Thorung La

I didn't do the full Annapurna Circuit hike as I had planned, for reasons I'll detail in a future post. I did have 15 days of mind-boggling scenery, absolutely perfect weather, new friends and surprisingly good food.

The literal high point of the trip was Thorung La, which, at 5,416 meters (17,873 feet) may or may not be the highest trekking pass in the world. It was easily the toughest day of hiking I've ever done. To get to the pass we had to ascend 1,000 meters (3,300 feet). Then we had to descend 1,600 meters, which was far harder, since much of the trail was covered with ice. Two days later I would be walking up the mountains in the distance into the Upper Mustang region.

I probably won't get around to writing anything until I return to Vietnam in about two weeks. That will give me time to sort through all the pix.

My new favorite hotel

I was walking around Pokhara, Nepal when I saw this sign.

Maybe it means something else in Nepali?

I want to stay there just to see what it's like. Is the name of the place designed to lower the expectations of visitors? If you complain about the water not being hot enough or the TV not working, do they say, "You're staying in the Mea Culpa, what do you expect?"

I was walking around getting the permits for my hike. I love this town. It's quite warm here during the day, shorts and tshirts weather. Heck, it's night time as I'm writing this and I'm still in a tshirt. But it wasn't a perfect day. There were clouds in the sky.


Don't see them? Look just above the trees. The clouds are below the mountaintops.

Kids will draw the darnedest things

I love Cambodia. It's such an intriguing place. It's exhilarating being in a country bursting with energy after awaking from the bizarre historical nightmare of the Khmer Rouge. Much of the country is desperately poor. You see much that is depressing or even horrifying. Estimates vary but I think it's safe to say that the majority of children do not go to school.

Sit on the beach in Sihanoukville and you will deal with constant stream of people trying to sell you fruit, sunglasses, massages, bracelets, etc. Most of them are children.

It's a lose-lose situation. If you buy from them it only encourages them to skip school or work on the beach. Or I should say, it encourages their parents to make them work on the beach. If you don't buy from them they get in trouble.

Ask the kids why they're not in school and they always have an excuse. If they're on the beach now it means they were in school this morning or will be this afternoon. Undoubtedly some go to school. Undoubtedly some don't.

There are signs on the beach from non-profit organizations and the Cambodian government asking tourists not to buy from kids. The sentiment is noble. The likelihood is nil. I have as much chance of changing the weather as I do of keeping these kids off the beach.

The kids on the beach mock the NGOs who claim to help them. Some of the organizations do great things, but too many of them are simply excuses for tourists to feel better about themselves.

What's a well-meaning tourist to do?

One day I met a new girl on the beach. Not only did her setup look new, she spoke no English. The kids on the beach amaze me with their ability to speak English, since they learn it all from interacting with tourists.

I was with a Khmer friend so even though the little girl spoke no English and I spoke no Khmer I was able to ask her some questions. Her name is Loan, she's 14, and she was indeed new to the beach.

She does go to school, but there was some sort of break. Normally she gets up in the morning, tends to the cows, goes to school, comes home and finishes her chores. Since there was no school she was sent to the beach to earn some money selling grilled squid.


She came by first thing in the morning. We were not hungry. I smiled and said "no, thank you" in both English and Khmer (one of the few phrases I know in the language), but she persisted. I felt sorry for her, because her frustration was obvious. I asked my friend to tell her that she's a pretty young girl and is more likely to make a sale by smiling and being friendly then by pouting.

I started asking her questions (through my friend, who interpreted) and she brightened up a lot. She was quite sweet once we got her talking, and quite pretty when she wasn't pouting. Like many of the people who work the beach, not only did she spend all day walking up and down the sand in the tropical heat, she had to walk miles just to get there.

Look at the rig she's carrying. On one side is a charcoal grill with a quiver of squid skewers sticking out. On the other is a bucket of squid with styrofoam plates, chili sauce, and whatever else she needs.

It's heavy. Carrying one of these rigs properly requires balance. The women who do it every day almost jog with them, using the rhythm of their steps to make the pole bounce on their shoulders, thus taking off some of the strain. Loan, on the other hand, plodded along the beach. Later that day she came back with a horrible burn mark on her leg. She had lost her balance and the grill had fallen against her leg.

Later in the day I bought some squid from her. I wasn't all that hungry but I wanted to help her out and, hey, I do love squid. I bought five. She tried to sell me ten but I just wasn't that hungry. She asked for a dollar. A dollar for five fresh, grilled squid, each about four inches long. I gave her a 10,000 riel note, or $2.5.

