is the major highway running north-south in this part of the country. Occasionally a car passes. It is no wider than a country road and no passing lanes, that is what the blind curves are for. On the steeper downhill sections I found this out by passing trucks and cars on these blind curves as the diesel spew gets nauseating on the long descents. Even though the people in the back of the truck (and there are always people in the back of a truck) are smiling and waving and giving me the thumbs up, I still want to pass them as it is the rare chance a cyclist gets to pass a motor vehicle. It is so satisfying...like lane splitting in Bangkok. There is some psychic connection that one has with blind curves the longer one drives over here. It is the only explanation for the ability to pass blindly yet knowing you will survive. Sure you may have to hit the brakes as hard as you can a few times. Sure you might have to force the car you're passing to cram on his brakes a few times but in the end everyone survives and speeds off to the next curve. I think I've mastered it after watching enough cars try it...although I have been wearing my helmet religiously just in case.
As soon as Luang Prabang was in the rear view mirror the hills started with a gentle warning. Eight hours later, and the warnings gone unheeded, I was at the summit of a hill dripping in salty sweat and "over it" as my niece Juelianna would say. The previous three hours and 20km had been spent on one solid climb. No little downhill sections, at all. No little spots to coast and let the blood back into my thighs. No spots to relax and spin gently so the lubricant in my knee joints could circulate. Just a continuous UP in my lowest gear. In those three hours I think I experienced four of the five stages of grief researched by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Hour one found me in denial that a mountain could actually go on like this for 20 km. This rapidly moved into anger that a mountain could go on like this for 20 km. The second hour found me in the stage of bargaining with myself, god, the imagined truck driver that might stop and ask if I wanted a ride...anyone or anything that would listen. As no one stopped, and god seemed preoccupied, and I got sick of whining (yes it's possible), I started to move into the fourth stage...depression. But the amazing thing about riding through Laos is that it won't let me get depressed. The scenery is just so beautiful. Even if it is deforested, and a lot of the hillsides are baren and black from slash and burn aggriculture, and the smoke is so thick from all the burning that you can barely see the next ridge (as well as having bronchial pain from deep breathing it all day), Loas is still a beauty. I wanted to ponder the destruction of the earth and how we are all on a one way trip to environmental suicide (because we all know how helpful and useful those thoughts are!) but the damn kids kept interruping me and kept me smiling. Small villages lined the way up the mountain and every time I rode through one all the kids would shout as loud as they could, "Sabai Dee!!!!" A village here is defined as a row of wooden structures on stilts with palm leaf roofs lining either side of the road. No side streets in these towns as the structures were precariously perched over steep drop offs. Under the houses were pigs and chickens and lots of dirt. And even gasping for air I couldn't help but shout back a sabaidee. From dark doorways kids would appear and always waving and shouting hello. From unseen places a shout of sabaidee was frequently heard. The bigger kids, from 4 to 10 years old, would run out to the side of the road and give high fives as I passed. It was a great feeling and so encouraging to have all these little guys rooting for me. I could imagine what it must be like to be famous like Lance Armstrong or Julia Roberts for a day! OK, maybe not, but those are the kind of messed up thoughts that passed through my mind as the electrolyte imbalance got more critical.
The last hour of the ascent felt steeper yet and I moved into the fifth stage of grief...acceptance. Breathe in for 3 pedal strokes; breathe out for 3 pedal strokes. Repeat. The breathing took over the thinking and it just became an exercise of stubborn will. Just keep pedalling and you will get there. And as I did pull into town and found a guest house, I felt like a rock star. Mick Jagger maybe, or one of the other dinosaurs who should have quit long ago... but still, a rock star. And the guest house up there? Let's be nice and say it wasn't a 5 star resort. It didn't have running water and the beds looked eerily similar to the bedbug infested things that I've "slept" in before. The dank shower room consisted of a 50 gallon oil barrel (Shell Oil logo still visible) full of cold water. There was an small empty bucket outside and I took it towel clad into the back kitchen (and you really don't want to know what is in a back kitchen in Laos...let alone the front kitchen). There the bucket was filled with boiling water from a huge pot being heated by a log fire. Mixed with the water from the oil drum, that bucket bath was better than most showers I've ever had. Washing away the funk that had accumulated on my body was all that mattered and it reminded me once again of all the crazy little things we not only take for granted, but get so upset about in our daily "struggles". Yet another reminder that travelling is such a great teacher. It can show us our craziness by stripping from us our familiar expectations...and replacing them with that cultures' crazy expectations.
I awoke bite free and ready to do it all over again and that's exactly what I did...for the next two days. Each day the power in my legs decreased. I rolled into Vang Vieng last night vowing that now I will take a day off and play in the river here and drink lots of Lao coffee. The sludge that just a few days ago I complained about is now a favorite staple and drug of choice. Super sweet, thick and chewy! Unfortunately this town is all about other drugs of choice and is a hot spot on the backpacker loop. But that is for tomorrows blog.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

