Zanzibar

WE left Mambo View Lodge (http://www.mamboviewpoint.org/ ) and the coolness that comes with altitude and made our way to Dar es Salaam on an 8 hour bus. Then a two hour ferry landed us on the Island of Zanzibar. Zanzibar has been a trading hub for centuries and is a wild mix of cultures. It is mostly Arabic, African and Indian. It is also known as the spice Islands and is a semi autonomus region of Tanzania. These days tourism is the biggest industry though it is also still a busy port and has many spice plantations in the interior. The old section of Stone Town the main city on the island is a chaotic maze of narrow alleys and roads. We found a great coffee shop in the middle of the old town and with that as a reward we learned our way. It felt a little like being part of a mice in a maze experiment of our own making. The coffee was good and the women who worked there were quick with a joke. Our incentives were high. Our room was at the edge of town near the busy port but back behind several buildings which made it quiet. It provided breakfast on the roof top terrace with views out to the Indian Ocean and the port loading container ships. One day we hired a motorized boat and went out for some good snorkeling and on another we took the local bus up to the north of the island to a resort beach which had the advertised turquoise water and white sand beaches but with plenty of heat as well. In Old Stone Town we found several bars for sunset beers where we could watch soccer and gymnastics on the beach. Food sellers set up every night in a large park by the beach selling local fish, pizza, sugar cane juice and nutella baked goods. It was packed with locals and tourists alike and was an impressively diverse crowd. There were a lot of burkhas of different degrees of modesty and decoration. Few had the full face covering and many were decorated with extremely glittery sequined adornments and some were very form fitting in an oddly sexy look. We left Zanzibar for Dar es Salaam where we had a flight to Capetown South Africa. In Dar the most exciting thing I can pass on was sitting on a large shoe shaped chair in a dark overly air conditioned bar . We were glad to head out. https://picasaweb.google.com/111147902531600338534/Zanzibar"

Tanzanian We arrived in Kilimanjaro airport at dark with a strong hot wind and waited through two long lines of foreigners heading for safaris or to climb Kilimanjaro. We were met by our safari organizer, Elias who drove us into Arusha and our room for two nights of acclimation and to shake the jet lag before heading out on Safari. Our Landcruiser arrived as promised right at 9AM and Emmanuel our driver and Victor our cook greeted us, “Jambo, Karibu.” Hello and welcome in Swahili. About as far as I have gotten with Swahili with the addition of Asenti for thank you. We arrived at Tarangirie Park where we were immediately greeted by the infamous African Elephants grazing nearby while Emanuel did the park paperwork. As we headed into the park we quickly came across giraffe, herds of elephants and gazelle and Velvet monkeys and one cheetah to far to photograph. The photos will do a much better description of our sightings. Though I expected to see large animals I was not prepared for the wild variety of birds. It was an amazing array and the other unexpected was the sense of being with the animals on their turf. What we saw is pretty well represented in the pictures but the sense of being in their habitat was more than I had preconceived. Tanzania has set aside a huge amount of land to conservation. The main parks we visited after Tarangirie was Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro and the Serengeti. Lake Manyara was on the edge of the Rift valley and the Olduvai gorge where some of the earliest discoveries of our human ancestors were found. East Africa is thought to be the area of the origins of human species. We visited a Masai village in the Serengeti park where 8000 live by agreement but who cannot cultivate crops though they can have herds of cows. The Masai warriors are known for their hunting which they do with spears. They are one of the largest of the 140 tribes that are in Tanzania and who Neyere Our driver and guide Emanuel was great. He knew a lot about the animals and birds and the plants and would take time to describe them and their idiosyncrasies as well as look them up in the books where we could read more. Victor was an upbeat and frequently smiling travel companion as well as a great cook. He learned it was Claudia’s birthday and baked a cake as a surprise and had several of the cooks march it out and sing Happy Birthday in Swahili to our table in the dining hall. We spent most of our days driving the parks in our landcruiser with a pop up top that allowed Claudia and I to stand most of the time and look out for the next great sighting. Usually Emmanuel was the one