Thai farm cooking school

Chiang Mai, Thailand. Comercial and cultural hotspot of northern Thailand. We took it upon ourselves to a bit of cultural enhancement for our own lives - so we signed up to do a day learning Thai cooking and a day learning Batik.

Of the hundreds of cooking schools now available in Chiang Mai, we settled on the Thai Farm Cooking School. This was the only option we found that took us out of the city limits, to a quieter, greener environment.
I was amazed at the clean, calm atmosphere of the food market we stopped at. In every respect it resembled all the other market's i've seen in SE Asia, except
it was tidy, clean and relaxed. The instructor, a small Thai woman, not more than 30 years old, gave us a brief tour o the market, explaining a little about curry ingredients, the many types of rices, and a bit about how to find our way around the market. Then she asked us which dishes (from a selection of about 18) we would each like to prepare. It took her only a short time - maybe ten minutes - to collect ingredients for all seven of us. Meanwhile, I paced off the dimensions of the market and sketched some details for later use this fall in my design studio. Brooke quickly found the closest Cha Yin cart and we both partook of some delicious Thai iced tea. It's going to be hard when I have to pay more than 50 cents for a big bag of Cha Yin.
When we arrived at the "farm" we got a short tour of the various plants that we would be using to spice our dishes, as well as some of the major ingredients. The farm was more like a big garden, which appeared to function solely as a learning environment, not as a food producing business.
The food was fabulous - while it may not compare to Thailand's finest, I'm pretty sure I was on par with the best Eugene has to offer. If only I could repeat that performance at home.

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The following day we joined another couple for a day long Batik class. The four of us were taught by a very friendly thai woman (Anne) who has a studio in her home. She lives with her husband, daughter and mother. While we spent the morning drinking tea and learning the basics of Batik, Anne's mother prepared lunch for us. By the end of the day we had two complete projects to take home. If I learned a bit more about preparing the wax, getting the temperature right and so forth - I just might try to incorporate Batik into my Architectural work... where there's a will there's a way

Trek to Hmong mountain village

Laos' majority and dominant population is, not surprisingly, Lao. Along with a few other groups of low-land dwellers they make up the larger group known as Lao Loum. Around Luang Prababng there are two well known minority tribes that live further up in the mountains. They are the Khmu and Hmong.
We arranged a private one day trekking tour of three minority villages. Our tour guide, Li, is 24 years old, and is studying to be a teacher. He is originally from a Hmong village, and came to live in the city when he was nine. We walked with him for about two hours, through a Khmu-Lao village, and part way up into the mountains to a Hmong village. Here wee stopped for a couple of hours, in the hopes of having some time to experience a taste of life in the village and maybe play with some of the younger children.
Most of the village was further up the mountain, working on the ricee fields. There was one older man in the village making baskets, several older woman - some sowing - and a gaggle of young children mostly just staring at us.
We are cleearly not the first westerners they have seen. Many more have passed through here before us - but only in the last decade - this is the first generation with any substantial exposure to western culture. I think my overgrown beard was especially strange to them. None of the Lao, Hmong or Khmu people that I've met could grow a beard like me.
Li told us a lot about Lao and Hmong culture, and asked us a lot of questions about our own culture. He has never been outside of Luang Prabang, but I would not have guessed that from the thoughtfull questions he asked. We talked about government, school, work, relationships...
There is NO free school in Laos. Of course, it is very cheap by our standards - but most Lao make VERY little money. I think that $50 a month is not uncommon. The government is making some effort to get modern resources to the minority villages, and as such many villagers are moving out of the high mountains and closer to big towns. This particular Hmong village moved closer about 7 years ago in order to be near a school and have easier access to trade goods with the towns people. They still live without electricity or running water, but only two hours hike away is a more modern village with sattelite TV, convenience stores, and a school.
I played kick-kick with Li and one of the village boys. The boy enjoyed it, so I gave him the kick-kick. I don't think kick-kick is a Lao sport - I've only seen it in Vietnam and Cambodia. In fact, I underestand that it is the Vietnamese national sport! If you don't know what "kick-kick" is that's probably because "kick-kick" is local slang for "kick-shuttlecock", and if you don't know what a "shuttlecock" is, that's probably because badmitton isn't a very big sport in the US. So you should understand by now that "kick-kick" is badmitton with your feet. But more frequently, it's just played in the street much the same way we play hacky-sack.
Getting back to the trek... we didn't spend very long with the Hmong villagers before we had to start back to our jeep. The hike down was much quieter than the hike up. Brooke and I were mostly deep in thought about what we had witnessed in the village, and Li seemed to understand this, so we walked quietly most of the way back.