I wondered how much time she spent on the beach. Did she work certain hours? Did she work until she made a certain amount of money? She said she stayed on the beach until she sold all her squid. I indicated the dwindling number of skewers on the grill and said it looked like she could go home soon.

She opened up the cooler and showed me dozens of uncooked critters still waiting to be sold. I felt guilty. I thought I was helping her by overpaying her for the five squid but what I should have done was bought 10 or 15 of them.

All of which is very sad. But what struck me the hardest was when I asked her what she was going to do when she finished school. She said she didn't know. I asked her what her dream was. She didn't understand.

I asked her if she dreamed of being a nurse or a teacher. She just shrugged and said ottay. No.

Even now, two months later, it still breaks my heart to think this girl, who is very nearly done with school and will soon be of marrying age, has never even dared to imagine a better future.

I'll buy fruit from the kids but that's it. I bought fruit from Lin. As I ate she picked up my book and started reading.


At least she looked like she was reading. The book is "The Confusion" by Neal Stephenson, which even I struggled with!

I tell them right up front I'm not going to buy anything. For some reason they still sit and talk to me and visit me every day. Maybe they appreciate my honesty. Maybe they appreciate that I ask for and remember their names. Who knows. Whatever the reason, at times I'll have 10 or 12 kids hanging out around my sunbed.

Here, right behind where I'm sitting, a crowd of them watches as a ladyboy gives a manicure to Phoan, one of my "tour guides" from the waterfall.


The kids love playing tic-tac-toe in the sand. One day it started raining suddenly. I ducked under cover and played games with some of the kids until the storm passed. One of the little boys didn't have any paper so he improvised a game board.


While I won't buy from them I will buy for them. Late in the afternoon women selling noodles, eggs, etc. come down the beach. If there are kids around my bed when one of them comes by I'll buy them all a bowl a noodles. Paying 25 cents a pop to feed a bunch of kids is money well spent in my book.


One of my regular visitors was Mai Lin, a tiny little rough-and-tumble girl who just cracks me up.


Everything she does is funny. She would come by, take my sunglasses off me and put them on herself. Or push me aside so she could lie down next to me and take a nap. She wasn't afraid to make herself at home.


I wondered how much if any real impact a tourist like me could have on these kids. They talk to hundreds of foreigners every day. Do they even care? Or is it all just a game for them? I found out from Mai Lin.

One day she sat down in the sand next to me and started quietly crying. I asked her what is wrong. Because she's such a tomboy I thought maybe she had bumped her head roughhousing.

One of her friends said that Mai Lin had befriended a young German girl who been on the beach for the past few days. That day the German girl wasn't there. Another tourist told them that the German girl had left Sihanoukville. Mai Lin was crying because the German girl left without saying goodbye. It was all I could do to keep from crying myself!

This little girl speaks very little English. She would just come and sit by me quietly, just to rest, I think. One day I was listening to my iPod. I put the earphones on her.


She sat there like this for over an hour, calmly listening to music. Then she took off the earphones, waved and walked away.

I love playing with kids and roughhousing with them. I'm always struck at how much they respond to the slightest bit of genuine kindness. You can't fool a kid. They know if you care or not.

Normally I don't mind having kids crawling all over me like a jungle gym. But Cambodia is different. As I mentioned in a previous post, Cambodia is where the really sick sex tourists go. If having sex with kids is your thing then Cambodia is probably on your travel agenda. The government is cracking down, but the country is still fairly lawless in a lot of ways.

In Sihanoukville I avoid physical contact with the kids. I don't want to give them or anyone else the wrong idea. So when my buddy Srey Na wants to give me a big hug, as much as I'd like to reciprocate, I don't.

One problem with the people selling stuff on the beach is that there's too many of them. There are dozens of people each selling fruit, sunglasses, massages, scarves, etc. etc. I try to tell the kids to find something new to sell. If your friend is making money selling bracelets then you should sell something else!

One day I was talking to a Canadian couple on the beach. They started making sand castles. The kids were fascinated. Could it be they've never seen one? So they started making sand castles.

Most of the kids eventually wandered but a little boy and girl stayed around and drew in the sand. Some of the drawings were pretty impressive. The little boy did pretty accurate renderings of the tattoos on my legs.