who saw things first. Often from a good distance and of well-disguised animals. We would ofen spend up to an hour at some spots like watching the Lioness and her 4 cubs playing amongst a rock outcrop. The photo of the Lion with her cub in her mouth being brought back away the open and the crazy humans was maybe our best shot. An Elephant with her baby and the monkeys and baboons with their babies were all highlights for us as well. Some cue babies. As we left the Serengeti we drove through the middle of the wildebeest and zebra migration that was impossible to catch in a photo to scale. In Ngorongoro crater park we saw a huge flock of pink flamingos that were not so photogenic and caught three black rhinos before they retired for the day. There are about 25 of them in the park and they are now guarded 24 hours a day against poachers. We returned to Arusha after our six days of constantly seeking out the next animalistic thrill. Arusha is a fairly large and somewhat wealthy city for Tanzania and the center for Safari companies as well as the home of the UN tribunal hearing about the Rwanda genocide. We headed south on the Metro Xpress bus that stopped at a lot of small towns. Caught a small bus from Mombo to Lushoto which is a small town at about 3600 ft and another center for people interested some hikes through the forests. We got a taxi from there to go even higher to about 5700 ft to the Mambo View Point lodge. This was a totally unexpected 2 hour journey along a rough dirt road but when we arrived we were greeted by an incredible setting on the edge of the highest point in the area. It was built 3 years ago by a Dutch couple who incorporated lots of solar energy, local building materials and labor and who has started several projects to supply water to the villages around and teaching new skills from carpentry to graphic design for teachers. Many people who are staying here live in Tanzania either with government jobs or Peace Corps as well as a few of us travelers. One man is teaching some young men from here how to be bird guides and we get the benefit of Attenborough videos in the evenings.(Life of Birds- BBC) . A Peace Corps worker who spent three years here, is helping the lodge install water pumps in a nearby village which will eliminate a 3 mile walk for water for some people. The area is over half Muslim and densely populated for being so remote and steep though in the valley floor there were lush gardens. We saw three large trucks of cabbage being hauled out to market as we drove up. Some of the growing is on land that would be hard to walk. On a clear day from our patio outside our deluxe tent camp you could see Mt Kiliminjaro and from another site the Indian Ocean. We leave tomorrow for Dar Es Salam and then Zanzibar and the beaches aka- home for Freddie Mercury.

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Luang Prubang, onwards and out

Our last day in the historical Lao town of Luang Prubang we got up early to give alms to the monks on their morning rounds. Our guesthouse manager, a college student who had been a monk for 2 years like many boys here, provided us with the instructions and the sticky rice to contribute. I doled too much to fast and he had to supplement my bamboo basket for the second round of orange clad monks who would come by arranged by age with the youngest last. Our guesthouse matron showed us the way to the Wat and where to offer our rice there. It seemed an example of combined Buddhist and animist practice.
Our 6-hour bus to Luang Namtha took 9 hours on the long and winding road that took us to a higher place and really cool nights. We immediately began checking the trekking boards and came upon a company that had 4 folks signed up and had room for 2 more. We were glad to have a group to go with on the 2-day one night home stay trek. Our co-trekkers were a great group. A Memphis man who had just complete a stint in the peace corps, a Canadian public health care nurse who was well traveled and was out for 10 months this time, a Belgian chemist who was between jobs and countries, and a British woman looking for a career and language move when she retuned and moved to France. Really nice folks who made the steep climbs and barefoot stream walks an enjoyable ordeal. Claudia and I raised the average age significantly. Our guide, Noi, was a recent college graduate and spoke English well, punctuated with lots of laughs and spoke 3 other languages.
We set out at 9 by songthaew (tuk tuk truck), stopped at a bamboo swinging bridge leading to an Akha hill tribe village. After being briefed on the cultural do’s and don’ts for village behavior by Noi, we crossed over and were quickly entertainment for the kids who were predominant and in turn entertained them with immediate digital playback of photos and video. They continuously called sabadee (hello), the one common word we all understood.
