Riding in a tuk-tuk, stuffed lemongrass, and the most unusual quickie hotel on earth

The first there pictures are the hotel/brothel. You park your car in the Wizard of Oz garage - hiding the license plate of course, then you can chose to take your prostitute to the Disney room, Tarzan room, Thai kick-boxing room, (boxing gloves included) or 20 others.
I didn't try this, but the stuffed lemongrass was delicious. It's split open, stuffed with chicken, spices, and ginger, then fried.

Biking and kayaking in Laos

We biked only 15km, but after 5 weeks of sitting on boats and in taxis, my heart was pounding in my throat. We arrived early to the elephant camp so we stopped in a nearby village to have a snack - squares of rice gel with tamarind juice, rice crackers, and chili. After seeing the elephants, half of them blind, had been rescued from a harsh existence in the logging industry. Southeast Asia is supposed to be reverent of elephants, but logging is a most irreverent task for these majestic creatures. Not shown is any of the three hours it took to kayak the 15km home, nearly 4 hours under a baking sun with no shade, not enough water in the river (we beached three times), and a headwind that actually could send you backwards.

Silk Weaving

Silk is pulled into threads from the white and yellow silkworm cocoons. It is washed and rests in skeins. Note the green pile of baby silkworms. This weaving shop uses natural dyes, lemongrass for light green, indigo for blue, and turmeric for yellow and orange, note the fabulous turmeric flower! It is spun into spools (see video 1) and then after an extremely complicated process to set up the loom, it is woven into intricate textiles (see video 2), embodying the true meaning of the word "art". After our tour, I was treated to a hefty mug of silkworm poo tea. Really, it's made from poo. Tastes like green tea.

Luang Prabang April 16 -20

We disembarked after 32 hours in transit, achy bums, sore backs, smelling like cattle or worse. So the city of Luang Prabang was like the most lovely site, full of 19th century Parisian cafes, rattan furniture with lazy cieling fans spinning high overhead, and superb coffee with the butteriest croissants on Earth. The city is in a time warp, frozen around 1920, an UNESCO World Heritage site packed with French architecture and two dozen perfectly perserved wats more stunning than those in Thailand for their earthier colors and minute details. All this gentrified prettiness comes at a price, our hotel was $35 per night, and though it must be admitted that we looked for a place with A/C and BBC, we were continually raising eyebrows at prices - for dinners, cakes, shirts, and especially craft items - that rivaled those in Europe.

Protests in Bangkok

Just to note - I have been nowhere near the civil unrest that disrupted the ASEAN conference in south Thailand nor the huge violent crowds that burned buses and wreaked havoc here in Bangkok last week. I keep getting worried messages from people, but all I saw was television coverage. All was quiet in the north during that period and all is quiet now.

Sonkran and Sailing Down the Mekong, April 14-15

The Thai New Year (Sonkran) takes place over 4 days of festivities which started this year on April 12. To ring in the year 2553, everyone took to the streets and threw water on each other, a derivation of the Buddhist practice of dribbling a bit of water on the monks and washing the hands of elders as a sign of respect and renewal. I was in Chiang Rai for all this, and as a small town in a fairly agricultural setting, everyone has pick-up trucks. So what had developed is that the streets are bumper to bumper with trucks, each of them carrying a 50 gallon barrel or two of water - many times ice water - which is thrown by the bucketful at anyone and everyone. So thousands of people are soaking wet, hooting and dancing, and unless you have a car with windows that work or wrap your cell phone and camera in plastic bags it is best to remain at home.
Stef met me in Chiang Rai for all this, and after four days of dodging trucks and people with water guns and hoses, we took a bus to Laos. We had thought that Sonkran was over, but Laos starts three days later, so we were doused once more as we crossed by ferry to this Communist country.
The people are even more fanatical about watr throwing, adding talcum powder, paint, and the oily soot from the bottom of the wood-fired cooking pots to the mix, making everyone look absolutely filthy. But they dance in the streets (the men all seemimg to impersonate women in a blurring of gender lines) til curfew sends them home to dinners of sticky rice and steamed catfish.
The boat pictured above is the public transport available from Huay Xai at teh Thai border, to Luang Prabang, a two-day trip on wooden benches and little more than a hole in the floor for a toilet. But you bond with your fellow passengers, we met a family from Switzerland who had been on teh road for 7 months, two photographers from France working on a book about life on the Mekong, and a few English and Dutch as well as a group of students just learning to play guitar and ukelale.

Palm Reading with Eggs and Villages

These were taken a few days ago with Dr. Tam's camera, so I just got them . This is the first Akha village I went to, where they read my palm after peeling the eggs in a welcoming ceremony. Another picyure shows our lunch afterwards, and the group we were working with standing in from of the "Cultural Center". Just Jess at work.

