Uh...

...yeah.

I encountered this in a freeway rest stop parking lot north of Kuala Lumpur on my way to the elephant sanctuary. The driver stopped to fix his licence plate. The vehicle clearly did not look new, but it purred like a charm when he started it up and drove off though. The driver sat in the chair, which did not appear to be physically attached to the vehicle in any way; without a seatbelt of course.

Ko Phi Phi

I dropped off of the radar for a little while because I spent a week on Ko Phi Phi Don, a gorgeous tropical island off the western coast of the Thailand half-way between Phuket and Krabi. The small town on the island has been rebuilt since it was completely destroyed by the tsunami several years ago.

Ko Phi Phi (pronounced pee pee) Don is most well known for its towering limestone karst topography and scuba diving, of which I did a lot. And no, I don't have any underwater pictures. Instead you are just going to have to suffer through several tropical island photos.

Looking north into Tonsai Bay

The island is made up of two north-south oriented ridges with a narrow isthmus connecting them. The compact, crowded and very busy town sits on the isthmus. There are no cars on the island and only the police have scooters. The lack of city noise is blissful.

Most days I would get up at 7, stumble my way to the dive shop and head out on their boat to Ko Phi Phi Ley, a smaller island just to the south. This is the island that has May Bay where The Beach was filmed. The diving was amazing. I saw a couple different types of sharks, a sea snake, thousands of fish, and even a hawksbill turtle with a giant snail riding on its back.

The southern most tip of Phi Phi Don with Phi Phi Ley in the distance.

There is a short hike up to a viewpoint where you can view wonderful sunsets.

Kata Beach, Phuket

It is a rough life, but someone has to do it.

Elephants

Based upon the recommendation of other travelers at the hotel I was staying at I booked myself onto a tour to the National Elephant Santuary about 80 km outside Kuala Lumpur. Ok, and to alleviate your concerns, this was a real elephant sanctuary that cares for injured elephants, rebailitates ones that have been treated cruelly by bad owners, and relocates ones that have been raiding crops. Because Malaysia is a poor contry they have had to develop a tourist program at the sanctuary to subsidize their budget.

I did get to ride one of the elephants and since I was one of the last to go, I got to go for a bit of a longer ride. Part of which involved going through a small river. Now, for the entire time I had been there, the elephants had behaved wonderfully. Yeah, I am sure you can see where this is going... As we crossed the stream, much to the displeasure of the mahout, the elephant decided to lie down. We both got tossed straight into the water. Completely soaked. I did mange to save camera though.

Bird Park

Having been in an urban jungle for four solid days I decided to take a respite from the concrete and so I headed to the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park. It is the largest free flight aviary in the world. It is built in a valley so the giant nets spread across the valley and down the open end. There were dozens and dozens of species that were free to move as they please. There were even several species that were breeding regularly. I have included a few of the better photos.

It was nice to wander around the relatively empty park and enjoy a stroll.

The ostrich was very curious and would come right up the fence and stare at you.

So was the hornbill. As soon as I walked up it hopped right off of its perch and came straight towards me. I was glad that it was in its own cage.

Kuala Lumpur

After four days in Singapore I flew to Kuala Lumpur (KL). Last time when I was in SE Asia I took the bus a lot because I had quit my job and did not have a lot of money. This time around I do have a job and can now afford the pleasure of flying what would otherwise be a 6-8 hour bus ride.

I stayed at the Classic Inn in the Golden Triangle. It is a great budget hotel and I highly recommend it. Adrian and Michelle were extremely helpful and hospitable. The even invited myself and two Canadian guys out to massages and dinner with them.

Anyway... On to the sights.

The Petronas Towers. Ok, so here is a very interesting tidbit. Everyone in KL refers to them as the twin towers. This is perfectly normal and they say it constantly without a second thought. As an American it was very interesting to here the term "twin towers" used in a very similar yet different context. While the term refers to buildings in each case, when I first heard a Malaysian say twin towers the first that popped into my head was obviously 9/11. It took me a second or two to realize that the phrase twin towers does not automatically recall a tragedy in the mind of Malaysians.

Bigger point: Once again I have found another example of the faulty logic of the "America at the enter of the universe" mentality.

Alright, enough personal introspection.

The buildings are the home of the national energy company and are built with strict geometry in mind in order to be harmonious in both Islam and Buddhist religions. I did go up to the sky bridge (they don't let you go all the way to the top of either tower).

Moped

I wandered upon this great old vespa on Busorah Street right in from of the Sultan Mosque in Singapore.

Eating your way across a city

While most people know Singapore and the place where you can't chew gum or spit on the street without getting fined, it is has been a cross roads of an entire hemisphere for centuries. As a result, there is a wonderful blend of cultures. One of the foremost of these conflations is food.

