Luang Prabang

After two days on the slow boat I arrived in Luang Prabang, which my travel guide says may be the prettiest town in Southeast Asia. I don't know about that, but I did enjoy it. The main part of town is a peninsula formed by the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers. It's just touristy enough without being overwhelmingly so.



This is the view from a sidewalk cafe on the north side of town. On the other side of the Nam Khan are gardens and thatch huts, with a bamboo bridge connecting the banks of the river.



The highest point on the peninsula is Phou Si, a great place to watch the sunset, I was told. Apparently I wasn't the only who got the memo.



I've been to a few popular sunset spots, but I've never seen anything quite like this: a Buddhist temple with bleachers for sunset watchers! I couldn't get a decent picture through the crush of tourists.

The local government has a list of rules in each hotel room. Now, I get annoyed by tourists who make fun of poor English translations.

Look at this. It says 'having' instead of 'has'! Isn't that hilarious!

I'm immensely grateful make the effort. I'd rather read mangled English than try to learn Lao on the fly.

So it's not necessarily the style but the content of the rules that concerns me.



The picture is lousy even by my lowly standards, so here are the rules in question:

Do not any drugs, crambling or bring both women and men which is not your own husband or wife into the room for making love.

Do not allow domestic and international tourist bring prostitute and others into your accomodation to make sex movies in our room, it is restriction.

I couldn't help but wonder what gone on in my room before I got there...

The Secret War

When I started this trip I was concerned about how I'd be received as an American traveling abroad. I've encountered very few hostile anti-Americans so far. And in the months leading up to the election I was traveling in places where there weren't many Americans: Russia, Mongolia, Nepal. People everywhere were interested in the election and wanted to talk politics. Thanks to President Obama we Americans are popular again!

But I am surprised I don't meet more hostility in some countries. In fact, I'm surprised some of them even let me in. Look at the horrors we've inflicted on Central America, starting with the CIA's overthrow of Guatemala's government in 1954, through the spectacularly misguided (and illegal) meddling of the Reagan Administration in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

In Southeast Asia the Vietnamese obviously have reason to feel hostile towards Americans. Cambodia as well. I recently read a biography of Pol Pot. When he was kicked out of the country by the Vietnamese in 1979, he found asylum in Thailand. I was horrified to learn he was able to maintain his army and his base of support due to the support of Thailand, China ... and the United States.

You see, he was a communist, which was bad, but he was anti-Vietnam, which was good. So the US supported a man who, in less than four years, managed to kill off perhaps as much as 30 percent of his people.

But Laos really has reason to hate us, because of the Secret War.

Trivia question: What is the most bombed country in history?
Answer: Laos

From 1964 to 1973 the US dropped more bombs on Laos than it did in all of WWII. We flew over a half-million recorded bombing missions. On average we dropped one B-52 bomb-load every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for ten years.

We dropped over 1.5 million tons of bombs. Over 13 tons per square kilometer. Over half a ton of bombs for every person alive in Laos at the time.

There are still visible craters everywhere.

The bombs were primarily cluster bombs. These are metal tubes full of hundreds of tennis-ball sized bombs, each containing 300 metal ball bearings. When the bombs explode it's like a massive shotgun blast.

In Phonsavan, Laos, I visited an exhibit by the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a British non-profit organization that removes bombs and mines in war torn countries throughout the world. I watched a short film about their efforts in Laos. About 30 percent of the bombs didn't explode. These are still being found, often the hard way, by farmers who hit them with their plows, or children who play with them.

Even today, 35 years later, people are being killed by these bombs.

The target of the bombs was ostensibly the communist Pathet Lao group. The purpose was to destroy their supply base. We bombed their farms. We bombed civilian targets.

Laos doesn't have much in the way of tourist attractions (which is part of its appeal, ironically). The one thing they have that other countries don't as far as tourist attractions is an archaelogical oddity called the Plain of Jars, thousands of giant stone urns strewn all over the countryside in the northern part of the country. They were studied extensively by the French in the 1930s.

We bombed them. We bombed the Plain of Jars. That would be like bombing Stonehenge. Here's a sign at the Plain of Jars.



And here's one of the jars, next to a crater.



All this was done without the knowledge of the US public or even Congress. This was flagrantly illegal according to both national and international law. How many Americans know about the war on Laos? Hell, considering there are Americans who can't find America on a world map I wonder how many have even heard of Laos.

