Easter!

We had a lot of fun dying Easter eggs. It was Otto's first time and he really loved it. I didn't realize that we would have a problem finding white eggs because all the eggs here are brown. We ended up having to buy duck eggs which to be honest don't taste that great. I had no problem finding dye...just used food coloring which is super-cheap here and mixed it in with vinegar. That night we had family dinner with Hilary, Becky and Shawn. We made hummous and falafel. It didn't seem like a very traditional Easter dinner but Shawn pointed out that the food might be similar to what people ate on the original Easter. It was a lovely day!

Our colorful eggs:


The table with all the fixings:


And Otto working away. He made some really cool eggs! What a creative guy.

Issan Pictures

So here are a few random shots from the trip. You can check out the whole album at my photobucket account: http://s171.photobucket.com/albums/u316/jenspearie/

All in all it was a lovely trip sans the peeping tom in the national park. To make a long story short, one of the national park workers was watching Chan while she was taking a shower. What a scuzzball.

Me and Hil chillin near the river in Chiang Khan


I love the way the fishermen cast out their nets. Otto said that the goal is to make it a perfect circle because that is the optimal way to catch fish.
The weird scarecrows we saw everywhere. Apparently there are certain ghosts when divorced women die and they come back and try to kill the available men (very sexist yes?) and so the people make their scarecrows to prevent the ghosts from entering their houses.

Bet you never knew that Chan was so strong!

More Issan Musings

Yesterday I was struck by the idea that this trip has been all about the earth and water elements. We've visited 3 nature parks that had strange rock formations. I have seen more huge rocks in this part of the country than I've ever seen in other parts of Thailand. Yesterday we went to Wat Phu Tok (Temple of the Falling Rock) which was actually just a HUGE sandstone outcrop. It basically looked like a large rock mountain jutting out of the earth. This place is a meditation retreat for monks so there are many little platforms up in the trees or sticking out of the rock. We walked up many stairs until we got to these wooden platforms that encircled the rock. There were 7 levels to represent the different levels to enlightenment. It was so strange to be on these walkways because there was nothing below them whatsoever. It felt like we were walking on the sky. I was overwhelmed by a sense of something very powerful and a strong energy surrounding the place. Perhaps it was because so many people have meditated and prayed there.

But this trip has also been about water. We have closely followed the Mekhong along the northeast tip of Thailand. Looking across the mighty river, we can see Laos. Even though the river is low now, it's still so powerful and majestic. It's obvious to see how this river has been the life-source of most southeast asian countries. One day we went down to the rapids and watched the fishermen casting out their nets. One fisherman's wife was explaining to us that these nets can catch many small fish but that they use fishing rods to catch the big fish. The fish usually move towards the banks to sleep so sometimes the fishermen wait until evening when it's easy to catch more fish.

The Mekhong:

Mushroom Rock:

Wat Phu Tok:

Chiang Khan

We took a funny open-air bus from Loei through gorgeous scenery yesterday morning. A butterfly landed on me during the ride! Chiang Khan is located right along the Mekhong River. Looking across the river you can see the sleepy hills and mountains of Laos. We were lucky enough to get a room at a guesthouse called LoogMai which is owned by a Thai artist and his wife Malarin. This was really a private home which was built in the French colonial style. It is full of beautiful abstract, minimalist artworks, sparse furnishing and wooden floors. Many of the buildings in this town are made of timber and it's so quiet that it could almost be a ghost town from the wild west. The only downfall has been the heat which is really beginning to set in. They say that there's nothing like the hot season in Issan where it is especially dusty and there is not much greenery. This morning we took bicycles down to the the local rapids on the river and watched fishermen casting out their nets. Life here is very slow. We spend a lot of time talking with locals, walking the streets and exploring. Rick and Chan should be here tonight so we will soon be traveling by car!

Issan: Here We Go!