I have no answer

I realize that in the "about me" blurb I said this would be a blog documenting not only my travels but also my evolving perceptions. I don't feel like I've stood up to that promise.
It is incredibly difficult to come to grips with my perceptions of the cultures and people we've met in Indochina. I am haunted by the percieved poverty that I witness in both the cities and rural areas.
The VIP bus with aircon rumbles down the road carrying me and a few dozen other rich tourists and a handfull of locals, with our iPods, neck pillows and bottled water from one scenic attraction to the next. The local kids look at us with curious expressions, pausing from their chores to watch us whiz by - us staring back with equal curiosity. What are they thinking? What am I thinking?
How aweful is it to litter plastic bags and food wrappers everywhere, poop and bath in the same water, and try to fanagle as much out of a foreign tourist as possible? Is that really so bad, when I am contributing more to global warming in one day of flying, than an entire household will in a year? Is that really so bad when all of my electronic waste gets shipped overseas where the heavy metals leach out and reach poisonous concentrations in ground water supplies? Is that really so bad when most of the clothes and goods I buy are made overseas in factories that pay low wages and offer few benefits? My choices do all their harm where I cannot witness the effects. The choices faced by most rural villages here have repercussions that they must face immediately. How can I want them to "clean up" after themselves when my waste is so much worse? Every day I ask myself these questions. Every day I have no answer.

Bussing through Laos

I am going to refer you to Brooke's blog for a more thorough account. But here are the critical numbers.
2 Bus rides
35 Hours
2 Little boys pooping their pants
6 Abnoxious cell phone users
5,000,000 Pot holes
15 Close calls with cows or goats in the road
1 Bus actually running into and killing a water buffalo
1 Bus running over a chicken
2 Fallen trees requiring removal
14 Fallen trees that could be driven around
7 Mud slides partially blocking the road
1 Mud slide resulting in our bus sliding precariously close to a steep precipice
1 Near abondement at border crossing
13 Women trying to scam me with money exchange
1 Very wet luggage bag
3 Very dirty luggage bags
1 Fish head with rice and egg for dinner
1 Fish butt with rice and egg for dinner
6 Kung Fu videos
2 Free bottles of water
4 Free moist towellettes to wipe the persperation off your face after a near death experience
5 Pee stops
2 Worn out travelers

A Haircut in Hue

The lightning storms in Hue were truly astounding, and we were lucky enough to see one of the better displays on our first night. I can't help but post another photo from that night... Sitting on the north bank of the perfume river, with a plate of chicken wings and 500ml of huda beer, we watched the clouds burst with electricity. Oddly surreal as this was, the whole scene was made even stranger by the rainbow sequence of colored lights on the bridge. Someone with a little spare time decided to mount a couple hundred stage floods on the bottom of the bridge. The lights slowly cycled through about five or six different neon colors, brightly illumintating the sides of an otherwise dull grey structure.

We cut our time short in Hue because the end of our trip is quickly closing in on us. To occupy our only full day in Hue we wandered throught the local market - browsing through everything from meat to fruit to fabric to coffee to toys to you name it. Our mission was to find Vietnamese coffee filters. They're cheap, perforated aluminum cups that perch atop your mug. For only a dollar a piece we bought three, each one just a little different from the others. The perforations seem too large for fine western grind coffee. So we bought about a kilo of the super dark roast, super coarse ground Vietnamese goodness to bring home with us. We'll be throwing a coffee with sweet milk party later this fall. Don't miss it.
After a tiring bout in the public market, we revived our sweaty selves with a cupfull of said coffee (the woman who sold us the coffee grounds also sold us two ca phe sua da - coffee with milk and ice - with the same beans so we knew what we were buying.)
Wandering further from downtown we stumbled accross the sound equipment, lighting fixtures, and tooth whitening street. As logical as this may or may not seem to you, they all appeared to be running successfull businesses in harmony with eachother.
I was acting like a kid in a candy store, bouncing from one stereo shop to the next. Most were cheap rip-off brands, but more impressively, most shops carried a large supply of bargain parts and tools for repair! Oh how I long to have shops like these in the states.
The biggest surprise of all was when we neared the end of the street and stumbled upon a barber shop. Two middle aged men sat reclining in their barbers chairs, with eyes mostly shut, listening to the radio. It didn't take more than a few seconds for the men to notice us standing their and invite me in for a haircut. How much? He picks up a piece of paper and writes "50. VND" or 50,000 dong, or roughly three us dollars. I can afford that.
The man spoke no English, so there was no way to tell him how to cut my hair. It was all in his hands. And he did a spectacular job. Using the full array of barbers tools - scissors, electric buzzer, straight razor, thinning scissors, some other thingy mabob, comb and brush - he proceeded to give me the most precise and thorough haircut I have ever recieved. All the way down to the peach fuzz on my ear lobes. Add a shampoo, scalp massage, shoulder massage, and chiropractic adjustment for another 30,000 dong and you've got a whole new class of barber-shop experience.
I was so pleased with my haircut that I spent the rest of the afternoon blabbering on about flying that guy back to the states and opening a barber shop with him in Eugene. I'll never be satisfied with a haircut again!

