LAOS DAY 2: hacking through the jungle

For our second day, Laurel, Michael and I connected with an eco-tourism company for a two-day adventure: one day trekking, the second day kayaking, with an overnight stay in a Hmong village. Four other American had signed up as well: a lesbian couple from San Fran, and a couple from UNC, Chapel Hill. The six-hour hike was the most intense I have ever done. The difficulty wasn't the incline, even though it was steep, but the extremely muddy trail. Laurel was wearing converse and slipped and took a mud bath within the first 20 minutes. But all of us followed suit at some point. My Chacos were great until a thin layer of mud formed between my foot and the sole of the sandal, and I started sliding all over. (However, I was the only person who didn't finish the day with wet socks.) About an hour of the trekking was on an uncut trail; we pushed through undergrowth that completely enveloped us. We seriously needed a machete, but instead we all incurred awesome scrapes on our legs and arms. At one point, when I was on my hands and knees in mud and couldn't see the sky because of all the brush, I stopped and said to myself, "I'm done. I'm done trying to be hard core. I'm done putting myself through this type of pain." But I had to keep moving, and eventually it got more enjoyable. Check out the amazing view we had!

Because the last part of the hike to the village was on a paved road, our guide hired a tractor to take us the rest of the way. He said he wanted our trip to be "spontaneous." We were pleased to sit, until the tractor's tires started to spin and showered us in terd-sized chunks of mud. It was hysterical.

The tractor took us to a village where different families take turns hosting tourists for a night, and we were put in a typical home: cement floor, no running water, toilet hole for squatting. They did however have electricity and the family was watching a HORRIBLE Lindsay Lohan movie dubbed into Thai (Lao and Thai are extremely similar). Our guide prepared us dinner - right now all I can remember is the sticky rice - and we ate on a mat on the floor. Our dinner entertainment was watching the family cat play with a dying mouse. He (she?) flung it all around our mat so we were frequently jumping out of our seats.

Michael, Laurel and I all slept on one mat under one mosquito net. It was a hilarious night. At one point, I woke up in a panic thinking that a stranger was under our net, and frantically shined my headlamp onto Laurel, who was sitting up because she thought she heard a mouse. We of course woke up Michael, who cursed when I told him that it was only 11pm. Then there was a huge, loud and glorious thunder storm. In a sleeping delirium, Michael uttered, "Should we get into lightning position?" I was too tired to ask what that meant, but we spent the rest of the trip laughing about it.

LAOS DAY 1: lost on a one-geared bike

Our first day in Laos, we tried to ride 35 km to see a waterfall and ended up completely lost in the countryside. Our first problem was that we were too cheap to rent the mountain bikes for $12, so we rented the one-geared city cruisers for $5. Although I would have made all the hipsters of Santa Cruz proud, riding with one gear through the Lao countryside is not very effective: we had to walk our bikes up every single hill. Plus it rained continuously for the first hour. At one point, I thought that Laurel was going to stage a mutiny.

After about three hours, we weren't exactly sure how many far we had gone or where we were, so we started asking locals about a waterfall. The ladies in the gas station laughed at us and told us that it was up a steep hill made of chicken poop. Then, one smart-looking man in a truck told us to take the next right and that it was just 11 more kilometers down that road. When we got to that intersection, there was in fact a giant sign for a waterfall, so we turned down the unpaved, soaking, muddy road. We kept pushing our one-geared mechanisms up the road through the sludge and slush, and we kept walking up every hill.

After another hour of riding over the "chicken poop" road, we asked for directions again and no one had any idea about a waterfall. Then one girl said that she knew of a waterfall that was 100 kilometers further down that road! So starving and hopeless, we tried to catch a ride back to the city. At first we tried with these men who were loading a logging truck (an interesting turn in my relationship with logging trucks from last summer), but they were kind of dismissive. A few minutes later a young guy with a small empty pick-up came and we flashed him some cash and he threw our bikes in the back, put us in the cab, and drove us back to Luang Prabang.

