Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Vietnam! I had a wonderful Christmas. First, I ended my China/Vietnam tour. Since the tour was over, I changed hotels to stay in a nice, fancy hotel so I could have a bit of luxury on Christmas day. I believe only about 10% of the population in Vietnam is Christian so they don’t celebrate it much, but there were lots of cute trees placed all around town. I think this is my "official" Christmas card for 2011!

I was really sad to be away from my family for Christmas day, in fact I had been dreading it for weeks. It is my first ever Christmas away from them, and it’s definitely not the same. I was lucky enough to get to talk to them all in the afternoon though, which definitely made me smile! A few wonderful girls from my tour were staying in Hanoi for the day, so I spent my day with Cassie from the UK and Angela from Australia. We spent time wandering around shopping, definitely my idea of a perfect activity! We ate turkey sandwiches for lunch, in the spirit of the holiday. Then we went to the most amazing ice cream shop for desert. All in all, a lovely Christmas day. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas as well!

Good Morning Vietnam

Hello again! I apologize for the long time since my last post. I procrastinated in writing my Vietnam post, assuming I would write it during my first few days in China. What I didn’t realize is that China would block my blog! I knew they blocked facebook and youtube and a few other sites, but it never occurred to me that blogs would be inaccessible as well. Guess it’s not the end of the world but I felt like a complete slacker! I think I would struggle quite a bit if I lived in China though – not being able to access all the information is frustrating to me.

So back to Vietnam…it seems so long ago now that I’m finally posting this. (the picture above is a cave we visited in Halong Bay.) Vietnam was great. We left part of our group in Siem Reap, which was quite sad. The good part, however, is that we had 11 new people join us in Vietnam. It’s always fun to have new personalities to change the dynamics a bit. Our first night we went out on boats to the Mekong Delta. They offered us snake for dinner – yes, actual snake – and I ate it! The craziest part was that they offered to let one of the people in our group kill the snake before dinner. I could never do that, but one guy did. In fact, after he killed it, they put some of it’s blood in a shot of local whiskey and the guy drank it’s blood. Yes, he killed the snake and drank it’s blood! If that doesn’t strike you as insane, I don’t know what does. It's supposed to be an honor and bring you good luck, but it seems over the line to me. In totally unrelated snake news, please meet my new boyfriend Frank!

On our way back to Ho Chi Minh City, we stopped at the Cu Chi tunnels. We were able to get down in the tunnels and crawl through them like they did in the Vietnam war, and let me tell you, you definitely couldn’t do it if you were claustrophobic. I kept thinking about how small they were and how people spent months down there, then we were told that they had actually been widened from their original size so that tourists could fit in them – great. We watched some of the propaganda movies that they used to show during the war, and some of them were pretty harsh against the Americans. I think my favorite line of all was “Due to a crazy batch of American Devils….” I didn’t sense any hostility the whole time I was there, but you could tell there used to be such strong feelings between the two countries. I did one other thing at the Cu Chi tunnels that I never thought I would do in my life – I shot a M60 machine gun! You could buy bullets for $1 each, so I bought 10 just to see what it was like. They go so fast, it was over in 2 seconds, but I’m glad I got to try it. Not like the crazy, snake killing guy who shot off 200 rounds!

We visited a couple of wonderful towns in Vietnam. We visited Nha Trang, a wonderful beach town. We spent the day on a boat, went snorkeling and just relaxed. We had some amazing food for dinner – I even had quesadillas! I can’t tell you how much I’m missing Mexican food. And cheese. And Italian food. And…sorry, got off topic for a second there! I did manage to go to a chocolate buffet in Hanoi thoughJ We also visited Hoi An and had some clothes custom made. I swore I wasn’t going to have anything, but of course ended up walking out with 2 skirts, 2 pairs of pants and 1 dress. Oops! I’ve already destroyed both pairs of pants, but for the small price I paid, I was okay with that. One girl even had her wedding dress custom made for $300. Everything there was so cheap!  In one city we were supposed to go to a war museum, but the power was out and it was closed, so instead our wonderful tour manager Jonny suggested we go to the zoo instead. Here is my friend Simba with the biggest smile of all time.

The final stop on the tour was Hanoi. One of the weirdest things we did there was visit Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. It is the most serious place I’ve been on my whole trip. You can’t bring ANYTHING in with you – no camera, no purse, no hats, no sunglasses, nothing. You are walk inside in a straight, single file line. You are not allowed to talk. You’re not allowed to stop. You’re not allowed to put your hands in your pockets. You just march straight ahead, view the waxy, preserved body of a man who has been dead for over 30 years, and then leave immediately. Some people come from all over the country to pay their respects.  It’s such an odd custom!