A River Journey Down The Mekong

Let me try to describe what the last two days of travelling in Laos have been like. And I preface this with the fact that my ass hurts more now, after 2 days of non-cycling, than it has since early Malaysia. A two day long-boat trip down the Mekong River from the border town of Huai Xai (yeah, I can't pronounce it either) to Luang Prabang on a hard, straight backed bench right out of a southern baptist church will do that to any butt. The pain really started before the boat ride, next to my ass...in my wallet. What should have cost $15 for the journey ended up being $30 as no one would tell us where the boat dock was. Everyone wanted to sell us tickets but mystery surrounded how to buy directly. One official looking booth next to the sign to our destination was occupied by a guy who pointed up the road when we asked to buy a ticket. Since we had just arrived on the bank of the river in this new country, up the road was, basically, Laos. The advice we got from everyone varied from "Go to the bus station" (we're thinking NO!) to the ubiquitous "can not". We finally caved in and bought the ticket from a guest house as the boat was leaving soon (or so we thought). Following the tuk-tuk on bicycle for 1/4 mile led us to the docks but the damage was already done and we had been fleeced. Fifteen dollars for a quarter mile bike ride...hey, it's a lot when you're spending $2.00 for lodging and $1.50 for meals!
Patience takes on a whole new meaning when travelling and especially travelling with the herd of backpackers all trying to find the next new thing and using the same Lonely Planet book to do it. We all packed into a boat approximately 10 feet wide (to hell with the metric system!) by 100 feet long. I say packed because there were maybe 200 people on this boat. The bicycles were stored up top and all bags were under the floor boards by 9:30am and we were ready to go as it was getting hot. By "we" I mean all the passengers. The crew was way more relaxed than the rest of us however and we didn't do much more than sweat and wait for the occasional straggler (or wiser tourist who had done this before). By the time the engine fired up, to the cheers of all, and we pulled out of the dock/sand bar it was 11:30 and our butts were already complaining. The Brits on board were whining that we were behind schedule as if a schedule actually has meaning over here, and the Canadians were on their 2nd or 3rd "beer-lao". The Canadians were definitely having more fun than the rest of us. But the fact that they were Canadian meant that their livers were well primed for 90 ounces of beer before breakfast. For those who have been to Laos (and I've been here for all of two days), Beer-Lao is more than a beer for the backpacker...it's a way of life. For just about a dollar one can get a good buzz on a 32 ounce bottle of nice, hoppy, light beer. The beer being light and delicious, and the weather being hot and humid, one beer just doesn't seem to cut it for most of the backpacking set. The philosophy of more is better takes over the philosophy of moderation after the second beer. And the resulting drunk fest that occurred on the boat was kind of depressing and yet impressive. People were getting to that place where , holding up a big 32 ouncer in each hand and waving them at passing monks seemed like a good idea. I've seen people drinking a 32 ouncer for breakfast as I'm still picking the sleep goo from my eyes and trying to focus on my lao coffee (read sludge). Lao coffee is another bloggable item that I just don't have the patience for but suffice it to say that sludge is a kindly description. Don't get me wrong, it'll wake you up...like a marching band will wake you up, like Led Zepplin will wake you up, like a Laotian hot chili poop will wake you up!!! Yeah, it'll do the job but in a painful kind of way. The cup, filled one fourth with condensed milk, barely sweetens and whitens but without it the enamel peels from your teeth. I've had 3 cups this morning and you can see how the clarity of mind is effected! The golden triangle indeed. To hell with heroin, the drugs of choice here are beer lao and lao coffee.
All right, back to the point of this entry... the river trip down the Mekong. The river is a brown and beautiful glassy mess. Cutting through places accessable only by river gives one the feeling of exploration as the steep hillsides and river banks were almost totally void of habitation or signs of human activity. Jagged twisted rock formations poke up like sharks teeth or striated fins from the murky brown water. Large forested areas mixed with ferns and palm trees gave it that strange feeling of "I've-been-here-before-except-for-the-tropical-bits". You know the feeling. The air was hot enough that you wanted to jump in the water half the time. The other half you remembered that this river starts in China and that the definition of a river in China is 'something that takes toxic things downstream away from you'. It was easy to remember that however, because anywhere there was a back-eddy, and therefore turbulence, a foamy brown baseball sized sludge-nut formed. It looked like the Mekong was making its own styrofoam and shipping it downstream with us tourists. So instead of looking to the river to cool down we would go to the bathroom. The floor was puddling with god knows how much beer lao pee. And the amazing quality of my new Thai baggy pants to drop into it still amazes me. Holding up the pants and trying to pee and then trying to tie them up again on a rocking boat can be challenging. I failed that challenge and will just tell you that the wicking ability of thai cotton to soak up liquids of any nature needs to be studied. It's uncanny how wet the bottoms of my pants became with an ungodly mixture of watever was on that dark and wet floor. Sitting back in my seat I did notice the cooling effects of urine soaked trousers but couldn't really enjoy it as I also imagined the bacteria colonizing my shins.
There were more people than seats on the boat and the overcrowding gave one the feling of claustrophobia mixed with a big party. In this case a frat party. Going to the back of the boat to pee was an experiment in balance and not stepping on the toes of everyone in the isle. But in the back was the engine "compartment" and a group of sleeping beer-lao soaked backpackers all intertwined and going deaf in the roar of the room. The engine was totally exposed and screaming at OSHA defying decibels. On it were flowers and rice offerings that kept this motor running. It was important as any engine failure would probaboly mean sinking at the downstream pace we were going and the jagged rocks that were jutting out from the banks of the river. And back here too was the Thai Bob Marley who was dreadlocking some young westerner's long black hair. It was as if everyone I had seen for the past month on Khao San Road had been placed in this boat as a cruel joke by god for some forgotten sin. It was everything I find obnoxious about travelling along the backpackers well worn route and I was trapped just a few feet under my bicycle. I was on this boat for two days...9 hours each day.
The second day everyone (even the Canadians!) who had been drinking crazily was subdued and either reading or listening to ipods and trying not to barf by the looks of them. What had the day before been a party boat was now a church service with prayers of delivery and forgiveness coming from the upright benches. A 10 hour church service. And as fun as that sounds, I was dying to get off this beautiful and horrible little long-boat trip down the Mekong. By the time I got to Luang Prabang I was begging for some of those monster hills of N Thailand and the feeling of desperation watching Alisa shrinking into the future. In two days we leave for Vienne Tien and I'm sure I'll be begging for the party boat and a cold one. The grass is always greener, as is the river.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