We never reached our goal and our bikes were worthless, but the land we cycled through was amazing. The road was enveloped by hills of green lushness that, from certain vistas, rolled on for miles. At intervals between the jungle-covered hills were pristine rice patties, which are always so romantic to Westerners. When we weren't riding through dramatic slices of nature, we were in the middle of rural villages and all the half-naked children would come and wave at us and say, "Sabadee!" (My tansliteration of Lao for "hi!")

Greetings from Laos

I have a new traveling team! Now it's me, Laurel and another Luce fellow, Michael. The Luce conference concluded in Cambodia, so we had to bid everyone else farewell. I was really sad to say good-bye because they treated me like an honorary Luce and welcomed me excitedly whenever I showed up at one of the their unofficial dinners or hang-outs. A special shout-out here goes to Ed, per his request, for his probing conversation and his company as a fellow non-drinker. All of the Luces have such interesting life stories and such fascinating insights into the Asian cultures in which they lived; I will miss the fun and the intellectual stimulation of our sporadic encounters.

Here are some adjectives to describe my newest travel comp, Michael: lanky, curly-haired, half Mexican-American, generous, yogurt-consuming, Princeton grad, human rights worker, good-humored, Spanish/Portuguese/Korean-speaking, energetic, Brazil-loving, New Jersey-ite, modest, idealistic, cinnamon-carrying, powerful, analytical.

Laurel, by the way, is comfortably conversant in Thai after her year in Thailand, and since Laotian and Thai are extremely similar, she's been our official translator. It's great when people approach us to speak in English and she surprises them by speaking in their own language.

The three of us flew to Luang Prabang, Laos for some hard-core outdoor adventuring including bike riding through villages on unpaved roads, trekking through jungle and playing in waterfalls.

Random Pictures

Random Observations

• They are very few American tourists here. The large majority are European or other Asians.
• Every time I go into an internet cafe, ALL the tourists are on facebook. It's amazing.
  
• In Cambodia, they use dollars and you can only get dollars out of the ATM machines. However, they don't have small change, so they give you small change in their currency, riel.
• The elections in Cambodia are next week and there are large campaign trucks that blast down the streets, but apparently it's already clear what party is going to win and the other parties are taking bets on how badly they're going to lose.
  
• Here, but especially in Vietnam, there is construction going on EVERYWHERE. Like in Brazil, they use wooden sticks for scaffolding.
  
• Men relax in the streets by squatting on the sidewalks. Their knees are bent, their butts barely off the ground, and their arms hang at their sides.
  
• I bought this really cool original piece of art in Vietnam by a modern artist, and I left it in a bus. I'm very sad about it.
  
• Children flock everywhere around tourists thrusting their goods upon you and chanting, "You buy from me. Where you from. One. Two. Three. Maybe means no. You buy for your friend. Remember me." It would be annoying if they weren't so desperately needy.
  
• While I really like it here, I don't feel the same connection I do with South America.
• Partly that has do with the fact that the language IS SO HARD! The sound combinations and tones are really hard for me to get out.
  
• It's HOT!!
  

More Adventures with the A-Team

After my adventures with the sisters, I bused up to Siem Reap in Northern Cambodia, where I was reunited with Adam and Abe. Over the next couple days we:

- got up at 4:30 in the morning to watch the sunrise over some of the majestic ruins of Angkor Wat.
- hiked a mile up into the woods to see ancient carvings in a riverbed that extended over about 100 meters. (It's amazing that they lasted over hundreds of years of water flowing over them.)
- got full-body massages while wearing Thai fisherman outfits
- ate real ice cream (mint choco-chip for me)
- strolled around town with Adam wearing his new shiny, silky, flowery red tailored shirt
- went to the Mormon branch at Siem Reap. They came down to my room and woke me up at 7:15 Sunday morning "so that you're not late for church!" and we gave our tuk-tuk driver a little map that some missionaries had drawn for me. But he had a really hard time finding it until I spotted two young boys in white shirts whom we followed part of the way. The building itself wasn't recognizable but we were able to match the words on outside with the words on a flier that I had. (see photo)
- said good-bye forever as they left from church to go the airport home.