To show you some of the variety of transportation we used in Southeast Asia, here is a picture of me and Tony from the US in our cyclos. They are bikes with two wheels in the front and one in the back. A guy sits on the bike seat and does all the pedaling while we got to sit in the front and get pushed around. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me!

For our final night we spent the night in Halong Bay. We had a private boat for the 30 of us, so obviously it was quite large. We spent 2 days sailing between the massive rock formations jutting out of the water. In the afternoon of the first day we went kayaking around some of them and it was just brilliant – you went into small coves with only one entrance, where the ceiling was just barely above your head. There was nobody else around so you could just relax and enjoy the beauty of the “Natural Wonder of the World”. The only mistake I made was sharing a kayak with Dwayne, a 19 year old from Australia. Everyone liked to tease him, so of course, at the end of the kayaking they decided to tip over his kayak…with me in it! We tumbled in the water fully dressed – jerks! Since I was already wet, I joined in the water fun, jumping off the top of the boat and just messing around. That evening we had a pirate party aboard our boat. I dressed in head to toe white, as an heiress who had been kidnapped – too bad I had Stockholm syndrome and liked all of the pirates:-) Halong bay was the wonderful end to an amazing time in Vietnam!

After 2 tours back to back, I was lucky enough to have a whole week to relax on my own. I spent the first 2 days in Delhi and then the last few in Bangkok. I was nervous to come to Southeast Asia due to the news about all the flooding. Based on what we heard, it sounded like the whole city of Bangkok might just float away! However, we arrived and it wasn’t nearly as bad as they said it would be. In fact, for the first 3 days I didn’t even see any water. There were lots of cars parked on top of overpasses and it was hard to find bottled water, but beyond that it was business as usual. We did go out of our way to find some water on our last day in Bangkok and this is what we found.

The next few days in Thailand were pretty relaxed for me, since I had been to Thailand a few years ago. I did a lot of thinking and a lot of sleeping during this part of the trip and it was wonderful! Next we crossed the border into Laos. I was so excited to go to Laos since it’s only been open to tourists for about 10 years. I thought it would be much less spoiled than some other places, which have catered so much to what they think tourists want. We started our time in Laos with a 2 day trip down the Mekong. You jump on a long boat, which isn’t just a cute description – the boat is literally as long as 3 full size busses! The family lives on the back 1/3 of the boat and we get to lounge on the rest. I have no idea how they steer these huge boats through the river without hitting any rocks, but it’s absolutely incredible. The days were a wonderful chance to get to know everyone. I was so excited because I am going to be joined for a whole month of the trip by my friend Catharine. We met at work and traveled last year to Peru together and it was so wonderful to see a friend from home!

One of the interesting and fun days of my trip so far was tubing in Vang Vieng. It’s absolutely crazy – you rent a tube for the day and wear any wild clothes you can find. You are driven in a tuk tuk about 2 hours upstream from town and dropped into the river. You float on your tube from one bar to the next, stopping to have a shot of snake whiskey or a bucket of some Lao Lao vodka concoction. There is music playing, spray paint and people just having a great time. There are also lots of fun water activities – diving into the river, pendulum swings and huge slides….it is so much fun! The day is supposed to end at the last bar, where you jump in a tuk tuk and are taken back to town, but of course it doesn’t always end that way. Some people climbed through jungle and walked back to town while others floated in the dark all the way back and had to be fished out of the river by some local kids looking for money. The whole day is an absolute riot and my whole group made it back with no visits to the hospital – success!

Our last day in Laos was also incredible (can you tell that I absolutely love this country?). We woke up in the early morning and drove about an hour into the jungle. There, we jumped on elephants for a ride! Catharine and I had a wonderful elephant whose name we didn’t know, so we just called her Sweetheart. She loved to be in the lead and often stopped for “snacks” along the trail. Our mahout, the elephant guide, was very relaxed as well. After about 10 minutes he jumped down and let Catharine and I ride on the front of the elephant for the rest of the trip. He took our camera and was taking all kinds of pictures – some were of us riding Sweetheart and some were just of the river and the scenery around us – I think he liked being artsy! So wonderful and different from any elephant ride I’ve been on before.

