the big ride

Alive and Well and Ready For More

2009-09-01T22:50:00.024-04:00

So, we’re finished. It’s been a little over a month since we returned home and integrating back into this reality has been so many things. Certain things are slightly disorienting, others jarring, and then there are plenty of times when we feel like we never left.
Last week, while I was riding my bike in a semi-rural area of Long Island (yes, this is possible), I hit my brakes when I saw a big black thing out of the corner of my eye. I had that same feeling I used to get when I'd see a water buffalo in the road ahead of me. This time it was just a garbage can. As for Danielle, she routinely sizes up the incline on parking garage ramps and marvels when she covers distances of 35 miles in a mere half hour.

On our last day of riding, we pulled into our hotel in Bangkok, got off our bikes, jumped up and down and immediately listed all the terrible things that hadn’t happened to us. It was as if we had made some unspoken pact to never broach taboo topics in an attempt to avoid jinxing our luck. We covered over 1800 miles on our bikes alone and managed to dodge true disaster the entire time.

A List of Nevers:

1. Flat tires
(Schwalbe Marathon Plus touring tires are apparently indestructible)
2. Accidents
(I had a mini incident with a moped in HCMC but we both rode away unscathed)
3. Theft
(minus the 11 year old Cambodian girl who stole 13,000 Riel (or $3) from my handlebar bag, was ratted out by her brother and then shamefacedly gave it back to me)
4. Abuse
(aside from the occasional rock thrower)
5. Injuries
6. Sicknesses
(other than the parasites who have taken up residence in our digestive systems)

It’s truly miraculous.

Also pretty exciting is that we raised over $7000 to help stop child prostitution and child trafficking. Once back in Bangkok we finally had a chance to meet with the people at ECPAT. They were so welcoming and thankful. The money we raised will be used to fund one of ECPAT's Youth Partnership Projects in Southeast Asia.

The Youth Partnership Projects are designed to empower child sexual abuse survivors to take the lead in the fight against the commercial and sexual exploitation of children. This peer support program will be set up in a school located in a high-risk area.

Though it’s nice to be home where things are easy and familiar, we both agree that we’d rather be in some far off place struggling up a mountain, knowing only that what’s around the corner is mostly unimaginable to us.

Back In The Land of Plenty

2009-07-16T00:24:00.008-04:00

The official biking part of our journey was officially scheduled to end in Luang Prabang . The plan was that once we reached Luang Prabang we would assess our timeframe and either ride to Vientiane or get a bus back to Bangkok.

Our indolence in Luang Prabang was like a sticky slime that we just couldn‘t shake. We schlepped from one annoying situation to another. Ruined shorts after an oily massage mishap, lazy songthaew drivers who preferred to sit around playing cards rather than drive us anywhere for a reasonable rate, interrupted internet service, useless travel agents, not even the rain was good dramatic monsoon rain, it was just dreary and intermittent. We didn’t ride our bikes anywhere other than to the bus station and to get breakfast. We were tired, fussy, anticipating the end of our trip, Danielle’s bike was on the fritz, we both had relentless gas.
It’s a challenge when we arrive in these bigger, touristed cities. Everyone’s got an agenda, the tuk-tuk drivers carefully paint the names of the local attractions on the side of their vehicles encouraging the frenzy. Caves, waterfalls, villages, everyone’s going in droves to SEE. To TAKE PICTURES. But we’ve been passing waterfalls along the way for days, discretely picking mystery meat out of our meals in remote villages and once we finally make it to a city we just want to wash our clothes and then sit still while we watch CNN and HBO and have a few beers. Of course we wanted to see the Buddha statues in the cave too but even Danielle didn’t have the energy to fight out a good price with the boat operators. Plus, I didn’t feel like filing into the cave in a line of other people who look like me, armed with a camera ready to capture the REAL BUDDAH CAVE. I wanted to pretend that I’m different.

But I’m not. Do I really want to eat rice gruel squatting on a tiny stool in an ally near a motorcycle repair shop while a naked baby crawls in the dirt beside me? Not really. I’d rather eat crepes and with a fork and knife under a bamboo hut along the Mekong River. Are there alternative eating opportunities in between these two experiences? Sure. I’m feeling dramatic. But I can’t help but feel sad about the fact that to me, Luang Prabang felt like one big promotion for happy hour buy-one-get-one-free Lao Lao cocktails and all-you-can-eat sandwich stalls specializing in PB&J. I was disgruntled. Dissatisfied with the idea of tourism. Wholly unimpressed and slightly depressed about what we, tourists, have done to dismantle real places everywhere and reassemble them as we prefer to experience them.

And as I said, we chose not to do much. But if we had fought our way into multiple Wats and lined up to take pictures of the novice monks going about their quiet lives or taken a boat ride up the river to see the caves would it have been any different?

In any event, we bussed it to Bangkok in a two fold V.I.P. bus escapade that culminated in our being dropped off an hour before dawn somewhere near Khaosan Road (the backpacker ghetto) in the rain, both our bikes mangled beyond belief, and as usual, swarmed by tuk-tuk drivers.

It’s become clear that this is when we’re at our best. Toss us in a situation like this, make sure we’ve had close to no sleep, and we’ll be sure to get right down to business. After fishing all our panniers from the pile of filthy, jumbo sized backpacks (our 2nd V.I.P. bus was jam packed with scantily clad 20 something year old backpackers who were covered in mosquito bites, two of whom were nearly beaten to a pulp by me around 2 am when I saw no foreseeable end to their inane chatter) we each began the assembly process. The tuk-tuk drivers in Thailand and Cambodia are unlike their Vietnamese and Laos counterparts; they love to help us. Once they realize we don’t need their services we are all released from the cycle of haggling and harassing and suspicion and free to become friends.

After the crowd cleared, the remaining tuk-tuk drivers took it upon themselves to assist us, our very own pit crew. As I mentioned, our bikes were wrecked during the journey. My forks were so bent my wheel wouldn’t come close to going back on and Danielle’s steering wheel (still, “handle bars“ does not come naturally) was at a 35 degree angle. My tuk-tuk drivers flipped my bike upside down, pried the forks apart until the wheel went on and then fussed with my fender until it didn’t rub the tire. Danielle’s team helped her stabilize her bike so she could align everything. They then held our bikes and passed us our bags and nodded approvingly while we loaded up. The assembly process is always a big hit with bellboys and tuk-tuk drivers. They love how easily everything clips onto the racks.

After an emergency sidewalk pee break, we headed off into the dark, slick streets. By the time day broke we were in Hua Lamphong station and had two tickets for the 9:20 train south. We had a delicious breakfast of spicy fish curry soup for 75 cents each followed an hour later by some genuine Dunkin Donuts Munchkins. This is what I love about Bangkok, somehow it retains its sense of self while simultaneously embracing things western. Like New York, It’s full of tourists but it doesn’t care. Unlike HCMC and Hanoi where the tourist quarters felt almost fenced off from the rest of the city and it was a struggle to find anyone willing to sell us anything for a non-inflated price, Bangkok is a breeze where anyone can ride the trains and river ferries hassle free for less than 60 cents and no one stares at us as we walk by.

Crossing back into Thailand was like riding a V.I.P. rocket ship straight to another planet. From the time we crossed the border we were stunned by the flash. We had no idea how accustomed we’d become to dirt, thatched huts, and inadequate lighting. We crossed a man made line and suddenly mini marts, oversized gas stations and real curbs and street signs lined the highways. Adding to our disorientation was the fact that this was the first border we’d crossed by bus, instead of on our bikes. It’s incredible to think that less than three months ago, when we arrived in Thailand we were amazed by the chaos, the filth, the inadequate lighting and now here we were reveling in how civilized it seemed.

OK, now let me tell you about our bus. The V.I.P. concept is huge in Southeast Asia. Menu items, hotel rooms, buses, really anything can be deemed V.I.P. The term is so widely used that it goes simply by “Vip“ and has been watered down to mean anything from a free bottle of water to a room with a real toilet. One of my favorite pastimes, second only to reading aloud to Danielle the laminated hotel rules and regulations page found in every room (full of stipulations like “Inflammable, explosive, and radioactive materials strictly not allowed” and ”Criminals, ex-prisoners, lepers and prostitutes forbidden from being in room of guest” and “If you choose to take the man or the woman who is not the husband or the wife of you to the room for the love making you will fined and locked to the prison by the laws of the place.”), is trying to figure out what features deem a hotel room/mode of transportation/restaurant menu item Vip. Is it the stickers on the window meant to emulate doilies? Is it the durian flavored noxious Twinkie like thing a shoeless man passes out to each passenger 3 hours into the trip?

In the case of our bus from Vientiane to Bangkok the Vip factor could have been so many things. First of all it was a true double-decker. Finally, my bus dream come true. Two levels, a staircase, this thing was a complete monstrosity. We booked our tickets in Vientiane with a man named Ham who at first seemed to immediately hate us and then just as suddenly, without reason, loved us. As we left he spread his arms, smiled widely and said, “I give you best seats on bus. Number three. Number four. You enjoys.” Ham didn’t lie. We sat on the second floor just above the driver. A panoramic view and more leg room than we could stand. After the foul Vip bus we took from Luang Prabang to Vientiane (where the toilet door was about three feet tall and once pried open revealed a bathroom too with a three foot ceiling and a toilet that flushed out onto the floor) this bus was a gem. It was bug free, had clean (ish) blankets, showed a quality movie (in English), never offered karaoke, and arrived at our destination an hour early.

So, our bike trip was over, but after so much time it turns out we couldn’t give up the dream so easily. We decided to take the train a few hours out of Bangkok and then ride the rest of the way down the Malay Peninsula to Chumphon, where we’d get the ferry to Koh Tao.

So, back on the train again with our bikes in tow. It was reminiscent of our very first train ride, from Bangkok to Prachinburi back in April before our big adventure began. How far we’d come. That first night our train arrived in Prachinburi 3 hours late, after dark. Other than our spin around the park by Danielle’s house in Boston, our bags loaded with canned food and books to simulate our future reality, we had never ridden our bikes fully loaded until that fateful night. We got off that train and spent what now seems like hours assembling everything. Desperately trying to balance our bikes while the handle bars spun around with the extra weight and the little benches we were leaning against tipped over and sweat poured. Not only had we never ridden fully loaded, but we also had no real experience riding on the opposite side of the road, or in the dark, or in Southeast Asia for that matter. We also had no idea where a hotel might be. I was NERVOUS. I wondered if we were really capable of doing this, if we were completely naive, if we had gotten in over our heads. As we headed out of the train station and merged into traffic, my bike wobbling precariously side to side while I tried to control it with shaky hands, I heard Danielle behind me like a crazed cowgirl yell out, “This is it baby! Ride! Ride!”

Two hours into the trip we were both nodding off when a fat man dressed in dirty clothes that smelled faintly of urine essentially sat on top of Danielle and proceeded to torment us with his savant like knowledge of U.S. geography. Using Boston as his jumping off point, he loudly spewed out sentences like this for about forty minutes, “Oh, Boston! Good! Number one! Harvard University! Cambridge. Connecticut. Rhode Island. New Hampshire. Vermont. Maine. Oh Boston, Massachusetts! New England! Number one!”

We still had a minimum of two hours until our stop if we didn’t poke our eyes out first. This was a third class open air train car. Our ticket cost a little more than $1. We stood out. I got up to go to the bathroom and on the way back to my seat multiple Thai people (4) nodded toward our new friend , scowled and quickly shook their heads “No.” He was really, really loud. Were they mad? I didn’t understand.

Back in my seat, our friend was still going. About the time he made his way to the Plains states the nice man who we had talked to on and off before Captain Geography sat on Danielle, discreetly passed me a note that read, “Do not let him help you with your luggage when you are getting off the train.” Creepy, but this was great news. Not only did this note justify our serious distaste for the dirty man, it also gave us license to be as unfriendly and straightforward with him as we pleased. A few minutes later I looked up at the nice man and smiled to thank him and he gave me a stern fatherly look and nodded at our friend who had made his way all the way to New Mexico.

Danielle wasted no time. She told him flat out that he needed to move now because she and her friend had to rest and he was being too loud. Who IS she? I was proud. He didn’t even put up a stink. He moved and the nice man smiled approvingly.

We’ve developed strategies for dealing with disembarking public transportation. We’re always careful about our bags, but the note made us even more careful. Each of us has 4 bags and a bicycle to keep track of and as soon as the doors open everyone surges in both directions, people push to get on as others push to get off. We really throw a wrench in things when we join in the rush holding our bikes vertically, pushing as aggressively as everyone else. When the train came to a stop we each carried off our four bags and I stood with them while Danielle elbowed her way back on the train and got our bikes. Within minutes we were ready to roll out of the station and our big, dirty friend disappeared. I wish the nice man knew how much his note meant.

So when we got off in Hua Hin we were approximately 275 Kilometers from Chumphon and we had two days to get there. We average about 100/day so we knew we had to ride at least 45 kilometers that day if wanted to make the next two bearable. We’d been traveling for almost 24 hours at that point and had very little sleep but we were excited to be back on our bikes. We hit the rode and less than an hour later when we were surrounded by nothing but pineapple plantations the monsoon of all monsoons hit. They come in fast and we’ve learned that a lot times the darkest most terrifying skies produce nothing but a drizzle, but even after days and days traveling outside here with nothing to observe but our surroundings and the weather patterns, we have no clue how it works.

We observed the sky turning darker and darker, saw the wind thrashing the palm trees, heard the thunder in the distance and then cringed when great bolts of lightening ripped through the dark ahead of us and still we pressed on. Really, what were we supposed to do? Pineapples provide little protection and there was nowhere to stay. We road as far as we could, singing, laughing, eventually shivering until we pulled up to the first hotel we saw and walked in literally so much water all over the floor that we had to stand in the doorway to negotiate a rate. Needless to say, we only got about 35 kilometers that day.

We dried off and settled in for the night. The hotel restaurant was the only alternative to pineapples and the menu featured an entire page devoted to crap. Fried crap. Crap soup. Crap with noodle. Every day we are treated to menu mishaps. Frish and ships, stricky rice with eeg, no name vegetable. Fried crap wins the award.

Fast forward two days and we eventually made it to Chumphon. Where we boarded a cargo ferry at 11 pm and though we were promised air-conditioning and beds, we slept on a mat on the floor in a sweltering room with at least 35 other people. Right in front of a Buddhist monk Danielle killed a cockroach with her shoe on someone else’s sleeping mat (double bad behavior as a good Buddhist kills nothing and regards shoes as vile).

Koh Tao was outstanding. We snorkeled and floated for 7 days. We’re not ready to go home and we are so ready to go home. It feels like we just left and it feels like we’ve been gone forever.

Wow Laos

2009-06-25T09:04:00.017-04:00

We have seriously been smack dab in the middle of nowhere for days on end. Squat toilets, no electricity, navigating landslides with care and river crossings with our sneakers slung over our shoulders. Most telling though is that none of the children we’ve been passing know the word hello. Some are naked, all are dirty and heartbreakingly sweet, serenading us with sing-song “Saba -dii’s” from beneath thatched huts or lined up alongside dirt roads. They have nothing to play with but old tires and huge beetles which they fearlessly crash together like matchbox cars. Children as small as six spend all day with their year old siblings strapped to their back and little ones not yet potty trained go without pants.

After being in Vietnam for 5 weeks we became accustomed to being treated with disdain, outrageously overcharged and occasionally ignored upon entering eating establishments. We needed a major attitude adjustment and the immediate, bashful kindness the Lao people showed us helped sustain us while we traversed the most difficult biking terrain yet. I’m not lying when I say tears were shed (Danielle) and screams were bellowed into the jungle (me) and on two separate occasions each of us was ready to quit as we suffered and triumphed through the unpaved, rocky landslide ridden roads of northern Laos.