We hiked through the village spirit gate and headed out into one of the National Protected Areas of Laos. Somehow growing rubber trees on cleared steep slopes of jungle seem to be part of the protection and was a significant income for many villages. It is actually mandated by the government that these folks grow some amount of the trees and collect the rubber that is an important export product and was decided on after soil testing the area.
The trail had many steep climbs and in the beginning two 30 minute descents that were in small streams where we all went barefoot which was slow with slipping and stubbing. We stopped for a lunch after a few hours that Noi and his aid had hauled in and laid out elegantly on several banana leaves. This was pumpkin, sticky rice and greens and bamboo as well as fish for those who chose it. We reached some great hill top clearings with long-range mountain views and went through some amazing tall bamboo forest that clattered in the strong breeze before descending to the Lenten village where we would spend the night. Our first order of business at 5pm was to “shower” as Noi put it , in the small stream but with very strict rules of modesty. It was a cold and contorting but welcome refreshment. The six of us obvious white westerners explored the 9 home, 60 person village and hung out by a fire that was welcome heat in the cool temps while Noi and his aid, along with the village chief’s wife made dinner. Our two meals happened in the Chief’s house, which, for part of our night gathering was lit by the one CFL light in the village run off a micro turbine in the stream. When it gave out a diesel-fueled lamp replaced it.
After dinner we all hung out with the chief and with Noi as translator asked and answered questions back and forth. We started with introductions including age, marital status, occupation and country of origin. The first revelation was that I was now the oldest person in the village. This fact seems to get Claudia and I the guest beds in the chief’s house. The chief is elected by the village and was 57 with 6 kids and a beautiful wife who he said had been the reason he settled there. He had been educated in Vietnam. They were nearly self-sufficient in food, grew their own cotton for clothing, made their own dyes and forged metal tools and jewelry. Their main cash crops were rice, rubber and pig. The nearest road to get things to market was a 2-hour walk away.
We woke the next morning to a cold beginning and a small fire that the chief started which quickly became the center of activity. Kids slowly accumulated and began playing marbles, carried their youngest members around for fun while others combed each other’s hair and chased each other in the universal kids connection. One of the elder men of the tribe smoked tobacco from a water pipe while teenage girls demonstrated the art of bamboo sculpting.
After breakfast and the requisite group photo and a drawn out chorus of “Sabadeeee” by the kids we headed up and out. A wonderful 57-year-old village woman joined us carrying our day’s lunch in a bamboo basket on her back. Our trip out was easy by comparison to the day before and we were back in Laun Namtha by 3. Noi bid us good-bye and safe travels at the trek center and then we opted for a leisurely afternoon in a great guesthouse.
We went to Mueng Seng near the Chinese border the next day, drawn by descriptions of the morning market and colorful Hill Tribe people selling their wares. We had some nice bike rides out into the country and a nice hotel room with a great balcony for beer and sunset behind distant mountains. The market however was pretty much unexceptional including only a few, very funny, hill tribe women working us hard to buy their bracelet and bags.
We began our trip back to Bangkok the next day with a full day of buses and a border crossing and with me sick laying all the burden on Claude to make arrangements while I sat in the shade whenever possible. We made it to Chaing Rai, Thailand and by 6 I was laid out in a hotel room with aircon and some $2. antibiotics Claude had picked up at a Pharmacy. A twelve-hour night sleep and some antibiotics can really set you up.
We made it to Bangkok as Chinese New Year was starting to rev up so we took the water taxi down to China town at sundown, enjoyed a beer and some incredible urban density moving on all modes possible even in the smallest back alleys. Shark fin and broiled bat were big at the food vendors. Bat. What’s with that? They seem like they are all wing and sonar.
On our last day we chose the royal palace and museum for its Jade Buddha. The Wats and palace were as ornate and as glittery and intricately ornate as you can imagine, while the Buddha sits serene.

