One Size Fits All

Apparently, kayaks made in Vietnam are also made for Vietnam sized passengers as well. It is not true that adage that says one size fits all. I have always hated it when I see that  label on clothing,  as I struggle into a too small Indian print dress, or swim in a tank top that is clearly intended for a person twice my size.

We decide after two full days of beach lounging that we should do something. David feels better finally. No cold, no stomach issues. He is ready for an adventure. 

We debate a moto versus a kayak, and decide that the kayak will give us more exercise. We pack up our bags yet again for the third move in three nights at the same set of 10 bungalows, one of the downsides to not making plans up front, and get downgraded from the ocean front bungalow deluxe to what David says looks like the storage quarters for the staff. It comes complete with a set of twin beds instead of the King we have had for the last few nights. There are only two pillows and one blanket in the room, and once again, we realize there is no electricity. 

We ask the manager for a kayak and spend the first ten minutes bailing out the water and sand that has accumulated in all of the seating areas and the storage for the dry bag. The manager insists on first helping me with my life vest and then buckling David’s, which is the same size with all the straps let out to accommodate the fact that we are no where near the same size. 

They tell me to get in the kayak and I figure they think I can’t help them drag it into the water, because I am a woman. I then realize they have told us both to get into child size boat, and are now attempting to drag the two of us over the sand into the small waves that lap the shore. 

We decide we want to head toward this island that we’ve been staring at for two days. It is situated west of us and thinking about it now, I realized it must have been at least 10 miles away. Though when we started and said, “Let’s go there!” neither David nor I thought, “well, maybe that’s just a tad far.” 

See the island in the distance?

We are quickly 40 feet out and paddling when David says that he’d like to stick to the shore rather than heading straight out to sea. It seems like that will be a longer trip, but I agree, knowing that David doesn’t feel that he is that strong of swimmer.

We both paddle on the left assuming that the boat will follow suit and head right toward shore, but much to our dismay, it turns the other way. David tells me to let him turn us around and mentions that his knees feel cramped in the seat compartment. I don’t think much about it and struggle out of my life vest as David backward paddles us until we are facing toward shore.

 We paddle together on both sides and find that before long, while we haven’t gotten very far, we are now once again facing the opposite direction of where we want to go. 

David mentions again that he feels cramped, and I tell him to take off his life vest, but he fears that he won’t be able to swim to shore if or some reason we are pitched into the clear waters below us. We spend the next five minutes struggling to turn the boat around again, first paddling both on the right (only to also head right which didn’t make sense) and then paddling both on the left (only to also head right) and then finally back paddling on the left and turning once again toward the island. David finally struggles out of the too small life vest and we sit floating for a moment, realizing that the current is taking us east along the shore past our hotel. 

“My legs are killing me. There is no circulation in them anymore.” I wiggle my own legs, and realize that if his compartment is the same size is mine, and my legs have to be bent to be in the seat, he must be super uncomfortable. One size does not fit all.  I feel the boat pitch left and glance over my shoulder to see David pulling first his left and then his right leg out of the compartment to rest on top of the boat. “Not stable,” he remarks laughing, “But at least now there is blood flow.” 

We paddle and paddle and finally manage to  turn the boat around one more time. We paddle as hard as we can to close the distance between us and the island. We slowly realize it is a losing battle, and finally succumb to the fact that the current is asking us to paddle down the coast and not out to sea. 

We’ve been “kayaking” almost an hour with no luck. The sunbathers on shore are surely shaking their heads wondering what kind of Laurel and Hardy comedy routine we’re trying to put on for them. 

 “Beer?” David’s voice makes a question out of the word as it comes out of his mouth and hangs there. 

“Absolutely!” I agree and we direct the boat toward shore, the first easy maneuver of the day. 

Slipping and Sliding in Sapa

I just finished pulling off the ends of the beans for our dinner with our homestay host and guide, Mau. We sit almost squatting on cement floor on the low, blue stools with her nephew while he cuts carrots and her niece adds wood to the “kitchen stove” which is little more than a rebar frame to support the the tea kettle and wok.

 I am grateful to be out of the big city. 

  I want to walk through muddy lanes in the middle of rice fields and wave at children standing in front of their homes. I want to step aside for the stray pig, and hop across a muddy river crossing.