Now here we are in our first Laos city relaxing in a mysteriously enormous upscale hotel for 90,000 kip ($10)/night where I‘m pretty sure we’re the only guests aside from a pair of Chinese male cyclists (cyclists are everywhere apparently) who look like they ran off course from the Tour de France and ended up in Laos with their alien head helmets and high tech multi colored cycling gear. If they had been around yesterday when we rolled up in our crumpled up dusty shorts and t shirts on our silly bicycles with the huge padded seats they would have surely snubbed us. Certain western concepts seem to not have translated very well in this hotel, we were given only spoons to eat our fried eggs at breakfast and had to eat our cereal with chopsticks the following day, there is wireless internet but no one knows the password, there’s a toilet paper roll holder in the bathroom but no toilet paper and we had to pay our full bill upon check in.
The countryside we’ve been traveling through since we reached Sapa, in northern Vietnam has been unreal. The mountains are bigger than anything we imagined and we’ve both developed strategies for dealing with them. I breath and exhale in threes while I chant, “ I-I-I-ca-a-an” and stare at my knees moving up and down until I’m borderline semi-coconscious and my brain and body are separate entities incapable of tormenting each other and Danielle plays alphabet word games with herself, games like, name an item found in the pharmacy from A-Z or her favorite, name a swear word from A-Z . Periodically I’m rudely awakened from my meditative state by a yell from behind, “What’s a food that begins with U?”

The day we left Sapa we climbed the highest peak in Vietnam and were rewarded with a 26 kilometer descent. It was tremendous. The mountains here are populated with a mixture of ethnic Vietnamese and various hill tribes, Black Hmong, Red Dzao, people who still wear layers of brightly colored embroidered garments, piles of silver and bronze jewelry and various mind boggling, complicated head gear. They live in small villages scattered throughout the mountains in thatched, stilted huts. We are as bizarre and exotic to them as they are to us. The people near Sapa are used to tourists and were entirely disinterested in us, but as we biked farther west toward Laos we created a serious, wide-eyed stir wherever we went. For the most part the villagers were skeptical of us, maybe even suspicious.
Back in Sapa, we met a woman named Ping who brought us to her village (a 2 ½ hour walk) and cooked us a meal in her little hut over a fire on the floor while we held her youngest baby who did not smell like Johnson & Johnson‘s baby powder and cried every time she looked at me. Ping told us that when she was 10, before the tourists came to Sapa, she remembers the first white people she ever saw. She said she was playing outside when three of them come walking into her village and she ran inside to hide and told her mother the big people were coming. She said all the women in the village told the children to come inside and they hid the babies because they thought the white people were coming to take them. It is with this information that we roll into every remote village all smiles and nods hoping to not incite terror in the inhabitants.

In addition to feeding us, Ping also acted as my nurse. I took a spastic fall on the way to Ping’s village and bloodied both my knees. While Danielle laughed hysterically at my stupidity (I went down like one of those handheld, collapsible toys that stand erect until you push the bottom with your thumb), Ping squeezed my elbow and said, “In my house I give you special medicine for your accident.” After lunch, against Danielle’s fervent protests, I let Ping apply a pungent smelling concoction to my knees which she claimed healed her husband of a broken arm in two weeks (I’m not gangrene yet).

A day before we were scheduled to reach the border we came around a corner and found the road entirely impassable. Rock slides and mud slides are fairly common but we’d always been able to get through up until that point. We rolled passed the parked vans thinking we could just push our bikes through and then we heard falling rock and actually absorbed the situation. There were three men suspended from the top of the rock face knocking the remaining loose rock free with sledge hammers and below them was a pile of rubble covering the entire road the length of about 4 buses and at least 15 or 20 feet high. We’re talking enormous boulders the size of Hyundais piled on top of each other and a cliff straight down to the river below. We stood there stunned, watching the giant rocks come crashing down in a powdery blitz unsure what to do.

It was 60 mountainous kilometers in both directions to the nearest town with a guest house and it was well after noon. For the next 4 hours as vehicles and motorcycles accumulated on either side of the mess we sat around and waited as a pay loader cleared a small path through the rubble. We couldn’t bare to backtrack 60 hard kilometers and the idea of riding on a winding, landslide prone road after dark was not appealing so we strapped our bikes to the roof of a bus heading toward the border and at 4:30 the debris was cleared and we embarked on the most terrifying bus ride of our lives.

Other than my irrational fear of dogs, not many things truly terrify me. However, I was brought to uncontrollable, hysterical tears three times during this bus ride. In general third world, high altitude bus rides are always hair raising, but this was a kind of reckless insanity I can not fully explain. Our bus driver was a crazed sociopath who spent most of the ride viciously beating the dust off the dashboard and passenger seat with a dirty rag, accelerating with great force as we approached all sharp, blind curves overlooking steep cliffs, and screaming things maniacally to the woman whose job it was to collect money.

During my third crying fit Danielle braced herself and stood up. Using hand gestures she demanded that the driver slow down which actually worked a little bit. I was still convinced the bikes were going to come loose and fly off the roof. At the first stop I climbed out the bus window and got up onto the roof to inspect them. Before I got back in the driver took off and I could hear Danielle inside the bus screaming, “Stop! Stop my friend is up there!!” He did and I climbed back in.

It is truly miraculous that death was avoided and our bikes never flew off the roof. We arrived after dark in Dien Bien Phu, the town 35 kilometers from the border, loaded our bikes up and headed off to find a place to sleep. We ended up in a nasty, formally fancy hotel where there were cigarette holes in the sheets and the towels smelled like perm solution. That night two restaurants refused to serve us and I almost cried again because I was so hungry and tired and frustrated. We found a place on the street that served us some fried rice which we ate while two large dogs licked the ground by our feet and scratched their fleas incessantly. It was the first time since we left that I’d had enough. I wanted to be home in a clean restaurant without food refuse and dirty napkins all over the floor and mold growing along the walls and fluorescent lights dangling from the ceiling and dogs and bugs brushing against me and people sitting around staring at me with disgust while I ate. The truth is though, if I really couldn’t take it anymore I’d have the luxury of getting on a plane tomorrow. Not a day goes by here when we aren’t exceedingly thankful that we were born into the ease of life in the U.S.

Usually at the end of every day we experience what we call our “last slap in the face.” Sometimes it’s a busted up petrol truck pouring diesel in our faces for 15 slow kilometers, or a nasty bit of unpaved road, or my personal favorite, the day a grown man threw a rock at me as I rode by (I like to imagine that he‘s still cowering in his flip flops, praying Danielle doesn‘t come back for him). Our ride to the border at Tay Trang was Vietnam’s last slap in the face to us. The last 20 kilometers were straight up without a break and damn it was hot that morning. We powered through like race hounds lured by rumors of friendly people and good food in Laos. When we finally reached the top not a soul was in sight. The border officials were enjoying lunch and made us wait 40 minutes until they were sated. After they had their fill they came out to inspect and prod our bikes. One official insisted on taking Danielle’s bike for a spin. Following the antics we were set free into that odd nowhere land between borders. The road immediately became unpaved and three kilometers later we entered Laos at the very summit of the mountain, with the outline of mountains visible in all shades of blue and purple in almost a 360 degree view around us.
So far Laos has been incredible. We both wish we could scoop up all the children and take them back home with us. There’s so much need here, it’s overwhelming.

We’re making our way to Luang Prabang and will likely have buns of steel by the time we get there.

Alternative Modes of Transportation

2009-06-24T11:53:00.016-04:00

We knew we’d have to take public transportation three times in Vietnam. After the train from HCMC to Nha Trang Danielle was determined to look into alternatives for our trip from Hue to Hanoi. This is mostly my fault. Since I know everything, I decided when buying our tickets in HCMC that we should book the top berth on the train. I stood firm while the woman selling us the tickets shook her head and waved her arms and said, “No, no you no like!” I reassured Danielle that I knew far more than the woman who worked for the railroad about what berth would be best for us.

In India the top berth was like a little haven, my own personal nest where no one could invade my space. In Vietnam the top berth is approximately the size of a coffin and maybe if we were less evolved and still had the climbing skills of lemurs it would have been simple to get up to our coffins, but in our present condition as oversized Americans it took a half hour on the first try. Additionally, on Indian trains there is room under the bottom berths for luggage. Not so in Vietnam. Here, you get to sleep with your luggage, which for us meant we each got to drag 2 panniers, a rear bag and a handlebar bag up into our coffins. I also apparently failed to tell Danielle about the squat toilet and how it empties out onto the tracks. For some reason I didn’t mind any of this but Danielle was not in the mood. I thought she might not forgive me.

She did but she also got her revenge when she booked us two tickets on the sleeping bus from Hue to Hanoi. There is something wrong with bus drivers in Vietnam. When best behaved, they drive like inebriated 15 year old boys who just stole daddy’s convertible. We’ve wondered if their pay is contingent on how fast they can get from point A to point B. They pass petrol trucks on switchbacks going 45 miles an hour. They careen through small villages at top speed. It’s a common sight to see two buses driving side by side at 65 miles an hour playing chicken with a truck on a one lane highway with no shoulder where water buffalo and farmers on bicycles (and American tourists on bicycles) are also fighting for space. They run vehicles off the road and miss head on collisions by mere inches all day and night. They never lay off the horn and they’re usually too busy screaming into their cell phones to be bothered with other details. The thought of getting on one of these buses and trying to sleep was absurd.

But how can one turn down the chance to travel by sleeping BUS. What would it look like? Would there be special seat belts? Would it be a double decker? Would there be a staircase? These were the kinds of questions I had and luckily for Danielle they were pressing enough that I agreed to put my life in the hands of a Vietnamese bus driver just so I could finally get some answers.

Again, the bus company charged us a ridiculous fee or our bikes. Another passenger on the bus stowed a refrigerator sized ventilated box of baby chicks in the bay and I’m pretty sure he didn’t come close to paying what we did, but we consoled ourselves by thinking about all the money we’ve saved by using our legs to get us through most of Southeast Asia.

While waiting to board we peered in the windows to scope out the scene. The bus had three rows of what were basically bunk beds that didn’t fully recline and in the very back of the bus were two king sized bunk beds where strangers would be crammed in like sardines. There is no way we were going to end up in one of the king sized fun beds. We have learned to be as pushy as the locals here and elbows out, we held our place to be first to board the bus. Upon entering we were confronted by a woman hunched over holding open a small blue plastic bag. Danielle stopped and the woman yelled something angrily in Vietnamese and shook the bag. Danielle shook her head and her hands indicating no understand. The woman stamped her foot and shook the bag and kicked Danielle’s foot and again yelled something in Vietnamese.

The bag was for our shoes. How could we have been so foolish? It was one of those times I wished so badly I had the language to say something along the lines of, “Listen lady, you may think it’s completely normal that you want us to put our shoes in a baggie but you would never, under any circumstances, be ordered to remove your shoes and put them in a bag upon entering a public bus in the western world. So please, for the love of God, give me a break for two seconds.“

Barefoot, we walked the aisle to claim our bus beds. Again, we were confronted by a bus employee. This time it was a man who spoke English and without looking at our tickets, motioned to the big fun bed and said, “You sleep.” We refused. He yelled, “Assign seating. You sleep there!” Now maybe 4 weeks prior we would have reluctantly climbed into the king sized sleeper. But we’ve grown wise to this kind of nonsense by now. The seats had no numbers. My ticket had no number. Who was this guy anyway? I tossed my bag over the guy’s head to a Canadian who was standing behind him and said, “Put my bag on that bed. I’m sleeping there.” Like some kind of NBA All-Star Danielle threw her bag across the entire isle of sleeping beds and ducked under one dodging across the isle to avoid the bus Nazi and claimed her single bed. This really pissed him off. He yelled out something in Vietnamese and then took up his fight with the Canadians who also refused to be bullied. We were a unified front and we won.

There was no toilet and the AC shut off at 9pm. About an hour into our trip the horn broke, which was both a blessing and a curse. It didn’t break entirely, it just went from being the typical Vietnamese ear piercing air horn to what sounded exactly like the loudest kazoo ever played, which for some reason, only Danielle and I and the Canadians found absolutely hysterical. We endured this for the duration of the trip.

I spent most of the night gripping the metal rail and involuntarily yelling out when I felt the bus listing to the left so much that I was sure we were going to tip over. After a couple of hours of no AC the available oxygen inside the bus was so low I started to feel like I was going to suffocate. In an act of desperation I fussed with my window and discovered to my complete relief and horror that the window, which stretched the entire length of my body, slid all the way open. This is the kind of thing that just wouldn’t fly in the U.S. It was entirely up to me whether or not I rolled out the window. I opened it a bunch and held onto my bag so it wouldn’t fall out and continued to cry out sporadically in fear.

We made three stops to pee, one of which was in what was likely the filthiest, seediest, most foul smelling place in the developing world, another was at a place that had a cement trough of sorts instead of toilets but Danielle and I and most of the other female passengers on the bus opted to squat in the dirt beside some stray chickens. Every time the bus stopped I’d collect my shoe bag and make my way off the bus and find Danielle and she’d groggily greet me, wondering why I looked so wrecked. Just as I didn’t mind the train coffin a bit, she seemed completely content to be violently thrashed around a dirty, half-reclined bus bed while a jumbo sized kazoo sounded every 4 minutes.

Sometime around dawn chaos outside roused me from a semi sleep state. I opened my eyes just as we were approaching the aftermath of a head on collision between a bus and a truck. People were lined up along side the road bleeding, fanning themselves, crying. It was a scene.

When we finally arrived in Hanoi it was after 9am - we’d boarded the bus at 5:30pm. We’d had no water since then in an attempt to avoid having to pee and I’d eaten one Oreo cookie around 7am simply because I was ravenous and it’s all I had. Now we had to assemble our bikes, figure out where the hell we were and ride in morning traffic to find our hotel. Sometimes I really question what the hell we are doing here.

We made it in record time and found our little hotel to be staffed with the most helpful, sweet people in all of Hanoi (The Royal Hanoi II if anyone‘s interested). Through them we booked a tour to Halong Bay and had our visas extended.

Back in HCMC we took a tour bus to see the Cui Chi Tunnels, but it was a half day trip and seemed far less involved. Our tour to Halong Bay was the first time we left our bikes in the dust and boarded a real tour bus for the long haul. The Royal Hanoi II kept our bikes and some of our bags and we headed out.

Halong Bay is one of the places we’ve both been really excited to see since we began planning the trip. It’s basically a sea of about 2,000 limestone cliffs which rise all craggy and dramatic from the greenish blue water of the bay. They are covered in vegetation and some have been eroded away enough that we were able to kayak underneath them. It was truly gorgeous and the boat we stayed on was a real dreamboat (minus one cockroach).There were about 15 cabins and we met some incredibly fun, raucous Australians who did a superb job of convincing us of the merits of living in their country. Chicken salt, vanilla slices and an incredible social welfare system were among the highlights.

After two months of relying on only each other for all conversation and entertainment we ate these people alive and thankfully for us they were hilarious. We jumped from the top, top of the boat into the bay, swam, consumed an excessive amount of alcohol, watched the sunset and succeeding lightening storm from the top deck and then tore it up with a riotous evening of karaoke, dominated by Aerosmith songs thanks to our new found friend AnnaMarie’s love of all things Steven Tyler.

We’ll likely move to Australia next where we’ll marry Shawn and Michael and visit AnnaMarie and Shane in Sidney on weekends.

When we got back to Hanoi the van dropped us off on the wrong street (Hang Mam instead of Hang Manh) and we ended up having to take a cycle rickshaw with all our bags to our hotel. We’d avoided this form of transportation up until that point as every tourist we’ve seen riding in them look like absolute morons, but being absolute morons ourselves, we couldn’t avoid it forever. As we were slowly being pushed through the busy streets of Hanoi by a 25 year old guy the size of a pre-teen girl a woman selling conical Vietnamese hats took it upon herself to use the opportunity to try to sell me some of her wares. She slowly jogged alongside the cyclo repeatedly putting the hat on my head yelling, “Lady you buy! Lady cheap hat for you!” and I’d take it off and hand it back to her. As this was happening a book seller appeared from nowhere on Danielle’s side and began trotting beside us displaying her cardboard box of photocopied books. In classic form, Danielle actually negotiated with this woman and bought a guidebook to Laos. The hat lady did not do as well with me and I eventually shooed her away.