Back in the 70s the government removed all of the food vendors from the streets and put them into food courts and hawker stalls. This decluttered the streets and also allowed for health and safety inspections. The result: incredible street style culinary delights where you do not have to worry about the nasty little buggies that typically come with street food in other countries in this part of the world. Needless to say I have been eating. A lot.

Laksa: A spicy curry soup with noodles, bean sprouts, fried tofu and in my case, fish. It is served in a metal bowl on the metal stand that has a fire lit underneath it. Wonderful dish. Rich, creamy, and full of flavor. I topped my meal off with mango juice.


Chicken Rice: I used makansutra to find what is supposedly the very place in all of Singapore for this dish. It is steamed chicken with an Asian style gravy that is served with a special kind of long grain rice, a bowl of chicken broth and a spicy chili paste. The chicken is steamed so perfectly that it is very soft, but not so soft that it completely falls off the bone. I have no idea what is in the gravy, but it is good. The chili paste is chili, garlic, ginger and a little water to make it not so thick. It also had a bit of a sweet edge to it that mitigated the heat. You ate the dish by taking some of the chicken and mixing it into the rice with a bit of the chili paste. You then took a bite with all of the components mixed together.


Other highly recommended dishes by the website above are chili crab, pepper crab, and fish head soup...

Same Same, but Different

This phrase is a very commonly heard idiom in SE Asia. It is said by numerous stall hawkers all over this part of the world when they want to convince you that they are selling something different from the stall right next to them.

The city/country of Singapore embodies this phrase for almost everyone who visits here. Everyone will find something that is similar to home, yet the place will be very different from home and other large cities in the region.

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum

Like a well maintained European or American city, the streets are very clean. Maybe even cleaner than the previously mentioned places. There is a fast efficient subway, which will remind many people of home. There are also giant shopping malls. They are full of stores from major American cities like Guess, Express, Gap, and Banana Republic. They also have European heavyweights like Louis Vitton and Chanel in addition to more common ones like Boots, the British pharmacy. But unlike an American or European city the population is mostly Asian and so looks very different. There is a fairly large ex-pat community here, but they are substantially overwhelmed.

Sultan Mosque

Like everywhere these days there is traffic and lots of it. Like most places in Asia, cars have the right of way and drivers assume that pedestrians will not get in their way. The food is also distinctly Asian although you can see how certain dishes from India have been reworked by the Chinese and vice-a-versa. While almost everyone speaks English, it is the first language for very few and so as you walk down the street you hear a dozen different languages that span geographical homelands from India to Japan to Indonesia.

Sri Veerama-kallamman Hindu Temple

Singapore is a clean, sanitized Asia and an exotic different America/Europe at the same time.

On vacation!

After another long mission in Laos the teams headed home, but I went on vacation starting in Thailand. I hopped a flight out of Bangkok this morning and I am now in Singapore. Look for more updates and pictures very soon.

Lao Landscape

Here are a couple landscape panoramas of rural Laos.

Waterfall

On the same day trip that took a few of us out to Plain of Jars Site 2 we drove even farther out across the horrible dirt roads that are rural Laos and visited a waterfall. No, I don't know the name and even if I did I would probably spell it wrong anyway.



The waterfall is a series of cascading chutes, drop-offs, and pools. At least during the dry season. Through our linguist we were assured by some local farmers that during the rainy season the waterfall is a raging torrent. But we were fortunate. We got to climb amongst the multiple channels and find nice precipices upon which to enjoy the view.

Plain of Jars, Site 2

Two years ago on my first trip to northern Laos I visited the Plain of Jars, Site 1. Site one has the most jars as well as the largest one ever made. As you would expect it is the most heavily touristed. This last trip to Laos I was in the same part of the country, but had the good fortune to get to go to Site 2.


Located much farther (down very bad dirt roads) from Phonsavan, Site 2 receives far fewer visitors. There are only about two dozen jars split between two hilltops. The first is a small cluster of jars beneath a giant tree. It is a very picturesque spot. The second hill is much more open and has numerous smaller jars.


The jars being on the hilltops is a marked difference from Site 1 where the vast majority of the jars are on a large flat area. At site 2 the very large and heavy stone jars had to have been dragged, pushed, pulled to the top of the hill.

The shape of the jars is very consistent at Site 2. They all tend to be tall a narrow with small opening. Like Site 1 it is thought that these jars were used in some form of burial practice. Recent work by Australian archaeologists has concluded that remains were not actually put into the jars, but rather buried around the jar and that the jar would have held offerings.

A 41 Hour Birthday

A 41 hour birthday is a neat concept...

The reality of it was not as nice as you might think...