 I want the peace and quiet of an occasional motor scooter as I step aside and watch in amazement that people can actually make it up these hills on these types of steep, half paved roads. 

I want to say “excuse me sir!” As I sneak past the water buffalo obstructing my path.  

I want to listen to 35 kindergartners running and screaming around their one room school house, as their teacher steps into the kitchen to cook them their vegetables and rice for snack. 

I want to sit at wooden table on a quiet street, and watch the village boys play marbles, as an eight year old girl makes repeated circles on a bicycle in her cement yard. 

 Everyone knows one another. Here no one greets with hello; they ask you where you are going or what you are doing. Babies sleep in slings on their mothers’ backs and clothes dry on bamboo fences. Brightly colored batik print bags are slung over every woman’s body, their clothes dyed a purplish- black from the indigo plant. 

Burlap bags of rice are stored in every house, be they one or three rooms. “We eat rice with every meal,” Mau reminds us. I have not forgotten. 

“Here in Hmong language, we say O’Chau for thank you,” Mau tells us,  as we sit by the river taking an afternoon break in our hike. She breaks out a cheat sheet with some words she is supposed to teach us, and we practice asking each other’s names and how we are feeling. She then says it is time for her to learn, and I wonder what we can possibly teach her as her English seems very fluid. She holds up her paper from Sapa O’Chau, an agency that believes in social responsibility in their tourism and asks how to pronounce the words on the list.  I look at the sheet. Her words read, “pessimistic, reckless, selfish, haughty and gruff” and I think those are likely all new words for her. She equates selfish to selfie, and I laugh as I explain to her that indeed they are related. “You are so selfish!” she quips her hands on her narrow waist and I tell her she is on the right track. 

We sit around the table, Mau, her son, two daughters, niece, nephew, Ain from Brunei, David and I ready to eat after hours of cooking over the make shift stove. Underneath the table, a bowl of embers burn to keep us warm. 

The table is full of freshly made spring rolls, fried tofu with tomatoes, saluted morning glory with garlic, green beans, broccoli, chicken and pork.

 Each of us have a small bowl of rice and we eat family style, the best meal I have had in south east Asia to date. I am full,but I can't stop eating. After the meal, Mau insists we drink some happy water to keep us warm that  night and I sip the rice wine as the others shoot theirs back quickly, the clear liquid burning as it slides down my throat. 

The sun is sinking low in the sky, and there is a definite chill in the air that we have not felt further south. We hope tomorrow will be another bright, sunny day, but know that even if it rains, we will walk slowly in the silence of the nature and village life. 

We wake up in the morning to a distinctly different climate, the mist so low it wets our face in the early morning light. “Maybe it will be sunny later,” Mau says when she sees our disappointed faces. 

“Maybe?” I offer, trying to remind myself that we had already had a beautiful day the day before and that we  could still hike with the mist and it would be fine. 

David’s stomach now finally better, he has woken up with what seems like a cold, and between his cold and my morning allergy, I get the distinct impression that  Mau cannot wait for us to get out of the house. We eat the left overs from the night before for breakfast along with coffee, fruit and some crepe like pancakes that I know she has made for our benefit. 

I am so full when we set out that I am not sure I’ll be able to walk, but after a few moments, I manage to forget my food baby and head up the hill after David. Mau continues to talk and text on the phone every few minutes and I wonder how many friends and family she must have, with the quantity of time she spent on the cell phone. The smart phone culture has certainly not skipped the ethnic minority villages of North Vietnam.  

We haven’t been hiking long before I realize that a lengthy hike is not in our cards. David’s beard is dripping with the moisture in the air, both Mau and my hair are soaked as well and David has already donned every article of clothing he has with him and is still complaining that he has a chill. 

I tell Mau that finishing around 2 will be fine as we hit the summit to see the non existent view of the rice terraces, river and valley below. “It’s very beautiful here when it’s sunny!” Mau squeaks as we tell yet another local following us, “no thank you” before she gets her hopes up that we are interested in the wares she carries on the basket on her back. We head into the bamboo forest and Mau explains the many uses of bamboo, as we skate along the path of mud and rocks. 

We should have known now that we are off the paved areas that it is going to be slippery. Maybe we did know since we had watched that guy slip the day before at the beginning of our hike. But that was before it happened to us. I know what you’re thinking. You imagining me sliding down the mountain on my butt, uselessly pawing at the rocks and shrubbery as they go by. I  know you know what a klutz I am. 