These sister missionaires are hard core

I had an unforgettable afternoon with the sister missionaries of Phnom Pen biking through ridiculously huge puddles, teaching English and eating stuffed frog. I got the address of the mission office from a friend whose parents have been serving in Cambodia, and went there within my first few hours of arriving in PP. The office elders were so great and so helpful, but I think a little bewildered by me, a single 27-year-old traipsing around the country partly on my own. ("You've been home from your mission 41/2 years?!" they said.) They kindly hooked me up with a map, a bike, a helmet and an appointment to meet the sisters in two days.

I met Sister Atkins from Idaho Falls, ID and Sister Kop and Sister Lam, both Cambodians, at the rented church building. I was relieved to see that my bike was just as ghetto as theirs. They all only have one gear, mine only had one working break, and they creek. We took off for an appointment down an unpaved road that was littered with bricks, rocks, stones and huge crevices. They road like animals, but I hung back a little, worried that I would hit a brick at a wrong angle, overturn or pop a tire. This experience confirmed to me that while I consider myself a pretty experienced road biker, I am definitely not a mountain biker.

Just when I when I starting to get a little comfortable with the protruding rocks, there was a sudden tropical downpour and all the unpaved streets flooded. But did that stop these sister missionaries? No way. First they bought me a little rain poncho and then they sped off through the puddles, kicking mud up onto their skirts. Until we reached a small lake. They paused, consulted, and looked at me, to which I responded, "If you can do it, I can do it." I'm not really sure why I said that because then we were riding through the lake, my gears and puddles were completely covered in water, I started to hydroplane and had to jump off my bike. The water came over the top of my skirt. I walked my bike the rest of the way trying not to think what I was walking on, and they waited for me at the edge of the lake. Oh, I forgot to mention that the Cambodian sisters wear nylons because they don't want their legs to get tan, and they all have to wear close-toed shoes. But not one of them complained about their sopping state.

Between the intense bike rides and downpours, we had some great visits. We taught a group of teenage girls, a woman who was baptized three months ago, and a grandmotherly woman who has had the first lesson. In each appointment, they either asked me to pray or to share an experience or to bear my testimony, and they translated for me. I loved it. (I also liked watching what they did when an appointment fell through; they always had a solid back-up plan.)

On our way back to their apartment to pick up a Book of Mormon, they took me to their favorite frog spot. There, they barbeque frogs stuffed with pork, fresh herbs and peanuts. There were no frog head or guts, just stuffing inside frog skin. I really liked the flavor, but had a hard time with the texture - it was full of crunchy bones and ligaments.

Finally, we headed back to the church to teach their tri-weekly English class. While they usually have 10-12 students, we only had 3 because everyone else was rehearsing for their Pioneer Day celebration. It was cute/odd to me that they celebrate that here. They had me teach the class and we worked on verb conjugations and a lot of pronunciation stuff. At the end of the lesson, each student gave me a little speech thanking me. The sisters have to be in their apartment when it gets dark at 6:30pm, so we said good-bye and I rode the 30 minutes back to the mission home partially in the dark.

One of my favorite details of the day is that it was Sister Atkin's hump day and to celebrate, they wanted to make her a chocolate cake. But no one has ovens in Cambodia, so they tried to make the cake IN A RICE COOKER! Ufortunately, even after four hours, it was still liquidy.

The day made me really nostalgic for my missionary days. I was almost ready to sign up for another tour of duty! There is somethng so fulfilling and divine about having every moment and every thought of your day dedicated to other people. Yet at the same, I was relieved when I got to go back to my hostel, get on the internet and put on pants. Interesting, I almost just wrote, "and do my own thing," which I realized would negate that I just said one of the great joys of missionary work is being totally focused on others. I guess that's the great paradox of being a missionary: being so self-less is what makes it so great also what makes it so hard.