My tour guide at the Plain of Jars in Phonsavan didn't know there was an American in the group. He told us that there is still a great deal of bitterness towards the US. Our government gives Laos aid, but they think of it as charity, not reparations for wrongdoing. We should be rebuilding the country as we did with Japan and Germany.

He said that in some rural parts of the country it is not safe to travel as an American because people there still hate the US.

I don't blame them. I don't blame them one bit. As I watched the film at the MAG office I felt physically ill.

Laos is probably the least-developed country I've visited. It's a country of small pleasures. There are no big mountains or canyons or ruins. Just the Mekong River, a slow pace of life, and the joy of being able to stand on a hill in the middle of the day and hear no machine noise in any direction: no cars, no tractors, only cowbells and rooster calls. Of the 194 countries ranked by the CIA, Laos is the 148th poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income.

So if the country is this primitive now, I can't imagine what it was like when we started bombing in the 1950s. What on earth did we think we had to fear from these people?!

The country is officially called Lao People's Democratic Republic, which is a bit ironic since it's one of the few single-party communist governments left in the world. So our bombing campaign accomplished nothing in that regard.

The last eight years was one of the darkest periods in US history. There has been much hand-wringing (but not nearly enough) about how we went to war in a foreign country that had never attacked us and posed no direct threat.

I am no Bush fan, obviously, but the seeds of his administration's foreign policy have roots at least as far back as LBJ in Southeast Asia. Eisenhower was president when Guatemala was overthrown. Iraq isn't a departure from US foreign policy. It's how we've done things for over 50 years.

Laos or Lao?

Before I arrived in Southeast Asia I met a lot of travelers who had been here. They all raved about Laos, but they pronounced it "Lao". I've always pronounced it Laos (with an 's') for reasons that should be obvious to someone familiar with the English language.

But it is, in fact, pronounced Lao, not Laos. The name comes from the French, and the 's' is silent. Maybe it stands for salt and they throw that away. (Did anyone get that reference?)

The country is officially Lao People's Democratic Republic, a bit ironic since it has a single-party communist government. It's usually abbreviated Lao PDR. The people are Lao. The language is Lao. They call whiskey is Lao Lao. The beer (which is by far the best in Southeast Asia) is Beerlao. As someone who struggles with languages I thank them for keeping things so blessedly simple.

The Durian

There are hotels in Southeast Asia that prohibit guests from bringing durians into the building. They are forbidden on airplanes and some public transport systems. They're nearly impossible to find in popular tourist areas because they don't want tourists to have them. And truth be told, most tourists don't want them anyway.

This is a picture I pulled off the web, from Singapore.



On the sign it looks like a hand grenade but the durian is a fruit. The reason they're restricted is because of the smell. It's incredibly powerful and lingers for days. Everyone has an opinion. Most of them are bad. Anthony Burgess, the British author of "A Clockwork Orange," said it's "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory." Travel writer Richard Sterling says "its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock".

But I wanted to see, smell and taste for myself. I could not and find them in Bangkok. Here is a stack of them at a market in Luang Prabang, Laos.



The things are huge, up to a foot long and as heavy as seven pounds. Workers wear hard hats when harvesting, in case one falls, because not only are they heavy, they're covered with sharp spines. Farmers kick them into baskets rather than pick them up.

The photo above is from Laos but I actually tried durian in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I stumbled across them by accident. I had walked to the US consulate, and was walking back through a residential neighborhood when I saw a stall selling them. I confirmed that it was durian and made my purchase.

Inside are two loaf-shaped hunks of meat, about the size of a small sub roll. I bought a package of two small loaves for 100 baht, or about three bucks. The couple I bought it from were amused by my purchase. As I walked down the street three Thais pointed at the bag, asked "Durian?" and walked away laughing. They knew what I had in store...

To me it smells like rotten onions. Anyone who knows me that I'm a pretty adventurous eater but I absolutely can not abide the taste or smell of onions. But I did force myself to eat a few bites. The texture was smooth, like a custard, perhaps, and the taste was surprisingly mild, somewhat nutty with notes of vanilla.

I wanted my German photographer friend Michael to have a taste so I left it in my room for a few hours. Big mistake. When I got back the room smelled like an outhouse. Michael has seen more of the world than anyone I've met so he's pretty hard to surprise, but when he took his first whiff he literally gagged!