Hip Hop Lao and the Wat on the Hill

We flew from Siem Reap to Pakse Laos as much to facilitate the visa process as to avoid the 10 hour bus ride. Pakse is at the cross roads of the main North/ South Laos road and the East /West road that connects Vietnam and Thailand. It is mostly business with lots of new buildings going up. We leave the next day for the 4000 island area to the south where the Mekong branches and reforms.  It is down here where the French set up a port and small gauge train to move resources and ship them down the river.
 Laos has one of the most comprehensive protected biodiversity areas system in the world  that now includes 14% of its area with 20 different parks and including a large elephant habitat.
   We take a 4 hour bus and a  30 minute motorized canoe to Don Kohn and spend an hour searching  for a room and find a duplex bungalow with woven bamboo walls and a family of four next door. It has a small deck that looks our over the Mekong as it slowly flows south and is a favorite playground for the kids, kayakers and water buffalo. We rent bikes and explore the two islands connected by a bridge and browse for a future improved room. Our bikes are big tire one speeds with monkey bars and baskets that seem set up for a suburb in Florida though we are riding over rutted dirt and large gravel roads. Still it is a good way to see what’s what here.
  I am reading Sorcerer’s Apprentice which is mostly a gossipy vent about Amy Wallace’s affair with Carlos Castaneda. I don’t like it a lot but can’t let go and it has put Carlos in his petty tyrant place.
   We have beerlaos on a restaurant deck cantilevered on the edge of the river as the sun sets over the hills. The next day we find somewhat better bikes where we can raise the seats a little higher and head out along the back roads and trails and find the remains of the French dock that looks out over the river to Cambodia and then to an surprising waterfall. Untill then it was an easy going flow that became a white water crashing gorge. We rode to a small beach where one of the motorized canoes would take us out to the border area with Cambodia where the Irawaddy dolphins are making somewhat of a comeback. Our driver managed the boat through rapids and a maize of outcroppings till we arrived in a large calmn area and floated as the sunset watching for the occasional glimpse of the dolphins.
  The next day we headed back to Pakse to catch an overnight sleeper bus to Vientien the Capital of Laos. The VIP bus had double decker double bunks on both sides. Even if they had been twice as wide and 10 inches longer it would have been a bumpy bad sleep. We arrive early and out tuk tuk is packed so I get a seat in front with the driver on the left side out with the side view mirror and beyond the windshield.
  Vienteienne is a modern city with lots of travelers in the old section of town and some great coffee with and evening balcony beer sites as well as a great vegetarian restaurant and a wat with over 10,000 Buddha statues. It is the least glitzy wat yet and was a lone survivor of an early 20th century war with Thailand.  On our last night we pass a conference center where we happen on the beginning of a hip hop inspired dance performance and chose it over dinner. It was a great show with a melding of classical Laos music with hip hop dance and some straight up hip hop happening as well.
    It is a 3 hour bus trip up to Vieng Veng which is mostly famous as a young back packer scene with  loud bars, drunken tubing and restaurants that continually play Friends on TV.  . The landscape of abrupt limestone peaks contains lots of caves. We rented some great mountain bikes and rode the 6 kilometers through a small village, past several small caves and came to our destination hot and grateful for the swimming hole formed from a stream that came from the cave.
 We splurged on a balcony room far from the late night techno pop where we could watch the cows wander back from their day of foraging directed by young kids and as kayakers and motorized canoes moved on the river in front of nearly vertical mountainsides.
   One comforting sign in many restaurants and guesthouse in contrast to no shoes no service is “Please remove shoes before entering” .
  We catch the morning bus to Lauang Prubang which is an 8 hours steep and winding ride north including an hour roadside stop for bus repairs. We are heading into the area of various ethnic tribes including the Hmong. Kennedy authorized the CIA to recruit 11,000 Hmong to fight the Vietnamese. The US later targeted parts of the northeast , where the Ho Chi Minh trail was,  for 4 years of constant bombing, including over 2 million tons of  bombs , 1/3 of which did not explode and remain a constant hazard today. 1/3rd of the people became internal refugees. The communist Pathet Lao eventually took control of the country with little opposition. You have to wonder how things would have played out if the US had avoided the whole Vietnam conflict altogether.