Last friday i got a rather disappointing call from my friend Rick saying that he wouldn't be able to start our Issan trip until March 14. but Hil and i have this whole week off so we decided to set off early and hopefully meet up with Rick and Chan somewhere along the way. monday we went to Phrae which is not really more than a couple hours outside of Lampang. we actually found it very similar to Lampang though a bit smaller. we spent much of the first afternoon trying to find transport to this place outside of town called "Phae Muang Phii" which means "Ghostland" in Thai. this place is a park with crazy rock formations formed by erosion (or ghosts). anyways, we couldn't really find anywhere to rent a motorbike and all the public transport was super-expensive. we kept walking around Phrae and as we walked past this one shop for the 3rd time, the woman there asked us what we needed. we sat down and talked to her. she had about 1 million poodles and fed us oranges and water. after about an hour of chitchatting, she told us that her husband's aunt would take us to the place the next morning. she said "don't be afraid. she's an old woman." later that night, the woman called me and started talking about prices. i was thinking, "oh no this is totally a scam" but it ended up quite to the contrary.

when the woman picked us up the next day, she was very friendly and had a nice clean car. she told us that she used to be the assistant director at the Agricultural College in town. as we drove out to the park she jammed out some Elvis which she called "old-people music." the ghost land looked very much like a canyon you would find in america. however there were weird outrgrowths of rock that looked like mushrooms and/or male anatomy. it was a nice place full of butterflies and birds chirping.

after that, she took us to the big temple and pilgrimage site for buddhists in that area. the temple was called Wat Phra That Cho Hae (wat=temple, phra that= chedi in Laos language and Cho Hae=a chinese-style silk that was wrapped around the chedi when it was first built). we walked up a bunch of steps to find a chedi under construction. however the main wiharn was decorated elaborately. there were these little flowers made out of glass mosiacs on all the walls and the ceiling looked like Laos-style with red paint and gold guilding. the most interesting thing about this temple was this custom of using a long stick as a kind of fortune-telling. people would measure their armspan on the stick and mark where their hands landed with rubberbands. then they would pray while holding the stick and finally ask it a question. then they would re-measure their armspan and if the rubber bands had "moved" the answer was "yes." if they stayed the same, the answer was "no." i've never seen anything like this and couldn't imagine how the rubber bands would move. hmmm. anyways, here are some pics of the temple.

finally, our tour guide, Petchura, took us to this huge house made entirely out of teak wood and then fed us a fabulous vegetarian lunch before dropping us off at the bus station. when we were getting ready to give her the amount of money we'd agreed upon she, gave us back change and said to hilary, "you really look like my daughter." she barely charged us anything even though she drove us around all morning and gas can be so expensive these days. i felt so grateful that people are still honest and not greedy. she said that now that she's retired, she really enjoyed taking us around. i think it gave her something to do in her free time. so the morning was great but the afternoon was a completely different story.

we wanted to end up in Loei by the end of the day but first we had to take a bus through Phitsanulok. we thought this wouldn't be too difficult but it ended up being quite the ordeal. the first bus took an hour longer than we were told and the air-con seemed broken. the bus stopped 10 miles outside of phitsanulok for half an hour just so they could give business to this local rest area. when we got to the bus station, we found out that there wasn't a bus to Loei until 6 pm (which gave us 2 hours to kill). the bus station was in the middle of nowhere and we were already peeved and tired. of course, the bus didn't end up coming until 7. we were so happy to sit down that we didn't notice how janky our seats were. we were in the second-to-last row so as the bus started driving, the seats started flopping forwards and backwards at a violent rate. these chairs couldn't be put into an upright position so we had to kind of lay while trying to protect our necks from whiplash. it was like being on a psychotic rocking chair. to top it off, the air con was blowing full blast and i didn't really have any "winter" clothes. i ended up wearing a hat (to keep in body heat) and wrapped myself up in the window curtain of the bus. i really felt that this was hitting a low point. then the woman in front of me reclined her chair so much so that she was literally laying in my lap. hilary and i were so tired and slap-happy by this time that we couldn't stop laughing. the loudest monk ever was sitting behind us (apparently he's the abbott of Loei province) but he kept looking at us like we were crazy. it was probably the longest 4 hours of my life because we couldn't sleep due to the violent seats and there weren't any lights on so we couldn't read. i have never been so happy to get off a bus. we got a taxi to our hotel which ended up being a brothel. cool. the room was scummy and the bedsheets were itchy. ew! i ended up sleeping on top of my towel because i didn't want my skin to touch those nasty sheets. luckily this morning we were able to move into another hotel and ate a wondrous breakfast of mangoes and sticky rice drizzled with coconut milk. today should be very chill and then tomorrow we're off to Chiang Khan on the Mekhong river.