A Quick Addition

Just added a new link to view starring my partner in cycling crime. The fact that she doesn't complain at all just makes me hate her even more! Enjoy.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Alisa Armstrong

OK. There is a piece of the story I've left out for reasons of pride and ego and self-respect. Her name is Alisa, she's 28 years old and we've been cycling together since Chiang Mai. And before you gutterheads get the wrong idea...no it's NOT like that...at all! We met up in Bangkok about a month ago after she read my blog and sent me a hello. She was also hiding in an internet cafe while avoiding the pierced and tattoo'd dreadlockers that knuckle drag their way from Khao San Road to Soi Rambuttri in search of the next bucket of mixed drinks. She came across this blog and we were soon emailing and setting up a time to share cycling exagerations (which proves that this verbal diarrhea of a cycling blog hasn't been a total waste of time). She was solo cycling N.Thailand and as usual I had no solid plan. So we went our own ways only to meet up again unplanned in Chiang Mai. When we decided that it would be fun to travel together up into Laos, I had no idea that this woman was Lance Armstrong's twin sister! The fact that Lance is in his late 30's has no bearing on this discussion. Growing up with Lance was tough Alisa assured me. Always having to wait for her older twin on the hill climbs and having to listen to him complain about the headwinds grated on her nerves to be sure. But the testicular cancer period was especially hard as she not only saw him through the ordeal but watched as he got all the attention and became the media darling while her own superior cycling skills were never appreciated. I think that to this day (7 "stolen" Tour de France victories later) she secretly resents Lance.
There is nothing new in my experience of feeling inferior to people...men or women. In many ways, women hold a greater power over me than I can explain. And knowing that I give them this power doesn't seem to change its emotional impact. So it was a familiar yet defeated kind of sensation when Alisa and I headed out of the rice paddies and straight for the mountains. I have been priding myself on my physical abilities after months of cycling and thought that I was strong. As a 44 year old I was also beginning to feel like I have a handle on what kind of mental strenght it takes to solo tour S.E. Asia. As Alisa began to shrink into the distance ahead I started questioning both those assumptions. Instantly in my lowest gear and struggling, I could barely make out that she was still into the middle of her gear cluster and had tons of lee-way "for when the hills get difficult". It was a foreshadowing that I didn't need to hear. She just got smaller until she disappeared around a bend. When I finally got around one of the harder bends she was standing there eating a creme cookie and sipping water like we were on a picnic. The last thing I could have done was eat a creme cookie without barfing or inhaling the dry crumbs while catching my breath. That was day one. She would say things that were supposed to be encouraging like, "It takes more energy to push a bike up a hill than to ride it". "Huh", I would say, not letting her in on the fact that if I possibly COULD have ridden up the hill I would have! By the end of the day she saw I was truely struggling and realized that I was getting washed out. She would give me words of encouragement that somehow just didn't work. Things like, "I don't have nearly as much crap in my panniers as you do. No wonder you're going so slow". Or, "You're legs must have atrophied over the past 6 weeks of not cycling". Sitting here now I can see the remarks as they were intended. A way for me to save face without too much shame. At the time my ears heard things like, "What dumb-ass packs a plastic pet cat or 5 pound hatchet in case he comes across a coconut to eat?" Or, "God your legs are weak."
It turns out that Alisa is a professional bike tour guide back in Washington and is used to people doing stupid things and not being quite in shape for the rides they plan. She's seen it all before and my antics were not new to her. Even though I know this about her and about myself, it still sucks to get my ass handed to me by a woman! So the other day we crawled out of the mountains and hit some fine flat rolling hills of a river valley. Just after a noodle lunch I said we should kick it down a notch and just spin for the second half of the day. It was hot and we were dripping sweat in the full afternoon sun. She agreed and as we rode off I hit the gas with a post lunch blood sugar boost. Once out of the steep hills I started feeling great again as I could finally get off my lowest gear and make some time. It really felt great to power up and watch as Alisa shrank into a small dot in my rear view mirror and then disappeared. "Who's got too much crap in their panniers now sucka" I thought as I hit a cruising speed of 16 to 18 mph. Then up ahead I saw the first of the short but moderately steep hills. It took a lot of energy but standing up while pedalling I could keep the momentum from making me hit my lowest gear again. No Alisa behind and I was still good...until maybe 3 to 4 similar hills later. It was near the middle of one of these little soul stealers that I saw her coming up from behind. From a speck to a blob to a discernable cyclist to Lance's sister I could see her advancing rapidly. It was uncanny how quickly she was catching up and made me feel...well, slow. My pride was now attatched to the thought that "OK, maybe you're stronger than me on the hills but dammit I got you on the flats!" I was now peddling almost all out but it was no use. Training with Lance had given her all his competitive drive and she overtook me within a minute or two more. She smiled at me as she said, "Hey I thought we were gonna take it down a notch here!" Then she was gone...blowing up the next hill as I hit the well worn low gear and spun my way up. Anyone who has done any sport knows that a lot, maybe most, of performance is mental. Being in shape and training correctly are important to be sure but if your mind gets beaten...then you are beaten. I had just been beaten and at 85 degrees it was killing me. After a few more hills Alisa pulled over and waited for me while drinking some water. A bit of advice here for those who have just kicked some ass. Never ask the person whose ass you've just handed back to them how they're doing. The responses given can be wide ranging but I chose the face saving "good, good, good, no worries!" So off we rode and it was only a few minutes later that I realized I wasn't doing so well. My upper lip was sticking to my upper gums giving me that skeleton look. No matter how much water I'd drink I resumed my psycho smile...my lips were cracking and I had cotton mouth so I couldn't even swallow. I was dehydrating and couldn't keep up with the water I needed. At about the same time I bonked.
There is a funny phenomenon in cycling called bonking. Sorry again gutterheads but it has nothing to do with what you are thinking right now. Bonking is another word for hitting the wall... a.k.a. pooping out. The blood sugar high I had just been running on peaked and I felt like my legs had instantly turned to gel. There is a fatigue and weakness that occurs and though I got hungry and weak, the last thing I wanted to do was eat. As I rode more and more slowly Alisa pulled over and saw the bonk face. "You need to eat, dammit, follow me." We went to a roadside stand and drank coke and orange drink and I jammed cookies in my mouth while fighting the urge to throw it all back up. After 20 minutes the world became clearer and the edges of things lost their hazy sheen. Even though I was thoroughly beaten down, I was grateful that Alisa had come to my rescue and forced me to eat and drink. I have now lost all illusions that because I'm a man I should somehow be a better or stronger cyclist than a woman (though sometimes I look at her gear ratio and think I could be just as strong with that wimpy Mt bike set up!). That notion was unceremoniously kicked out of me a few days ago. But if you (male or female) ever get the chance to ride with Alisa...pack lightly.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