Hanging Out With Deported Ex-Con's

There are no drug rehabiliatoin centers in Cambodia, but there is one NGO that is a harm reduction center for drug addicts, and Adam, Abe and I spent an afternoon there. The NGO is called Korsang and was founded by an American woman named Holly, a former student of Adam's father, who is a counseling psychology professor in Boston. We met up with Holly one night at an expat restaurant/bar where they were having a trivia night. (We did well identifying the buroughs of Manhattan, not so well identifying British pop stars from the '80's.) She invited us to go see the next day the organization that she has created.

The center is a safe-haven for drug addicts, a "home" where they can get clean needles, a warm meal and emergency medical treatment. There's an art room for art therapy, a classroom where they have lessons in English and Khmer (Cambodian), a music recording room and a break-dancing floor. The point of the institution is not drug addiction recovery, but lessening the dangers and the risks associated with drug use. These kinds of institutions can be controversial, along the same lines in my mind, as handing out condoms at high schools, but for this country at this time, I think it is such a blesssing.

Holly herself is a recovered heroin addict. She has boy-cut hair, wears baggy jean shorts, smokes like a chimney and has earned the respect of the thousands of individuals who have walked through her doors. She is totally chill and full of empathy. She's currently on poor terms with the Cambodian government because she took and published pictures of some current prisons that represent serious human right violations.

The Cambodian man who gave us the tour of the facilities had a perfect American accent. That's because he was raised in the States but was deported back to Cambodia after spending 12 years in an American prison, I think in CA. Almost all of Holly's employees are deported ex-con's from the USA. They were so fun to talk with and easy to spot because they dressed American urban style: saggy pants, oversized baseball hats. They seemed really grateful to be working with Holly and to be helping out their struggling countrymen.

Holly also had us watch 30 minutes of a documentary film abou Korsang that is currently in the middle of the production. If it does well at Sundance, remember that you saw it here first! You can watch the trailer and read more about it here.

I left there feeling really inspired and also with an increased realization that everyone has a job or a calling that optimizes his or her specific set of talents and life experiences. I realized that I would not, for example, be at all effective in Holly's position, not because I could't do it if I really wanted to, but because my life experiences don't lend themselves to it. I couldn't empathize with or relate to the struggling drug users the same way that Holly does. And there's so much power in that. I don't think those guys would take me seriously at all. My quest is to try to find the place in which I can do the most possible good given the life opportunities and experiences that I have had.

The A-Team Takes on the Chopstick Attacker

Thanks to everyone for their well-wishes - I am feeling much better. I'm not quite 100% yet, as evidenced by the box of Kinder chocolates that I've been carrying around with me for almost a week and haven't had the appetite to finish yet. But I definitely have a lot more energy, chocolate consumption or no.

It also helps that I am in love with Cambodia! I've had some amazing adventures here, almost all of them with my new best friends, Abe and Adam. They're the nice Jewish boys from Boston that I met on the bus in Vietnam and we met back up at their hostel ("guesthouse" in Cambodia) in Phnom Penh.

Adam is a hard negotiator - his first offer for any good or service is always a dollar. He can do strange voices and interpretations of different English accents, and he is great at entertaining hoards of pre-teen Cambodian girls trying to sell him souvenirs. He went to Vasser and is about to start med school up in the Bronx at Albert Einstein. When I first met Adam on the bus, I overheard him talking to his girlfriend back home saying, "No, Vietnam is NOT near Croatia!" He got teased for that the rest of the trip.

Abe spent the last six months in the Yukon where he milked squirrels and fell out of a 12-foot tree all in the name of research. He is a cellist and acted as our tour guide, giving interpretations of ancient carvings from a guide book that he bought - without negotiating - from a man with no hands. He went to Cornell and is looking for his next job/experience/adventure to last for the next couple years before getting a PhD in neuro behavioral biology (or something like that). They're both funny and thoughtful and adventuresome and generous, and I'm waxing nostalgic because they just flew back to the States and I already miss them.