There are dozens of varieties of the fruit, each with its own special character. People that like durians love durians. But I don't expect to eat one ever again.

There is another fruit called the jack fruit which looks much like the durian, but has smaller pockets of meat inside. Oh, and the jack fruit is actually edible. I've met many tourists here who think they've experienced durian but have actually eaten jack fruit. Trust me, you'll know when it's a durian.

The Mekong River

In order to feel like I had been to the "real" Southeast Asia I felt I should travel by by boat on the Mekong River, perhaps the defining physical characteristic of Southeast Asia. It is the 12th-longest river in the world, with its source in China. It passes through or forms part of the border of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

After taking the ferry to Laos I boarded a "slow boat", a long, slender motorboat with two rows of wildly uncomfortable wooden benches. This is one such boat passing us on the river.




Here's a view of the aisle of the boat when we made a brief stop and were boarded by an army of Lao girls with plastic baskets of Coke, potato chips and Beerlao to sell at extortionate rates.



Laos is perhaps the least developed country I've traveled in. One thing I realized after two seven-hour days on the river is that we hadn't passed a single bridge! I saw villages of thatch huts with no electricity, where people fish from handmade wooden canoes.



Just sitting there for hours on end watching the scenery glide by was one of the highlights of the trip thus far.



I sat on the right, or south, side of the boat the first day, and got cooked by the sun. That night we slept in Pak Beng, a little town that seems to exist solely as a overnight stopping point for the slow boats. This is sunset.



And this is sunrise.



It was quite spooky. I sat on the left (north) side of the boat so I wouldn't be in the sun. And I froze my butt off. Nights in northern Thailand were much cooler than had I expected but that morning it was uncomfortably cold.

The Mekong itself is, well, ugly. It's a sick brown color, even though the rainy season is long since over. The log perched on the left side of the big rock illustrates how high the river can get during the rainy season.

Happy New Year!

I booked a deal through my guest house in Chiang Mai to get to Laos. A minivan picked me up there in the morning and drove me to Chiang Khong, a small town on the Thailand-Laos border. I was given accomodation in a decent guest house overlooking the Mekong River, three meals, a taxi to the dock, a ferry to Laos, a taxi to the dock on the Laos side, and two days on the slow boat, all for about $50.

People have suggested I write a book about the trip. If I were, I think it would be about how disappointingly easy it's been. I've read that even a few years ago this was a tricky border crossing. It took me about five minutes to arrange door-to-door service, and I didn't even need to leave my guest house.

A few of us at the guest house decided to walk through town and find a place to grab a beer. We heard music coming from a parking lot a bit off the road so we wandered down, into a raging karaoke party.

Apparently the local power company was having it's Lunar New Year celebration. Notice that even though they work in a fairly remote corner of Thailand their uniforms are printed in English.



I think. It was hard to tell because I don't speak Thai, they didn't speak English, and they were all snotslinging drunk. Plates and empty beer and whiskey bottles were piled on picnic tables, so it seemed they had been going at it for a long time.

They managed to convince some of the tourists to get onstage and sing karaoke. It was one of those weird surreal travel moments, being on the Thai-Lao border watching three Germans sing John Denver's "Country Roads" in English.



They were generous with their alcohol. They tried to give me whiskey, but I said I'd prefer beer. So someone handed me a glass of ice, then poured warm beer over it. Mmm...

Then they poured the whiskey over the beer.

What's the Thai word for "hangover"?

Mardi Gras, Thailand-style

I really knew it was time to leave Chiang Mai when I saw the sign for this convention.



You know how crazy things can get when the International Workshop on Sustainable Management of Disused Sealed Radiation Sources gets together.

Chiang Mai

From Lampang I went to Chiang Mai, the tourist hub for northern Thailand. Everyone that I've met whose been there loved it. I met a retired American couple in Lampang and a retired American man in Siem Reap who had gone to Chiang Mai for a visit and ended up buying homes there. So I was excited to get there.

And really disappointed when I did. It's a great town for ex-pats, with lots of Western-style restaurants, Starbucks, bookstores, etc. But it could be a town anywhere. It didn't feel like Thailand. It felt pretty sleazy, in fact.

There wasn't much I was interested in doing. It's the jump-off point for lots of outdoorsy type things like rafting and rock climbing, but the main reason people go there is to go hiking to visit the hill tribes.