A Whole New Ballgame

Never...ever, as an adult, have I had to push my bike up a hill. After thousands of miles of bicycle touring in Europe, the U.S. and Asia I have finally had to face the shame and defeat that N. Thailand has dished out. Everything...all the moaning, whining, complaining, and even wimpering that I've done so far? Forget it. It's all been the writing of the uninitiated. Like someone complaining about the heat of black pepper before tasting a red chili. But I now have been initiated. Northern Thailand has shown me things I thought only God or satan could. The places of despair and anger and futility that pull things out of you that you wish would have stayed in. Sure there were the hot days of hallucinations and talking to myself down in S. Thailand...where sweat stung my eyes and blurred my vision. Sure there were the lonely days of wanting to have a conversation longer than "hello". There were times after cycling for days that progress could hardly be measured on the map. Ahh, the good old days.
Riding out of Chiang Mai was a joy as it had been almost 6 weeks since I had been on my bike. My legs felt good and rested. I now realize that rested means atrophied...6 weeks of sitting and menu gazing makes for lousy traing. But I was finally headed out of town toward Laos knowing I would soon be off the crowded polluted highway. Fourteen km later and a right turn showed a world that is quiet and wonderful and full of water buffalos and rice paddies. There is a feeling that I get when I am out here propelling myself quietly along, using no fossil fuels and watching the world pass by that I can not describe. Self reliance, pride, elation, alive, physically strong, adventurous, ecofriendly (OK, I can describe it) are some words that come to mind. There is a peacefull understanding that all is right and all is as it should be. Had I known that just 6 hours later every one of those feelings (except eco-friendly) would be stripped from me and left me to feel just weak, inadequate, tired and stupid I might have turned around. Nah, everyone I met already had warned me about a new kind of hill in N. Thailand but I didn't listen. It's not like I would have changed my plans but maybe I would have unloaded a few things before the hill climbs. Things like Presta, my new battery operated shiny, golden, one-armed, waving kitty-cat that I thought would be hilarious outside my tent every night keeping me company as I camped out. Presta was weighing heavily on my mind, and without the hilarity, the first time I hit the monster hills. Or other things like clothing that I bought for friends back home, books, a knife that no longer opens, or the down jacket that I might use someday, or the 2 extra pairs of shoes (rumor has it that the king of Thailand has only 3 pairs of shoes...and I'm right up there with him...on a bike!). OK you get the point, a catalogue of the absolute useless crap that is in my panniers being hauled up the mountainsides of this country doesn't make for the most exciting reading. I just wanted to be clear about the feeling stupid part.
I've ridden some steep mountain passes in my time. And there is one thing they all seem to have in common that is lacking in Thailand...foothills. The nice little rollers that introduce you to the mountains ahead. The ones that say, "Welcome, friend, you are going to have to get it together soon because in a little while your gonna be in a world of hurt"...like a puff of air on a still day that warns of the impending storm. Here in the paddies of nowhere, minding my own business, the looming hill just ahead seemed to say, "What the hell are you doing on a bicycle?" It's a question I've asked myself over the past 3 days many times. There are no foothills here. From rice paddie to steep incline, the road changes incline so fast that I have to rapidly downshift into my lowest gear to avoid losing all momentum. The roads start steep and stay steep. Or worse they tend to get steeper. On day one of my re-introduction to cycling, after 5 hours of HARD riding, the hills just went crazy. Surrounded by the most amazing scenery of steep cliff sides and tumbling valley walls and coffee plantations, the road just shot UP. The switchback ahead curled around the bend recalling a paved spiral staircase. I was already exhausted and sore and my knees were having discussions with my common sense. I just buckled. I had run out of wimpers long ago and just shouted out a big F#%$$& to the world who didn't seem to care a whole lot. I was still 2 km from the summit and the sun was starting to head down. I was beaten...done...paralyzed. I stood there for the longest time as mopeds crawled up and cars groaned in first gear spewing black clouds. I got it together and started pushing my bike up the "staircase" having to stop every 10 steps or so to catch my breath. My pulse hovered around 160-180 just pushing Presta and her mobile home up this road. Now it's acually harder to push 80 pounds uphill than it is to cycle it, but when your legs and the gear ratio on your bike meet their limits you get off and push. I don't know how long the last 2 km took to walk but the carrot of the town/lodging/and food kept me going. As I walked, I also considered the other thing that most roads (outside of Thailand) have in common...some sort of engineering. The sort that puts turns in roads so as to make the ascent easier...or at least doable. Maybe it's cheaper to just go straight up the hillside though, as that seems to be the common theme in roadbuilding here.
As the milemarker read zero and the summit came into view, the town didn't. I was met with an amazing view of mountains and trees and valleys as far as I could see. I was also met with frustration. The light was fading and I was done. To the right the road stretched uphill. To the left a steep drop to a town and hopefully food. Yeah, I went left and what had taken me hours to achieve had been erased in a mind-blowingly fast and scary descent in just about 5-10 minutes (a descent that I would have to climb the next morning!).
What occurred just outside of that town strengthened my faith in humanity as there was no store or market for food down here, and no lodging. I was brought to the house of a man in 50's who set up a place for me to sleep on his floor and cooked me the best meal of rice and some green beans that I've ever eaten. After dinner, when I bit into the bar of imported chocolate I just started giggling like a fool. I'm not sure why. And he smiled along. The connection we shared was limited by language and culture and yet it was deep because it transcended both. He was a human being helping fellow man and it is a lesson I hope to remember for a long time. It washed away a lot of the pain (that and the HOT! shower) and gave me courage to get up the next day and do it all over again.
I'M NOW NEARING LAOS AND MAY BE OFF LINE FOR A FEW DAYS...OR DEAD...SO STAY TUNED.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Body Fluids or So THIS is Why I Left Kauai