He made one really impressive drawing that really freaked out the Canadian couple and me. Unfortunately a wave wiped it out before I could take a picture. It was a pretty detailed drawing of planes crashing into the World Trade Center. He may have been alive on 9/11 but I don't know how he could have any memory of it. Who knows why he chose to draw it in the beach sand.

Other drawings were of happier subjects.

How can you not love a kid who does this. In her second language!

I stayed there for about two hours watching and encouraging them. I tried to tell them that if they made sand castles or made drawings in the sand people would give them money. I gave them each a buck to drive home the point.

I do what I can.

Storm watch

I was sitting at an internet cafe on the Tonle Sap River in Phnom Penh, Cambodia last week witnessing a hydrological event I wrote about a few months ago but had never seen.

From where I sat I could see where the Tonle Sap River joins the Mekong. During the rainy season the mighty Mekong receives so much rain that it forces the Tonle Sap to change direction.

When I was here five weeks ago the river was at this level and flowing away from the camera.


On my last visit the river was much higher and flowing towards the camera.



Typhoons have been crushing Southeast Asia for the past few weeks. Even Nepal, which is far from any ocean, has felt the brunt. I was reading in the Kathmandu Post of a village in the western part of the country that was swept away by a flood. Over 70 homes, school, shops -- gone.

Last week Typhoon Ketsana dropped a month's worth of rain on Manila in one day. The Phillipines is hit by about 20 typhoons and major storms each year but was not prepared for 16 inches of rain in one day. (Maryland gets about 40 inches of rain per year.)

Relief efforts are being hindered by yet another typhoon, Parma followed quickly on Ketsana's heels, with Melor right behind.

Ketsana moved onto the mainland and smashed into central Vietnam. Hundreds died and hundreds of thousands were left homeless in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.

In the US we tend to equate typhoon season with hurricane season. Even though there are storms like Katrina and Andrew that cause damage on a biblical scale, typhoon season is worse. The frequency of storms is greater, and the islands and coastal areas where they hit are densely populated.

In August Typhoon Morakot killed 770 in Taiwan, a "modern" country. The effect on poor, rural areas is even worse. Laos is the most primitive country I've ever traveled in, and I don't mean that in a condescending way. Even on the "tourist trail" I passed through communities with no electricity where people live in thatch huts. It's a level of poverty that simply does not exist in the US.

In these areas people have no warning, and even if they do, they have nowhere to go. Relief agencies are overwhelmed dealing with disaster areas in the Phillipines, Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asia. If you are asked to donate, please do.

Ready, set, go

I have my permits. I have just about all the supplies I'll need. I have a bus ticket. All that remains is the hike. All 21+ days of it...

I did the Annapurna Sanctuary hike last year by myself. No porter, no guide, just me and my backpack. It was tough but immensely satisfying. Last year when I hiked here I had already done the Everest Base Camp hike, so I was acclimatized and had my legs under me. This year I'm starting cold.

I have plenty of time to do the hike before my visa expires so I'm going to take my time. The key to avoiding altitude sickness is not over-exerting yourself. I am looking forward to the hike, generally considered to be the best in Nepal -- and that's saying something.

I am not looking forward to Thorung La, a 5,416 meter (17,900 feet) pass I will have to cross in about 10 days. I got up to 5,550 meters on the Everest hike, and it was brutal. This time I'll be carrying a full pack. Wish me luck.

The blog will continue while I am gone. I've got a few posts I've scheduled to publish every few days while I'm gone.

Back in the BKK

I'm in Bangkok now. I came here partly because it's much cheaper to fly from Bangkok to Kathmandu than from any other hub in SE Asia. So I traveled by bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh and then onto Bangkok.

The other reason I came to Bangkok is because I wanted to visit Bangkok! I wanted to experience a couple days of craziness on Khao San Road before disappearing into the mountains in Nepal.

At night I like to sit at one of the sidewalk bars on Khao San Road and watch the freak show. It so happens that the guys who work at the bar where I was hanging out are all from Nepal. I showed them the tattoo I got in Pokhara last year and told them I was going back this week. They love me.

One night while I was sitting there a barhopping expedition formed. It was probably the most demographically diverse group ever assembled, given the size. The roster:

* our leader, a gay Thai guy who works as a tout for one of the bars
* his sister, who recently returned to Bangkok after working as a prostitute in Amsterdam for seven years
* a black Australian tattoo artist who works on Khao San Road
* a Filipino ladyboy with original equipment below the belt but expensive additions up top
* a German girl who took turns hitting on both the tattoo artist and the ladyboy
* me: heterosexual, white American man. How boring.