There are groups of non-Thai ethnic groups living in the hills trying to maintain some semblance of a traditional lifestyle. But they've also figured out that there is money to be made by making themselves available to tourists. From what I've read, and heard from people who have been there, is that the encounters with these people feel staged (which they are), and that they are being exploited by the tourist companies.

For instance, there's one particular group that tourists love to see because the girls there wear a stack of metal rings around their necks. As they get older, they add more rings, so their necks become abnormally long. This obviously causes serious health risk, because the neck becomes too long and weak to support the head on its own. The practice was apparently falling by the wayside, until the tourists started showing up. Now the practice is back in full. I didn't want to contribute to that.

So everywhere in Chiang Mai you see travel agents with signs outside advertising treks to "Visit Longneck Karen", Karen being the name of the tribe. But I can't help but imagine a longnecked woman named Karen sitting in her living room watching TV while a parade of tourists passes through. Now THAT I'd pay to see.

Since time is becoming a factor, I decided to get out of Chiang Mai and head to Laos.

Elephants!

I hadn't planned on going to Lampang, but Michael, the German photographer, said he was going there for a day, mostly to check out the Elephant Conservation Institute, so I tagged along The complex serves a number of purposes. It puts on elephant shows for tourists, of course. Here is one of them painting.



I bought this piece of art. The lesson here, as always: I am a dork. (Or a ding-dong, as my friend Kellda so aptly called me, after I explained how I messed up my plans to visit her home country of Vietnam.)

The facility also offers multi-day courses where tourists can learn to be mahouts, or elephant drivers. The elephants perform with the mahout trainees on their backs.

It also has (so they say) the world's first elephant hospital, and offers a mobile clinic with which they will treat a wounded or sick elephant free of charge. This poor old girl was rescued after she stepped on a landmine and nearly died of infection.



She may have lived but her left front leg is horribly twisted, making it difficult for her to walk. But without this facility she would be dead.

It was a geeky, touristy way to spend a day, but seriously, who doesn't love elephants? They're endlessly fascinating. And it was quite touching to watch how gentle and patient they were with the Thai schoolchildren visiting the camp.



Here I am feeding one a banana.



The town of Lampang was pleasant enough, and the Riverside Guest House was fantastic, but the main sights to see are temples, but, quite frankly, I've seen enough temples. I did ride a bike just a bit outside of town to visit Wat Chedi Sao Lang, known for its 20 golen chedis, or monuments. It was worth the trip. There were a number of groups of schoolchildren but we were the only tourists there. And the temple itself was unlike any other we had seen.



It is customary here to remove your shoes before entering a temple (or a home) so all the kids' shoes are piled up at the foot of the stairs. And guarding them are just a few of the many stray dogs at the temple.



This place had perhaps the highest concentration of stray dogs I've seen since I've been traveling, and that, my friends, is saying something. Maybe it's because here, at a Buddhist temple, they don't have to worry about getting run over or kicked. Or maybe it's just a nice place to lie in the sun.

Sukhothai

From Ayuthayah I took a bus to Sukhothai, site of yet another set of ruins. Sukhothai was part of the Khmer (Cambodian) kingdom until it broke free in 1238. The new kingdom is generally considered to be the founding of the modern Thai state. The golden age of the occurred under its third ruler, King Ramkhamhaeng the Great, who is credited with inventing the Thai alphabet. But the fun didn't last for long. Sukhothai was soon absorbed by Ayuthayah.

I shared a tuk-tuk to the Ayuthayah bus station with a German photographer named Michael Riehle. Fascinating guy. He's traveled all over the world and has published books of his work. He was in Thailand because his agency needed to refresh its stock photos. Nice job, eh.

The town is divided into two sections, the old part, where the ruins are, and the new part, which is 12 km away. My guidebook said all the accomodation is in the new part, which meant I'd have to hire a tuk-tuk in the morning to take me to the ruins. Michael's guidebook said there was accomodation in the new part, closer to the ruins, so we decided to check it out. We ended up in a guest house catty-corner across the street from the park entrance. From the entrance of our guest house we could see the ruins. It couldn't have been any closer.

The ruins are similar to Ayuthayah in that they aren't completely overrun by tourists, and they're a great place to spend a relaxing day riding a bike.

The temples feature a number of restored statues of Buddha, most of them white, like this one at Wat Sa Sri.



Just north of town is Wat Saphan Hin, which is at the top of a hill overlooking the town and features an enormous standing Buddha.