I only wish that is what happened. I love a story where something sort of tragic happens to me, but then I don’t get hurt so it’s funny when I tell it. Unfortunately that’s not what happened. And watching David slide down the hill grasping for anything that would keep him from continuing descent the steep rocky, muddy trail to the edge, was anything but funny. 

The local girl, who has been following us despite our insistence that we don't want anything she is selling, catches up to us just as he slides to a stop, hands and pride covered in mud. “Rocks slippery. Walk here.” She offers as she skipped down the trail to the river. 

I guess I should know better than to ask a person if they are ok after they have fallen, but it’s in our nature to want to make sure that someone has not injured themselves on a muddy slip and slide down the side of a mountain while sick in a foreign country. But let’s just say I learn my lesson the first time David slips, and after that I keep my concerns to myself for the next two hours. 

The trail does not improve after David cleans his hands in the river and if anything gets progressively more steep, as we continue out of Lo Chai and into Tau Zau’s village. The footprints of those that have gone before us are our best guide as we make our way down into the valley,  the few hundred feet we have just finished walking up. David decides to walk in back, and I cab hear the tread on his shoes doing nothing for him as he gingerly steps and slides, though still upright behind us. 

“I’m sick of this wet mud,” I hear him mutter as we come around another curve to see yet more steep muddy down hill ahead. 

“Be careful. Go Slow. Slippery.” Mau reminds us as if it is the first time we have ever been hiking in our our lives. “Tan Zau billage are Red Dzau and Hmong living together. They don’t speak same language, but here they live together.” I nod and sneak a look at David. His mouth is set in a scowl and I can tell he can give a sh*@ less about the culture and history of the people at this point. Mau points out a slippery section and I crouch down as I go down the hill using the rocks to guide me. 

I glance back up the hill just in time to see David’s feet come up and his body twist as he grabs uselessly first at the air, and then at the rocks and begins to slide once again sideways pitching forward down the mountain. I “run” back up the hill with Mau at my heels to where he is sliding to a stop cursing the mountain, the weather and the whole region of Sapa. 

Mau  gets there first and tries to push his behind back up (which if you know David, you know went  over really well) while simultaneously asking him, “David, you ok? Ok David?” I offer him the bandana silently knowing better than to talk to him. “Just 5 more minutes and the mud is done,” Mau says quietly as David wipes the thick, orange layer from his hands and hands the bandana back. I say a silent prayer that we will get down in one piece and proceed to walk and slide on my butt the rest of the way down, David close behind me. 

The noodle soup does more for David’s disposition than anything else that day. That and watching two other hikers essentially fall all the way down the trail we have just left, their pants covered in mud. One guy has two tiny Vietnamese women flanking him on either side as they try to hold up his 6 foot frame from tumbling over the edge. Then came the transport of wood. We watch, in awe as a man and his two sons pitch parts of a tree trunk down the mountain,  and then gather the 5 inch diameter, 12 foot long pieces of wood into bundles to drag with a small rope across the trail and over the bridge to wherever he is building his new house or store. 

“I guess it’s easier once you know the terrain,” David laughs as we watch the boy in flip flops run down the area where we had just slid on our rear ends. Mau nods her agreement, looking relieved that David is once again his happy self. 

The air is colder and the rain heavier after lunch and we are grateful that the mud is over as we follow the man and his sons over the bridge, past a small church celebrating Christmas and back to the road to Sapa. 

Little do we know that ahead of us lies a harrowing ride down the mountain to Lao Cai, followed by an eight hour sleeper car to Hanoi next to a stinky dehydration toilet, over the wheel well that has us feel every bump and turn of the road. Not to mention the fact that we are sharing a 4 bed car with a man whose snores could wake the dead. 

We can't  wait to get to our beach paradise in Phu Quoc. 

Temples Galore – Say Wat?!

I don’t think that I have ever traveled with David to a place where he didn’t end up needing to go to a clinic,  pharmacy or need some type of medical attention. In the end, suffice to say that we’ve utilized the health care professionals along the Delaware shore, in Nicaragua and the west coast of Mexico. 

Now in Thailand, once again, we needed to seek out the advice and antibiotics of a medical professional when David awoke still suffering from an ailment he had unknowingly decided to bring to South East Asia all the way from California. 

