Sketching a Twisty Path on the Globe

The last 5 weeks of traveling together have been a blur of banana trees, noodles, tuk tuks, history lessons, smiling faces, and playgrounds of the most unusual sorts. Sadly, Kristin hops a plane tomorrow to head home to chilly Alaska (unless, of course, her alarm mysteriously doesn’t go off). There’s no way to summarize our trip completely. We’ve packed it full yet lazed away many days as well; spent time on the “tourist conveyor belt” and as the only pale faces on busfulls of locals; found activities to make our heart race and others that made our hearts hurt.

Last night over what we voted to be the best ice cream of Southeast Asia (included crumbled cookies, strawberry sauce, and, of course, a sparkler!), we devised some lists that I’ll type into a less sticky form here. : )

TRIP DUTIES:
Kristin’s:
–navigator, whether to find our way through a city or just to turn the right direction when we exited a shop
–keeper of the key
–scam spotter
–locator of hidden ice cream shops
–animal tamer

Cindy’s:
–supplier of any obscure toiletry or first aid item
–blogger and photo uploader
–mental entertainer: lists, rhyming games, scavenger hunts
–time-keeper (the irony, huh? it’s only because I wore a watch)

TRIP’S 10 BIGGEST CHALLENGES:
Kristin’s:
1. Finding surfable waves (absent; the elephant head had to suffice)
2. Trying to speak Lao
3. Self-entertainment on long busrides
4. Picking cucumbers out of every meal served, every country visited.
5. Convincing herself to put on slimy, stinky, sandy and otherwise disgusting Birkenstock’s each morning.
6. Leaving Cindy in Cambodia.
7. Exorcising the demons from her new camera.
8. Making sure that buses/groups didn’t leave without Cindy.
9. Stepping off the ledge on the river trapeze swing.
10. Packing her backpack the morning after her Happy Birthday celebration. : )

Cindy’s:
1. Sticking to my fantasy $20/day budget.
2. Waking up before 6am for multiple bus, plane, and sunrise trips.
3. Hiking 3 hours/day, 3 consecutive days with a fresh knee injury.
4. Figuring out the complicated system for getting hot water out of the shower (usually gave up and took cold ones).
5. Not getting lost in every/any town we visited, large or small.
6. Finding sufficient sweet AND salty snacks to satisfy PMS cravings.
7. Keeping body parts free from injury (only about 4 survived unscathed)
8. Convincing Kristin that my malaria med hallucinations were real—i.e., monkeys on the roof, rats on the floor, monks praying in the waves
9. Driving a motorbike on a very unroadlike road (boulders, ruts, gravel, dirt) with Kristin on the back.
10. Taking off /putting on shoes with straps and buckles at every doorstep (and often while wearing the world’s heaviest backpack).

Guess that shows we’re either both a mess or a pretty good traveling balance. : )
La Kohn, Kristin! Until our next world adventure!!!

“Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.” Anne Sophie Swetchine

I read in a book that in Cambodia they don’t celebrate the actual date of your birth until you are fifty; until then your age advances on the Cambodian New Year. So, in a region of arbitrary birthdays, we decided that yesterday in Vang Vieng, Laos would be as good a day as any to celebrate Kristin’s birthday. So, the highlights. . . .

–As we were in the first “touristy” town in weeks, things showed up on menus that had long since been replaced by noodle soup 3 times/day. We began the day with pancakes and crepes with bananas and chocolate, espresso, spring rolls, fresh fruit salad, and fruit shakes. And for dinner Kristin got the dish she’d been craving but could never betray Asian food for—pizza.

–Only in Laos. The top tourist activity of Vang Vieng is to hop into a tuk tuk topped with towering tubes, get a ride upriver, and then spend anywhere from 3 to 8 hours floating back down. Some people we met even confessed to doing this daily, beginning at 10am, for up to a week. Of course this creates a crafty business opportunity. Lining the riverbanks are at least 20 bars, most with “flying fox” trapeze swings and ziplines, others with dance music and volleyball. In some places, a Lao in a canoe will just sit midriver with a bucket full of Beer Lao for the lazier tubers. Unfortunately no one mentioned that sunset is really around 4pm due to the towering karst peaks. So, we spent the last hour blue-lipped and goose-bumped trying to flap our way faster down the river. Prayers answered, soon a skinny, big-grinned Lao kid with shredded shorts and tied-together flip flops charms his way onto my tube. At first he accepts the free ride with smiles and thumbs up, but then climbs off to begin kicking, pushing, and using flip flops as fins. OK, so maybe at first I just thought he wanted a lift to his home downriver, but Kristin recognized the business immediately; at the pull-out, the group of children collected their “motor” fees and raced off to catch the next group of shivering tubers.

—Kristin’s Birthday Cake. Jaydee’s Restaurant happily made a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind birthday cake: big, fat pancake with chocolate sauce, oatmeal sprinkles, and apple wheels. And this part I couldn’t even have been clever enough to request: CUCUMBER CANDLE HOLDERS! [For anyone who doesn’t know, cucumbers rank on Kristin’s list as the foremost offensive food.]

—The rest of the night was spent indulging in our last Lao massage, warming by bonfires, and mingling with the world’s representatives.

Tomorrow morning—WAY too early—we fly to Siem Riep, Cambodia where we will spend Kristin’s final days. : (

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