One of my first adventures with the A-Team was confronting a crazy man who tried to attack me at a restaurant. We were calmly eating our rice on the outside patio of a restaurant when I heard some yelling and ranting behind me. Suddenly, something hit me in the back. It was a chop-stick thrown from the large European-looking man behind me. I smiled and laughed because it seemed like some kind of a joke, but then he started cursing at me and calling me a variety of offensive words for women with his unidentifiable English accent. I tried to ignore him but then he got out of his seat and rushed towards me. I jumped out of my seat and ran around to the other side of the table, A and A stand up, and some woman in the restaurant (we think she might have actually been with him) tries to physically restrain him. But he makes his way up Adam and threatens him - "You trying to touch me?!" - and a crowd starts to form outside the restaurant. He continues to yell and the woman continues to struggle with him and finally gets him to calm down sit back in his seat. I sat on the far side of the table outside of his line of sight, and we quickly finish our lunch and headed out without incident. It was a really scary moment, but I found out later that Adam actually has a triple black belt in Karate, so I was in good hands.

Why Laurel is Bored

I'm really sick. I've kind of been sick since I got here, but I thought it was jet lag at first. Now my glands are swollen, my nose is blocked and my body is all achy. I've been sleeping about 16 hours a day. I spent my second day in Hoi An in bed, but Laurel got to live groundhog day with the rest of the Luce's on the beach. However, the next day, the Luces headed off to Cambodia and Laurel was left alone with me at our cheap yet refined resort near the city of Danang. (During the war, Danang was "an American city" with everything from bowling alleys to movie theaters.) We've been here three days and I have spent most of those days on the white sheets in our air-conditioned room. I get about 5-6 hours of energy a day, but then I crash and can barely make it back upstairs to the room. Laurel has had to eat a lot of her meals with a comatose companion, and the majority of her beach time has been alone. Today, I purchased a Vietnamese version of IB Profun because I finished my whole DuaneReade bottle.

I couldn't really ask for better circumstances to be sick in, though, because we only intended to relax on the beach these days, and the Sandy Beach Hotel where we are staying is really comfortable. They even serve cesar salad in a parmesan cheese bowl. How can you not feel better after eating a Parmesan Cheese Bowl?! Plus we get HBO Asia and ESPN. The five-hour Nadal/Federer Wimbledon championship game was ridiculously amazing. It's a good thing I'm not a bigger sports fan, or I would have known that the game I was watching had actually happened a week ago. Also, I recommend the film "'The Remains of the Day." Beautiful and heart-wrenching.

Tomorrow morning we're flying to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and I'm optimistic that I'll be feeling better and ready to re-enter the world of southeastern asia.

From Luce to Luce

My travel companions motorcycled the 65 miles from Hue to Hoi An. I declined to join this adventure for two reasons: 1) please refer to my previous description of Vietnamese traffic conditions and 2) please refer to my last experience on a motorcycle in NYC. Instead, I climbed onto a bus with 9 pieces of (their) luggage, and they excitedly put their lives at risk for some great views of the Vietnamese countryside.

On the four-hour bus ride, I sat between two Canadian guys (one who asked if I was Canadian - I was extremely flattered) and two American guys from Boston. I spent the majority of the bus ride debating with the Americans about whether animals or humans are more interesting and if humans are inherently selfish. Unfortunately, it didn't bring me any closer to my goal of learning to love animals. These two young men, Abe and Adam, will probably reappear as characters in my asia story because we might travel together in Cambodia while my Luce friends are in their secret meetings.