Where else in the world could this group of people come together for a social outing?!

Just Kathmandu it

One of my few regrets from my round-the-world trip was that I didn't budget my time well in Nepal. I didn't leave myself enough time to hike what is considered the best trail in Nepal, the Annapurna Circuit. I hiked to Annapurna Base Camp, but did not do the full circuit. It takes at least three weeks. The best time to do it is in October.

I just finished my TEFL class and have been stressing about where to teach. I haven't even decided which country to teach in, let alone which city, school or grade. I took a bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh and spent a couple days there. I took a bus from Phnom Penh to Bangkok, which is where I am now.

Tomorrow I fly to Kathmandu. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. When is the next time I will have the entire month of October free? I really can't afford it, but I can't pass up the chance. It'll give me time to think, unwind and lose some weight!

I have a few more posts I'll try to publish before I hit the trail. I was flabbergasted last year when I found internet cafes on the trails in the Himalayas, so I wouldn't be surprised to find internet access on this hike. For all intents and purposes though, once I start the hike I will be off the grid for at least three weeks.

Kbal Chhay

That is not a typo. It's the name of a waterfall near Sihanoukville, Cambodia. I wanted to see it, but it's about about a 30-minute moto or tuk-tuk ride. (As it turns out it's a long 30 minutes.) A couple kids who work on the beach offered to be my "tour guides" for the day. Which meant they wanted a day away from the beach and they wanted me to pay for it.

I said no at first. I have had kids show me around other places I've traveled, but there are additional concerns in Cambodia that aren't necessarily a factor in those other places.

To put it bluntly, Cambodia is where the really sick sex tourists go. A lot of very bad people go to Cambodia for very bad reasons. The first time I was in Sihanoukville I found out that a tourist had drugged and murdered two kids the week before I arrived -- in the guest house where I was staying!

The country is held together by the thinnest veneer of law, so virtually anything is possible if you're willing to pay. If a tuk-tuk driver offers to take you to a "chicken ranch" he's offering to take you to a place where you can have sex with children.

Looking at this picture of my "tour guides" it should be clear why I was reluctant to take them up on their offer.


I was concerned at how it would look, a western tourist with two pretty young Khmer girls. Phoan (right) is 14 and Da (left) is 16. I've spent hours talking to them on the beach, so I knew and they knew my intentions were honorable. I just wanted some company for the day (and someone to show me how to find the place). They wanted an all-expenses paid trip to the waterfall. I'm glad I took them up on the offer.

The waterfall was nice, but what I enjoyed was seeing how Cambodian people spend their free time. I went there twice and both times it was packed. Both times I was one of a handful of tourists.

In the parking lot I saw this tuk-tuk. Apparently it was "take your child to work day" in Sihanoukville.


I love the advertisement on the back, because when I think of Cambodia, the first thing that comes to mind is Mexican food! You can see the waterfall from the parking lot.

The view is better once you pay the outlandish admission price -- 1000 riel, or 25 cents -- and cross the bridge to the other side.


Walk a little further and you get a glimpse of the crowd gathered at the bottom.


At the bottom it's so crowded it's difficult to walk in places.

Above the waterfall a line of pavilions runs alongside the stream. Families sit on blankets or in hammocks, eat, talk and play cards. The day Da and Phoan took me there it wasn't too crowded. But there were party crashers.

We ordered a whole chicken with rice for lunch.

Here is Da offering me her favorite part of the chicken, the liver.

(Note: This is not my favorite part of the chicken.)

Just in front of our hut was a bend in the stream which served as a natural gathering place.

As I've mentioned before, in Southeast Asia most people swim fully clothed. When Da and Phoan were ready to go swimming they went to the toilet to change from shorts and tshirts ... into different shorts and tshirts.

As is usual in Cambodia there were far too many children there working, selling fruit and snacks and whatnot. I didn't want any snacks but I bought some from these two.

One of the joys of traveling is interacting with kids. No matter where you go, no matter what the local ethnicity or language or religion is, kids are all the same. I'm especially fond of Khmer children, because so many of them are so poor, so many of them don't go to school, so many of them work so hard, and yet all of them are still ... kids.

These little girls walked around all day with baskets of junk food on their heads, and yet here they are giggling and teasing each other.