When we finally got to our hotel we found there was no power because there had been a fire in the hotel across the street the previous night (which explained the piles and piles of melted power lines all crumpled up in the street). We had to change hotels, but first we had to ride our bikes through rush hour traffic to the train station to try to (unsuccessfully) convince the meanest, most miserable man in Vietnam to sell us tickets for our bikes so we could send them up to Lo Cai where were heading the following day. He refused and we rode home dejected and dragged all our crap through the neighborhood over the burnt tree limbs and power lines and charred debris to a new hotel that had power where we finally showered, washed all our laundry, and went out to get water and food for the following day. When we came back to the new hotel the elevator was broken so we climbed to our room on the 7th floor only to open the door and find out that power was out. These are the kinds of scenarios we’ve learned to put up with on a daily basis. I don’t know what we’re going to do when we get back home and everything runs smoothly and makes perfect sense and everyone understands what we’re trying to say.

And this day was just a warm up for what happened the following night when we tried to get our bikes on the train to Lo Cai.

Hai Van Mishap

2009-06-24T11:14:00.006-04:00

The Hai Van Pass has become the joke of our journey; our training wheels in the form of a mountain. It’s a mountain pass just north of Danang, Vietnam. Once over this mountain the climate is supposed to change dramatically. In my head, I secretly hoped that meant I would climb the mountain and descend into the Catskills. The road over the pass is a consistent climb straight up for 10km (6 miles). There’s a tunnel that goes through the pass but we would never pass up the chance to challenge ourselves and simultaneously see an amazing view. Okay, and the real truth is that bicycles are not allowed through.

We were pretty confident after nearly 6 weeks of biking that we were in good enough shape to conquer the pass comfortably. The previous day we lounged around My Khe Beach, also known as China Beach which was a preferred spot for American soldiers during the war.

We floated in our tubes; Corinn’s bright pink and decorated with dolphins and fish, mine a bright green hippo with an inflatable head and a circumference the size of my thigh which I stubbornly wear around my waist. We had a couple of beers while sitting in beach chairs and talked for hours with the most adorable and friendly Vietnamese man of all time. He is an insomniac who learned English from watching American movies over and over and over again when he couldn’t sleep. His favorite is Home Alone. Can you imagine the impression that Home Alone has on a young Vietnamese man? He was convinced that all Americans are rich and that Bruce Willis’ character in Die Hard was a reliable source on what Americans earn for a living. He also asked Corinn why she didn’t have a baby since she was so rich. Corinn set the record straight about a woman‘s right to choose whether or not to have children and tried to explain that her non-profit salary did not make her rich. He was shocked by this.

He told us that on average he earns $2/day. He is learning English with the hopes of becoming a tour guide. He told us that in Vietnam it is very hard to get a good job unless you know someone in the government or have a lot of extra money to pay bribes. He told us that there is no such thing as social welfare in Vietnam and seemed to think that no one really has to work in the U.S. because the government passes out free cash whenever someone declares they don‘t have enough. He told us how the Chinese gave the Vietnamese a very strange chemical (that he pronounced with the hard ch sound) that makes pigs grow to their full size at 6 times the normal rate and keeps seafood looking fresh a week after being caught. He also told us that sleeping buses were way nicer and more affordable than trains (more to come on how that turned out).

After hours baking in the sun we parted with our new friend and headed out to find some dinner. This proved to be an enormous challenge. My Khe Beach was at the height of its tourist season so people were out in droves. These were Vietnamese tourists, we were the only westerners amongst the hordes. For blocks and blocks the road side was full of impromptu seafood BBQ joints, all outfitted with the standard sets of mini chairs and tables found at all Vietnamese eateries. These chairs and tables are exactly the same size as the ones found in preschools for snack time. I was never able to sit down and relax at these tables as I was always afraid that when I tried to stand up I would have a tiny chair attached permanently to my ass. Corinn and I never lost our fascination with their choice of dining furniture (we are happy to say that there are normal sized chairs and tables in Laos).

Anyway, at the place we chose were given a bowl of peanuts and menus in Vietnamese. Not one word looked familiar so when the waiter came over I pointed to the people at the table across from us and said “Same, same” to which he replied “feeeeeesh?” and I shook my head yes. About an hour later we were served a plate of fresh greens (none of which I could identify) and rice paper wrappers hard as a rock and some fish sauce. He then placed in front of us what appeared to be a small, square piece of rubber garnished with chilies. We poked at it with our chopsticks and determined it to be a sting ray. We had a lengthy discussion about sting rays and how that woman in Florida was killed when a sting ray flew out of the water and smacked her in the head as the boat she was riding in sped by. We remembered the crocodile hunter and how he was killed by one. Eventually we realized what we were trying to eat was far too small to be a sting ray and we identified it for a second time as a skate. It turns out skates are delicious. But they do not have a lot of meat and we went to sleep pretty hungry. The next morning we realized mid-meal that our cereal had been infiltrated by ants and we were forced to abandon our breakfast.

Unfed and mildly dehydrated, we got a late start at 9 am. The sun was out with a vengeance and ready to wreck our worlds before we even started pedaling. We got a little side tracked on the way to the pass. We needed to get water. We needed to get fruit. We needed to get deodorant. What better time to do a little shopping than when the temperature is rising and we’re heading closer and closer to the hottest part of the day. Jackasses! We didn’t make it to the pass until around 11:30.

We started to pedal up hill. The sun was suffocating. I was trying to breath but couldn’t catch my breath. I kept thinking, “Slow and steady, slow and steady” and “Nothing worth doing is easy” as well as a multitude of other self help phrases when all of a sudden I heard Corinn scream in rage “I just need some shaaaaade!!!! I hate you sunnnnnnnnnnnn! She was at an all time war with her nemesis, that big, giant, fiery ball in the sky.

Delirium was setting in. I know I’m losing it when the pattern on the shirt Corinn wears all the time starts to take on different forms. Sometimes it’s Barack Obama’s face, other times it’s a big giant lion. On this day it was a furious dragon breathing fire at me.

At one point a large van passed us. The side of the van said “Intrepid Bicycles”. The westerners inside stared and pointed at us from their support vehicle and we had a good time yelling after them, “Seriously? You’re the intrepid bicyclists??”

As we rolled up to the top I was near death and so proud of us for pushing through. The reveling in our success was short lived as we were swarmed by women selling pearl necklaces and bracelets. Sales tactics are not well thought out in Vietnam. We were soaked in sweat and barely breathing., they had bottles of cold water and yet they approached us with bracelets?

As we crested the peak 4 British guys each on the back of a moto taxi passed us going in the opposite direction. The first one raised his arm and shook his fist and yelled “Well done!” The second one yelled “Good effort!” We smiled and descended at top speed with the bright blue South China Sea in front of us.

Every pass we’ve climbed since one of us has yelled out at some point, “Why can’t this be the Hai Van Pass??” We miss our training wheels a little.

Right now I’m in a really comfortable hotel in Udomxai, Laos and I’m thinking about my Pops, hoping that you all think good thoughts about him while he is recovering from a quadruple bypass. I love you, Daddy-O!

More Pictures

2009-06-07T04:50:00.002-04:00

These are of HCMC and biking between Nha Trang and Quy Nhon, which was our favorite little cities so far. More later of the remainder of our trip up the coast. There's a ton as usual, as they are pictures taken from both our cameras. Since Nha Trang the scenery has been absolutely stunning!

Ho Chi Minh City

Pictures

2009-06-07T04:16:00.002-04:00

Lots from the floating markets.......

Rach Gia - Can Tho

Freak Out Hell Van

2009-06-03T21:08:00.004-04:00

Since we left Nha Trang, we’ve experienced a lot of firsts. Our first mountain pass, first time riding through a toll booth (no charge), first time crying on the side of the road. It’s been an interesting week.

We didn’t expect to hit mountains until after Hanoi. Maybe the hills we’ve been riding through wouldn’t be categorized as mountains to anyone other than two people who were raised on Long Island and then lived most of their adult lives in Boston. Who knows? All I know is that our East coast legs are tired from all the pedaling. We’ve learned that the word “deo” anywhere on a sign along the highway indicates that a pass is ahead and if that deo is accompanied by anything steeper than a 10% grade yellow warning sign one of us invariably yells out “Noooooooooooooo!”. Truck drivers and rain are the two things we’ve relied on to propel us upward and onward on these inclines. The trucks pull up along side us as we’re slowly, slowly climbing up and all people in the truck not driving hang out of the windows and yell at us and give us thumbs up and clap. We overlook the fact that the same truck drivers regularly come frighteningly close to running us down on flat stretches of the road. We’ll take encouragement where and how we can get it. We don’t know what we’re going to do when we get to the real mountains north of Hanoi and in Laos. Maybe we’ll hitchhike.

Speaking of hitchhiking- we had our first rescue mission this week too. We had been steadily making our way to Hoi An all week. We’ve upped the kilometers we cover daily to about 100. On our last day we had a little over 120. We both woke up illin’ big time. The big D, nausea. One of us suffering from one of these things is a daily occurrence, but both of us suffering from both was a little worrying.

We hit the road, it was windy and a mean sideways rain was falling. At 25 kilometers in I pulled over to puke and told Danielle I couldn’t go on. There was a shack of sorts nearby and I sat down on a pipsqueak sized blue plastic chair beside a little wooden table about knee high. Danielle immediately flagged down a van crammed full of Vietnamese people. The door swung open and a man jumped out and offered to take us for 350,000 dong. The people in the van likely each paid 20,000, if that. Danielle scoffed. I wretched in my little chair while the rain poured in.

The driver got out and took all sorts of money out of his wallet and waved it around furiously. Danielle remained steadfast with her arms crossed. Little kids showed up and started tinkering with our bikes. One put my helmet on. The driver waved the money in my face and I shook my head and pointed at Danielle. Danielle told the driver to leave. Finally he got back in his van and pretended to leave. One of the kids was poking my arm saying something repeatedly in Vietnamese. I just sat there. Then the driver got back out and said OK,OK to Danielle’s price and started unloading the back of the van.

It’s far less ridiculous in Vietnam than it was in Cambodia, but I swear a person must bring at least a few dilapidated card board boxes, an elderly relative and maybe a partial bed frame with them when leaving the house. I don’t know where people are going with all these items or why they need to transport them but they must.

Let me be clear, the van was packed to capacity even by Asian standards before we and all our stuff got crammed into it. I sat on the little chair while the man unloaded numerous boxes, a card table, 5 suitcases, and a large wire basket full of rice crackers. I asked Danielle where we were going to fit. She shrugged her shoulders and told me not to worry because we were in Asia. The driver and his first mate made all the people sitting in the back seat move forward into the middle seats, he then folded down the back seat and piled our bikes on top of each other, stacked all our packs on top of our bikes and shoved everything else in where he could.

Danielle and I sat in the front seat with the driver and a man named Dung. Before we got in Danielle made Dung throw out his cigarette. Little did she know that the van was chock full of smokers who really liked to smoke. When I got in I turned around to face all the poor Vietnamese passengers we had displaced and while they stared at me from behind their facemasks I weakly said, “I’m sorry” in my best Vietnamese which made some of them laugh.

At first I sat on Danielle’s lap but after a while Dung moved over so that he was straddling the gear shift and I slid in between him and Danielle. Keep in mind that both us of were extremely nauseous, I was seriously worried about other possible bodily accidents and I had a fever and the van was barreling down the road at mind boggling speeds, passing every vehicle in its path, horn honking steadily, while multiple passengers smoked and talked loudly on their cell phones. Vietnamese music was blaring and all the while Dung kept the questions coming from my left. “Vietnam you liking?”, “City you living?”, “Danang you going?”

In addition (it doesn’t end there) our driver had an insatiable appetite for passengers. His van was never full. Anyone standing on the side of the road was fair game. He’d blow his horn, slow down and the guy in the back would slide open the side door and yell something determining if the person or people needed a ride. At one point there were the 4 of us in the front, 8 in the first row, 11 in the next and 4 people hunched over standing in the space between the seats and the door. Then there was all our stuff.

After an hour I slumped over the bag that was on my lap and every time the van screeched to a halt I’d open one eye and Danielle would shake her head yes, confirming that we were in fact, beyond all comprehension, picking up another passenger.

This lasted for over two hours. When we got near Hoi An the driver poked me on the shoulder and pointed at a sign with an arrow that said Hoi An was 10 km east. Danielle and the door slider hauled all our stuff out onto the street in record time and I eventually climbed out of the van and crawled up on the cement outside a welding shop where I began to cry like a small child.

After defending me from dogs and bullying border officials, Danielle loaded up both our bikes like a champ waited in the hot sun until I felt like I was ready to ride. We rode slower than ever and I stopped three times, once to squat beside a rice paddy, once to cry while I sat on some cement slabs and locals swarmed and asked Danielle questions and once when we finally made it to town and I couldn’t go on. There, she left me in yet another tiny blue plastic chair and found us a hotel.

We still don’t know what we had or why I had it worse. But we’re better and enjoying Hoi An, a city that boasts 240 tailors, one of whom is busy at work as I write making us 15 items of clothing and 2 bathing suits all for $120.

Breakfast Buffet Bonanza

2009-06-01T22:20:00.001-04:00

Lately we have been having some trouble staying within our budget. The truth is we have one general rule which I think is perfectly reasonable. Corinn will claim that it is my rule but I respectfully disagree, plus she benefits from it anyway. The rule is that we need to stay in a comfortable hotel at the end of our long, exhausting often uncomfortable, yet highly rewarding biking days. When I say comfortable I mean the following: no apparent bugs (the cockroaches here are the size of my hand), no obvious filth or any other unnecessary grossness. If you know me well, you know what a giant baby I am when it comes to things that crawl. You can ask my sister Cathy---this issue goes way back to when I was little. She used to have to check my bed for creepy crawlers every night before I would agree to get in it. Now Corinn has taken on that duty for me and I could not be more grateful. I might protect her from dogs with sharp teeth but what she does to protect me from insects is far more brave. I like dogs. She hates bugs. She also routinely shields me from the multi legged beasts that have taken up residence in our rooms. I’ll never know how many cockroaches, spiders and ant colonies she has bravely and silently destroyed for my benefit. Remember the rule…. ‘no apparent bugs.’ What a girl!

So, back to my point of the budget. We can sometimes find remarkably clean and comfortable rooms for around $10-12. Sometimes, we are not so lucky. After riding all day long, we are sweat soaked, filthy, smelly and just slightly resemble human beings. We are beyond exhausted from pedaling our faces off in the most oppressive heat imaginable. All we want to do is get clean, return to our normal looking selves, eat something that will not kill us and sleep soundly in what at least appears to be a clean bed. Not too much to ask for, right? Well, sometimes it is.

What frequently happens is that our rational, logical selves have been left on the side of the road 20-30 miles back before the day’s journey comes to an end. We drive up to the first place we see and for $4-7 we can sleep with the cockroaches. After I run out of the hotel or guesthouse with my arms flailing, we ride on. We come to another hotel that is $8-11 a night. Instead of cockroaches we can sleep in a room that has poisonous black mold hovering over the bed and smells remarkably like the inside of a squat toilet even though it has a western style one. Is it crazy to think we would go to the newer, bigger looking hotel for a $20-25 night? I think not!

Here is how we masterfully rationalize our choice…one simple question to make it all okay “Is breakfast included?” If the answer is yes, “Is it a buffet?” If that answer is yes then we’ve got ourselves a deal.!