After Laos we flew to Cambodia. Seeing Cambodia from above was shocking – it was completely covered in water. I honestly didn’t see any place we would be able to land, it was so flooded. It was definitely the worst flooding we had seen the whole time in SE Asia, and you could see why it was such a tragedy. Phnom Penh was spared from too much water, but since the area around it was flooded, they had to cancel much of their annual “Water Festival”. Ironic, I know.

After just one short day in Phnom Penh we jumped on a quick flight to Siem Reap. We spent the afternoon on a boat tour out to the floating city. It is amazing to me that people live on these small houses that just float on the water. They are powered by car batteries and they seem so primitive, but some of them even have satellite tv! Then we did something I never could have predicted – we went to this farm where the guys could pay to go fishing. They would catch a catfish, then they would tie it to a pole and feed it to the crocodiles. It was insane! There were 15 or 20 crocs in this pen and they would fight and bite each other to get to the food. The poor catfish! I guess many of these crocodile farms have been flooding recently and the crocs have escaped – so bad for the locals! It was amazing to see how strong and determined the crocodiles were though.

Our final day in Cambodia ended with the highlight, Angkor Wat. We got up super early so we could go there and see the sunrise. Seeing the reflection of such an old building with the sun rising over it was beautiful.

We spent the afternoon going to some of the lesser known temples, including the “Angelina Jolie” temple. I preferred some of the others over Angkor Wat simply because they have been left more natural and have had the trees and wilderness overgrow the temples in some places. It makes me think more of what the temples looked like before they were “discovered”. In one of the temples we also saw some people from the Amazing Race who were running around, as well as the flags for the checkpoint as we were driving away! Great to see them actually in these places, but I felt so bad that they had to run through them and didn’t get to take their time and really enjoy the sites. All in all, SE Asia so far has been incredible!

India is a land of such extremes. Everywhere that you go, there is something new to see that will put you outside your comfort zone. I’m not going to lie, when I first arrived in India, I was not excited at all. I was completely exhausted from the hike to Everest Base Camp. I was sad because I had really loved my group in Nepal and I was sure that my new group would not be any good. This was the only point on my trip where I ended one tour in the morning and started a new one the same evening and it really took its toll on me. All I wanted to do was sleep and instead I had to put a smile on and meet my new group. Maybe I could learn a little something from this guy!

I think it took about 3 days for me to really start enjoying India. It is just so overwhelming some of the time, I didn’t have the energy to take it all in. I walked around Delhi and Jaipur in a dreamlike state. Our second night in Jaipur I was finally woken up after a night of drunk teenagers, power outages, insect repellant and getting to share the big bed in the honeymoon suite with the roommate I had met two days before. Fun! Once I was back in the real world, the next few days were wonderful. We went to a Bollywood move, which was much different than I expected it to be. There was all kind of short shorts, crime and sexy dancing, not a saree in sight! So odd. We ate lots of naan, korma, butter chicken and vegetable curries, I loved every bite of it. We spent one afternoon at the house of an Indian family, where they made us lunch and we got to play a little bit of dress up, Indian style. I think I could totally pass for a native, what do you think?

Once we got to Agra we got to see what I was most excited for – the Taj Mahal! It is the 6^th wonder of the world I have seen, with the only remaining one being the Great Wall of China. I really hadn’t given much thought to the Taj, I just knew it was a beautiful building in India. Being there, you hear some of the history about the building – it was built by a man in memory of his favorite wife after her death. He spent so much money and so many years building a fitting memorial for his wife, which is why so many people say the Taj represents love. 

It was amazing to see how it changes color during the sunrise. After taking all my pictures I found a bench with a great view of the Taj and just took some quiet time to reflect on such an immense love. I felt peace and happiness wash over me and at that point I realized the place really is magical. I am so appreciative that I’ve had the opportunity to travel the world and see all of these incredible places.

After visiting the Taj, we went a bit more off the beaten path. We spent one night in this old, dilapidated fort. It would have been the perfect place to film a slasher movie, so we spent the whole evening planning out the script. Who was the serial killer, how would we escape and who would be the survivors at the end? Definitely not related to India at all, but a great way to just relax in a country that is so serious. The town surrounding the fort was quite small and when we walked through it, it seemed like we were stepping back 50 years in time.  