When I finally landed in Hoi An with 9 pieces of luggage, I was not alone. Three other Luce scholars were there to meet me: Selena, Miles and Ed. I had been passed from one group of Luces to another group. They had been living groundhog day for the past 3 days and they let me right into their routine: renting beach bikes, eating chicken noodle with peanuts from a road-side vendor, riding 5 km to the beach, buying delicious ripe mangoes on the beach from a woman with a basket, and then settling down for dinner on the beach in the dark. Women and families set up mats with lanterns up and down the beach and they try to get you to eat at their "restaurant." They bring out menus, and then retreat up the beach, returning about half an hour later with plate-fulls of deliciousness. For the first time, I had squid that I enjoyed. Lounging on the sand amidst hundreds of flickering lanterns is an extremely peaceful way to eat. After staring at the stars of the Southern Hemisphere, we rode our bikes back into town. Thus ended groundhog day. The only difference that day was that we met up with the motorcyclers, who despite one break-down, made it safely and happily down the coast.

Have you ever tried to sleep on a sleeper bus?

"Bed" may not be the best word to describe the long padded sections of the sleeper bus that we spent 15 hours in from Hanoi to Hue. Each peron's "bed" inclined slightly for your head, and it had a little cave to put your feet in. (The foot cave actually created the incline for the head of the person in front of you.) The only problem is that these "beds" weren't made for Westerners, so when I extended my feet to the end of the cave, the inclined part for my head hit me about mid-back. When I squooshed down so that my head was in its proper position, my knees were bent up and hit the top of the cave. The best option I could find was to sleep on my side. For awhile, I had my feet on top of the cave, but then I accidentally kicked the head of the poor German man in front of me. Even if you could maneuver a reasonably comfortable position, the Vietnamese pop music made it hard to find complete rest. (I had a weird dream about incorporating international pop music performances into General Conference.) The bus itslef had 2 tiers of 3 rows of little beds. I was in the middle row, bottom tier towards the back of the bus and my Luce friends were in the neighboring beds.

After 15 hours, we made it to Hue. A shower and a rest in our hostel revived us enough to spend the rest of the day exploring the cool ruins of the Imperial City.

Chez Allison

My very first evening in Hanoi we were all invited to the home of a former Luce scholar, Allison, for drinks (for explanation on Luce scholars, see "Welcome to Vietnam JN JKCKLDS" post), and we ended up staying for almost 24 hours. She happens to live in a restored French colonial villa with covered patios, a pool and lots of silk sheets. And she's gorgeous and extremely smart and is an amazing hostess. She graduated from Stanford undergrad, Yale Law School and she currently works for the American Bar Association as part of their international outreach program, working to set up a bar association in Vietnam. Drinks preceded a swim in her pool but not before she had made us fresh, chunky guacamole - a particular treat for those who have been living in Asia the past year. Then she invited us all to just spend the night. We actually took a taxi back to the hostel, forfeited our $7.50/night and picked up our bags so that we could accept her invitation. Because it was my first day, I was extremely jet-lagged and forfeited going out to dinner with them so that I could sleep.

In the morning, I woke up a few hours before everyone else and because I hadn't had dinner, I was extremely weak and kind of dehydrated, I think, because I was really nauseated. So I raided her fridge and layed on the kitchen floor sipping seltzer water and nibbling on crackers. I fell asleep at intervals, and then would wake up to try to consume a little more. After a few hours of that, I made it up to the dining room table. Then Allison appeared with French pain ou chocolats (chocolate croissants) and whipped up fritata. After all that, and consuming a 2-liter bottle of water, I went back to bed and slept until 3pm, awaking much revived.

Everyone else was just getting ready to leave at that point, so we taxied back to our hostel where we were could catch our over-night sleeper bus down the coast to Hue. I had a enough time to zip over to the Temple of Literature, home of Vietnam's first university, before we boarded the bus.

A small shout-out for McCain

Upon my request, our first destination was Hoa Lo Prison, the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" where American POW's, including John McCain, were held and severly tortured during the Vietnam War. Funny thing was, the museum DIDN'T MENTION THAT AT ALL! Instead, it showed American soldiers playing basketball and volleyball in the courtyard, feasting and celebrating at Christmas time, receiving packages from home, and overall enjoying a nice relaxing vacation there in Hanoi. They also featured a photograph of John McCain smiling on a hospital bed and showcases the pilot suit he was wearing when captured. Completely missing the irony, they use the title "Hanoi Hilton" as evidence that Americans were so comfortable there.