  Luang Prubang is an amazing small city. It is clearly focused on serving the tourist  crowd and does it really well while preserving the historic architecture from its French colonial past. Tourism is 50% of Laos economy and here they have figured out how to attract people from all over the planet and keep them supplied with what they want. It is walk able, clean, historic and within easy access of  natural wonders. We are spending 3 days here, easily our longest stay in one place. We hook up with some Cambodian/Swiss and Australian folks and hire a tuk tuk to take us out to a large waterfall. It is a series of small and tall falls and turquoise pools that make for some great swimming. Also a rescue bear sanctuary.
 At sunset we climb the long and winding stairs up to the Wat on the hill in the center of Luang Prabang to watch the sunset and listen to a Lao woman sing ballads. On the way down we pass a room of chanting monks .
  Claudia is reading Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux who has written other travel books as well as fiction- “You think of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time. Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people’s privacy-being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders.”

Swimmin' in Cambodia

 We are now immersed.
 We made it from Bangkok through corruption at the border to Koh Kong, a mostly industrial port town with red clay dusty roads. At night the dust cloud through the head lights of oncoming traffic leant an etheral tint as long as you didn't think of what you were breathing. Then on to Sihanoukville named for the famous king who won independence from the French. He ruled up till he  was thrown out by Lon Nol who was supported by the US. (these names all come back from the Vietnam war days). But this is a nice beach town popular with Khemers  who came out in great numbers on Saturday to camp, play games on the beach and swim in the not quite snorkel-worthy water. A lot of places catering to a large international contingent of travelers including cheap beer and good coffee.  Lots of motorbikes for transport and wireless for communication. We got a great thatched roof room with bark siding door and with the occasional hot water though with temps in the 80's the cool shower is often the best choice anyway.
 Monks in ocher robes make the morning rounds for offerings to all the guest houses shaded by their umbrellas of complementary, slightly cooler color.
 We ate at the Monkey Republic restaurant where they recycled their cooking oil into biodiesel, donated to child-safe and played Jimi Hendrix (Foxy Lady), Rolling Stones(sympathy for the devil) and Beatles (Blackbird). Somehow an odd juxtapose as the timing of those songs was the time of the US "secret" bombing of Cambodia and the rise of the Pol Pot people.
 We leave the beach and head to the river town of Kompot. This is just beginning a revival and has some new and restored buildings amongst lots of colonial french architecture and a wide riverside boulevard. We rent bikes and head out of town over a clanging metal bridge and out a red clay road that turn into an agricultural  area. On one side of the road are flooded paddys where they make salt during the dry season and on the other side are dormant rice paddys.  The small wooden stilt houses stand along the road and most have large concrete urn cisterns.
 My bike has some lousy bearings in the handelbars and I often find myself  drifting to the middle of the road and those motor bikes are not going slow.
  On our way back we stop by the local wat and monastery. It is the typical elaboratly decorated serene scene. This one also has an ornate hip roof covered dock where a lone monk is saying his prayers.
   We head for Phnom Phenh early. The bus takes 5 hours and there is a lot of road work. Looks like highways are being upgraded everywhere we go and lot of building going on in Phonm Phen. I am reading The Gods Drink Whiskey by Stephen Asma (thanks Claudia J ). It is by a Chicago teacher teaching Buddhist Philosophy in Phnom Phen  because the Khmer Rouge wiped out so much of the educated class and monks that they needed to import an American to fill the void. Great read about buddhism and cambodian history.
  I know the motorcyle traffic has been over reported but I have to say seeing 50 motorcycles come into a roundabout at 35 mph and merge and diverge with up to 4 passengers or construction materials without incident is still a dance to behold.