Burma, Hospitals, and Hearing Aids

Top picture is Danny, a man of the Chin tribe of Burma that I met just after crossing the Thai border. He had been one of the boat-people, arrested in 1992 after crossing from Bangkok to New York in a cargo ship. he spent 6 months in prison in NY, an experience he says wasn't that bad - he was fed, he could drink as much milk as he wanted, and they gave him a chessboard and books to read. He spent a total of 5 years in the States, so he speaks very good English. he was helping me get the paperwork and transportation to Kentung, a village 3 hours from the Thai border, when we discovered that I had not requested the proper stamp from the Burmese police and was not allowed to leave Chatuliek. Being a border town not unlike Tijuana, Chatuliek is dusty, overpriced, crammed with market stalls selling Gucci and D&G rip-offs, and doezens of kids that keep pestering you to buy cigarettes. So I left after buying some very cheaply priced Australian wine for a friend in Bangkok.

The next photo is some of eth nusing and administratin staff at Mae Fa Luong Hospital at anotehr spot on the Thai-Burma border. I was there to gather some information about undocumented patients (who do not possess government ID and must therefore pay out of pocket for health care) as well as discern how they track health information - this is useful for my job with WHO.

Lastly is a picture of Jake and Tam, the people I'm working with at AFECT, with a few Akha children. We were in thsi village to ask about health care and how peopel went about accessing it, and it is here that I met a woman who is very hard of hearing. She had just the day before been chased by the police because she could not hear them approaching. So for the past coupel of days I have been writing letters to hearing aid companies for donations.

Fried Delicacies, Chiang Rai Market

I met people eating these creatures who insisted they were tasty, but I couldn't bring myself to bite into a fried cicada. Nor the sauteed Madagascar-size cockroach. I have tried just about all other street food though, including fried "roti" which seem to be an Indian influence.

Healthcare at AFECT

This is a short interview of Dr. Tam, who has just graduated with a 4-year degree in traditional medicine from a University in Chiang Rai. He will be running the health programs for AFECT, the NGO I am helping.

April 4, Burma Border

We traveled to the edge of Thailand today. There is an Akha village there that is part of a royal project to plant coffee beans as an alternative to opium production. The coffee is very good.

The border is only 2 km away from the village, and this area is known as a cross-over point. There is nothing but a bit of barbed wire and low bamboo fencing to divide the two countries. The bathrooms were very clean, and I found the bamboo chutes for the men particularly charming. You can urinate overlooking Burma.

Hill Tribes near Chiang Rai, April 3 2009

Yesterday I ran into a friend of mine from high school. Turns out that Jon Morris (who Joe has met) went to high school at Manual in Louisville. We had Freshman English together, maybe German too. Anyway, he remembered the Shulls, and decided he had to join me and Jake for an impromptu dinner at AFECT. He has lived in Thailand for 9 years, speaks fluent Thai and understands Akha, and isnow doing an MBA at Yale even though he already has an MS from MIT. Overachiever. He had to leave today (back to the US), which is a shame since he knows quite a bit about fundraising for the Hill Tribes.
At any rate, I am learning a great deal about the work of AFECT. Today I went with Jake and Athu, (who is director of AFECT and an Akha who was sponsored by AFECT when he was growing up) on a cross-country tour of a few Akha villages. We drove in Athu's shakey old jeep anhour south of Chaing Rai ntil the pavement ended, the hills ramped upat 45degrees, and the air got much cooler as you enter the forest. We stopped in a village of wood and bamboo houses, all the huts gathered on the slope of a green mountainside where most of what you see of your neighbor is the top of his thatch roof below you. Our hosts were the shaman couple who have been healing the village for more than 44years, at 81 years old so thin and fragile looking it seemed even their headdresses with the silver coins and metal beads would be too heavy for their necks. We performed a welcome ceremony, each peeling and cracking a boiled egg that was read and eaten by the woman shaman. She was sick herself, soeating the touched brought by visitors from afar and the incantations murmured by her husband were to give her strength. After the egg we each were given a white string to tie around her wrist (similar to the Buddhist blessing in the form of a string we recieved in Ayutthaya froma monk) and we were told not to touch any part of her but her hand. We were then led out to eat lunch on the porch: a low table covered in banana leaf, upon which was arranged various main courses. We were offered pig skin bathed in blood, a sort of chicken bone and skin BBQ, a delightful tomato salad with fish sauce, sauteed bamboo shoots, and something that I suspect was dog. I had been told about their tradition of eating and raising dog, so I prepared my hosts to tell everyone that I was vegetarian, which of course was incomprehensibleto the Akha, but they accepted it and just gave me more mountain rice, which is nutty and very good. I ate watching the poor pups of the village slinking around the house, though it mattered less with each refill of my little glass of rice whiskey. After lunch the shaman had perked up a bit, and as we shook her hand to thank her for her hospitality she hung on and started reading palms. When my turn came she rubbed a bit of ginger on my middle finger and palm asked what I wanted to know. "Will I be ale to help the Akha tribe?" I asked through my translator. "Yes, you are giving and you will help all you set out to help, but you must be careful not to keep giving or all your luck and strength will run out at the age of 50. Keep some for yourself." Then she quietly stated that I was married and had been with my husband for one year (exactly!) and that he was a good man (indeed). And that we would have 2 boys and 3 girls(yikes). With stuffed bellies we got back in the jeep and drove another couple of hours to see first an herbal training center, then a village where the Doi Chiang coffee is grown, and then met with a family of 6 who now lives on public land between a rock-face and a road since they were able to escape the village and the traditional Akha rule of killing twins if and when they are born. The tribe kills babies with hairlips, missing fingers, or any defect because they are considered to bring bad spirits to the whole village. So AFECT has a small fundto feed and cloth these children. I met two of them, identical twingirls who are now 15 years old and finishing high school although the diploma they get will be no good unless the Thai government agrees that they are citizens.
Such an interesting day.Then I met a group of Thai and German high schoolers who had lived with the Akha for 2 weeks and were just going home, I couldn't imagineg\doing that at the age of 16, holy cow. We ate Pad Thai with the AFECT staff and were on our merry way home when Jake was hit head-on by another motoscooter who fled the scene. He was fine (I was imagining missing toes), but he does have to fixthe bike now, the front is all smashed in. Piece of advice, never gothrough yellow lights in Thailand.

