Writing
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Water Slides and Spirit Guides
Champasak, Lao (PDR)
The dramatic black karst limestone mountains ringing Ban Na Hin grew darker as the light faded. I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light slowly disappear from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, or if such an explanation even really existed.
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The Lovely Universe
Vang Vieng, Lao (PDR)
I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. We were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you.
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I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan
Luang Nam Tha, Lao (PDR)
The next time someone asks you, “would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?” I highly suggest you say, “yes, where do a I sign up?” If you happen to be in Laos, try the Gibbon Experience.
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Hymn of the Big Wheel
Luang Prabang, Lao (PDR)
Jose Saramago writes in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis that the gods "journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them." Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact.
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Down the River
Luang Prabang, Lao (PDR)
Morning in Chiang Khong Thailand revealed itself as a foggy, and not a little mysterious, affair with the far shore of the Mekong, the Laos shore, almost completely hidden in a veil of mist. The first ferry crossed at eight and I was on it, looking to meet up with the slow boat to Luang Prabang.
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The King of Carrot Flowers
Doi Inthanan National Park, Thailand
The light outside the windows was still a pre-dawn inky blue when the freezing cold water hit my back. A cold shower at six thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful, albeit not at long lasting, as a cup of coffee. After dropping my body temperature a few degrees and having no towel to dry off with, just a dirty shirt and ceaseless ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, I climbed on my rental motorbike and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park.
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You and I Are Disappearing
Chang Mai, Thailand
The all night bus reached Chiang Mai well past dawn, the city already beginning to stir. I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonably modern and, in my opinion, not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent.
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Buddha on the Bounty
Bangkok, Thailand
The house Jim Thompson left behind in Bangkok is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are.
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Brink of the Clouds
Bangkok, Thailand
"The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter, "its scent is dreams." Salter may have been referring to New York, but his words ring true in Bangkok. And the best place to feel it at night is on the river or from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel — where a circular, revolving observation deck offers 360° views of the Bangkok nightscape.
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Are You Amplified to Rock?
Bangkok, Thailand
It's a new year, are you amplified to rock? Ready, set, go.