While we were sitting there I was reminded why I had misgivings about the venture in the first place. Da was swimming, Phoan was sitting in the hammock and I was sitting on the blanket people-watching. Twice we were approached by women selling fruit. Both of them asked Phoan (in Khmer) if I was her husband! Phoan is tiny even by local standards. She might weigh 70 pounds. How many places in the world exist in a moral alternate universe where someone would think for even a moment that this tiny little girl might be my wife?!

A few days later I played tour guide and took my friend Hieng to the waterfall. She's a 23-year-old Khmer girl who had just moved to Sihanoukville from Koh Kong, on the border with Thailand. I enjoyed being in the unusual position of being a tourist playing tour guide for a Cambodian! Here she is at the top of the waterfall.

Here is the view looking down the stream at the waterfall, with the pavilions alongside.

I loved the irony that in Cambodia it's common to see a family of five on a motorbike with no helmets but here they make sure the kids wear life preservers in shallow water!

As seen on Discovery Channel

I went for a walk on the beach in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, hoping to get away from the crowds. We passed the restaurants and came to an empty stretch of beach where we saw more cows than people.


We also saw something I thought was really cool, something I'd seen on TV but never in person. When the tide goes out countless little crabs come out of the sand to feed. They sift through the sand looking for treats. In the process they roll the sand into little marbles.


These are industrious little critters. This little guy is about as big as the nail on my pinky finger, yet he and his buddies clear acres of beach. The dark patch here is one of many areas already scavenged.


I could have watched the little buggers scurry around for hours. My friend wasn't as impressed. Yep, it's yet another chapter in "Things that may interest only me".

I'd like to thank the Academy

Here I am receiving my TEFL certificate from Diem, the primary instructor for the class. On the board is the location of the post-class gathering. They decided to ... play laser tag? Yeah, it was a young bunch.

Here is the whole happy class. These photos came from Steven, the guy in black in the back row holding his certificate above his head. I took my camera with me but left the memory card in my laptop...


Here I am sitting between Nhi (left) and Nghiem (right), the course administrators. There's a bit of forced perspective going on here. I'm scrunched down between them so you can't tell that I weigh significantly more than the two of them combined!


Afterwards we walked around the corner for a big buffet lunch. The place is so big that the boys who replenish the buffet dishes scoot around on roller skates. I felt a little tug on my heartstrings when I saw the name of the place: Dìn Ký. The dog I had when I was a boy was named Dinky.


Here I am trying a local dish for the first time. Mmm ... snails.

Kampongsom

I'm afraid the blog is jumping back and forward in time. For a year I was able to keep it in mostly chronological order. So much for that. For the past month I've been in Saigon but before that I spent a few weeks in Cambodia and made an ill-advised detour to Indonesia.

Cambodia was wonderful. I spent my time there shuttling back and forth between Phnom Penh, the capital, and Sihanoukville, the beach town.

The traditional Khmer name for Sihanoukville is Kampongsom, which is actually easier to say! It's touristy, but not overwhelmingly so like the beaches of Thailand. I'm a pretty uptight person and it's tough for me to relax. Sihanoukville is one of the few places I've ever been where I can truly take it easy.

I've been there several times, but I haven't seen all that much of the area. I'm perfectly content to go to the same beach every day and sit on a sunbed at the same restaurant. I'll sit there all day long reading and goofing around with the kids who work on the beach.

I found a great little guest house literally a two-minute walk from the beach.


Thida is a Khmer woman with a British husband, hence the flags over the entrance. At the end of the dirt road Serendipity Beach is visible. (Her pizzas are fantastic, by the way.)

My routine is to wake up whenever I damn well feel like it, walk down to the beach, find a sunbed and sit there until I feel like going home. At night I'll go down back down to the beach to have dinner at the best deal in Southeast Asia, the Sihanoukville beach barbeque. Virtually every beach restaurant has one every night, so the competition for customers is fierce. It's definitely a buyer's market.

In this shot you can see that the beach is lined with nearly identical restaurants. What you can't see is their menus are virtually identical, too.


With the BBQ you get your choice of fresh seafood. I usually go with the combination of prawn (two big ones), squid (two small ones, 3-4 inches long) and a barracuda filet. It comes with potato and salad.

Cost: $3. Wash it down with a couple draft beers and the cost goes all the way up to $4.

Here is my friend Hieng enjoying just such a feast.


Nightlife on the beach is geared towards the young backpacker crowd -- some bars offer free drinks to patrons who are still there at sunrise -- so I'll head back to the guest house, talk to Thida and the other guests, then turn in early.