Enormous.



The main temple is Wat Maha That, and features white Buddhas of various sizes. This should be a nice pic when I have time to touch it up. I like the bird sitting on the Buddha's head.



The temple is quite large, with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. This is a wide view, with two standing Buddhas in the background and sitting one in the center pavilion.



Probably the most popular spot is Wat Si Chum with its equally enormous sitting Buddha. (I had to go there three times because it was so crowded with tour buses that I couldn't even get close.)



This isn't an optical illusion. It's practically wedged into the temple. The tree gives a sense of its size, but this picture of me standing by its hand really hammers it home.

Rookie mistakes

As of yesterday I've been traveling for eight months. Wow. I'm starting to feel the pressure of impending deadlines. And I'm still making stupid, rookie mistakes.

I was in Luang Prabang, Laos, a great little town to relax and do nothing. But since time is becoming a factor I decided to keep moving. I took a bus to the town of Phonsavan to see an archaelogical curiosity called the Plain of Jars, then took a miserable overnight bus ride to Vientiane. (Blog posts are coming on all these places.)

There I planned to visit the US embassy to have pages added to my passport. (That's a pretty cool problem to have, eh?) Then I was going to apply for a visa to Vietnam and catch a plane to Hanoi. Vietnam is the only country in Southeast Asia that does not issues visas on arrival. Most places you can just show up, pay the fee, and they'll issue the visa on the spot. You have to arrange a visa for Vietnam in advance.

I arrived in Vientiane on Saturday. Embassies are closed on Saturday and Sunday. Duh.

As crazy as it sounds I decided to take yet another overnight bus to Bangkok, because it's easier and cheaper to arrange transport to virtually anywhere in Southeast Asia from there.

I made an appointment to go the US embassy and realized that the Embassy of Vietnam is on the same block. What a stroke of luck. So I went to the US embassy and did my thing there then walked down to the Vietnam embassy ... and read the note saying that it was closed for three days in honor of the Lunar New Year, which is huge holiday in Southeast Asia.

So the earliest I could even apply for a Vietnamese visa is Thursday. I didn't want to stay in Bangkok until then, so I hopped on yet another bus this morning and came back to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

For those of you scoring at home, that's three countries in three days.

Now I have to decide what to do about Vietnam. It takes a while to travel there because it's long and skinny. The two main cities are in the far north and far south. The main tourist attractions are in the north (Halong Bay) and south (Cu Chi tunnels, Nha Trang).

So do I rush through all of it? Concentrate on one half? Do half now and half in March? Or skip it? We'll see.

While I'm in Siem Reap I hope to knuckle down and post some blog updates. It's hard to get online when you're in a bus for 12 hours every frickin' day....

Ayuthayah

I wanted to visit some of the historical ruins of the Thai kingdoms so I headed north. First I took the local train from Bangkok to Ayuthayah (ah-YOU-TEE-ah ... I think), a rickety old thing that locals use to commute. It took about an hour and a half and cost 15 baht, or about 45 cents.

I rented a bike for the day. It was a perfect sunny day, warm but not too warm, low humidity and a slight breeze. The landscaping around the temples is gorgeous. The temples are surrounded by ponds and canals, gardens and rows of trees.



Where at Angkor I felt pressed to see as much as I could, here I could relax and spend a relaxing day riding at a leisurely pace.

You can't help but compare it to Angkor, so I will:

In Angkor the jungle is dense and claustrophobic at times. Not so at Ayuttayah. Angkor is absolutely mobbed with tourists. Not so at Ayuttayah. The stonework at Angkor is masterful, still holding up well after hundreds of years in the tropical climate.

This is Wat Sri Sanphet, one of the major temples at Ayuthayah, famous for its three giant bell-shaped chedis, which exhibit a Burmese influence, or so I'm told. The chedis are impressive but the walls around them, um, not so much...



Everywhere you see foundations sinking into the ground, chedis leaning over, walls twisting in crazy waves. It helps you understand why Angkor is perhaps Southeast Asia's biggest tourist attraction, while Ayuthayah is a place where people will spend a day, if they have the time. And it's not as if the city is a historical footnote. Ayuthayah was the center of the Thai kingdom from 1350 to 1767 and home to as many as a million people.

Outside this temple there's a market with food, souvenirs and beggars. I had to give this family style points.