A friend has talked about bloggers block. It is real. This is how I combat it...I appologize wholeheartedly.
Why the hell have I been getting sick so often? I asked the question again all night last night as I kept myself up coughing and sputtering. Then it all started to piece together...like an infected puzzle; the lack of vigorous physical exercise, the stress of crowded cities, crowded trains, and crowded planes and basically just crowds. But the biggest piece of the puzzle was the hacking woman, coughing moistly and incessantly, on the Petri Express to Hanoi, Viet Nam. She kept coughing without covering her mouth but since it was on my sister I felt pretty OK about it all. Instant Karma I guess as Samantha is healthy and back in the US and I am stuck here coughing up pieces of lung tissue.
Viet Nam has had several outbreaks of bird flu this year and as much as I think the whole bird flu pandemonium (not pandemic) is a media driven non-event {be afraid and support pfeizer and the economy with a trip to the doctor to get an immunization} the fear of it entered my mind as pieces of crap keep getting hacked up from deep inside my body. As an aside...I know!...there are countries in SE Asia that now have millions of outdating immunizations and they are trying to decide wheather to spend millions of very limited health dollars on a "maybe" when there are so many critical issues facing them that are NOT maybe. Remember Y2K!! Anyway, the crap that is coming out of me is a lot like...crap...thick green bird crap. I think I've got a case of bird crap flu...the first case noted anywhere! Call the CDC and have them analyze my phlegm (by the way, I used to live in a house with a guy who did that for a living...analyze peoples' phlegm...he hated his job) and it can be confirmed. I swear, if I hacked up one and spit it onto your windshield you'd think a bird had just flown by...with diarrhea.
Phlegm. The laymans term for what respiratory therapists and medical professionals call sputum. It has always been my least favorite bodily fluid. It is referred to us (read ER or ICU nurses) who use the term "professional" a little more irreverently, as lung butter. In many, many ways it's not the worst of the effluents that spill from our bodies...certainly not the smelliest. That prize would have to go either melena ( a very nasty runny, black stool of digested blood) or emesis (plain old barf). A little tangent here to meditate on the word stool. It has always been a mystery to me how two nouns could have the same name and be so different. For one is something you step on and the other is the last thing you'd ever want to step on! But where was I...oh, vomit. The word can be a noun or a verb but either way it is a powerful thing. I mean, when you smell someone elses poop, do you suddenly have to poop too? Everytime I clean up a trauma patients' barf encrusted hair (and sure I generalize here but trauma=alcohol ingestion and alcohol ingestion=a recent pizza meal...trust me I'm a nurse), I start to wretch. I've never actually vomited on the job but I've wretched a lot...with some serious close calls! And even hearing someone throwing up (having an emesis lacks punch don't you think? I mean, it sounds like they could be ordering something from a cocktail menu...OK not really) kind of makes you curl your toes right? You set your jaw hoping you won't be next. That's why I hate it when a poor sick patient gets those watery, bugged out eyes and desperately says, "Oh God, I think I'm going to throw up!" I fear the ER chain reaction as I reach for the amplifier that is their barf bucket. It's like a megaphone for the gastro-intestinally challenged to broadcast their condition. I've never measured how far the sound actually carries but half a football field down a narrow hospital hallway would not be exagerating. The heart monitors of those unlucky patients closest, speed up...it's like an epicenter of nausea spreading outwardly and dissipating as it gets quieter. It is an odd thing really as we don't react that way when we hear a burp...or a fart. So yes, vomit is way up on my list of least favorite bodily fluids.
Melena is just as bad. When one digests their own blood and then passes it, (and why God, does it almost always have to be incontinent?) there is an odor that is indescribably foul. It is a good thing that a patient in this condition is so desparately ill and needing emergent care. Otherwise the instinct {called self-preservation} of every nurse, to barely slide the door open, slip in a bucket of soapy water and a can of glade(with the instructions to hit the call light when finished) would take over. Even in the most caring RN. So yes, again, Melana is not a favorite.
Sputum, however is the worst. This is a personal ranking of course as we nurses in the ER have this discussion not infrequently. For me the greyish creamy color, and most of all the tenacious consistancy of sputum, gets me gagging all the time. A slimy and thick gob of lung butter can alternatively slide down a napkin onto your unsuspecting arm. Yet once there it will fight all the water pressure in the hospital to hang on to it. Yeah, it's like that.
Oh I could go on reminiscing...but since no one is left reading this thing (I hope), why should I bother. And even if it isn't what I wanted to blog about, at all, it has helped me to remember one of the reasons (OK 3) for leaving nursing for hopefully cleaner pastures. It also, unfortunately for you, has helped to break up the bloggers block like a good old enema...but I'll save that story for later.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

GERMS!

OK all kidding aside...maybe my sister has something here. I'm sick as a dog once again and figure its those damn germs. I awoke with abd cramps and diarrhea and have been coughing for the past 2 days and now habve bronchitis!! Back to bed!

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

How to Travel?