Let me start at the beginning. I woke up on April 7th at about 7 in the morning in Phonsavan, Laos. I took a shower, got dressed, and had breakfast at the hotel dining room just like every other morning for the previous month. We were scheduled to fly from Phonsavan to Vietntaine at 9. Unfortuunately the weather was bad, so we waited around until about noon when we boarded the helicopters and made the 1 hour flight. Shortly after we arrived in Vientiane the C-130 cargo plane left for Utapao, Thailand with all of our gear. It was supposed to make a quick turn around and return to pick up all of us (The plane is not beg enough for the gear and 50 people at the same time. The plane should have been back by 4:30 or 5:00 at the latest. This of course did not occur. The plane broke down in Utapao.

The detachment staff in Laos immediately got to work. Eventually they arranged for us to board buses and drive to Utapao. We ended up boarding a 45 seat bus (there were 50 total personnel on our trip) in Vientiane at about 7 pm for the one hour drive to the border with Thailand. Crossing the border took about an hour. On the Thailand side we acquired another bus, split the people between the two buses and headed out into the night at 9:00 pm. My birthday started at midnight. I had already been up for 17 hours. After a 10 hour ride we arrived in Utapao at about 7 in the morning. While I can sleep on a bus, it is not good sleep. I think I got about 4 hours total. Please note that at this point we have been traveling for 24 hours.

When we arrived in Utapao, the terminal was open but none of the shops were, which meant that we were unable to get any water. We waited in the airport in Utapao for about 3 hours until we could board the C-17 cargo aircraft. This plane is big enough to accommodate the gear and the people at the same time. Unfortunately, the C-17 was extremely loaded down with gear so there was very little room to lay down on the floor like usual. It was a six hour flight to Guam where we got off of the plain and waited in the Anderson AFB terminal for two hours while the plane was refueled. More gear was put on the plane so there was even less room on the next leg of the journey which was an 8 hour flight to Honolulu. Due to all of the time/day change of going from west to east across the international date line our plane landed at about 9 am Hawaii time. Yes, after fourteen hours of flying a a two hour layover between legs we had gone backwards in time.

Upon return to Hickam AFB, my first stop was work. I had to turn in my evidence. Then I was finally free! I drove home and discovered that my kitchen and downstairs bathroom are half way through a massive remodeling project that is expected to take another three weeks. This is of course exactly how long I have until I go out on my next mission...

If you have been paying close attention you will notice that no where in the narrative is there anything about sleeping in a bed or taking a shower until getting back to Hawaii. It ended up being about two days (48 continuous hours) of straight travel without decent sleep or a chance to clean ourselves... Eeeww...

Ok, so I am sure that you are saying: "But it must have been about noon, you still had 12 hours of your birthday left". If you are saying that you have clearly never pulled a two day non-stop travel haul. I was barely able to put coherent sentences together, much less go out and party it up. Fortunately there were presents waiting from my family and a special someone here in Hawaii who took that day off of work so that she could spend my birthday with me.

Ten out of Thirteen...

...is how many weeks I am going to be gone starting this week. I am headed out on two back to back missions to Laos. The first one is to the northern part of the country where I will be returning to the very first site I excavated for work. Another team went to the site since I was there in 2007, and I am hoping that my team this time is going to be able to be able to finish it up. The second trip is going to be back to southern Laos, where I have been twice now, but to a province that I have never been to before. More info on that trip later.

Take care. Be good. And look for pictures some time in the second week of April.

Youngest Cousins

One of the best parts about going back to California is getting to visit my extended family, Olivia and Ella in particular. They are my aunt Rowan's (not pictured) daughters and I was lucky enough to get to go to the San Francisco Zoo with them.

I gave six year old Olivia a ride on my shoulders first.


This of course led to Ella insisting that she also get to ride on my shoulders. For some reason she would not let a photo be taken of her sitting up straight. But hey, you can't really fault a kid who is this cute.

One More Bug!

Sorry I didn't get this picture in with the original post. I knew I had it somewhere. It just took me a while to find it.

Walking stick.

Too Cute

With all of the baby blogs out there these days I decided to put up something in the cute category. I think it is a pretty solid entry.

The locals brought him out when we were doing recon work. They wanted us to buy him. We politely declined.

Helo Photos

Sometimes when you go out on reconnaissance trips you have to land the helo in some strange places...

Just a cool photo from the ground.

Rural Housing

I sifted through the several thousand photos taken by a bunch of us this last mission and found a few that do a good job of showing what rural houses look like in Laos. The are above ground wood houses constructed atop stilts. Nicer ones will have single panel wooden walls, but many will simply have woven walls. The houses are raised because is allows for out of the rain storage without having to build an additional structure. Animals are also frequently stored under the house. Many have thatch roofs, but wealthier families with have corrugated metal.

Kids on a log!

It torrentially rained on us one day while we were waiting for the helo to come get us so we hid under a house near the LZ. The pigs, chickens, and goats were in their with us trying to stay dry, but the rain did not deter the kids in the area from coming out hoping we had candy. I am glad that we did that day.