This has only backfired on us once - when we stayed at the Don Xuyan hotel in Long Xuyen. It appeared to be a clean enough hotel. However, while I was trying to wash the day’s filth from my body I looked up at the shower curtain and gasped in horror. I shouted for Corinn to come in and showed her the dirty pair of women’s red and black lace underwear draped over the curtain rod! The best part about it was that when we called the front desk they assured us they would send someone to clean the room. The housekeeper came in and removed the underwear. All set, the room was clean.

I guess the question you are asking is, why would breakfast being included be a reason to stay, especially when we can score a perfectly acceptable meal on the street for $2? The answer is simply that we have become white trash in Asia.

Corinn and I can turn one breakfast buffet into a full day’s worth of food. Here’s how it works. We both enter the room and assess the buffet. We then split up and return to our table with platefuls of food that we feel would be useful during the day…proud of each other for our ability to think outside the portable food box. We then each return to the buffet to obtain the food we will actually consume while sitting there. Corinn then proceeds to create some sort of distraction. This can include asking questions to the wait staff she knows they will not understand. This inevitably will bring other members of the wait staff into the conversation which will in turn free me of their ever present gaze. She also has a great ability to shield me from the business men and other respectable diners so I can get down to business. I must have been paying close attention to how my Nana pocketed things at restaurants when I was a kid. I can fit an enormous amount of bread, bananas, butters, jams and anything else transportable in my purse. There have been times that I have pulled out 3 French bread loaves, 4 pieces of toast, 8 bananas, 4 boiled eggs, 8 packs of butter and 4 packets of jam. No joke. Corinn and I pat ourselves on the back on a daily basis at the things we get for free. Toilet paper is huge. We are known to give each other high fives for pocketing a full roll from a one night stay. Corinn still pulls out soaps from our favorite hotel of all time, which we stayed in over a month ago. She also keeps a stash of salt and pepper from the same place.

It’s survival of the cheapest and we are good at it.

Floating Markets

2009-06-01T02:01:00.006-04:00

Every tourist's goal in Can Tho is to take a boat ride to the floating markets. Like good tourists, ours was too. We were really excited to sit back and watch while someone else did the navigating for a change.

The night we got there a friendly man appeared out of nowhere while we were trying to buy some mystery food wrapped in a banana leaf from a tiny woman who was squatting in an alley (anywhere is a perfect place to sell food in Asia, especially dirty alleys). I hate these friendly men because they just want our money, but Danielle loves a good sales pitch and takes pleasure in bantering with them. Really, she’s a natural born hustler disguised as a naïve white woman (although white is up for debate at this point).

Anyway, Mr. Trei (pronounced - tree) offered us our own private boat for 6 hours for $40 (a complete outrage). After witnessing our shock at his ridiculous price he launched into a grandiose performance utilizing laminated maps and photographs that he kept pulling from various coat pockets. While I slowly ate the contents of the banana leaf package Danielle and Mr. Trei laughed uproariously at each others' counter offers until they reached a stand still.

We decided to leave in search of more food (you wouldn’t believe how much we eat on a daily basis). Not more than 10 minutes later Mr. Trei reappeared from nowhere, tapped Danielle on the shoulder and said happily, “OK, U.S. 21 dollar we both very happy.” She had wanted 20. They sealed the deal and the next morning we took the Mekong by storm on our little boat and saw the most remarkable sights yet.
The floating markets are hard to describe, as they appear from an outside perspective to be complete chaos. But this is true of most of Asia, at least what I have seen. My first impression of everything here is that there’s no order, no rules, no reason. But there’s clearly some order because everyone is busy getting things done from daybreak well into the night. Whether or not they’re getting things done efficiently is another matter, but that’s really beside the point.

Based on no factual information, just observation, the markets look like this: Tons of old wooden boats tethered together each piled with a different product, the pinaple boat, the dragon fruit boat, bananas, coconuts, etc. There are larger boats on which entire families live, their laundry hangs out to dry on the back of the boat, the family dog is tied to a pole on the roof, potted plants line the perimeter of the vessel. Each boat has its specialty item tied to a tall pole as advertising. Then there are smaller boats, mostly operated by women. Bad ass women, who row unbelievable amounts of fruits and vegetables between the larger boats and shore. Maybe this is where the term boat loads originated? These women stand up and row in their conical hats and little matching pajama like outfits. We loved them.

The whole thing seems to operate on a bartering system with the pineapple lady tossing 25 pineapples into the cabbage family's boat while the cabbage family tosses 40 cabbages into the jackfruit lady’s boat. All the while life is happening, people are squatting on the edge of their boats brushing their teeth, women are cooking on little stoves, babies are sleeping in hammocks.

It was fascinating. There were even floating cafes, lottery salesmen and clothing stres. We cruised through with our jaws dropped. Afterward our driver (not Mr. Trei but a small man with smiling eyes who spoke as much English as we spoke Vietnamese) took us on an unexpected adventure through the smallest canals and waterways.

The Vietnamese seem to not get the concept of explaining what’s coming next. We’ve been in so many situations where we’re just expected to blindly follow some guide and we have no clear idea where we’re headed or any indication of a time frame.

In this situation something like this would have been helpful: First you will see two floating markets, then you will be driven down a long and desolate series of canals where you will see no one, Vietnamese nor tourist. After one hour your driver will inexplicably pull over to the side of the canal beside a rice paddy and instruct you with hand motions to get out. This will entail balancing on a boat not much wider than a canoe and climbing a steep and slippery mud bank. There will be nothing around but rice paddies and banana trees. You will then follow your driver down a path and over a hand constructed “bridge”. This bridge will lean heavily to the left and will wobble tremendously instilling great fear in you. You will wonder how deep the muddy canal is beneath you. Your driver will laugh at you while you try to cross this bridge…

I could go on. Our tour lasted forever. It was great fun and fully worth the $21 and forced blind faith.

On our way into the deep unknown we passed a couple from Germany on a boat just like ours and their engine had failed. Their driver was paddling them somewhere and our driver and theirs had a heated conversation for approximately 5 minutes and then we bid them good luck. On our way back out of the deep unknown, after we had had an informative tour of a paddy field, a banana plantation and eaten lunch beside a strange waterway we passed them again. This time the German man was hunched over the engine trying to help the boat operator with his repairs and the girl was in the front near tears. They hadn’t made it to lunch and were desperate for rescue. We helped them into our little boat and headed back to town. This girl was my twin. So now our tiny boat made for 2 had 4 people, two of which were fair skinned, freckled, red haired, lanky girls and this made for some really good stares. We also found out that they had refused to get out of their boat when thier driver pulled up to the paddy field and that they had paid $36 for their tour which confirmed Danielle’s bargaining prowess and made us both happy (sadly, at their expense).

A New Place

2009-05-24T09:25:00.004-04:00

We had our first swim in the South China Sea today. I spent the whole afternoon like an old lady floating in my bathing suit and sun visor watching the clouds while a monsoon slowly rolled in from the northwest over the mountains.

Then we hid out under our thatched umbrella while it poured and ate pineapple and mango. It was a good day.

Last night we took an overnight train to Nha Trang. It was the first of three train rides we have to take in Vietnam because it's too long and our time is too short. SAD!

We had to send our bikes the day before on another train and we were like two mothers seeing their kindergartners off on the first day of school. We've become attached. Even though my bike is a pain in the ass I love it. If it breaks again I might toss it off a cliff, but I love it. No really, the hassle of not traveling by bike is an interesting one. One might think taking a taking a train or a bus would be a relief to us at this point, but other than the obvious fact that trains and buses save time, the ease of getting from one place to another on our own and not having to lug any bags around because they're just attached to our bikes and rolling with us really can't be beat.

We woke up on the train at 5 and the landscape was entirely different and the houses were made of different materials and the temperature was different. Before yesterday, we'd traveled over 1300 kilometers at a snail's pace and one of the things I loved was how we noticed small changes in the environment from day to day, sometimes morning to afternoon. Separated by only kilometers, farming techniques varied, housing materials and transportation methods would be slightly different. We could even detect differences in attitudes and mannerisms. Likewise, we also fall into daily routines, regional foods we can rely on, ways things are sold and what the general price is, and when things in our environment change slowly it's easier to acclimate. When everything is foreign it's easy to cling to what little you know. I feel like tomorrow morning when we start we'll be disoriented somehow, the 450 km leap we took by train putting us off balance.

The landscape is absolutely stunning here though. Mountains and blue, blue ocean and in between, stepped rice paddies in every shade of green. I'm excited to see more.

Little Bit Lost

2009-05-23T07:32:00.006-04:00

A lot of these posts are out of sequence, we write along the way and post when we get internet access. We're leaving Ho Chi Minh tonight and heading north. Between Phu Quoc and Ho Chi Minh we rode around the Mekong Delta, saw some incredible floating markets, spanned some make shift bridges, and met my German twin. Stories and pictures to come. For now just a little sad story with a happy ending from last week.

We got lost for the first time a few days ago. We didn’t bike into the city we were in (we arrived by ferry) so we weren’t entirely sure how to get out. We asked for city maps at 2 big hotels and there were none to be had. The girl at the reception at our hotel spoke no English but I pointed to the city we wanted to go to on our map and she drew me a map that was roughly a square, an arrow, a circle beside 3 smaller circles and another arrow. Then she shook her head happily.

We followed this map and came to a road where a group of moto taxi drivers were lounging around on their bikes looking for prey. They told us, No, no! not this way! Go back. No one had lied to us up to this point, in fact people have only been helpful giving directions, so we believed them. We circled the city for at least 20 minutes asking people along the way and they all pointed us back to where the taxi drivers had tricked us.

You have to understand that it’s not like we were just lost in a small town trying to find the right street sign. It was the usual scenario that’s becoming so familiar to us. We were in a city with no traffic rules, other than the don’t look before you pull out of a side street rule, no signs indicating anything we understood and multiple traffic circles, which are approached by diving in full speed and muscling your way through. In addition, anyone turning left pulls into the shoulder against traffic and drives there until a space opens up and they can cross traffic and get into the proper lane. So at all times cars, mopeds, food carts and bicycles are coming at us from all directions. As bicycles we are at the bottom of the totem pole and take the most abuse.

So we’re lost, trying to communicate with each other over the din and then, kind of in slow motion, I realize that I am eerily alone. Even the food venders and cycle taxis have pulled over. And then all this fake american money is showering down around me. Am I in the twilight zone? I look back at Danielle and see that we are leading what appears to be a parade. At 7:30 in the morning. There are 2 guys on a moped next to me, the one in the back is the fake money thrower, he has a huge basket of it. Behind them is a row of guys on mopeds with big drums that are being ceremoniously beaten and behind them, next to Danielle, is an enormous, ornately carved and brightly painted wooden structure that is being carried by about a half million people who are singing something. And it went on for as far as I could see, busloads of people singing, people on mopeds, walking.

I yelled to Danielle but she couldn’t answer because she was laughing so hard. We eventually extricated ourselves from the festivities without causing too much commotion and got ourselves back to the road we had intended on going down before the moto drivers played their funny joke and a man flagged us down and enthusiastically said, “I can help for you!!.” And he did. Until we got really lost 20 kilometers later and rode 24 kilometers out of the way and enjoyed another motorcycle escort to a ferry. This ferry was about the size of a small car. The ride lasted about 3 minutes during which everyone yelled things back and forth to each other loudly while motioning to us and laughing like they’d never laughed before.

We got off in Vietnam’s version of the Cambodian dirt road to nowhere. Not a bit of asphalt anywhere for 25 more kilometers and the road was all rocks. Huge rocks with canals on either side and the most laughably terrifying rickety wooden brides every kilometer or so. How these bridges support anything is beyond me. They were about 3 feet wide, had inclines about as steep as the entrance to a parking garage and each plank of wood moved freely when we rode over them. And of course there were no railings.
Though this road was absolute hellish torture and we worried it would never end and our bikes would be destroyed, we saw the most amazing things. We rode along this little canal through tiny villages where people were making fishing nets and corralling ducks and tending gardens. Behind the houses were bright green rice paddies as far as the eye could see and the bluish outline of mountains in the distance. We passed rice paper drying in the sun on woven mats and saw all sorts of boats plying the canal.

When we finally reached the end of the dirt road we still had over 6o km to go and it was almost 1pm. We hadn't eaten since 7 am but if the moto drivers hadn't played their little joke we wouldn't have seen any of it.

Cycling Saigon

2009-05-21T00:03:00.008-04:00

Well here we are in Ho Chi Minh City. Really, everyone still calls it Saigon, so I will too. We have a lot to catch up on, ferry rides, being lost, war museums, hair cuts, but I’ll start by posting two videos. We took a bus here from Can Tho because yes, my bike was broken AGAIN. After much confusion at a Chinese run hotel we paid for 6 seats on a bus to Saigon. We sat in two and our bikes occupied the other 4. Seems when drivers fall short of real passengers and they have two helpless “rich” white people standing in front of them they suddenly become unwilling to tie things down to the roof and act like the idea is preposterous.

Sometimes there’s nothing we can do but suck it up and allow ourselves to be victimized and heinously ripped off. After the driver picked up most of the inhabitants of the Mekong Delta, had a prolonged screaming match with a man in a helmet, and answered at least 12 cell phone calls, he drove us to Saigon like a an addict on a drug run. We crouched down in the back seat and tried not to look.

When we arrived we were dropped off on the side of a bustling road. We had no idea where we were in the city. Imagine being dropped off in Times Square having never been to Manhattan, knowing only that you have to go somewhere in Brooklyn, no one speaks your language and you have a semi busted bicycle to take you there. And as usual, it’s about 98 degrees.

Like a choreographed exercise in hilarity, we each loaded up our bikes, changed into our socks and sneakers, loaded up water bottles, and tied down spare bags with bungee cords. We did all this on the side of the road while balancing our bikes with one hand and ignoring the crowd that had gathered nearby. Again, I had only a hand drawn map. I copied it from our hotel’s website the night before. When we were finished we said “Quan 1??” to our crowd and, as usual, everyone looked at us like we had done something distasteful and said nothing. Then one man stepped forward and did Moses hand. Straight to the left and to the left again.

Within an hour we were at our hotel. Let me be clear. It was not an easy task. There’s really no way to fully convey the sheer number of mopeds tearing up the lovely, tree lined streets of Saigon.They’re like swarming bees, cockroaches, I don’t know. It was equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.So we’ve been here for a couple of days, we had two bike mechanics work on my bike. The second one finally figured out that the grooves were stripped on the piece that kept coming loose, causing the grinding in my pedals. I also needed an entirely new crankshaft (Darrah, you warned us) and some other miscellaneous repairs. $32 later we hope it’s truly fixed for the last time. I’m fairly sure the rock ridden dirt roads we’ve been riding on for long distances have not helped matters.

In other news, we accidentally bought both salt flavored toothpaste and peppermint impregnated maxi pads. What kind of cruel joke are both of these products? It’s hard when you can’t read labels.

Ferry Ride Fiasco

2009-05-20T23:47:00.006-04:00

Picture this: Corinn and I pedaling our hearts out down the crowded streets of Can Tho, Vietnam--one of the largest cities in the Mekong Delta. Motorbikes, bicycles, venders, pedestrians all fighting for their small space of pavement. We constantly have to swerve left and right to avoid whatever impediment is in the road in front of us.

Sometimes I can't control my vocal chords and I get very embarrassed when I shout ‘eeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhh!’ upon a near collision. Vietnamese people are very tolerant of each other (as well as the two stupid American girls on bikes) and I rarely see a look of irritation or frustration come across their faces. And I NEVER hear a sound come out of their mouths. I'm working on this but Corinn has it down pat.

We need to take a ferry to the other side of the Can Tho river to make our way up to Vinh Long. We felt confident (sort of) as this was our second ferry ride across a Vietnam river so we thought we had a general idea of what to expect. What we didn't know was where the ferry was located, how to tell which direction it was going in or any other tidbit of valuable information necessary for people who don't speak or read the language. There was no way we could have predicted the enormity of the mayhem that was about to ensue, making our initial ferry ride look like a spin on It‘s a Small World at Disney World.