Alone again!!! My sister and nephew are somewhere over the South China Sea right now and I'm 5000 miles from home and back in Bangkok happily sitting at Taewez Guest House wrapped up in a blanket of polluted fishy air and the familiar sound of tuk-tuks. When I left here three weeks ago I was fantasizing about shooting every passing tuk-tuk as they roared by in a blaze of blue smoke. After Hanoi they've regained their cute status. I do not miss the constant honking of Viet Nam. But I must say the unbelievable frenetic energy of that country, and Hanoi in particular, makes Bangkok seem like a retreat for PTSD sufferers. I'm almost happy to be back in Bangkok...almost. There is a warm and humble greeting that Thais give you upon meeting. A simple "yo" or "whattup" or "hey" in my world is transformed in Thailand into a kind of reverence for the person you are meeting. Hands in prayer position and a slight bow while uttering a soft "sawadee kap" are the mechanics behind it. What gives it the humanity and warmth is the eye contact and the sincerety of the accompanying big smile. I feel truely welcomed. Sawadee kap could mean "my ancestors would have whooped the asses of your ancestors had they met" and it wouldn't matter...I'd still melt. Upon boarding the airplane to Thailand from Hanoi I was sawadee kah'd by a beautiful Thai flight attendant. The past 2 weeks of the Viet Namese greeting, "Xin Chao", happily melted into the past. Into the nebulous and watery world of memory and unread journals. Xin chao is said in the same way we would say "yo" or "hey" with all the intended depth and connectedness. It was nice to be leaving Viet Nam even if I was bound for the crowds of Bangkok. For even in this city of 10 million (people/cars/tuk-tuks/carcinogens) the people are willing to connect. The Viet Namese less so (again, except for Phan, whom we met up with in Hanoi and took us to dinner, and was even warmer so disregard everything I've just written). Sometimes I wondered if it was because we (the U.S.) dropped over 5 million TONS of bombs on the place, and 80 MILLION gallons of toxic defoliants like agent orange. Or when the war was said and done, somewhere between 2 and 3 million Viet Namese were dead. And in the south those we just abandoned were left to be killed or "re-educated" by those in the north. Sometimes I thought about these things...when a Viet Namese wasn't too warm and fuzzy. But I have to say that we were treated amazingly well for such a recent and terrible history. Of course we were mercilessly ripped off by everyone who could. But that had more to do with being rich than being American as every tourist I talked with had similar experiences. My sister called it "the revenge of the Viet Namese" and she was able to use that phrase frequently. The Viet Namese were able to exact a painful, slow, unceasing barrage of the senses and wallet in much the same way they won the war. Small attacks, never full on. Hit and run so you only realize the damage after it has occurred. Like the time I traded in a book for another one and then actually bargained my way to a higher price than the seller originally quoted. Everyone laughed as I pulled out my dong (easy now gutterheads, dong is the currency over here!) and half way down the street I groaned out loud as I realized that "the revenge" once again had hit my wallet. Actually it's all just economics and I really think that, just like the Cambodians, everyone here wants to move on and focus on the present and the future...the past just hurts too much. BUT...this isn't what I wanted to blog about today...at all.
I need your help... some feedback. My sister and I have been having a running dialogue about travel. How to travel and what is it that makes it worthwhile and what actually is the best way to do it. One way to NOT do it is to have one person, i.e. my sister, pay for the entire trip. Don't get me wrong here...it's been great having an all expenses paid journey for the past 3 weeks. The problem is that she with the pocket book usually gets to make the final decisions. Samantha hasn't played that card at all, it's just that it is hard to make the person paying for everything stay in a place she really doesn't want to. The weird part of the scenario is that I always want to stay in places that would save her tons of money but also be a whole lot less comfortable. The second class 19 hour petri dish of a train ride is a good example (pee puddles and all). Another example is food. Viet Nam has millions of noodle stalls and street vendors