The other part of the museum was dedicated to Vietnamese revolutionaries who were imprisoned there during the time of French imperial rule. This section featured the terrible prison conditions, the way some heroic prisoners escaped through the sewers, and the guillotine (ah, la france) on which many of them lost their lives to the cause.

We did some online research afterwards because we weren't sure to what extend there had been a misrepresentation. As it turns out, Americans underwent extreme torture at the prison including, according to wikipedia, "rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement." McCain was there for five and a half years and underwent torture to the point of making an anti-American "confession" that the North Vietnamese used as propaganda. That's also when he lost the use of his arms and when his hair turned white. He attempted suicide twice. Just two months after he was released in 1973, US News and World Report published his first-person account of his time there. They just put it online in January. You can read it here.

Although I'm not a fan of either the Vietnam War nor of McCain, my respect for him has increased. He visited the jail in 2000. It must have been a slap-in-the-face for him to see no acknowledgment of his horrific experience. I wonder if he is elected president (it hurts to even mention the possibility), what - if any - changes would be made in the museum. I also wonder what kind of policy changes he would make with regards to America's current position on torture. I'm skeptical. The amount of hypocrisy currently shown by America by decrying what was done to their own while perpetuating the same kind of torture, makes me sick. To the Vietnamese in 1968, McCain was just a terrorist-like intruder into their country. Yet they are also guilty of hypocrisy: torturing prisoners in the exact same space in which their own were mistreated. Maybe they don't see it as hypocrisy as much as that for the West, what goes around, comes around.

Welcome to Vietnam JN KWCKDLS

As I walked through customs at the Hanoi Airport, I saw a young Vietnamese man holding a sign that said: "Hanoi Backpackers' Hotel: JN KWCKDLS" It took me a second to decide whether or not I should go with him, but I finally decided that it was close enough.

Driving from the airport into Hanoi was one of the more harrowing experiences of my life. I didn't fear for my life as much I feared for the lives of those on motorbikes and bicyles who envelopped us on the road. Motorbikes outnumber cars maybe 50 to 1, and they all wear helmets (thanks to a new state law) but the roads are complete chaos! There aren't really any stoplights/signals in the city so whenever you reach an intersection, you just procede slowly, honk your horn and hope that no one hits you. Honking is the most important driving technique. No one drives quickly, but no one every stops either. People use motorbikes to transport everything: babies, entire families (I've seen a family of 5 on one bike), bundles of grass that looked like they were heavy enough to tip the bike over backwards, TV's under arms and even 5-foot tall intricately decorated vases!

We made it to the hostel without killing anyone and my friend Laurel was sitting on a chair in front when I arrived. I met and became friends with Laurel my senior year at Stanford (her junior year) when we were in the same dorm - I was actually her RA. I haven't seen her in over a year because she's been in rural Thailand as part of the Luce Scholars Program. Every year the foundation gives money to 18 students without any previous Asia experience to spend a year volunteering in an Asian nation. In the hostel, Laurel introduced me to the other Luce scholars who would be our traveling companions prior to their final Luce wrap-up session next week in Cambodia:

Dane - former professional soccer player, worked at an NGO in the Congo for 2.5 years, placed in Beijing
Angela - MIT grad from North Carolina passionate about economics and motorbikes, placed in Indonesia
Ming - White hippy (not as implied by her name) from Santa Barbara, Brown grad and a creative writer who was setting up a writing community in Mongolia.

(You can read more about them and see pictures on the Luce link above.)