We see an enormous amount of motorbikes in an long line that appears to go into a sort of building. Somehow, we know instinctively that this is the ferry line even there are no boats in our line of sight.

We fall in place with 200 or so moto drivers around us. We look at each other on opposite sides of the ‘hallway’ or what appears to be a very long car port. It is suffocating. The noxious fumes from every scooter and motorcycle burning our eyes and lungs. Even though we are ‘inside’ everyone is riding forward. I ride my bike trying to balance at such a slow speed. There are people within millimeters of touching me in every direction. I think to myself that it’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic. I know that Corinn and I must fend for ourselves and will meet up again in a few moments.

There’s a sign with monetary increments but it’s in Vietnamese. The sound of the engines is deafening. There’s no way to ask how much. Corinn pushes her way up to a small window and throws 2000 Vietnamese Dong at the woman and points at me and our bikes and keeps riding. We need to keep pushing (and I mean pushing) forward amongst the hordes or else we will not make it on the ferry. In Asia you cant be shy, timid or passive or you will not get anywhere--not even to a squat toilet.

The hallway is dark. It is about 10 ft wide by 200 feet and up ahead I see light, a clearing…thank god. Just as soon as I feel relief my anxiety is back as suddenly there are motorbikes coming at us head on in the opposite direction. More balancing, swerving, and then we also need to make a choice because there are two ferries. The ferry to the left or the ferry to our right? We find each other through the crowd and decide with just eye movements that we will get on the ferry to our right and hope for the best. This is how we communicate now - with eye gestures.

The ferry is about the size of a basketball court…filled to maximum capacity. The man next to me is fascinated by my map on my handlebar bag. He is touching it. We have grown so accustomed to personal space violations. As we are used to by now, we are stared and pointed at and laughed at. I have no contempt towards the people laughing at us. If we’re providing comic relief for a population of people who rarely smile and survive a chaotic, polluted, difficult daily existence, at least we’ve done something positive.

Hunting Dogs and An Island Reward

2009-05-14T09:36:00.007-04:00

Recently, Danielle and I had a conversation debating whether or not we’ve gotten stronger in the past month. I argued we hadn’t. She scoffed. Then I realized she was right.

In order to get on to our ferry to Phu Quoc island, we had to first roll our bikes over two rickety planks of wood onto a bright blue wooden boat which served as a sort of staging area for everyone to get ready to get onto the ferry which was docked beside it. To actually get onto this old blue boat we had to step off the planks and then squeeze through a small opening, maybe 3 ½ x 3 ½ feet and then we had to carry our bikes down an approximately 3 foot drop into the dark belly of the boat. As usual, it was a mob scene at the dock with people running in every direction, yelling things and ordering other people around. There was no time to dilly dally and without thinking I just picked up my bike and carried it down the 3 foot drop. When we started I couldn’t even move my bike to lean it against a wall without help.

Once on, we had to de-bag our bikes while many people carted things passed us through the boat, giant satchels of produce, motorcycles, huge sacks of god knows what. Before we were even done putting our bags down a man picked up my bike and passed it through another small opening to another man on another boat. I barely knew what was happening. Eventually both our bikes were secured with slimy green rope on the bow and we took off at top speed into yet another torrential storm.

The ferry was ice cold and like all public transportation in Asia a karaoke show playing at mind blowing decibels was being offered in the cabin.

We disembark to the usual crowd of men offering rides, hotels, fishing trips. It is raining. Everyone is rapidly unloading the dilapidated looking cargo. While Danielle pushes her way to the bow of the boat where our bikes are wedged between two motorcycles, I set up an assembly line on the dock which I work single handedly, putting rain covers on all of our bags.

I have taken off my glasses because it is raining so hard I can’t see out of the lenses. Now, instead of being blinded by raindrops everything is blurry. As I work all the drivers stand around me in their various pastel-colored rain ponchos like a bunch of talking, gesturing Easter eggs in my peripheral vision.

Periodically I look up to check on Danielle. I see her standing like a giant at the bow, holding my bike over her head while two little Vietnamese men push their motorcycles toward the planks. She carries off my bike and goes back for hers. There are people everywhere but no one is helping.

We pack up and roll off, rain pouring down.

Do we know where we are on the island? Do we know how to get to where we would like to go?

A woman who sells us two rain ponchos, and whose plan to rip us off in the deal is foiled by her honest son, reluctantly shows us where we are on a map. She does the old hand held out and curved slowly to the right routine, all the while shaking her head affirmatively. We determine from this that we should go straight and eventually make a right.

We head off. There are multiple, possible rights. We look at our compasses and choose one. The island is deserted. No buildings, no people. It’s pouring. We are riding steadily up hill, smiling. There is something incredibly satisfying about being in complete control of your destination while simultaneously having absolutely no control over it. We are still not sure if we are going in the right direction but who cares, the island is small.

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate rain. I hate clouds. I hate anything gloomy. The first thing I do when I enter a room is open all the curtains. I’m always trying to maximize sunlight. Being outside in relentless, burning, South Asian sun for 5, 6,7 hours a day with no shade, no escape, has changed my relationship with the sun.

I hate it. I curse it. I pray for dark rain clouds.

I’m used to standing out in a crowd, but here I am a complete freak show. My red hair makes me beautiful but my freckles make me UGLY. Shaded by umbrellas and wearing socks, gloves and scarves to shield themselves from the sun, the women here touch my skin and cluck, cluck their tongues disapprovingly, disturbed by my flagrant disregard for my pale white skin. How could I have let this happen?? If I wasn’t already freakish enough, I have taken to wearing an incredible costume in an attempt to prevent myself from looking like the wrinkled beach hag in There’s Something About Mary.

I start with 60 sun block which is also a skin whitening sun block because that is all we can find here. But just like our self tanning creams, instead of really delivering the promised effect, this whitening sun block just leaves a layer of white lotion on the skin that refuses to absorb. On top of this, I wear a long sleeve shirt (oh, the torture!) and I put an open bandana in my helmet so it hangs down, covering my neck. I also bought a lovely pair of lacey ladies gloves which I cut the fingers off of and I wear them to protect my dainty hands (which actually were blistered after the first two days in the sun). Every 40 or so minutes we stop so I can reapply sun block.

Danielle does not take sun protection as seriously as I do. She was told twice in Cambodia that she was “Same, same as Cambodian” and she kind of is now. She’s probably darker than most.

So anyway, after being repeatedly sunburned through my clothes and suffering blisters and Danielle withstanding jabs from the locals, we are done with the sun, which is another reason we were so happy while riding through Phu Quoc in the pouring rain. The rain was cool, there was no sun. Life was good. The only bad thing about the rain is that it energizes the dogs who are normally, entirely immobilized by the sun and heat.

Other than fish sauce and beautiful beaches, Phu Quoc is known for its roving packs of semi-feral hunting dogs who are so plentiful and diligent that they have apparently decimated a majority of the small, native species.

Nice.

I somehow forgot about this until I was madly pedaling up a large hill in the pouring rain wearing flip flops and a pink plastic poncho. Up ahead I see a dog shoot out of the woods after Danielle. But it was too far behind to catch her without putting in some real effort. Then it spotted me. My biggest fear unfolding right before my very eyes. I would rather be chased by a gang of Vietnamese drug lords on mopeds armed with Chinese starts and sling shots.

It was staring me down growling, moving its two front legs like a soccer player warming up. I thought I might pee in my pants. Should I turn around and race down the hill? Or should I just go for it in spite of everything working against me, the hill, my slippery flip flops, the pouring rain, my pink poncho flapping in the wind acting like a parachute. I knew I could never out pace the dog.

I screamed out “Daaaaaaaaaaannnn-yelll!“ and started pedaling faster than I ever have. All I could think about were my bare ankles, rabies, canine teeth. The dog approached, came close to my left ankle and I tore it up on my bike. I flew passed Danielle screaming and crying, turning my handle bars in every direction, my bike careening back and forth across the road while tears streamed down my face. All the while Danielle rode on peacefully at a snail’s pace looking at me with her eyebrows raised, shaking her head. I should have felt like an idiot, but I just continued on breathing fitfully and letting out small whimpers.

From that point forward Danielle took it upon herself to protect me from any dog we saw. She’d ride ahead of me and when she spotted a dog (or a potentially vicious pack of rabid wolf half breeds) she would slow her bike to a near halt right in front of them, sacrificing her safety, allowing me to hold my breath and pass at mock speed. This worked well, as I’m writing this lying on a beach towel, all my limbs in tact (and so are Danielle’s).

Phu Quoc is gorgeous and our little bungalow is right on the beach. We're tempted to just stay parked right here for the next two months.

The Road To Vietnam

2009-05-14T09:13:00.005-04:00

Complicated, trying, exhausting, frustrating, arduous, depressing, all adequately describe our experience trying to enter Cambodia at Poipet. Vietnam on the other hand was much like riding our bicycles through a McDonalds drive thru minus the Big Mac. However, in true Cambodian style, our journey to the border crossing at Ha Tien was anything but smooth.

We left our hotel at 8 am with explicit instructions from the owner to “ride that way, when you see pagoda, turn right down dirty road and follow telephone poles all way to Vietnam.” These directions were accompanied by the typical hand gestures we’ve grown accustomed to interpreting. One hand held straight out slowly curving to the right, kind of like Moses parting the Red Sea with one hand. “No more than 14, maybe 15 kilometers.” he said confidently.

We had spent the previous two days riding up a mild, but steady incline and battling wind so strong it almost doubled our time. Toward the middle of the first day, when the heat was so bad and the wind was so brutal that we were both close to giving up, a man pulled up beside us on a bike. He had one leg and was carrying a home-made prosthetic device in his left hand. He nodded and pointed at our bikes and smiled manically. He said something again and again to me in Khmer. The only word I understood was bicycle, bicycle. He took off grinning and I followed, laughing. He was traveling faster than I had all day simply by pushing his right pedal hard when it made contact with his right foot. Soon we were side by side laughing with each other in the red dirt heat. He spoke loudly and emphatically to me and I repeated everything he said, nodding as if I understood.

We raced.

He moved ahead, I caught up and then sped forward until I was spent and suddenly there he was beside me, laughing and waving to people on the side of the road. He gave once last uproarious laugh, leaned over, slapped my arm and then just as quickly as he appeared he was gone, vanishing in a cloud of dust down a side road waving and laughing. And then we were together again, Danielle and I. Wondering if it had really just happened. We continued on renewed and have thought of him so many times since.

So we were tired and sore after pushing on those two days, but we were looking forward to a quick ride to the border where we’d catch a ferry to Phu Quoc Island, where we planned on floating in turquoise water and drinking Saigon beer.

The sky was dark when we left, ominous would better describe it. By 8:15 the wind was howling and huge black clouds were spitting out bright lines of lightening at rapid intervals. Within minutes we were caught in a monsoon deluge. We took cover at the closest shelter, a gas station run by the miserable wife of a pig farmer. We stood around the gas station for a while - wait - maybe I should explain what I mean by gas station, because by now this seems normal to me,, but three weeks ago I was confused.

A gas station in Cambodia is one of two things; a shack with a tin roof containing one or two fifty-gallon metal drums full of gasoline with a type of siphoning system attached to the top or an umbrella shading a wooden stand holding anywhere form 15 to 30 two liter 7-Up bottles full of gas.

We pulled in to the 50 gallon shack type and stood under the tin roof inhaling gas fumes and listening to the pigs squealing in the barn behind us while the wife of the pig farmer glared at us from under the cover of her blue umbrella.

It wouldn’t let up and eventually we decided to just get out of there seeing as we weren’t welcome anyway. We geared up in our little flimsy plastic ponchos and headed out to brave the storm. We pedaled and pedaled, soaked but happy to be rid of the awkward pig farmer and his inhospitable wife. We kept our eyes peeled for a pagoda.

We passed on high up on a mountain, no dirt road there. We passed another near a stream, nothing. We passed multiple dirt roads with telephone lines but not a pagoda in sight. Finally we saw a pagoda and a dirt road. No telephone poles, but we just took it. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the people living on this road were down right shocked to see us passing by. There was so much rain the road was like a river, emptying water from rice paddies on one side straight into the paddies across the street. We pedaled passed small crabs and fish stranded in huge puddles. There were frogs all over the place. Thunder was clapping and still, through the din Cambodian children were screaming, “Hello, hello!” to us. Whenever we saw an adult we’d point ahead of us and scream over the wind, “Ha Tien? Vietnam?” Everyone shook their head, yes!

After 6 or so kilometers we were dumped out onto a paved road. The same road we had been on the afternoon before on our way into town. Our little detour saved us about 2 kilometers of riding, but added who knows how much time due to the crude riding conditions.

It was still pouring. We felt defeated. We continued on. 5 kilometers later we see a pagoda and a dirt road lined with telephone poles for as far as the eye can see! We are overjoyed. We follow it into nothingness. The most nothing we’ve ever ridden in. There are rice paddies and nothing else. Not even a water buffalo or a screaming child. The wind is so strong it nearly tips us over at times. The mud is thick. My bike slips in it but I catch myself. We ride like this for almost two hours. It is painfully slow. Occasionally a moped passes. The landscape is mostly baron. There are huge thatched sheds and what appear to be abandoned fish farms all around us. Then we’re in a mangrove swamp for a long time.

Are we heading to Vietnam? The telephone poles say yes. After 35 kilometers we reach a town, dirty, red mud everywhere. We eat soup with mystery meat at a teeny tiny table , both balancing on a wooden bench suitable for first graders while two teeny tiny ladies wearing the typical conical Vietnamese hats eye us suspiciously.

Everyone laughs at us but we’re tired and covered in a thick layer of red mud and are sick of being laughed at. How are we funnier than the entire family who just rode thorough town on a motorized soup cart, the 9 year old daughter asleep beside a huge bowl of bean sprouts? How are we funnier than the man I almost had an accident with who had at least 40 huge aluminum pots piled so high on the back of his bike they towered above his head?

The hand gestures indicate that the border is ahead. We plow on. Right through the drive thru into Vietnam. Where we hope edible food is plentiful and the roads are paved.

This dream turns out to be true. As soon as we cross the border the road is paved. We stop to ask directions to the ferry to Phu Quoc. Two men get out of their hammocks and find they don’t have the language to explain to us where the ticket office is. They get on a moped and gesture to us, then to them, then off in the distance, Moses style. We get another moped escort. Right to the ticket office. The boat had left already so we spent the night in HA Tien and ate our way through the night market like two little pigs and the food was DELICIOUS.

Pictures

2009-05-07T12:25:00.004-04:00

There are some videos too but I don't know if they are marked as such.

Also, have I mentioned that I have no idea why our Picassa page is in Thai? Here it's entirely in English, but I've heard that it's in Thai at home?

Siem Reap to Phnom Penh

What More Could We Want?

2009-05-07T11:00:00.005-04:00

So I’ve mentioned briefly how everything we need always seems to be just over my right shoulder. It’s getting a little ridiculous though now. We’ve had the surprisingly perfect hotel dropped in the middle of nowhere, multiple bike repair shops within eyeshot at the worst times, a bus station like a mirage, and then we happened to stay at the same tiny run down guest house in a town famous for its fried tarantulas (Danielle almost ate one, her excuse, “If they weren’t sitting in so much OIL…”) as two women from Holland who have been traveling by bike for the last 8 months. I’m pretty sure we were the only 4 people staying there and they were in the room across from ours and said we were the first women on bikes they had encountered the entire time. It was entirely reassuring to know that they had done it. We had come from opposite directions, they from Phnom Penh and us from Kompong Thom. I’m sure the people in the villages along our routes thought they were seeing things when a second set of girls on different bikes rolled through town the next day.