Ayutthaya, March 28-30

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This was an elephant "farm" where 160 working elephants are housed, bathed, and fed. They have a particular affinity for these Corn-Pop tasting snacks that one may purchase. So for a mere 40cents you get to be chased by baby sugar-crazed pachyderms.

We rented a moto and zipped around town. Ayutthaya is famous because of the 30 or so wats dotted all over the city. These are some of the best-preserved "cathedrals" of the Siamese empire, dating from 1450. Most of them are sinking, have alreday been looted and serve no function now, but reconstructions allow you to see just how powerful and wealthy Siam was.

We serendipitously found a guesthouse that was not having luck attracting clients, so for 10 euros a night we stayed in a traditional, teak-wood, slanted-angle guest-house with a rare soft bed and a hand-made doorway that requires stepping up a stair and over a foot-high threshhold. We were also treated to daily interactions with the personable owner who had studied at Wright State University in Dayton, not 20 miles from Antioch, where I did University.

Later we ran into this monk who offered us an aster-flower drink (too sweet, Stef dumped it out later) and then when we knelt in front of him to receive his blessing me tied a string around our wrists, then proceeded to splash us in the face with frangipani-scented water. Which was rather welcome in the heat.

We ate the giant river shrimp famous in this area, and we had some of the best coffee in Thailand at a cafe/B&B run by a guy that Stef just happened to know from Bagkok. Of course, that allowed us royal treatment and a tour of the city in his air-con Nissan.

Floating Market

This is a market - now mainly for tourists - about 1.5 hours south of Bangkok. I had been looking for a hat to shield myself from the lethal sun, and finally bargained for one while sitting in our little paddle boat in the canals of this market.

Steamy Bangkok

Transfer station of the Sky Train, four blocks from Stef's house


The Floating Water Market, 1.5 hours south of BKK


And this is Part I of the One Pot One Pan cooking show put on by my sister and Aey, a talented activist.

Bangkok, Thailand. March 24-28

After 4 days in Bangkok I have managed to fall down the stairs of a famous Wat (twisting same foot injured skiing), crack my big toe on an immovable cement block in the sidewalk, and unwittingly eat durian, thinking it was cooked and therefore would not smell like rotting flesh.

The wats are small oasis of calm in this traffic-crazed city. We went to one on my first evening here, after Thai class. I sat in on the class just to experience it, and was actually totally comprehensible (though I remember none of the words) because the teachers use a total immersion/theater method, and they animatedly talked for an hour about diarrhea, constipation, and tapeworms. Afterwards Stef took me to a small spirit house – built to appease the spirits that had been haunting workers who were constructing an enormous hotel on that patch of Bangkok – and we lit incense, laid woven garlands of jasmine, and prayed with the Buddhists. Nearly all buildings have these little shrines, even private houses. Wats are much bigger, they are the cathedrals of Thailand, usually surrounded my plants and bells that you can bong to your heart's content, then you remove your shoes and sit inside on little mats.