Nudibranchs in Nha Trang

Nha Trang is the up-scale coastal city with all the whistles and bells you need for a beach vacation. To get right down to it, we booked a one day SCUBA trip, which was Brooke's first time diving. She's a natural.
Conditions were very good, and the shallow reef seemed well protected. We saw all the usual tropical fish, anemones, urchins, puffers, shrimp, eel, sea cucumbers, nudibranch (just one, but it was beautiful), sea stars... and on and on. Not a lot of big fish, probably because of the shallow depth.
After an amazing morning of diving we took the afternoon to completely dishearten ourselves by attempting repeatedly to purchase plane tickets to Beijing for the fifth time, only to be denied over and over, and have our cards blocked for suspicious activity. Grrrrr.
I think, maybe, we've got it taken care of now, and will actually be able to make it to Beijing. For a minute there it wasn't looking good.

Roses are red...

If you're a boy, and you like a girl, give her a red rose. If you're the girl and you like him back, give him a white rose. If you're not interested, and he won't stop bugging you, give him one of these:
...it's called a "pig shit" flower, and it means "you smell bad" - as I interpreted it.

Favorite photo of the week

This picture was taken in Hue, during a lightning storm that blew my socks off (figuratively). We had dinner on the river bank, watching the storm from a distance - lightning flashes lit up the clouds every four or five seconds. It took me about 60 tries to get this shot, even with all the lighting, timing the photo was just luck.

Abseiling

Catching up quickly, we booked a canyoning adventure in Dalat for one day of abseiling, swimming, trekking and water slides. For those of you not in the know, abseiling is the sport of lowering yourself precariously down the face of a waterfall using rock climbing equipment. Best $28 dollars yet!

I like Dalat a lot

Dalat is the honey moon town of Vietnam. The climate is cooler, more temperate, the prices all a little higher, and the activities very entertaining. We started with a "cultural" tour of the surrounding area. Our friendly guide Trung, a student of tourism at the local university, took us to a long list of sites, including; a flower nursery, coffee plantation, rice-wine making business, silk factory, mushroom business, waterfall and budhist temple. It's worth noting that Dalat is one of the coffee capitals of the world. Every hillside has coffee plants. And everyone drinks coffee. It is served black or with condensed milk, iced or hot... and that's about the extent of your choices. Having never seen raw coffee beans, it was somewhat surprising to find that they are green and red!
The silk factory was also humbling in that I am completely ignorant of the silk making process. Of particular interest was the fact that the worms are actually eaten after the silk has been removed from the coccoon. The raw silk feels course and strong, and requires an acid bath to soften it up.
Rice wine is the Vietnamese version of vodka, as far as I can tell. And it is frequently used in conjunction with healing hearbs to make a tonic. Considering that it's distilled, and has only a slightly lower alcohol content than most liquor, it hardly seems to qualify as a "wine".
The waterfall and happy buddha are friendly neighbors. I can't say that I have aver set eyes on a happier buddha. Since you can't reach the belly because he's HUGE, the big toe suffices for good luck.
Elephant water fall, not more than 500 yards from the happy buddha offers a close up experience for the brave - walking BEHIND the massive cataract. Of course, the moisture was too much for me to take pictures, just imagine the wind and mist nearly knocking you off your feet.

Mui Ne fishing village

Fishing in Mui Ne is the number one industry as far as I can tell. Famous for it's fish sauce, every other shop along the road displays rows and rows of the savory stuff. To get an up close and personal feeling for the fishing culture we took a short tour through one of the fishing villages. It was around 9am, and most of the days business was finished. We got there in time for the tail end, which included a very strong odor as the temperature was steadily rising.
One of the more curious sights was the giant wicker baskets used to shuttle people and goods through the small breakers at the shore. With no prefered orientation the baskets are ideal for handling the small waves with little concern for being turned sideways. One wooden paddle is lashed to the side of the craft and it is propelled with a skulling motion. Slow but steady.
All along the beach were women and children picking up any by-catch that was worth keeping. One woman found an eel, and was brutally killing the thing as we watched in mild horror.

I want that toy!

While we were in Mui Ne, enjoying the gazillions of gorgeous shells that litter the beach (intermingled with a healthy amount of trash that the last storm blew in), I met a fellow from Austria with a toy that I MUST have. I think the correct term is "power kite". He had what looked very much like a kite-boarding kite, but it was smaller and didn't float on water. Too big for your typical recreational kite, too small for kite boarding or paragliding. He was sliding and bounding down the beach and through the shallow surf as if perfectly balanced with the force of the wind on his kite. Curiosity got the best of me and I chased him down the beach to find out more.
Better than just information I got to fly the kite. With the two control lines in my hands, wrapped around my wrists with neoprene padding, I stood there wondering why nothing was happening. The kite hovered quietly about a hundred feet above me, fluttering slightly. It wasn't untill I began working the kite back and forth that it started playing with me. With a little practice I was skidding accross the sand, wide eyed and laughing.
I always thought kite flying was for kids, and I was right - this was just a reminder that part of me will always be just a little kid.