But it didn’t stop there. After we met Monki, the tuk-tuk driver/bicycle racer who seems to have properly fixed my bike once and for all we had another encounter with the bizarre today. After walking through the Central Market we were aimlessly wandering around with no plans. We zig-zagged down a bunch of roads and stopped on a corner to decide what we wanted to do. Right above my head was a sign that said Vicious Cycle Co-op. It advertised self serve laundry. We do laundry most nights in the sink but after riding for 4 or 5 hours in the dust and heat the sink wash doesn’t really cut it and after a serious laundry debacle in Siem Reap (our clothes came back wet, with NEW stains, a rip, and short a bra) we were besides ourselves with excitement.

It turns out the place is an adventure cycle touring business/laundromat/café and the owner, Adam actually asked us if we had time to sit down so he could help us out with our route.

We’ve been debating about where to cross into Vietnam and where to go once we get into the Mekong Delta. It’s like a web of waterways and small roads and we had no idea what to do and we leave tomorrow morning.

Adam sat down with us took out a Vietnam atlas and talked us through the best way to go, gave us advice on road conditions, towns with guest houses and then color copied all the pages we’d need from the atlas. He also advised us on the northern part of Vietnam and where we should go in Laos. Incredible. Even more incredible, they just opened last week and we were the first laundromat customers. I feel like it’s not that far off that the things we need are dropping from the sky.

He doesn’t have a web site yet but The Co-op is at 29 St. 130, opposite the Indochine 2 Hotel (adam@grasshopperadventures.com) for anyone looking for bike tours/planning/clean clothes etc…

So, we take off tomorrow for Takeo 75 km south and then head to the border at Ha Tien where we hope to take a boat to Phu Quoc Island (Sissa, your fish sauce!).

It could be a while until we have internet access again.

Daily Schedule

2009-05-07T10:00:00.006-04:00

We’ve finally figured out that if we’re up by 5 am and fed and on the road by 6 we’ve got at least three good hours before the real heat sets in which makes everything more enjoyable. It also means we’ll have more interactions with people. Life here starts at sunrise. By 5:30 everyone is up going about their business. People are cheerful and full of energy. By 10 am most people are settling into their hammocks for the first of a series of naps they’ll take throughout the day. And by noon there are only warm bottles of water to be had because all the ice is melted in the coolers at the stalls along the side of the road and no one really wants to be roused from their sleep to sell them to us anyway.

This schedule is also good because it means that we get to really see life happening in the villages we ride through. A woman bathing beside a well in a patterned sarong, a group of old men squatting in a circle playing a card game, one laughing, two boys herding cows across the street from one paddy field to another, a family spreading rice out on woven mats to dry in the sun, long lines of giggling children walking and bicycling to school in their perfectly starched navy and white uniforms.

We stopped for water the other day at a very typical set up, a cooler by the road in front of someone’s hut. After a while man rolled out of a hammock to take our money. While we were sitting at a table in his yard I saw what looked like fire crackers or incense splayed out in the yard of the hut next door. I walked over to the fence to look and he saw me and came over. He opened the gate and brought me next door where an entire extended family was lounging beneath their hut organizing incense sticks. They yelled some things to me and I talked back. None of us had any idea what was being said but one of them happily ushered me back to a shed behind the hut where more people were working, actually making the incense. It was my mini dream come true! I’m always plagued by the question, “Where does this come from?” Every day I use things, buy things and eat things whose origins are a complete mystery to me. I take for granted that so many things that pass through my hands are physically made or grown by another person. At least now incense can be checked off my list…

The same day we pulled over to eat a mango and a watermelon under the shade of a tree. There was a woman selling gas there and she was lying in her hammock. She got us 2 plastic chairs and watched while we ate. We offered her some watermelon but she didn’t want any (I don’t blame her we were filthy). Within minutes there were at least 7 people standing around smiling at us, inspecting our bags, my hair, our clothes. We’ve become entirely used to being stared at by large groups of people for prolonged periods of time. We’re like a run down version of the Olsen Twins, we gather crowds but not the paparazzi. Anyway, when we were packing up to leave the woman came out of her shed with a mango and a watermelon to replace the ones we had just eaten and insisted on giving them to us. We tried to give her money but she refused to take it. We’ve had multiple people wave to us from the side of the road, inviting us to eat with them, we’ve been given bottles of water. The people we’ve had the chance to meet have been so observant and generous.

I have pretty much been in a continual state of awe since we began riding in Cambodia. If I’m awake and outside of a hotel room I am likely incredulous. Experiencing our surroundings so slowly on our bikes keeps us alert and aware in a way that regular travel never has.

Celebrity Sighting

2009-05-07T09:37:00.002-04:00

So we left off with the Vietnamese tour bus dropping us off in Kampong Thom. The other people on the bus, including the driver were clearly perplexed about why we chose to get off there, seeing as there is absolutely nothing to do or see, but I’m sure they were just happy to be rid of us as we smelled pretty badly and didn’t stop laughing the whole way.

We chose the town because it was the next closest town slightly bigger on our map than roachville. We settled into our dank little room, did some laundry and went down to find some food. Most of the places we’ve stayed between large cities have been completely bizarre in ways I can’t begin to explain and this place was no exception. We left our room and there was a young Cambodian man in the hall done up like Robert Smith when The Cure was at its best. I was confused, but I’m always a little confused here so I continued on.

We went to the restaurant downstairs which was entirely empty and we were greeted by approximately 15 young people in maroon button down shirts all waving and saying “Madam, sit” . The menu featured a full page of frog dishes and while we ordered the entire wait staff circled our table and looked on. Before our meal was served two Cambodian women arrived completely DECKED OUT. I could have easily been convinced that I had successfully time traveled and it was 1983 and I was dining beside the Cambodian likenesses of Donna Summer and Whitney Houston.

These women clearly were exciting news to the wait staff, who quickly lost interest in us and turned all their attention to Donna and Whitney. A fan was provided, a personal waste paper basket was set up at their table, large trays of fish kept coming out. Then, just when we though the wait staff couldn’t get any more excited, Cambodian Robert Smith sauntered in wearing a short black denim jacket lined with a bad ass skull pattern, big black boots with 2 inch platform soles and skin tight black jeans with zippers all over them. He had on multiple necklaces and a couple of chunky rings. His eyes were lined and his hair spiked straight up.

He had a sort of entourage with him and they all joined the ladies at what had clearly become the V.I.P. table. The whole place went suddenly silent. It was awkward. The girls on the wait staff nervously fawned over him, giggling and trying not to stare. People from the street came in and stood around staring and whispering to each other. The owner of the restaurant came over and made sure things were up to par. For the first time in 3 weeks no one even noticed us. We couldn’t even get a waiter’s attention when we tried. We stared too and speculated and ate and found out later, after they all exited separately from different doors that he, our guest house next door neighbor, was a Cambodian pop star/heart throb.

I’m so mad we didn’t have our cameras with us.

Many Mechanics, One Big Problem

2009-05-05T11:05:00.011-04:00

Exiting Siem Reap went something like this:

A Red Sox/Yankees game has just gotten out at Fenway Park. The Red Sox won in the last inning. It’s 98 degrees. Upon exiting the stadium every fan is issued some sort of “vehicle”, a moped loaded with 65 dead ducks hanging upside down, a bicycle laden with firewood piled 4 feet high, a tuk tuk with 2 full-sized cows in the back, a scooter with 4 mattresses folded in half and strapped on top, a 15 passenger van with 35 people, a motorcycle, a half dozen 50 pound sacks of corn and 8 chickens inside and 17 people and a bicycle in the roof, a dump truck, a motorized noodle soup cart, a giant wooden wheel barrow piled with hundreds of tiny watermelons. Throw in the sound of countless squealing piglets, crying babies, crowing roosters, shouting and yelling, and horns of every variety.

I’m on my fully loaded bicycle, slowly advancing through the mayhem. When the rising sun isn’t blinding me, black diesel fumes are. The pedals on my bicycle are making a horrendous grinding sound, like there’s gravel in the bearings. I scan the scene squinting, searching for Danielle’s familiar shape. Finally I see her and scream “MY PEDALS ARE F*ED UP AGAIN. WE HAVE TO FIND A BIKE SHOP.” Somehow she comprehends. Miraculously, to our right there is an enormous sign that says, “Bike repair. Many spare parts.” We roll in. 10 minutes and $2 (a donation) later we’re out. Fixed?

No.

2 KM later the grinding is back. I’m close to throwing a fit but, wait, what’s that to my right? Another bicycle repair shop. We roll in. 2 hours and $5 later we roll out. Fixed?

Sort of.

15 km out of Siem Reap I start to hear the bearings fall out one by one. My crank (?) is loose again. My pedals are stiff. Danielle wants to try to fix it with a rock and our mini screw driver on the side of the road. We search beside a rice paddy for a big rock. There’s nothing but big water buffalo. I get REALLY MAD. Did I mention I have a raging, undiagnosed case of P.M.S.? Eventually I yell very mean things at Danielle, who is still wearing her helmet and holding a small rock in her hand. I take off on my bike like a lunatic, my pedals clunking and grinding. She catches up and we have a full fledged screaming match while racing side by side passed innocent Cambodian rice farmers.

Approximately 25 minutes later we enter a small village. There’s a bamboo shack with 4 men standing around an upturned ,ancient-looking bicycle. I cross the road and pull in and show them the problem by shaking various part on my bike and using gestures and sound effects. One man takes action while the rest stare in awe. 5 minutes later and $0 we roll out.

Fixed?

For God’s sake. NO. The problem is deep. It is bad. It is tearing us apart. The rolling fight takes up where we left off. We are cruising through gorgeous country, with beautiful children happily screaming “Hello! What you name?” every two seconds. They emerge en mass, mostly naked, from under thatched huts on stilts. They have nothing and still they are smiling widely and all I can think about is how upset I am that my bike is busted.

We continue on in silence. We yell the obligatory hellos and stop to drink water and eat nuts. Almost 70 km later we get to our destination town of the day. It’s not good. No one speaks English. There are two guest houses and at mid day both are found to be crawling with roaches. What would they be like after dark? We don’t want to know.

We’re at an intersection. We’re unsure where to go. We’re 90 km from the closest town that might have a semi acceptable sleeping situation. We hear clanking. An ox cart pushes us off the road. A moped pulls up. An older woman is on the back sitting side saddle, she smiles and says hello. Danielle smiles back and takes a chance and says “Bus station?” The lady smiles and points and says “There.” Like always, to our right is exactly what we need, this time it’s clapboard sign with a picture of a bus.

We spend the next 40minutes trying to buy a bus ticket while a group of men fondle our bikes. They are mystified by the bell/compass. Danielle takes over the purchasing of the tickets while I try to convey that ringing the bell will not turn the dial on the compass. Apparently it’s equally as difficult to explain the concept of north, south, east, and west without proper language as it is to buy a bus ticket. We get no where. A man wearing a towel at card table made some calls on a cell phone. Then he left and returned wearing pants. Another man flipped furiously through an unintelligible ledger book, another man chain smoked and asked us questions in Khmer and French. Danielle did her best. I defended our prized possessions. A crowd gathered.

Miraculously, we eventually got on a bus full of Vietnamese tourists and rode two hours to Kampong Thom, Pol Pot’s birth place, where we stayed in a guest house where we spotted only one roach (which unfortunately shot out of Danielle’s bag while she was rooting around for some socks) and chanced to dine with a real life, seriously I’m NOT lying, Cambodian pop star. More on that later.

We’re in Phnom Penh now and somehow met a Cambodian bicycle racer/tuk-tuk driver named Monki who took my bike apart in the leafy courtyard of our hotel, went to a market for some parts and came back and fixed it like a champ. We hope.

More later on other topics, including how incredibly helpful, generous and kind the Cambodian people have been to us.

65,000 Pictures of Angkor Wat and a Brief Note

2009-05-01T18:59:00.005-04:00

We're finally hanging up our waffle robes and venturing back out into the real world. We've been in Siem Reap for almost 5 days and spent most of the time in our bathroom. 4 days ago I ingested something VERY BAD and Danielle ingested something BAD. Who knows what's living inside us, but we're feeling well enough to get back on the bikes.

The following are our pictures from our first few days biking in Cambodia and of course, Angkor Wat. Unbelievably amazing! We hope you enjoy. More in a few days.

Poipet-sisophon

http://picasaweb.google.com/wecycleasia/PoipetSisophon?feat=directlink

Sisophon - Siem Reap

http://picasaweb.google.com/wecycleasia/SisophonSiemReap?feat=directlink

Ankgor Wat

siem reap

The Road to Siem Reap

2009-04-29T06:18:00.012-04:00

Cambodia. It’s been all smiles, tears, frustration and wonder since we arrived. The incident at the border at Poipet nearly did us in. Crossing was not straightforward as all research suggested it would be.

Picture this: it’s 7:15 am, it’s 95 degrees, we’re on our loaded bikes. There is an enormous, circus like market on the road to our left. There is a streaming line of seemingly countless people, barefoot for the most part, in ragged clothes, dragging huge, rickety wooden carts behind them. Everyone is shouting. There are no clear lanes, traffic is moving in all directions, right, left, toward and away from us. We’re doing our best to navigate it all without being hit while trying not to run anyone over.

Suddenly there is a “check point”. It is staffed by many men so clean and well dressed it’s clear they’re up to no good. They blow whistles and yell “Madam! You must stop madam“. We continue on, confused. Was that official? They continue yelling. There is a bigger building ahead. Near it we see a huge line of people organized by metal fencing. There’s a “foreigner” line. No one is on it but the fencing will seemingly not allow our bikes to fit through. Yelling ensues. Hands flare. Men descend to ‘help’ us (this happens all the time and they are never really helpful). With their "help" we drag our bikes through, pulling the fencing with us. Thai people on the long line beside us discuss this excitedly, watching, pointing and laughing. I stay outside with the bikes Danielle goes in to take care of business.

From my vantage point I can see the line of people waiting to pass through from the Cambodian side. These are the ragged cart draggers. There is a line as far as I can see. They are hunched over in the morning heat, pulling huge, empty carts across the border. There is an equally long line of people with full carts heading back to Cambodia. Men, women and children of all ages struggle to haul these overloaded carts back across the border. They fill up with goods at the giant market, cross back into Cambodia where they sell their goods. This happens every day. Children as small as 5 are pushing and pulling, visibly straining from the labor. Old women are balancing enormous baskets of fruit and vegetables suspended from bamboo poles which rest on their shoulders. It’s heartbreaking and I’m leaning against a wall next to my bike and all my gear, crying.

The poverty here is staggering. Yet the people smile constantly. Here everyone wants to talk to us, ask us questions, tell us their names, help us if they can. All day long adults and children yell “Hello!” and “Bye bye!” from their shady bamboo platforms. Children run out of hiding spots in groups of 5 and up screaming “Hello! Hello!” and waving frantically and jumping up and down. Early yesterday morning a family on a moped road up along side Danielle and talked to her for about 10 minutes as they rode side by side.

In Thailand people openly laughed at us in a mocking way, but here everyone smiles widely and jokes. In the heat of the afternoon yesterday a wooden flat bed pulled by some sort of tractor engine pulled up along side us with at least 23 laborers piled on it. They all waved and smiled and screamed hello and one woman raised her eyebrows and patted the cart next her, shaking her head yes and smiling, inviting us to hop on for an easier ride.