There's an adorable little girl all gussied up in makeup and barrettes, sawing away on some sort of stringed instrument, with a collection bucket that says in English (and Thai) "FOR EDUCATION". How could I say no to that?

Her education funds certainly aren't going towards music lessons. I should have given her more money to stop. It sounded like someone tossing and turning on a busted boxspring.

Unemployed travel bums like me rent a bike for the day for 20 baht, about 60 cents. Other tourists hire more exotic forms of transportation.



There were dozen of elephants, all decked out in gold and red, each with an umbrella attached to the seat, or howdah. If the wind blows the umbrella away you get the elephant to pick it up. Must be nice to have a job...

Everyone who visits here has this photo.



It's the head of a Buddha statue held in place by tree roots. The whereabouts of the statue's body are unknown. When I first looked at it I was reminded of the sinister atmosphere of Ta Prohm, the temple at Angkor being torn apart by the roots of giant fig trees.

But then I realized this is a Bodhi tree, the type under which the Buddha sat and gained enlightenment. Where at first it looked like the tree was strangling the statue, it now seemed as if the roots were gently cradling the head. Funny how my perspective changed just by knowing the type of tree.

Sadly, there's a fence around the tree and guard to keep people from sitting or climbing on it or taking inappropriate photos. There are signs everywhere asking tourists to stay off the statues and monuments, often in vain. I can't recall seeing signs saying, "Oh, by the way, we'd appreciate it if you didn't sit in the Virgin's lap" or "Please don't climb on the altar and have your drunken idiot friend take a picture of you hugging Jesus on the cross."

Ayuthayah is on an island formed by the confluence of three rivers, so I took a boat tour around to visit temples on the opposite side of the river banks. At Wat Phanan Choeng I saw an enormous golden Buddha statue being renovated.



The courtyard at Wat Phuttaisawan has an inner wall with dozens of golden statues of the Buddha. (I didn't count them.)



The last temple we visited was Wat Chaiwatthanaramm, perhaps the most beautiful temple I've seen in Southeast Asia. It was built in the Khmer (Cambodian) style, probably to commemorate a victory in battle against them. The sun was just about to set, bathing the brick in a soft golden light, perfect for taking pictures.

Unless your camera battery dies. This is the only photo I have of it.

Laos

I'm in the town of Luang Prabang in northern Laos after two days riding the "slow boat" on the Mekong River, sitting in an internet cafe next to a Buddhist monk. My travel guide says this may be the prettiest town in Southeast Asia. I'll see for myself tomorrow.

I spent last night in Pak Beng, Laos, which may be the coldest town in Southeast Asia. I froze my butt off for most of the day on the boat, not what I thought I was signing up for when I came here!

Hopefully I can post some pix if I can get a decent connection when I get to Vientiane, the capital, in a few days.

Quick update

I'm about to hop on a bus and head to Chiang Khong on the Thailand-Laos border. Tomorrow I'll cross the border into Laos and take a two-day trip on the "slow boat" to Luang Prabang.

No ... more ... temples

I've covered a lot of ground since I left Bangkok. I wanted to make my way to northern Thailand and visit a few of the historical sites along the way. I took the train to Ayutthaya and spent a day there. I took the bus from there to Sukhothai and spent a day there. I took the bus from there to Lampang and spent a day seeing the town and the Elephant Conservation Center. Now I'm in Chiang Mai, the tourist hub for northern Thailand.

The temples at Ayutthayah and Sukhothai aren't nearly as large (or impressive) as those at Angkor but they're also not as crowded. The sites are elaborately landscaped and dotted with canals and ponds. The weather is unusually cool here so I was able to spend a couple relaxing days riding a bike around the ruins. But my brain is full to the brim with temples and it's time to see something else.

I've got lots of good pix but I'll update the blog and respond to email when I have the time and a decent connection. In the meantime I'll probably be sitting on a bus, to where I haven't figured out yet.

I'm online with a lousy connection doing some research for the next leg of the trip. I've got a little over a month to spend before I have to be back in Bangkok to meet a friend who's coming to visit, so I need to prioritize what I want to see and plan wisely.

The Tiger Temple

Ok, so here's the real story on my River Kwai excursion. It could be considered a disaster. For starters, I ended up on the wrong tour. I was supposed to ride the train on the Death Railway, but I ended up in the wrong group. I wasn't terribly disappointed, in part because I was completely smitten with my tour guide. She looked like a Thai version of Thandie Newton.