 We just have one full day in Phnom Phen and after coffee on the riverfront at back packer central I take a tuk tuk to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum while Claud , having been there before goes in a different direction.  The place is kept just as it was found after the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979 when Phnom Penh was nearly empty. I spent 2 hours there with many others in near silence amongst well kept records of all that had come through what was once a grade school and had become ground zero for torture and murder of up to 2 million people over 4 years. It was not only impossible to comprehend how it could have gotten to that state but also how a people recover from having a quarter of their people killed for no reason other than having an education or being a monk or being associated with the past government. Almost equally unfathomable is that the US supported Pol Pot while in exile as the legitimate head of state for several years, misguided I guess, by anti-vietnam fanaticism.
  The next day we leave the Okay guest house and take the 6 hour bus up to Siem Reap and settle into the Red Piano guest house in the midst of a fast paced international destination just outside Angkor Wat. Claud was here 5 years ago and is astounded by the changes. It is clearly a happening place. Tourists from a wide variety of countries with Germany, Korea and Britan seemingly the largest percentages.
 We rent bikes to have early the next day and find an amazing vegetarian restaurant, one of the clear advanatges of a tourist town in ascendancy. The bad news is that it is cloudy with a little rain in the morning though the good news in that, is we have no qualms about not getting going at 5AM and missing the sunrise on top of the Wat.The disadvantage of an ascendant destination is obvious biking out around the various temples and sites among the buses, motorcyles and tuk tuks  There is an hour long wait in a line to be able to climb to the top of the main Wat. Angkor Thom ( tag Chris) is more laid back though some of the nicest times are the biking in the woods between the crowds at the temples and watching the monkeys.

solar decathalon

 Claudia and I recently went to DC to check out what is new in the energy efficient, renewable energy, smart house market and spent two days in many lines getting an overload of inputs. It was great. Some really creative and innovative projects by 20 University teams from a few countries. Most of the porducts were off the shelf though there were a few that "will be out soon."  (http://www.solardecathlon.org/about.cfm )
 The houses were up to 800 sq ft and it is billed as " a competition in which 20 teams of college and university students compete to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house."
 What we expected and saw were lots of PV panels and solar thermal water heating systems, geothermal and water to water heat pumps as well as computerized system monitors that allowed the user to control the systems from one display monitor . Most homes had a solar orientation along with some unique means to control the light so that it did not overwhelm the small interior space. There were a lot of louvers. There were also a lot of plants and carefully oriented planters both interior and exterior to help with water filtration, air filtration and food production. Some planters doubled as railings and some as visual screens and herb gardens. There was a green roof under one translucent PV array to help cool the panels.
 Some of the unique products were recycled chalkboard as flooring, the return of the trombe wall concept with in south facing window units including  one with clear plastic modular units that are filled by vacuum. These provided thermal mass without having to transport a lot of weight by filling on site. There was a lot of consideration of the shipping consequences which led to a lot of modular building systems.
 There was also a lot of flex space through movable walls, beds and dividing cabinitry that allowed for multi use space and interior and exterior space connection that gave a feeling of expansiveness.   
 There were some windows with aerogel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel) that is a super insulating substance though most were triple pane with argon or krypton gas.
 The wall systems were usually around R40 through use of SIPS panels ( http://www.sips.org/content/about/index.cfm?pageId=7 ) or spray foam such as Icynene. There was also some phase change materials incorporated in walls that is now a commercial porduct.  The Illinois house was the only one that was certified by the US Passive House Institute. http://www.solardecathlon.org/2009/team_illinois.cfm
 There were a lot of high efficiency heat pumps and all houses met their electric demands and then some through their photovoltaic arrays.
 There were an abundance of LED lights and Induction stoves which are new but gaining in the market.
  There was one solar powered popcorn popper and a smart TV (no it wasn't permanently off) that turned itself off when no one was in the room.
 All or nearly all houses had some form of rainwater catchment and reuse.
 The houses felt like they were fitting into an unusual set because of the need to be mobile and to meet the energy demands of the contest. On the other hand they felt like they did not have the same limits of a house to be sold on the market. It provided a great variety of possibilities some more manageable and affordable than others