Year of the Volcano

It's always satisfying when you visit something you've wanted to see your entire life and it lives up to your expectations. The Great Wall was everything that I expected. Angkor Wat, too. Occasionally you're disappointed.

The truly magical moments happen when you stumble across something unexpectedly wonderful. When you go you don't expect much but when you leave your mind is thoroughly blown.

In 2006 I spent two weeks in Belize and Guatemala. Near the Guatemalan tourist hub of Antigua I had my favorite unexpected travel surprise. I did a one-day trip to hike up an active volcano. In Costa Rica I had visited an active volcano called Arenal. There minivans take you to a viewpoint a few miles away. You go there at night so you can see the red lava against the night sky. I enjoyed it. I had never seen lava before.

I expected a similar deal in Guatemala. We hiked through a thick fog that obscured views of the mountainside. I began to get a little grumpy since it seemed we were going to hike all day and not see anything.

Suddenly we were in the clear. We could see the mountain.


In Costa Rica I was miles away. Now I was on the mountain itself. In Costa Rica the lava was visible as thin, red ribbons glowing in the darkness. Here there was a river of lava rolling down the side of the mountain. There were no safety precautions whatsoever. I could have walked up and jumped in.

First we had to hike through a fantastic landscape like something out of the movie "Alien". Previous lava flows had cooled into bizarre shapes and patterns. Thick fog added to the creepy atmosphere.


We walked across a cooled lava field that crumbled beneath our feet. Veins of molten lava ran through the rock directly beneath our feet.


I got as close as I could to the lava flow but it was unimaginably hot. How hot? Look at my face.


For the love of God, take the @#%&ing picture already!

This was about as close as I could get. (You can see the river of lava over my left shoulder.) The thick Vibram soles of my hiking shoes were no match for the mountain. The ground was so hot the rubber soles started getting gummy. As we left we could look back at other tourists inching close to the lava flow, which is flowing straight down through the center of the photo.


While we were hiking the other hikers and I wondered what would happen if the volcano erupted in earnest. Last week Volcan Pacaya erupted.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=357691&CategoryId=12394

A volcano also erupted in Ecuador, not far from where I hiked in 2004. And we all remember the volcano in Iceland which tied up air travel for weeks.

The death and casualty tolls are pretty low. At least 9 children are missing. More than 20 people have been injured. Thousands have fled their homes or were evacuated. Sad news, but this is literally a disaster waiting to happen. Small villages dot the side of the mountain. It is close to Antigua, the second most popular tourist destination in Guatemala, after the Mayan ruins at Tikal. I'm glad I saw it when I did!

Barang

I'm a barang. So are you.

It's a Khmer word which means foreigner, especially someone of European origin. It is not considered an insult. Usually... The origin of the word is a bit convoluted. In Thailand the word for foreigner is farang. The two words are obviously related. Farang came first. The Khmer word is different for the simple reason there is no F sound in the language. I know this first hand. Often people here struggle with my name. There are people here who know me as Jepp or Jess.

On a similar note, in Asia the R and L sounds are often confused or interchangeable. The word should probably be transliterated as balang. I have seen the Thai word spelled falang.

The explanation for the word farang is that it is a corruption of the word français. The word became part of the language through interaction with French traders. This is the most popular explanation and seems to make sense. It is also almost certainly incorrect.

Not only did other European traders (Dutch and Portuguese) arrive before the French, other non-Europeans did as well. Persians arrived before Europeans. The Persian word for foreigner is farangi. There are other explanations but this seems the most obvious.

Why, then, the common belief that the word comes from the French? To me it seems to appeal to a typically white/European-centric view of the world.

Persian is the language of Iran. Most westerners think of Iran as an Arab country but it is most definitely not. Only three percent of Iranians are Arabs. Even less speak Arabic. It is a huge pet peeve of Iranians that travelers who believe themselves to be worldly and educated show up in Tehran and try speaking to the locals in Arabic. Imagine someone getting off a plane in New York or San Francisco assuming the people there speak Arabic and you get the idea.

The majority of Iranians are ethnically Persian and speak Persian. Do white tourists from Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand want to be referred to a word from Iran, of all places? It's bad enough being called French!

Today's weather: Same as yesterday's

My decision to move to Phnom Penh was the right one. However, my timing could have been better. April is the hottest month here. For the folks back home, you know how every summer there's a stretch of a week or two where it gets so hot it's hard to breathe? Days when the weather is so miserable that just walking from your house to your car is enough to sap your will to live? Cambodia in April is like that every day. And every night, for that matter.

It's always hot here, although it does cool off a bit in December and January. I was teaching a lesson about weather vocabulary. I asked the students how cold it gets. They said 23 degrees Celsius, or about 74 degrees Fahrenheit. I suppose I should start storing provisions for the brutal Cambodian winter.

Here's a chart showing the average temperatures and number of rainy days for each month:

	Avg max temp C/F	Avg min temp C/F	Rainy days
Nov	30/86	22/72	9
Dec	30/86	21/70	3
Jan	31/88	20/68	1
Feb	32/90	21/70	2
Mar	34/93	24/75	4
Apr	35/95	25/77	6
May	35/95	25/77	16
Jun	33/91	24/75	18
Jul	33/91	24/75	19
Aug	32/90	25/77	19
Sep	31/88	25/77	19
Oct	31/88	24/75	17

The average high temperature never gets lower than 86 degrees, but in January it can get down to a frosty 68 degrees. Glad I saved that yak wool sweater I bought in Nepal!

There are two seasons here, the dry season and the wet season. It's pretty obvious from the chart which months fall into which season. As hot as it is here now it's a dry heat, which is surprising considering this is Southeast Asia. That's starting to change. Soon it will be the rainy season. For half the year there is a downpour just about every day. Last night I had plans to go out but stayed in because it was raining. It was the type of storm that chews up and spits out umbrellas. It was so loud I couldn't hear my television.

Note that the average temperatures are the same for April and May. It might be stinking hot now, but next month it will be just as hot and rainy and humid. If anyone is planning to visit me here, next month is not the time to do it.