In two days and 156 km we’ve seen:
7 mattresses piled high on the back of a small pick up truck
At least 50 ducks hung from their necks dangling on a board attached to a moped
15 baby pigs in a big tube-shaped basket on the back of a moped
25 propane tanks tied to the back of an El Camino type vehicle with two people napping at the very top
20 monks in saffron robes in the back of a pick up truck
A little boy riding a bike so big he sat on the bar and pushed a peddle every time one came into contact with his foot
Construction workers laying asphalt in flip flops
2 industrial sewing machines, 25 people and a motorcycle in the back of a pick up truck
As many as 5 full sized pigs strapped upside down on the back of a moped, their legs flopping
Approximately 30, 100 kilo sacks of rice and 35 people piled into the back of a pick up truck
A 9 month old baby riding in a hand made cloth swing suspended from the handle bars of a bicycle
Countless baskets of fried sparrow kabobs
6 weddings
1 funeral procession
A stone carving village

In the same time we’ve run over or nearly run over:
4 snakes
7 frogs
1 mouse
3 butterflies
2 cows
1 water buffalo

(The cows and the water buffalo were the near misses, some of the other things were already dead, one of the butterflies got stuck in my hair for a second and the mouse ran straight between my tires.)

Things people have yelled at us other than the constant HELLOS:
Bye bye I love you!!
Spicy Pork!!
The price is right!!
How are you name??

OK, back to the border.

So I’m standing there crying while Danielle is inside dealing with BEUROCRACY. She was kind of crying too. The official man hated her and the whole room was in chaos. She kept waving me in and I’d push my way past the lines, stand before the man and he would mumble something, throw his hand at me to dismiss me and I’d push my way back outside to watch our bikes and witness the crushing humanity.

Eventually, after 2 hours, Danielle emerged with all our crap stamped and then it was time to figure out how and where to get our visas. We got in line with the cart pullers, pulled up to a kind of drive thru window where a man looked at my passport, pointed at Danielle, said “Same same?“ I said yes and he waved us on. We crossed over and set up camp at the visa office, all the while people are yelling and gesturing for us to come over so they can help us get our visas. Again, Danielle went over and fought with the Cambodian officials, this time for about 45 minutes while they demanded she pay two times the price for a visa, that she pay in American dollars, and then insisted the official she needed to talk to was off duty and wouldn’t be back for two hours. She never gave in. Again, I sat and watched the mayhem.

Gambling is illegal in Thailand and right over the border in Cambodia are a number of casinos, the Tropicana was my favorite. So in addition to the cart pushers and general desperate state of things, there are rich Thais getting out of large Land Rovers with tinted windows looking to gamble. The tropicana was my favorite.

After getting papers, Going to more weird offices to get our pictures taken and our passports stamped we were set free in Cambodia.

It was 10:30 at this point and the day's heat had already set in. We rode for 50 km to Sisophon, accompanied the whole time by constant screams and hellos and waves from everyone we passed. The rumors we heard from everyone we encountered about the deplorable road conditions proved to be untrue. The road was paved and had a shoulder for the most part. It was full of tractors, water buffalo, an endless array of make shift vehicles, cows, bicyclists, large trucks, motorcycles and pedestrians, but it was paved!

We spent the night at a strange hotel where we might have been the only guests. We ate as soon as we got there. We hadn’t eaten anything but tiny bananas for hours. Unless you’re in the mood for fried sparrow or rodent kabobs it seems your S.O.L. in rural Cambodia as far as food is concerned.

Around 6 Danielle decided we needed to order dinner and breakfast and a snack for the next day since we would be leaving before breakfast began and who knows when we‘d see edible food again. I was delirious and told her to do what ever she wanted. An hour later I was sitting in bed, semi conscious, watching Tom and Jerry because it was the only channel I could understand and a parade of hotel workers arrived with trays of food, 2 fried eggs, an omelet, 2 boiled eggs, vegetable curry, steamed rice and 3 orders of toast. I can’t begin to imagine what these people thought of us.

We pedaled out of there before 7 am the next day and began the epic journey to Siem Reap. It was our first big day. 108 km. We nearly died.

By 9am we had gone 40 km. We stopped to eat our boiled eggs, have some mango and cool off with the washcloths we keep in our little cooler. We made a small scene at a little road side shack where chickens pecked our legs and the neighbors showed up in droves to stand and stare at us while we ate. I thought a riot might start when I unzipped one of my panniers to get out a pair of sunglasses. A group formed around me all straining to see what mysterious object I might remove from my bag.

We rode on. Maybe yesterday was an auspicious day or maybe everyone gets married on Monday. We don’t know, but we passed 6 weddings yesterday and they were spectacular. Thatched huts on stilts, pigs in mud pits, water buffalo roaming the streets, children naked from the waist down playing with sticks in the dirt and then bam, blaring music, silk dresses in brilliant colors, brides and grooms in ancient looking red ensembles shaded by big golden umbrellas. All in the middle of nowhere.

We also passed a funeral procession and rode right through a stone carving village where a woman carrying a load of some sort on her head smiled, shook her head and punched first Danielle, then me really hard on the arm while she was walking by us.
Things have been interesting.
Now we’re in Siem Reap. And we kind of hate it. We haven’t been to Angkor Wat yet, I’m sure that will be spectacular, it’s the city itself that’s depressing. Everything’s quadruple the price and is quoted in dollars. We took money out of the ATM and US dollars came out. There are huge tour buses everywhere and billboards that read, Siem Reap, the real Cambodia. It’s hard to know what to feel. The contradiction between the Cambodia we loved so much the first two days and the Siem Reap, Cambodia is hard to swallow.

It’s been strange. We travel slowly through these really remote areas for hours on end during the day and then get to our hotel room where we hole up and eat and watch television and sleep until 6 am the next day. Normally, when traveling, the exploring begins once you reach your destination city. But once we reach the city we’ve spent the day peddling to we’ve already exhausted ourselves exploring everything along the way.

Even weirder is the fact that we’re staying in an incredible, upscale hotel for very little money. We pulled up on our bikes, foul smelling, sweating, and did the normal routine, Danielle goes in to make arrangements, I stand outside straddling my bike while holding her bike, sweating my ass off and hoping for the best. Except this time a man came out with a small glass of iced tea and a plate holding two cold wash cloths and an orchid bud. I accepted these as graciously as I could in my condition, which required a second man to come and hold Danielle’s bike. All this while a Swiss couple watched in awe.

So here we are. Kind of feeling guilty but thoroughly satisfied, in white waffle weave robes, full from room service, watching HBO. America is everywhere. And if you have enough money it’s easy to forget scenes like the border at Poipet, but if we stayed at a hotel less extravagant would we be contributing any less to the tourism machine?

Radios, Lies and Mopeds

2009-04-24T20:41:00.011-04:00

Yesterday. Ohhh, yesterday. We met our first Thai slime ball. He had big white dentures, Saturday Night Fever hair and was wearing an old three piece suit. Thankfully, our sour encounter with him was sandwiched between two events unexpectedly good.

Thai radio stations rig up little pick up trucks with super speakers, staff them with two to three youngish boys who drive up and down the streets and highways blaring music and yelling things through loudspeakers attached to the front and rear of the vehicle (what? I'd love to know!).

One of these passed us early yesterday morning before the heat stroke set in and we danced on our bikes while they drove by. Hours later, when we were not sure of our names or what country we were in, the pumping sound of Thai pop came careening toward us again. This time enthusiastic arms waved at us from the open windows holding bottles of water! They did a U turn, came along side us, gave us water and sped off yelling something into the loud speaker. It's probably better we couldn't understand.

It's possible they talked about us on their radio station earlier that morning because the beeping, yelling, waving and general extreme excitement that drivers showed when they saw us yesterday was unprecedented.

Anyway, It had taken us 5 hours to ride 50 KM bc the heat was INSANE. We'd ride for a half hour and sit for a half hour. All day the temperature read between 43-45.

This seems impossible. And we still kind of think it is. But both the computers on our bikes read the same thing all day and they have consistently matched the thermostats in all our AC hotel rooms.

By the time we finally reached Aranyapathet we were wrecked. We rolled up to the Indochina Hotel, the glass door slid open, AC swooshed out and I almost cried. I was disgusting. Offensive really. When I took my helmet off at the front desk a dirty washcloth fell out. Sawadee Kaaah!

The tidy Thai women remained outwardly unphased, but I'm sure they wanted to kick me to the curb ASAP. Who wouldn't? And once the initially ecstasy of the AC wore off, closer inspection of the Indochina revealed a bright green pool (slime pit would best describe it), cracked plaster and precariously suspended chandelier.

I would have enjoyed it all in my state, but slime ball in the three piece suit talked Thai circles around us quoting nonsense prices and catching himself in an evil web of deceit and transparent scams which were all "very special deal for foreign friend". He even told us that the day before 4 westerners on bicycles just like ours rolled right up to the Indochina Hotel and happily paid $40 for a room (we average about $12 for similar digs). We told him we were sad to find out he was such a liar and we peddled off into the baking Thai heat.

Oh, the misery.

We had read there was a hotel near the market after the clock tower. When the clock tower was long gone we decided to inquire. Of course no one understood a word we were saying and pantomimes were getting us nowhere, then a woman pulled up on scooter with a 6 year old on the back who was eating an ice cream cone (did I imagine that?) This child understood us and the woman indicated that we should follow her. We high tailed it behind this speeding little scooter through dark alleys, back streets, large confusing intersections, the whole time the little girl is twisted around staring at us wide eyed, very slowly licking her ice cream. In no time we were delivered to the Market Motel where we've happily been residing ever since. For $11 we have AC, a sparkling pool, TV, free wireless Internet in our room and a nice restaurant. A very special deal indeed!

We did 108 miles in our first three days and it was almost never below 100 degrees. We decided to stay an extra night to rest up and get ready for the border crossing and Cambodia's infamously heinous roads.

We had a perfect day attempting to interpret the plot to a Thai soap opera, floating in the pool and eating delicious food.

Oh, and the weirdest part, who was sitting around a picnic table at the hotel yesterday afternoon when we got here? The radio station water givers. The screaming that ensued when they saw us, we all nearly died.

So tomorrow we wake at the crack of dawn, head to the border, where we'll hopefully get our visas no problem and then start out on the road to Sisaphon, around 55ish km on an apparently unpaved, potholed wreck of a road. I have a feeling we'll miss the comforts of Thailand.

Day One

2009-04-22T05:37:00.009-04:00

OK, so maybe "holy crap" should begin all our entries from here on in.

Maybe I'll start where we are and go backwards as it seems like so much has happened in the last 36 hours.

Let me start by saying that we rode 46 km today and it was between 40-43 degrees Celsius the whole time. That would be 28 miles in 104-109 degrees.

I can't even comprehend how hot that is and I was there, peddling my ass off.

Somehow, after riding under these circumstances, without having trained at all, we are alive, showered and drinking Singha beers in the most beautiful hotel ever. My mother claims she's praying for us and by God I'm certain Jesus himself dropped this hotel down here in the middle of no where late last night just so we would find it. It's like rolling up to Sax in Appalachia. It makes no sense.

Everyone always says that Thailand is so westernized, its inhabitants jaded by tourism, surely true in many parts of the county, but since we got on the train in Bangkok we have seen no one western, barely encountered anyone who speaks English and have been treated so kindly by the people that I would argue that there is a large swath of Thailand untouched by the evils of tourism.

This doesn't mean that there are not hordes of Thais who yell and jeer at us all day from road side stalls and various motorized vehicles. It's quickly becoming clear that the two of us are the laughing stock of rural Thailand. And for good reason. Who in their right mind would strap 60 pounds of crap to a bicycle and ride it for miles on end when it's over 100 degrees?

Part of what has been interesting about today is that we have no book and no formal map for Thailand. We knew we'd essentially be taking rt 33 all the way to the border and that it would only be a couple of days, so we ripped the central eastern Thailand map out of a Lonely Planet that was on the shelf at our guest house in Bangkok and supplemented it with two hand drawn maps from the girl who worked the reception at Hotel Sophia in Pachinburi, where we stayed last night.

Remarkably, this worked well. We passed 2 signs in English the whole day and incredibly they indicated the distance to our destination.

More on our train ride and our unexpected arrival after dark in Pachinburi last night coming soon. For some reason I'm tired.

Off We Go

2009-04-21T03:06:00.002-04:00

OK the bikes are bunjid to Toi's tuk tuk as I write. We're heading out of Bangkok and arriving in Pachinburi at 5:30. We'll ride to the hotel. This is the plan. tomorrow we head east on Rt 33 toward the Cambodian border.

Here's the last of our Bangkok pictures. We probably won't have internet access for a while. Greg! Sorry I missed your call. LYMI!

april 19

more pictures

2009-04-21T02:58:00.001-04:00

Bangkok 4.18

Test Run Mess

2009-04-21T02:38:00.004-04:00

Holy crap is all I have to say!
Today has been a mega doozy of a day.
We had giant plans to go see lots of cool temples and get massages
at one temple famous for them. We were going to r e l a x our last swelteringly hot
day in Bangkok before our big ride.

Our plans came to a screeching halt at 7:15 this morning while we were taking a test ride around Bangkok on our bikes (during rush hour traffic - whose idea was that?). All seemed well until Corinn lost her power steering...what? you didn't think you could lose power steering on a bicycle...well, my friend, I am here to tell you otherwise. All of a sudden as we
rounded an extremely busy turn over a canal, Corinn realized that her handlebars were turning in the opposite direction her bicycle was moving. Thankfully, she was able to stop before bouncing off any motorcycle riders.

We returned promptly to our hotel and continued to work on her bike for the next 3 hours. It appears as though the handlebars that she has were never intended for use with her bike. The loser who owned it before her put a multitude of shims in the bike. Those shims were apparently disrupted upon transit. Good thing we found out now.

We slaved over that bike today. We were unable to tighten it fully so we decided that we needed to take it to a bike shop.

For obvious reasons we had a difficult time finding a taxi that would
be big enough to take the bike as well as us. We flagged down a tiny pink taxi and to our amazement the taxi driver placed the bike - minus the front wheel standing up in the trunk.

Yes, STANDING up. He then took what appeared to be a large shoelace and tied the bike
to the part of the trunk that attaches to the car. We then drove miles through hordes of Bangkokian mayhem----I can't for a second just call it traffic.

We arrive at the nicest bike store I have ever been to. I couldn't afford a wheel in that place, let alone a whole bike. We explain our situation and it became abundantly clear that they did not believe they could help us.

Then, out of no where an older gentleman takes on our problem. He was tossing shit left and right. The bad news was that, “we no have paht dat fit ya biiike” because seemingly our bikes were far too old. In Bangkok, the land of fine bikes, with a backdrop of markets everywhere that are filled to the rim with all of America's thrift store rejects, our bike is too old for them to find us a part! Ahhhhhhhh.

After an hour, our angel of a man made the bike 100% tighter than we could with his fancy bike store tools. The bad news is that it still wiggles.. He assured Corinn that she wouldn't die because of her lack of ability to steer but told her that if she did die she should come back and see him.

Semi-confidently, we left the store and test drove it at the park across the street. All seemed okay.

We had lunch at a road side stall that served us the worst Pad See Ew I have had of the three Pad See Ew meals I have eaten since we arrived. We then flagged down a cab to take us back to our hotel. The first cab driver drove off as soon as he saw thre bike. The second cab driver shook his head when we told him that we had a bike. "it no fit" he claimed. Corinn then showed him the bike standing up in the trunk routine.

I wish I could say that was the end of our day...not even close.

We also took a really entertaining tuk tuk ride to the train station with our new Thai saviour named Toi.

We thought we would be able to leave on a train at 5am tomorrow and wanted to scope out the train station and ask some questions about taking our bikes on the train. Honestly, communication is a barrier here. Even universal hand signals don't work. I have even taken to drawing pictures in my little notebook to show people. That DEFINITELY doesn't work because I suck at drawing. Anyway, we think we found out that we will need to be on the 3:25pm train or else we can't take our bikes. Fun times. Good thing we went.

The best part of our day is that our new friend, Toi the tuk tuk driver, is going to take us to the train station tomorrow. Two bikes, a million bags, and 2 seriously crazy American girls all on a teeny tiny tuk tuk. Wait until I send those pictures.

Pictures

2009-04-17T21:18:00.001-04:00

Bangkok 4.17

Take Risks But Don’t Do Anything Stupid

2009-04-17T19:30:00.007-04:00

Wise parting words from my father at the airport.