I tried to make clever and witty conversation, but there was a definite language barrier. She spoke Thai, of course, but she also spoke English well. However, when it came to my turn to speak, all I could manage to say was "Duh" or some variation thereof.

Then my camera died at the worst conceivable time.

My tour included Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yanasampann, better known as the Tiger Temple. It's a monastery-turned-animal sanctuary where I was told you could actually touch the tigers.

We walked down into Tiger Canyon, where the tigers are kept during the day. There were maybe 15 tigers there, all sleeping. Because they sleep through the heat of the day, and because they've spent so much time around humans, they lie there while an endless stream of tourists poses for pictures with them. For the entrance fee you get to have your picture taken with one.

But for 1000 baht (about 30 bucks) you get to do this:



Look at the size of that beast, for crying out loud. My God, what a magnificent animal. These are Indochinese tigers, which can weigh as much as 400 pounds. His head is the size of a basketball. And that's no optical illusion -- his paws are that big.

I also got to do this:



And this:



That's the monastery Abbot Phra Acharn Phusit (Chan) Kanthitharo making sure my vocal cords stay intact.

There's a small army of volunteers who guide tourists through the maze. The rules are very strict about what you can wear, partly for safety, partly because it's a monastery. It was when I first lay down next to the tiger that the volunteer who had my camera noticed that the battery was dead! I nearly cried. They just happened to have disposable cameras for sale, but I haven't gotten those pix developed yet.

These photos are from my digital camera, and were taken today. When I told the girl at the hostel who booked my tour that I didn't get the tour I had paid for, she offered to send me on another tour for free, including the one I had just done. I wasn't keen on spending another 12+ hours in a minivan. But it meant I would get to ride the train, and go to the Tiger Temple again.

(I also had the crazy idea that I might get to see my beloved tour guide again. It was a different tour, though, with a different driver -- but she was my guide! Was it Fate? No, it was definitely not Fate. I still couldn't get past "Duh".)

Just up the hill from Tiger Canyon is a platform where four cubs sleep. You can just walk right up and pet them. Three of them lie in the shade of the fence while the fourth lies on the platform, where you can sit and have photos taken. (The photo at the top is of one of the cubs.) Here I am petting a wide-awake tiger cub, which happens to be the size of an adult Black Lab. Again, check out the size of those paws!



The monastery wasn't intended to be an animal sanctuary, but local villagers brought an injured jungle fowl to the abbot. Peacocks were attracted by its calls. A wounded boar was nursed by the monks and released back into the forest. He returned the next day with his family in tow. Then people started bringing tiger cubs that had been rescued from poachers.

Now there are all sorts of critters roaming around. In this photo are goats, normally camera-shy deer and -- your eyes do not deceive you -- a camel.



The tiger is the biggest of the big cats and is on the short list of the world's most fearsome predators. (Siberian tigers can weigh over 800 pounds.) So being groped by tourists may not be the most dignified way for them to spend their days. However, because they are so threatened by poaching and loss of habitat, if they weren't here they'd almost certainly be dead.

The admission price is 500 baht, and there are donation boxes all over the compound. It's money well spent, since it all goes towards the care of the animals. They're in the process of building a huge addition so that the adult tigers will each have a private area to roam. The goal is to return the cubs to the wild.

http://www.tigertemple.org/Eng/Donation.htm

During my photo session today the volunteers positioned me behind one of the biggest tigers, a monstrous brute I could have fit inside of with room to spare, so that they could put his head in my lap. As they lifted his head he bared his teeth, started growling and swatting with his paw. They quickly pulled me back out of the way. (I didn't resist.) The big cat closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

It made me realize the precariousness of my situation. Yes, these animals are conditioned to be tolerant of tourists. Yes, there are dozens of handlers to make sure nothing goes wrong. But these are huge, powerful and astonishingly agile predators that could end my life before anyone could do anything to save me. It was quite a thrill. I felt quite privileged to be so close to these beautiful, majestic and, sadly, endangered animals. I had my picture taken with ten of them. Twice!

The day took a tragic downturn, however, when a member of my group was the victim of a savage and unprovoked attack by one of the animals.

Mongolian Nazis

Travelers tend to fall into different stereotypes. The Ugly American is alive and well, I'm sad to report. But there's a certain traveler who tends to be young, earnest, idealistic, and not terribly well-informed.