The next town we visited, Alipura, was very similar. We stayed in a palace, and to this day the local maharaja still lives in the top floors of the building. However, once you left the walls of the palace, you see how the local people live. When we walked through town, everyone knew the tourists were in town. The children would come up to you and say HelloPen and HelloMoney – they immediately expected you to give them something, which was very sad to me. They’ve been raised to view foreigners as only an opportunity to get something for free. I’ve been told in many countries not to give the children anything because as they grow up they will continue to beg, then teach their children to do it, which creates a whole cycle of this, but let me tell you – when they look up at you with their sad eyes, it is so hard to say no. Once they finally realized we weren’t going to give them anything, they simply followed us on our wander of the village. At one point I think we had about 20 kids following us! Of course, we couldn’t resist taking pictures of their sweet faces and this completely changed everything. Most of them have rarely seen a camera before, so when they realized we were taking their pictures, they wanted to see them immediately! You might have 3 kids pulling on the camera strap and another 3 touching the lens and the screen – you had to hold on to your camera with all your strength so they didn’t get too excited and break it. It was one of the most innocent, heartbreaking and genuine experiences I’ve had in my whole time traveling.

One of the things that you notice about India is the complete lack of inhabitations people have. They are more than willing to go to the bathroom in the middle of town and not care who sees them. I saw more men peeing than I could possibly count! You also see the poverty everywhere you look. There are women wearing the brightest, most beautiful colored saris and they are sitting in the middle of a dirt road. There are people sleeping on the side of the road and it’s just so sad to see. It’s not like home where they have sleeping bags or boxes or carts full of belongings – they literally just lie down directly on the pavement and sleep. There were some corners where you would see 20 people lying there and you just wonder if they will ever be able to do anything different.

Our tour ended in Varanasi. The roads in Varanasi are crazy – we got around mostly by bicycle rickshaw. But there are really no traffic laws – people drive wherever they want to, not caring about who is coming the other way. There will be busses, tuk tuks, horsedrawn carriages and bicycles all fighting for the same space on the road – and then you realize there’s a cow in the middle of the road and they are all just detouring around him – it’s the most organized chaos!  The main thing to see in Varanasi is the Ganges River. It’s a believed to be a sacred river so people often go on a pilgrimages there or they go there to die so they can be cremated on its banks. They do not believe in cremation for children or pregnant women so they simply wrap their bodies in a white sheet and place their bodies directly in the river.  We saw people being cremated which was incredibly hard, but at the same time it was amazing to see because you were able to see all the rituals that they perform on the person before the light the fire. I was incredibly honored to be able to see such a spiritual moment.

They also believe that it is a cleansing and healing river, so many people go to the river banks and bathe in the river. You see people praying and families relaxing there and it is crazy to me that just up the river, they are putting ashes and dead bodies in the water. It was so unsanitary, but they just don’t think about it. Their beliefs are the most important thing and nothing else matters. Who am I to question someone like this woman who has such faith?

A picture is worth a thousand words

They say a picture is worth a thousand words....so I am going to let these incredible kids from India do all the talking today. I think you'll agree that their faces tell you everything you need to know.

(I swear, this is the Indian version of Jameson!)

Beautiful, aren’t they?

Everest Base Camp!

Nepal! Everest! The portion of the trip that I have been the most excited for and the part that I have been the most nervous about. The beginning of my time in Nepal got off to a bit of a rocky start. The day before I was scheduled to arrive, there was an earthquake on the India/Nepal border and a few people in Kathmandu died. I arrived not knowing how it was going to be – would there be lots of damage? Luckily everything was fine – there was absolutely no evidence of an earthquake. I had about 5 days on my own before the tour started so I went to a city called Chitwan, where the jungle is. I spent 3 days taking hikes in the jungle, riding elephants and having canoe rides. It was so relaxing and different, I really enjoyed it. The only challenge was the electricity – it was probably off for about 60% of the time I was there (that’s normal), so I spent a lot of time wearing my head torch.

Back in Kathmandu, it was time to get prepped for Everest Base Camp (EBC). Kathmandu is a really unique city – since it is the starting point for pretty much every trek in the Himalayas, you can buy any type of trekking gear that you can think of. There are 100s of North Face, Columbia or Mountain Hardwear replicas at a fraction of the cost you would pay at home – instead of a pair of rain proof pants costing $60, I think I paid about $5! There are also street after street of stores selling the exact same thing, I never understand how they all make enough money to stay open. I met my new group and they seemed wonderful and a really good mix: there were 2 brothers from Australia, 2 girls from Ireland, 2 guys from Denmark, 3 Canadians, 4 people from the UK and one other American guy from Portland.