where hygeine takes a back seat to "adventure". Hanoi has these street corner places where plastic step stools used as seats spill out to the curb. Kegs are out in the open pumping up the cheapest beer in the country and the corners look like a vibrant and fun way to pass the time and eat a $2.00 meal. We gave these a wide berth and dined in a beautiful french colonial restaurant that served the best ratatouille stuffed aubergine this side of Paris. Beautiful decor, great service, awesome food and a decent little house red (a bit woody maybe but with a nice finish) to wash it all down. OK, you get my point. When in France...go big! When in Hanoi sit on a stool, shoo away the occasional cockroach and eat chilies like you'll never poop again! So we discussed these diferences in travel style and tried to compromise. I whined enough about the horrors of clean sheets, air-cionditioned rooms, maid service and swimming pools to get MY way the last night of the joint trip. It is here that things went wrong...terribly wrong. Maybe it was the fact that we had been on the move all day with taxis and airplanes and schedules. Maybe it was the fact that we had stayed up till midnight the night before waiting for the hotel (mid-range compromise) staff to break the door knob off our room door so we could get in (we locked the keys inside). I think it was the combination as well as the not too distant memory of a train ride that still gives my sister scalp scratching nightmares. It all led to the inevitable and only argument of the entire trip.
I got to chose our final nights lodging in Bangkok. At $7.00/night (for the family room mind you) it's the cheapest place we've stayed in Asia (although I prefer the term inexpensive). The room we reserved had 2 large beds, air-con, and a private bath. The only problem was that the staff reserved it for the wrong day. Fancy foot work (giving us someone elses reserved room before they got there) ensured us a place to sleep. This room had two big-ish beds, AC, and a bathroom just down the hall. Samantha was definitely "NOT HAPPY" but what could we do? The place was full and we were exhausted. Samantha went off to the bathroom and came back livid. The toilets were squat style (bonus in my book!) and some splash-back ended up on her feet. Not a big deal unless the water system for the entire neighborhood was shut down...which it was. Add to this scenario the afforementioned germ phobia and things begin to teeter precariously. She was realizing that for the next two days she would be airborn, sleepy (having had only 3 hours of sleep), cranky, dirty, unwashed and possibly stinky...with pee on her feet. She was getting less happy the more she pondered. Her comment, "If I had my way I can guarantee you we would have stayed in a a neighborhood where the water system is not shut down!" didn't help my edgy tired mood. I was taking it personally as I not only chose this place, I love it. The smell of fish from the bustling market across the street has the odor of authenticity. Plus it masks the stench of the sewer gas! It was past midnight now and we were all surly and the room was hot. It was time for sleep. I turned on the AC and crawled in bed. When the air-con unit failed to respond I thought 'hey at least we have a good strong fan', but wisely chose silence knowing this would be the proverbial straw breaking her back. She doesn't sleep well without the room being cool. Her response surprised me though as she chuckled in agony; broken and reserved to an evil night of dirty teeth and sweaty sleepless tossing and turning...with pee on her feet.
As an aside, I woke up at 8:30 and the water had been restored. I took a cold shower (who needs hot water when it's so hot out anyway?) thinking how much I love budget travel and the joys of having rock bottom expectations. The handheld shower hose, if precariously balanced on the pipe coming out of the wall, allowed me to rinse my hair using both hands. The fact that I had to do so bent over at a 90 degree angle and putting my face within inches of the squatter ("hey, the skid marks are almost gone!") in no way altered my outlook.
I think there might be a problem here. Maybe my other sister Martha can find a diagnosis in the DSM-4 (ultra-low self-esteem disorder?, happy with horrible conditions condition?, self-effacement syndrome?) and email me some treatment options. God I hope not as I just got a whiff of the buckets of snails and eels from the market and I'm recalling the coast of France. Travel is good...it's all good!