Once armed with battery of antibiotics and over the counter medicines to treat the symptoms of his current situation, David was ready to be bedazzled by the plethora of temples that Chang Mai has to offer. 

We set off from our guest house on the border of Chinatown and wandered down the street for not more than five minutes before we came across our first temple, Wat Nongkham. 

We would soon realize that the temples or Wats, as they are called in Thai, are set up in similar fashion with a central buddha and open place to pray, surrounded by gorgeous gardens. The main temple has a golden steeple and intricate designs on the doors and sides. 

Our second temple, Wat Phan Tao was made of wood, and there we met a local Muy Thai fighter who initiated his conversation with us first by asking the ubiquitous where are you from, followed by a cheeky humor of asking David if he liked traveling with his daughter. Between every quip, he hit David on the shoulder or stomach with increasing force and I could see that we needed to get out of the temple quickly before David put his Muy Thai skills to the test. Between that and his insistence on taking us to a handicraft market, that he was not looking for money from us and his elaborate story about his Australian wife and subsequent picture of them from the 1970s gave us the clue that is was our turn to take our leave. So with a quick “Kob Khun Ka,” we were back into the old city streets and on our way to the next temple. 

Our third temple, Wat Chedi Luang, was by far the most impressive with multiple places to pray and buddhas on various sides of the temple walls. 

We sat on one side for a while watching three monks at the top of the temple’s edge, hundreds of feet above us, tying twine to the top of the fence enclosing the Buddha and then tossing it down to a waiting monk below who then went about his job of weaving it through the railings below. 

On one side of the temple, rows of white chairs were set for what we assumed would be a wedding later that day or weekend. 

At that point, we had been watted out for a few minutes and took refuge in a little café on the side of the road where David ate the only food he was told by the pharmacist to risk, Boiled Rice Soup. 

She assured us, that not only would every place in town make it for us without a problem, but that he could eat up to ten bowls without issue! David looked at me and said, “Do I look like I would eat ten bowls a day?” We laughed  - no response was needed.  I ordered a Northern specialty “Koa soy,” and we ate our soup in the quiet afternoon, random Christmas songs interspersed with local Thai music playing in the background. 

The wait staff also took a break shortly after we arrived to eat their soupy looking lunch all together, and I couldn’t help but feeling that if our work practices included a daily communal lunch that we might be a lot better prepared for our afternoon’s work. 

(Which apparently involved more temples, a cool park and taming some wild animals!)

Be Careful for What You Wish or How I Went White Water Rafting as Part of a Balinese Hotel Staff Retreat

I paid my $39 and was told to sit in a group of chairs close to the parking lot. There seemed to be a group together there, and I felt my socially awkward tendencies rearing their ugly head. 

I didn’t necessarily want to sit alone, but I felt like somehow I was intruding on this group of Balinese folks, most of whom were wearing a black shirt that all read the same logo – In search of Ultimum. I didn’t know what Ultimum was, and I wasn’t totally sure that they really wanted me in their space; plus I wasn’t positive that I hadn’t just taken one of their group’s seats as there seemed to be quite a lot of them. So hard to be in my head sometimes. 

Of course, had I known that I was the one singleton at the TOEKAT Rafting agency, and that regardless of what they or I wanted, we would be spending the next two hours navigating the Ayung River together, I might have inquired if they spoke English before we all piled into the van together. 

But I was still feeling misanthropic, so I sat there alternately trying to guess the wifi code in the agency and staring off into space. Then the guide, a "cool" Balinese man in his mid 40s with a pony tail and an earring, wearing  a rash guard waved us over to a set of vans and into two vans the fourteen of us went. 

Immediately, the guide began talking to me and only me in English, “So where you from?” “First time in Bali?” “Where your husband?” “You come alone?” I had gotten to expect this line of questioning, but felt awkward by his blatant disregard of the other five guests in the van. They, however, didn’t seem to mind and the girl next to me struck up her own conversation in Indonesian when she decided the time was right. 

We drove for twenty minutes out of town into what seemed like the jungle,  and got out of the van to choose our life vests, helmets (what had I gotten myself into?) and paddles. The guide joked that I could stay with him, and insisted on touching my shoulder every time he said it and then laughed, “just kidding.” No that wasn’t too annoying. 