Thank you, NYC

Here are some of my priceless New York City experiences from the past 3 years:

• Sleepovers on my roof, both in and out of tents
• Thanksgiving in the city with the family featuring the Macy's Day Parade, the Rockettes, the Charmin Bathroom and the Thanksgiving dinner without a table
• The best night of my life: The Awesome '80's Prom for my 26th birthday
• Scorching radiators in our apartment during a summer heat-wave due to a broken thermostat
  
• Dinner with my 5th Grade teacher, Ellen Reeves
• Slow dancing on the platform of the 59th St stop to a live saxophonist
• Watching ginormous rats feed while waiting for the 3 a.m Staten Island Ferry
  
• Miraculously surviving a motorcycle accident on the Henry Hudson with no serious or permanent injuries
• Tuesday night volunteer shift at the Manhattan Temple
• Living just across the Hudson River from Mayor Cory Booker
• 4-mile run on New Year's Eve 2008 in Central Park
• Taking second place in the stake ping-pong tournament in an exciting final match
  
• Taking the shuttle from 168th Street up to the beloved Inwood 3rd Ward
  
• Knowing the Giants had won the Super Bowl by the screams coming through my neighbor's walls
• Moving in and then out of a fifth-floor walk-up without an elevator.
  
• Pushing my granny cart full of Pathmark groceries up 145th Street at odd hours of the night
• Capture the Flag in the streets of Harlem followed by a dance-off for the "War and Pisces" joint birthday party extraordinaire (almost as good as the Awesome '80's Prom birthday).
  
• Riding my bike through Times Square behind one of those tourist-circle-cycle-thingees for protection
• Standing room tickets for MET operas and then having rich people hand us their orchestra tickets on their way home during intermission
• House guests and visitors from all different eras of my life at Hotel Hamilton Terrace
  
• Cycling from Harlem to Coney Island over the Brooklyn Bridge
• Red velvet cake from Make My Cake
• A kiss on the cheek from a teenage boy after I had fallen asleep on the subway
• Moments of spiritual enlightenment at the MOMA, Frick, Guggenheim and MET
• 9/11 ceremonies around Ground Zero
• Dar Williams in Madison Square Park, Ben Folds in Prospect Park, Bishop Allen in Williamsburg
• Picking up splattered mouse guts off the kitchen counter with a plastic shopping bag
• Easter sunrise service on our roof
• Shouts of "Oh no he didunt" at the Magic Johnson AMC during Spiderman 3
• Getting to said Magic Johnson Theatre 3 hours before the opening of Indiana Jones just to end up being in a theatre that was only a quarter of the way full
• Running 89 blocks to work on a stifling August morning with a change of clothes in my backpack because the subways flooded
• Breakdowns, delays and true love on the Chinatown bus back and forth from Boston and D.C.
  
• Having a friend perform at Amateur Night at the Apollo
  
• Waiting on line for five hours in the rain for free tickets to Macbeth at Shakespeare in the Park
• A fantastic good-bye party on my roof with little white lights, lanterns, skyline shaped rice krispy treats, chocolate dipped marshmallows and wonderful friends
  
• THE AMAZING PEOPLE - FRIENDS, FAMILY, ROOMMATES AND THE CRAZY NEW YORKERS - WITH WHOM I SHARED THESE EXPERIENCES! I'll miss you.
  

Crazy Idea Number One

Last summer when Chris and I were biking down the Pacific Coast (http://blood-sweat-and-gears.blogspot.com) we talked about how cool it would be to do a cross-country bike ride for Barack Obama with rallies all along the way. However at the time we didn't know who was going to secure the nomination, and we didn't know what our plans would be either. Well, Chris is getting married September 13th and I, oh wait, have no plans! So I'm starting to look into the idea again. Why volunteer for him in an office when I could be working for him on my bike? Chris and I have begun talking, planning and trying to work any connections we have. The current plan is to start riding the beginning of September in Oregon, ride through the heartland hitting up key swing states like Colorado, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and ending in D.C. on Tuesday, November 4th. It would be ideal if we could get hooked up directly with the campaign so that we could coordinate rallies and such with them. (Also, wouldn't it be amazing to have an Obama cycling jersey?!) Unfortunately, I'm leaving today for Asia for a month, so plans will kind of be on hold. If anyone happens to find this blog entry and wants to do and/of help with this ride, leave me a comment, please. Si se puede!