Unfortunately, they day before we were supposed to fly out, there was a plane crash in Kathmandu and all 19 people on board were killed. We were all really freaked out because we were already flying out to the most dangerous airport in the world, Lukla. It was very sad and made you think about how scary it can be to fly in a third world country. The day we were supposed to fly out it was pouring down rain and I think they were being very cautious due to the accident, so we got to sit in the airport for 7 hours and eventually our flight was cancelled. We went back to the hotel and would try again the next day, but since we were on a fixed schedule we started to worry that we might not have enough time to get up to Base Camp. It would have broken my heart if we weren’t able to make the trek. Luckily we were able to get on a flight out the next morning. The flight was awesome – it was just a tiny little prop plane and my group took up every seat in the plane! The Lukla airport is very unique – one end of the runway is 60 meters higher than the other end, so you land going up a hill. It’s also a really short runway so as you are approaching all you see is a small black line going up the side of a hill and you can’t believe you’re actually going to land there – so cool!

The trek itself is quite challenging. You hike up for 8 days (2 of the days are acclimation days so you only do short day hikes and return to the same city that night) and normally hike down for 4 days, but since we lost a day at the beginning we had to get back down in 3 days. There are some days where you have a few hours of straight uphill and lots of days of “Nepali Flat”, where it’s up and down all day but nothing to steep. I think the second day of the Inca Trail was a harder hike than EBC, but you are so high in Nepal that you get out of breathe doing the simplest things. You can hike all day long, but then at night when you go up one flight of stairs you are huffing and puffing for breathe.

The hardest part of the trip is not the hiking itself but all the other parts of being up at altitude – the food gets really boring and repetitive (rice and noodles, no veggies, everything is fried), you have headaches quite a bit, and I swear I’ve never had more conversations about other people’s poop in my whole life! When I was preparing for the trip I had people recommend that I go on Diamox, which helps with altitude sickness. I just laughed them off, figuring that growing up in Colorado would mean I had no problems, but I was wrong. I started getting really bad headaches around 4000 meters and luckily my roommate had Diamox that she could spare. I highly recommend anyone going to altitude take it – it makes you pee about 18 times a day but the headache goes away! This is how we do laundry in Nepal:

Things are also really expensive the higher up you get. You don’t blink when they ask you to pay $5 for a Coke, $6 for a tube of Pringles or $7 for a hot shower (that’s right – only a cold shower is included)! We did refuse to pay $4 for a liter of water though and everyone had some way to sterilize or purify it. I will say NEVER buy a SteriPen! Mine broke on day 3 of a 12 day hike and left me without a way to purify my water. Thank goodness my friends looked out for me!

Most of the paths are either stone or dirt, and in many places it’s wide enough for 2 or 3 people. The whole way up you’re passing yaks carrying lots of gear or sherpas running up the hill like it’s nothing. The people who live up at these high altitudes just amaze me. There are no roads there so the only way to get anything up to these towns is to carry it. We were passed by sherpas carrying 5 huge sheets of aluminum or cases of food. It is such a hard life but everyone we met seemed so happy. Not a single person was begging or hassling us, they would just smile at you as you walked by. Even the person who was in charge of making the yaki pies (taking the yak poo, mixing it with grass and flattening it into perfect circles so it could be dried and used as kindling in the fire) seemed perfectly content with what they were doing. They live such a simple, basic, difficult life compared with what we’re used to, it was so good to see that side of the world. This would be my house if I lived there.

The final push to Base Camp was different from the rest of the hike. You are walking next to the longest glacier in the world, it is so cold and all you see is a few tents set on top of rocks. As you get closer and closer it’s hard to breathe, but the second you finally reach EBC, it is just the most amazing feeling in the world! What you’ve dreamed of for months or years, what you’ve walked towards for 8 days is finally there! I was so proud to just get to Base Camp, I can’t imagine how people who actually get to the summit of Everest feel.

I was so inspired by my group – every single person in our group made it to Base Camp! One of the guys, Toppy, was incredibly sick (he hadn’t eaten in a few days and was getting extremely dehydrated), but he had been driven to come to Base Camp since he was 15 years old, so he pushed through all his sickness and pain to make it to the top. I was so incredibly proud of him – if I was in that kind of pain, I don’t think I would have been able to make it. Unfortunately he had to be medically evacuated by helicopter the next day and spent 2 nights in the hospital, but he accomplished his goal and made it to Base Camp.

As a group we walked a total of 127 kilometers and made it to a height of 17,600 feet (5364 meters). Definitely the highest I’ve ever been in my life. As soon as our whole group was at the top, the sherpas pulled out this banner that they had carried from Kathmandu. It had the details about EBC and on it was listed every single one of our names. I think most of us started crying at that point – to see your name at the top of Base Camp is just so moving and powerful – we had made it!!!