Homestay in the Mekong Delta

Getting from Phnom Penh to Saigon went something like this:
We booked a slow boat (should be renamed "loud boat") from Phnom Penh to Chau Doc, Vietnam. After being almost certain that our tour agency had abandoned us I knocked on the window of a van at the neighboring hotel and managed to get a lift to our boat.
The boat was narrow, full, slow (as advertised) and very loud. About two feet directly behind me and to my right was a 2" galvanized pipe connected directly to the exhaust manifold located two feet directly behind me and to my left. No muffler. I cannot express how relieved I was to have remembered earplugs.
I know this sounds like a small nightmare, but once on the river, with earplugs securely in place, the ride was actually delightful. Border crossing went smoothly. The second boat was much more comfortable. And we made friends with a woman from Ireland, Caroline, who had been traveling for two and half years straight!
One night in Chau Doc was all we gave ourselves before embarking on a two day tour and homestay on the Mekong Delta that would deliver us to Saigon.
After a short visit to a small village and floating fish farm we piled onto a van to Can Toh, where we met our friendly local guide Dua. He is a small and very energetic Vietnamese man who thus far is the only person to have the honor of being adde to my contact list (I have lofty ambitions of arranging for one person - maybe Dua - to be sponsored to fly from SE Asia to Oregon for a visit). He took us by boat to his uncles house in a small quiet village about 5km from Can Toh.
Dua's uncle, Hung, is a full time host to tourists. It is his business to make travelers feel at home and to provide a glimpse of village life on the Mekong Delta. Caroline, Brooke and I were the only ones at Hung's homestay for the entire afternoon and evening. We gave ourselves a tour of the village and nearly every young child shouted hello from his or her doorstep. We sat out the afternoon downpour sipping iced coffee with the locals. They don't speak english, we don't speak vietnamese, it was great.
Dua gave us a tour of Hung's family farm which was primarily watermelon and rice paddies. The path was very muddy, narrow and raised about four feet above the watermelon beds. We had to stay intently focussed on our footing to keep from falling into the watermelon patch. In fact Brooke did fall, albeit very gracefully, off the path and into the watermelon drainage ditch. The workers all had a good laugh - so did we.
For dinner, about a dozen more tourists arrived, and we made traditional fried spring rolls while Hung's family cooked up some elephant ear fish and tofu.
According to Hung, most of the work in the village is finished by 6 am! I have no idea how they manage to work at night in the fields, and honestly I think that either he was exagerating or something was lost in translation. Either way, it's either very hot or very rainy during the daytime, so it makes sense that they would take all of the afternoon off.
From Hung's village we were shuttled by boat to a small rice noodle making outfit, and then a floating market - i.e. a herd of river boats milling around selling mostly fresh produce in very large quantities.
The floating market was our last taste of Mekong delta life, litterally - it tasted like pineapple, purple sweet potatoe and star fruit - with a lingering odor of exhaust fumes and floating garbage.
Now we are deep in the heart of Saigon, preparing for our next adventure - the Vietnamese central coast and highlands.

Strongest coffee ever!

The highlite of today's adventures in Saigon was a visit to the local drug dealer, I mean street side coffee vendor. Deep inside a narrow back alley, past the feral dogs, fresh fruit stands, hanging laundry and honking moto drivers, you will find a very serious vietnamese woman selling some very serious coffee.
Her operation is simple. Two tin coffee filters drip molten black coffee into glass cups, as if to proudly display it's remarkable opacity. Beside them is a plastic 1.5 liter water bottle with more of the rich black drug already prepared. Behind her is a small pyramid of sweetened condensed milk and a bucket of sugar. Beside her, a small iceberg.
With only a small amount of confusion Brooke managed to order an iced coffee with sweet milk (condensed milk) to go. I stand by curiously watching the process. About 1 oz of condensed milk, a couple ounces of sludge from the 1.5 liter bottle, about the same from the freshly brewed cups... stirred briskly. Then she grabbed a block of ice in her left hand, a crescent wrench in her right, and smashed the ice. Before I realized what she was doing there were shards of ice hurdling towards me. After the initial shock, I decided it felt rather refreshing.
The coffee was amazing, and after most of the ice melted it was still the strongest coffee I've ever tasted. No wonder this city is so fast paced.

The Hottest Couple in Cambodia?

...you decide.