My favorite story of the trip thus far concerns such a person, a young lady I met in Russia. She was horrified when I told her I was traveling to Mongolia next.

You don't want to go there. I just came from there. They're all racists!

I had done quite a bit of research about Mongolia, so this caught me by surprise. There are less than three million people in Mongolia, and, aside from a small Kazakh enclave in the far west, virtually everyone in Mongolia is a Mongol. It seemed unlikely to encounter racism in a country with essentially no minority population.

And the country is Buddhist, a religion or system of thought that stresses tolerance.

I took pictures because I knew my friends back home wouldn't believe it. I saw SWASTIKAS everywhere! They're all Nazis!

As gently as I could I said that I was pretty sure the swastika was a Buddhist symbol and that I found it unlikely that Mongolia was a bastion of Nazism.

Oh no! I saw them EVERYWHERE! You don't want to go there!

I thanked her for her kind warning and exited the conversation as smoothly as I could.

I did some research and found that "swastika" is derived from the Sanskrit word svastik, which can be translated as "that which is associated with well-being". Or, to put it more simply, the word for the symbol associated with hate and fear in the Western world means "lucky charm"!

Sanskrit is, of course, the language the Buddha spoke. But the swastika actually predates Buddhism. In fact, the symbol was used at least 10,000 years before the birth of Christ and exists in cultures all around the world. One easy explanation is that it is a pattern which naturally occurs in woven goods.

Here it is in a detail from the rafters of a temple at the Erdelene Zuu monastery in Kharkorin, Mongolia, home of the ancient capital of the Mongol Empire.



And here it is branded on the flank of the horse our guide rode when we were horseback riding in the Eight Lakes region.



And for good measure here it is on a door at the Summer Palace in Beijing.



However, while it is commonplace on buildings and in traditional art, and while you can buy souvenirs with other Buddhist symbols, souvenirs with swastikas are hard to find, even in Buddhist countries. (I looked.)

The Bridge on the River Kwai

I was thinking about going here, but it was the flight back to Bangkok that made the decision for me. On the New York to Seoul leg my seat had one of those personal entertainment systems. One of the movie choices was, well, see the title of this post: the David Lean classic starring Alec Guinness and William Holden. I took it as a sign from Above that if a movie from 1957 shows up on the screen on the back of the seat in front of me then I should probably go. I'm thankful for the divine encouragement.

This of course isn't the bridge, since Alec Guinness blew it up at the end of the movie. Actually, that's not what really happened. Brace yourselves for this revelation: The Hollywood movie isn't historically accurate. And today the transliteration of the river's name is Kwae, not Kwai.

The bridge was part of the "Death Railway," which the Japanese built to connect Thailand to Burma. An estimated 15,000 POWs and 100,000 civilians died building the railway. Remains of 7,000 Allied prisoners are buried in the exquisitely landscaped Kanchanaburi War Cemetery.



The graves are all identical. I was strangely moved by the stark contrast between the sentiment of the epitaphs and the uniform plainness of the headstones.



And I'm not ashamed to admit I got a little choked up when I saw this, which someone had placed on a large cross in the center of the cemetery. The year of his birth isn't visible, but the note says Sgt Albert Slaughter was "The last of his platoon" before he passed away in October. Why would anyone who helped build the Death Railway return? To run in the River Kwai Half Marathon in 1987!



There's a museum by the bridge. Some of the exhibits are morbid, even given the subject matter. This shows the destruction of the bridge.



But while the floor is festooned with scantily clad statues in various states of dismemberment the ceiling is covered with whimsical and colorful paintings of Thai proverbs. This one says "Feeds the elephant and eats its stool" followed by its meaning: "Using one's own authority in career to misappropriate somebody else's fund."



Thus, a painting of a man eating elephant poop.

Since I'm a film nerd I thought this excursion would get filed in the "Thing that may interest only me" category but I was surprised at how popular the bridge is as a tourist attraction. The anti-government protest that shut down the airport last year was expected to hurt tourism here, but my hostel is full and this was the crowd on the bridge.



Here is the obligatory self-portrait during a relative lull in traffic.



It's been noted that all my pictures of me look alike, with scenery in the background and me in the front right corner. That's because I take the pix myself. There's only so much posing you can do while taking a photo of yourself by holding the camera at arm's length. When people see me doing it they inevitably ask if I would like them to take a photo of me. It would be impolite to refuse, so I let them, but mine are usually better!