The hazards on the sidewalks (can you call them sidewalks if they are actually sand pits and improvised cafes serving steamed cow knees and tapioca drinks?) are avoidable, nearly everyone simply takes taxis or taxi motorbikes, never walking anywhere. Which isn't unreasonable considering how hot it is and how cheap taxis are – one euro gets you 3 or 4km depending on traffic. But traffic is astounding. I have given up and walked on two occasions already because it was faster than waiting for lights to change and thousands of buses/trucks to move.

Durian, well. I am not sure why they say it tastes like heaven. But it certainly smells like hell. I had that goo on my molars for 20 minutes.

A surprising number of Thai towns have canals. Bangkok has a network, and for the equivalent of 10cents you can ride up and down them in low-slung boats. This morning I went to what is known as the Floating Market, in a town 1.5 hours south of Bangkok. We took a boat decked out with a motor improvised from a truck, arrived at the market, and switched to smaller boats. There, an ancient man dexterously paddled me and 4 others along canals teeming with boats selling mainly fruit, but also sticky rice treats wrapped in banana leaves, hats ( I bought a straw cowboy variety), candles, soup, etc.

I bought two fruits I've never seen before – mangosteen and a sort of hairy lychee – very tasty.

When we returned to Bangkok I learned that not only had there been a 10,000 strong protest against the current government yesterday, but there had also been one today. The city is so big I never saw anything.

Stef and I are leaving for Ayutiya tomorrow. It's described as one of the ancient capitals, so we're planning to bike around it, provided our knees aren't poking us in the armpits as we pedal, people are much smaller here.

Koh Phangan, Thailand. March 16-24

My cell phone has revolted in the heat and will take no more pictures. I can send the one I did manage to take of the bright green long-boats that serve as water taxis, with their green/red/yellow/pink flags flying on the stern, but the internet connection here is too slow to load photos.

So let it suffice to say that the beaches are pristine, the sand actually pieces of white coral worn to pebbles, the coconut palms bearing nuts with very thirst quenching juice, and the air so hot and humid it feels like it should rain. I sweat just walking up 100meters over the hill to the next “resort” which is actually a Thai Boxing camp. There are dozens of little nooks and valleys around the island, each hiding a series of teak bungalows, little pointy thatch-roofed houses on stilts, each with it's own hammock and terrace overlooking the Gulf, or the dense green trees. And it's chock full of tourists. Hundreds of us. Froam all over. I've met 6 Dutch (though one is actually Syrian I think), 1 woman from Kazakhstan, 1 Iranian who works in Pakistan, 5 English, 1 Canadian, 4 Aussies, and 2 Czech, who actually live here and have a 2 month-old baby and work at the resort. That's the oddest thing, there are so many babies around. It's heaven for the parents, Thais love babies more than any country I know of, even the men come over and start cooing, eventually grabbing the kid from the relinquishing parent and carry it around with great unfeigned joy. Parents can pass of their kids and go to the spa or beach without a care in the world.

When I lie on the beach I read a book by an Italian journalist who lived in Asia for 40 years working for Der Speigel. He saw the fall of Saigon, the takeover by the Khmer Rouge, and knew these countries as they were before real tourism set in. He rails against the commercial aspect of the resorts and speed boats, the hundreds of shops all selling the same crap that was actually made in China. He in fact blames China for being too industrious and the West for being to easily mimicked.

So as I lay there among the variably sunburned and oiled bodies of the English, Dutch and Germans around me, I understand that this is precisely the unfettered commercialism poor Tiziano cannot accept. And I see his point. It's not pleasing that every full moon there is a wild drunken fest for all the backpackers not but a Thai party-goer in sight. Thais work all the service jobs but it's westerners who own 90% of the resorts. Sometimes, if you sneak up quietly to the reception desk , you can see them talking dramatically amongst themselves, or SMSing, looking at MP3 players, then they suddenly snap to attention and smile, “yeahs, may I hep yooo Miss Jessica?.” But they are really quite kind, very patient, and such a welcome change from people I've interacted with in Morocco, for instance. I've learned to bow my head and say “Kaap khun ka” - thank you.

Lastly, there are not many mosquitoes here, which is strange since it has been raining (cool breezes!) and there is a murky river that runs through this resort. Once on the veranda I was set upon by one damned blood-thirsty insect at I high-tailed it for the bug-free comfort of my air-conditioned room. Blast the wasted energy, I'm not getting Dengue again.

Soon I'm off to eat dinner with a Dutch acquaintance. He fasted 13 days poor devil, still can't bear to eat anything but salad and papaya still, stomach too sensitive. I'm already back to eating all fruits and yogurt, even had sweet potato yesterday. Tonight I want lime squid and Pad Thai.