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Mopeds

All across SE Asia I've seen hundreds of thousands of mopeds and the further north from Singapore I get the more there are. I thought Bangkok was bad until I got to Phnom Penh. I thought that was bad until I got to Ho Chi Minh city. Hanoi blows them all away as there is no comparison. The sidewalks are actually parking lots for them as there are just too many. As there is no room to actually walk on the sidewalk, the thousands of mopeds that constantly flow by honking, do so within inches, sometimes bumping their handlbars into you. We arrived by all night train this morning and couldn't believe the choking streets. This is the first place so far that I'm glad I don't have my bike. The intensity of the traffic here is too much. The constant stream of noice and horns and stimulation is agitating and tiring and aggrivating. I'd be road kill in minutes. Our train was a 19 hour festival of noise and the stench of urine as our berth happened to be next to the "toilet". I use that word generously as it was more of a hole in the floor, surrounded by pee puddles, than an actual toilet. The puddle of urine that sloshed toward my birkenstocks every time the train rounded a bend threatened to soak my socks. They somehow remained dry, but all the same I tracked in a smelly, wet trail of pee from the bathroom to our room. The sheets were the color of storm clouds but not as fresh. Mine were covered in footprints which led me to wondering if the person using my linens had previously been to the bathroom. The berth had 4 beds (2 up and 2 down) and we 3 shared it with a Viet Namese woman who had a frequent and very moist cough. You know that smokers-cough-early-in-the-morning-hacking-up-a piece-of-lung-tissue sound? It was that, except more often and a little wetter. It was on this leg of our journey that I learned the true depth of my sisters fear of germs. Not quite the Howard Hughes level of paralyzing fear (I didn't see her lining the floor with Kleenex tissues...not while travelling anyway) but way up there in my dads league. Our conversations of germs and lice and cockroaches and bedbugs dominated the train ride and made the 19 hour journey fly by in no time. The luster of budget travel was wearing off rapidly for her as I happily wrapped up in a dishwater grey blanket and buried my head in a matching pillow case. That night Samantha slept with a hoodie on zipped all the way to the neck. I'll give her some slack though (even if she did have Elliott checking her roots for lice tonight) as it is getting colder the further north we go. But everyone has had long horrible train rides in Asia and it isn't really what I wanted to write about, at all.
Yesterday we were in Hoi An which is a beautiful small town in the central coast of Viet Nam. Old Chinese buildings line a small river and the back alleyways and narrow streets are lined with tailors and shops selling brightly colored cloth lamps. At night the place lights up beautifully with thousands of hanging balls and shades swinging in the evening breeze. Another thing that makes this downtown area special is the lack of cars. Several streets are car free zones that are meant to be pedestrian areas. While I generally applaud the removal of cars from all roads, interstates included, I haven't noticed much of a change in the decibel level of these walking streets. Mostly because the mopeds have more than filled the noise gap. Nature abhors a vaccuum as noise abhors a silence (as is demonstrated by the constant jibber-jabber inside my head) and the Viet Namese abhor driving without constantly honking their horns. I think it's all about power (isn't everything?) as the lowly moped is the bottom feeder of the traffic stream...the lower rung on the ladder. So the horn is a kind of "beeeeep, back off you pedestrian, or cyclist, I've got 75cc's of hell under my ass and if you don't back down you're gonna get hurt!" "OK, maybe not very badly, but back off!! That's the thing with bullies with big horns... all bluster. Because in the end the moped driver knows (as none wear helmets...loud horns save lives man) he will end up on the wrong side of the E.R. if he goes up against a truck or car, or pedestrian, or dog...hell even a curb! So, with all that pent up rage boiling inside and no one to take it out on (safely) the only pressure relief valve comes in the form of a cute little trumpet button under his left thumb. But maye, as a cyclist, I'm just projecting my powerlessness onto all these moped drivers who are just tooting their nasally horns defensively, in a gesture to keep themselves (and in many cases their entire family-5 people on one moped is the record so far) upright and alive. I'm considering a pedal powered air horn myself as my bell sounds kind of ...gay. When I hit my bell people don't generally scatter out of my way as much as stop and smile. No, on second thought I'm not projecting...at least here in Viet Nam. I have proof. Of all the multitudes of mopeds I've seen there are only a handfull of differing brands. They mostly have innocuous names that have been market researched and sanitized to offend no one. The ubiquitous wave and its offspring the wave 2 are good examples. When the pack of hundreds of waves line up at an intersection and the signal changes green, a veritable tsunami is unleashed...ba da boom! Add to the waves names like the future, the dream, the viva, the boss, and my personal favorite the spacey and you'll get the idea of generic sounding marketing. But in Viet Nam I've come across a different moped. Sure it looks similar, but how could you drive the ATTILA without wanting to kick some ass? Or at least want to honk your horn all the time! No, Viet Nam plays by different rules and (again with the bad decisions of the U.S. leaders) any country that names a mode of transportation after a hun is not to be messed with!