When it was time for our group picture in front of the rice field we would walk through to get to the hundreds of steps we would go down to get to the river’s edge, I hung back. I was pretty positive they didn’t need me in their picture. An older man waved me over and smiled. “Come on! We take a picture.” And so there I was smiling along side of everyone else with my dorky helmet and life vest. 

We walked as a group slowly down the hundreds of awkwardly sized stone steps to reach the water’s edge. The older man filled me in on the fact that the group worked at a hotel in Ubud, Purem something or other and that this was a staff bonding retreat. 

I joked that they were so happy I came along, but that was possibly lost in translation, as they just smiled and said of course they were. 

We reached the edge of the river just in time to see the assistants pumping up the rafts and putting the plugs in to keep them afloat. 

We jumped on the rafts after a quick photo and immediately the two girls in my group went right to the back. The boys joined them in the center which left me right up front. I tried to remember what was more dangerous in class 3 rapids, but at that moment, it felt a little like a moot point. So instead, I listened as the guide gave us the thirty second rafting lesson. “Mayor” meant paddle forward. “Madur” meant back paddle and surprisingly “Stop” meant stop. I said the words aloud a few times to try to remember them and tried not to feel awkward when the boat cracked up and said a bunch of things I didn’t understand. I mean what were the chances that they were talking about me, right?

The other two boats had already taken off with the rest of the group so we pushed off and joined them. “Mayor,” the guide instructed and forward we went. Now to be quite honest, the white water rafting wasn’t the most intense I’ve ever done and I am anything but expert (see my earlier post about surfing and all things requiring physical prowess), but the experience of being in the Ayung river in the middle of a jungle gorge was something else. 

The water was a murky brown and the stone walls of the gorge shot up hundreds of feet on either side of us, covered in jungle plants, hanging leaves, strangely formed trees and sections of the stone that seemed to be carved into a story of animals, buddhas and people. 

Later, when I asked the guide about the carvings, he laughed saying that a hotel had done them about ten years earlier, but had made them to look as if they were thousands of years old. Capitalism rears its ugly head again, of course this time, you couldn’t see tell it was ugly since it was so artfully carved. 

Our job as a group, of course, was to catch the two other rafts, splash them with our paddles m, and then pass them to “win” the “race” down the river. I didn’t initially understand this, but when we came within splashing distance, right after our first patch of white water nearly threw me over the edge and then right into the raft in front of us, I was quickly brought up to speed as a face full of water was artfully aimed and "paddle tossed" at me. 

It was all in good fun of course.  Sometimes, they got caught on a rock, and we laughed and splashed them and then as life goes, sometimes it was our turn to rock back and forth to free ourselves from where we were stuck as they laughed, splashed and passed us down the river. 

About mid way down the trip, we were told to all get out of the boats and whether we liked it or not, we were swimming and having our pictures taken under a waterfall. 

One of the guys in the group had that cool plastic case that allows you to bring your phone into the water and I offered to take a picture of them as a a group – which I did, but only after slipping and landing on my rear end much to delight of the entire group, my feet up in the air, phone still clutched my kltuzy hand. 

We stopped a little while later for what I thought was lunch, and I accepted the offer of a beer from a woman that had a bunch of different choices in a basket. She opened it for me and then held out her hand. The guide yelled down, “Do you have money?” I had thought it was part of our tour, and I shook my head, I had given all the money I had brought to the agency. He said something to her in Indonesian, and she took back the beer shaking her head, before proceeding to hammer the cap back on with her opener. I shrugged and apologized again, feeling a flush in my face, until my female boat mates insisted on a dorky picture all together and the incident was forgotten. 

In the second half of the trip, we caught up to a group from Bali Adventure tours,  and I saw what I had expected my trip to be like. Three boats, filled with passengers that were all white or Japanese, tattoos and sunburn, go pros attached to their heads.”Mayor!” screamed Wayan, our guide. “Gooooo!” 

And we passed their group as well, but not without a good splashing. 

And then after a few more “mayors” and “madurs” and a backwards descent down a set of rivers, past a few waterfalls and some sort of strange piping into the river that we had to duck under, we had arrived. 

Back to shore. 

Back to the walk up the hundreds of steps where I would no longer be part of Hotel Purem something or other.

Did we win - you were wondering? 

Do you even need to ask that question?