It turns out that the most difficult leg of our trip was the one from Boston to New York. Flying to Bangkok, no problem! We rolled into JFK like the Clampetts, in a big green pick up truck with boxes instead of luggage and after unabashedly laughing at us for a few minutes, the people at Qatar checked our bikes and other boxes as if they were suitcases never charged us extra for them. What??

Other than a set of bawling 5-year-old Indian twins on leashes, an inebriated Irishman named Gordon who we couldn't’t shake in Doha , and the slightly embarrassing fact that I tried to get in the driver’s seat of our taxi at the airport (the driver said, You drive us lady? This no Europe! Ha, ha, ha.), our 20+ hour journey was entirely uneventful.

Now we’ve had a full day in Bangkok. We reassembled our bikes (no problems, Darrah, you’d be proud). We spent almost 4 hours wandering around the enormous flower market and Chinatown. We cruised up and down the river on water taxis. For $7 each we had what were supposed to be foot massages but were definitely full body massages. And in an homage to My Cousin Vinnie, we topped off our day at a food stall where we were served soup with what appeared to be liver and fried pig skin floating in it. If only I had a tiny pink disk camera and was wearing leather hot pants.

The only real problem, IT’S GOD DAMN HOT. It remains unclear how we will physically survive the actual riding our bikes part. But that comes later. By Tuesday I’m sure we’ll be fully acclimated to 99 degree heat and a 100% humidity.

Greg, as you requested:

When we arrived in Bangkok it was straight up egg bag. Not surprising since egg bag originated in Thailand.

The market - dried fish, steam, BBQ meat, jasmine and smoke.

A Little bit of Good News

2009-04-15T13:11:00.001-04:00

Ok, so it’s been pointed out to me that my last entry was not very positive. That maybe it implied I was somehow not out of my mind excited to finally be leaving on Qatar’s fine airline, beginning this big adventure.

UNTRUE I say. I am outrageously excited! But it's not all ROSES every day. It’s not like I was HAPPY I had to repack my bike 64 times and that it still wasn't small enough and I certainly wasn't high-fiving strangers over the potential revolution happening in Thailand.

What's sad is that I remember Bangkok as a magical city second only to Varanasi, India in the way of wonders I have explored thus far. I couldn't get enough of the place and I was so excited to go back to ride the mystery river taxis and eat 50 cent noodle soup for breakfast and walk barefoot through the many Wats and now I’m worried it'll just be a bust due to riotous protesters and an oppressive military presence. And even worse, I feel badly for the Thai people, half of whom seem to just want the democracy they had before the coup in 2006.

So yes, I (and Danielle too) can’t wait to arrive in Southeast Asia. I just feel some trepidation.

In other good news, we are 93% to our fundraising goal of $5,000.

Danielle foolishly agreed to eat some sort of fried larvae or Thai cricket if we happened to meet our goal before we flew out of JFK.

We’ve got less than 11 hours to raise $359. I think it’s possible. You?

A Little Bit of Bad News

2009-04-14T15:43:00.009-04:00

Well, a few days ago I though our biggest problem was our complete incompetence when it came to packing our bikes in the boxes to ready them for the flight (see video below). Clearly, we thought we knew what to expect but it was far, far more complicated than we anticipated. After an hour and a half, two phone calls to different bike shops, an undetermined number of beers, and some burnt hot dogs we packed the first bike in its box, taped it shut, measured it and found out the box was too big and Qatar would not let it on the flight anyway. Seriously? And we think we can handle this trip? The box would be allowed on any other carrier, but for some reason Qatar has militant rules regarding baggage, even sporting equipment.

But anyway, in addition to our box woes, while we were driving down to the ferry on Saturday (in two separate cars, mine full of my entire life as I officially moved out of Boston that day and Danielle's entirely full of our bikes, our bags, spare parts we're shipping to the ECPAT office in Bangkok, food, blah blah blah), I heard the news that Bangkok was in the midst of a political crisis and eventually we found out that the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency.

We've been waiting it out, trying to decide what to do as various countries have sent out official warnings to their citizens to avoid Bangkok at all costs and to cancel any travel to Thailand in general if at all possible.

In the mean time, we've been packing and repacking our bikes to try and get the boxes they're in down to to the size allowed on Qatar Air. Our bikes our now in approximately 75 pieces and each box is still 1"too big. If they're going to fight us over an inch we decided we'll bust out the tears and sob mercilessly at the check in counter until someone say OK.

In all seriousness, the real hysterics will likely begin the minute we collect ALL our crap at the airport in Bangkok and try to get it out to the taxi platform. Or maybe it'll happen when we're in our tiny hotel room trying to reassemble our bikes from scratch. Or maybe it'll happen when we take off on our bikes through the streets of Bangkok to make our way to the train station and it really sinks in that we're total IDIOTS.

It's unclear. But things have died down and the protesters have retreated in Bangkok so we're hoping to arrive as scheduled with as little drama as possible.

Our Maiden Voyage

2009-04-04T08:59:00.011-04:00

Ahhhh. We're at 70%! This is shockingly exciting! There's a very good chance we'll reach our goal before we depart. AMAZING!

Also shocking is what we're learning about bike maintenance. Other than the fact that I can't stop calling my handle bars "the steering wheel" and that I put my saddle on my seat post backwards (buns in the front), and that on two separate occasions both of our back wheels fell off WHILE we were riding due to faulty assembly, we're making tons of progress.
The word derailleur has lost its mystique and we both grasp the concept of brake and shifter cable replacement. This is good news, as it's also starting to sink in that rural Lao will not be like Boston.

Just the other morning I woke up in bed and it was sunny and I was unbelievably cozy in a nest of down and I could smell the coffee brewing downstairs and I thought to myself, wait, I'm voluntarily leaving this exceptionally comfortable security to ride a BICYCLE through a part of the world entirely unknown to me during the MONSOON and the only thing familiar to me will be Danielle??

When I have these moments of uncertainty I think of two things:
1. The ridiculous hilarity that ensues whenever we're together in a foreign place
2. The children who will benefit from our doing this

We'll have to redefine the meaning of security from April 15 forward.

Yesterday, we finally packed our panniers to simulate Worst Case Weight Management Scenario. It was our maiden voyage with our panniers at capacity and to those who saw us peddling down the street it looked like we were really going somewhere. Little did they know that our bags were filled to the brim with cans of re-fried beans, Campbell's soup, various books and miscellaneous household cleaners.

It wasn't half as bad as we had suspected it would be.

In other news, we both had our final days of work on Friday. Talk about emotional. We were both lucky enough to have had jobs that we actually really liked for the most part, so it was relatively traumatic to say goodbye.

And here I am on my first Monday off, awake and cleaning the kitchen at 6 am because the list of things I have to remember to do before we leave Boston on Saturday wouldn't stop growing in my head.

I think we've said it before, but we are truly astonished by everyone's support. People we work with, friends and family we rarely have the chance to see, and of course those we see all the time, have all been so generous. Thank you so much.

Countdown

2009-03-24T07:49:00.000-04:00

April 15th is barreling toward us and everything is starting to fall into place (due to lots and lots of work!). We're both in kind of a frenetic state. Excited doesn't really cover it.

Carol at ECPAT USA and Nadine at ECPAT International have been great! Check out ECPAT International's mention of our trip front and center on their web page: http://www.ecpat.net/EI/index.asp.

We've been stunned by everyone's generosity and support. To date we've raised $1600 for ECPAT and our goal is to reach $5,000 before we even step foot into JFK on April 15th. Possible? This entire thing has made us realized that anything is possible really. Donations of any amount count and no donation is too small.

In other news, our panniers arrived form Arkel and they are full of useful secret pockets and are so easy to get on and off our racks. I'm personally obsessed with the giant cooler-sized handle bar bags. I'm a pack rat at heart and love to have all my things with me. Numerous friends have made sorting through my purse a regular form of entertainment. An impromptu inspection of my bag always comes up with essentials like plastic cowboy figurines, screw drivers, chop sticks, seam rippers, toothpaste and Pez dispensers. I know a couple of people who would likely pay some $$ to meet me in Hoi An or maybe Battambang just to mock me while they rummage through the mysterious and senseless contents of my bags (gebs? Zoe? Mr. H?). What will I acquire?

Not only is Arkel amazing, but Schwalbe sent us their Marathon Plus Touring tires and tubes and we are now adept, yes ADEPT, at changing tires. However, I'm betting that we get very few flats due to the fact that we'll be using the Rambo of tires.

AND Planet Bike also sent us a box of wonders! It's been like Christmas every day. They sent us everything from locks to mini pumps to the cushiest, most extravagant touring saddles ever. They're so cushy and over sized that I'm a little embarrassed.

Also, we found out about an ECPAT Italy sponsored rehabilitation center for children and female victims of human trafficking that was recently opened in Savannakhet, Laos and are hoping to visit there during our ride. The program was opened by the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare in Laos and Acting for Women in Distressing Situations (AFESIP) with the help of ECPAT Italy and will prepare women and children for reintegration into society by providing safe housing, psychological counseling and vocational training.

2009-02-28T08:15:00.001-05:00

If this is any indication of what's to come it's going to be a long three months.

I've recently gotten really nervous. I can't stop thinking about all the dogs out there in Southeast Asia. They're everywhere. Roaming free. And they're going to chase us. Everything I read suggests investing in dog spray. What is dog spray though? Dog mace? Will it injure these poor dogs or just infuriate them enough so they won't be satisfied with simply chasing us, but will want to retaliate with their gruesome yellow teeth?

I had an encounter with a Labrador-sized monkey in India and it was hands down the most terrifying experience I've ever had with an animal.

Danielle's Costa Rican turkey was different. Clearly, the most it could do was peck at us with its hideous beak, yet we still FREAKED out. This turkey's residence was between the little place we were renting and the beach. Being a turkey, it had nothing to do all day other than strut around in the street waiting for innocent victims to harass. Our first meeting went something like this:

I cruise up on my bike and it immediately charges me clucking and screeching wildly while its repulsive gobble flops around its beak. I FREAK OUT, screaming like a little girl. Danielle suddenly appears at my side like Cat Woman and blocks the turkey with her bike, allowing me to escape. I ride to safety and turn around only to see Danielle detained and defending her ground with her bicycle. Screaming and laughing ensues.

Every day thereafter we had to muster up the courage to pass this turkey. The second day my immediate reaction upon seeing the turkey in the road ahead of me was terror. We were on foot and I argued that we had to go back and get our bikes but Danielle was the turkey whisperer.

She told me to walk slowly and NOT look at it. In spite of my anxiety, I semi-casually walked past it while looking in the opposite directions and repeating aloud "I'm not looking at you. I'm not looking at you." I could hear it gobbling and I could see it moving with me in my peripheral vision. But it didn't attack.

I went over all of this in my head early this morning while I was lying in bed feeling scared about dogs. Maybe I'll just not look at them?

A Loose Route Map

2009-02-21T13:08:00.000-05:00

I'm not really sure how to use this yet. If you scroll over to Asia our tentative route is plotted. I have no idea how to make it come up automatically.

View Larger Map

An Unrelated Story About Flats

2009-02-21T12:05:00.000-05:00

Danielle just reminded me about our Big Flat Disaster. She is right, I have never gotten a flat, but she has and I was with her and it was an epic mess that ended up with me driving a car in a torrential downpour while wearing a bicycle helmet.

It was July. We were about 16 miles out of Boston on our bikes. We had $4, no credit cards, no IDs, no spare tire, no pump, no cell phones. The sky to the east was dark and threatening. Danielle's front tire was suddenly flat as a pancake. We deliberated and decided I would ride off with my $4 and find a bike shop and do what??

That wasn't really clear.

I left her on a bench under a big tree and rode toward the thunder. I had no idea where I was because we had ridden out on a bike path and I took the road in search of a bike shop. Approximately 2 minutes into my ride I realized my mission was doomed as I had

1. no idea where the nearest bike shop was
2. no money and nothing to even barter with
3. monsoon style rain pretty much drowning me
4. firetrucks bearing down on me with their engines blaring and lights flashing

I made a last minute decision to ride back to Cambridge at top speed, where I would get the car and return to rescue Danielle. But I didn't know where I was so I followed signs to Boston, which worked well until the sign delivered me onto the entrance ramp of Rt 2. I paused for a second and then went for it.

I felt like an actor in a ridiculous play. The thunder and lightening set the scene with ample dramatics while I rode down the circular entrance ramp on my bike in my pink running shorts.

I rode over the rumble strips and made my way on the highway all the way back to Cambridge in record time where I got the car and drove to rescue Danielle.

The rain was so bad that every car on the highway pulled over to wait it out. I persisted. Slowly inching along. It was around this time that I caught a view of myself in the rear view mirror and saw that I was driving the car with my bike helmet on.

In the end the rescue mission was a success. In spite of the fact that Danielle spent about 45 minutes near tears because she was 100% convinced that I was dead, we tossed her bike in the back seat and had it fixed at a bike shop (of course).

Qatar Air Will Deliver Us To Bangkok

2009-02-21T11:07:00.000-05:00

We bought our tickets!

April 15 we hit it from JFK and will arrive in Bangkok on the 17th. Fresh and shiny and naive as hell. We can't wait!

We've begun taking private bike maintenance lessons from a former MassArt classmate of mine. We know shockingly little about bike maintenance it turns out. This isn't really surprising actually.

The first 6 years I lived in Boston I had 5 bikes stolen (one of them was stolen twice, the first time by an ex-convict who went by the name Mother Jones, among other fine aliases. He was apprehended by the MassArt police who chased him up Mission Hill in their van and charged him with grand larceny. A true travesty, as this sent him right back to jail, from which he'd apparently been released only two days earlier. I still feel badly about it because the bike he stole cost me $44.95 at Walmart and was in no way worthy of grand larceny status. It was a fine bike though, I rode it nearly every day for two years and didn't have to bring it in to a bike shop once.).

ANYWAY, I've had all these bikes stolen. I've ridden in rain, sleet, snow, slush, 95 degree melting asphalt days and I've never gotten a flat tire. Not once. I've only brought my bikes in for routine tune ups. And being that I live in a city, I'm never far from a bike shop and it's allowed me to be l.a.z.y.

Why investigate the workings of my bike if I can pay a small fee for a professional to do it?

Well, those days are over. I can barely change a tire and that's about to change. I'm not really that worried about it though, if I can't manage I've already informed Danielle that in addition to fending off all dogs, she is responsible for fixing my flats.

Though we shouldn't have ANY flats because the nice people at Schwalbe have provided us with the most amazing tires ever. The Marathon Plus Touring tires are supposed beasts and can apparently withstand all sorts of abuse . We can't wait to test them out.

The Origin

2009-01-22T12:10:00.000-05:00

It started out as a challenge, more of a joke. Let's just BIKE through Southeast Asia. And somehow, it's turned into a real event. That's happening in April. To us.

We are two 30-something year old women who love to travel. Upon recent visits to Thailand, India and China, the horrors that face children in these parts of the world became dreadfully evident. Child sex tourism and trafficking are rampant abuses all over Asia and the problem needs to be brought to light and eradicated.

As human beings, it was not only painful to witness these crimes, but as Westerners, we were ashamed that it was our fellow countrymen who appeared to be the primary perpetrators of these atrocities. According to ECPAT, about 25% of the sex tourists who abuse children while traveling abroad are American. At first we felt only outrage and helplessness, but we were determined to find a way that we could help contribute to the solution.

We are presently planning a 3 month bicycle ride throughout Southeast Asia to raise money for ECPAT International, a global network of organizations and individuals working together for the elimination of child prostitution, child pornography and the trafficking of children for sexual purposes (http://www.ecpat.net/EI/index.asp). In addition to the funds we will raise, we aim to raise awareness about the sexual exploitation of children in Asia and around the world.

For an ECPAT history follow this link: http://www.ecpat.net/EI/Ecpat_history.asp.

As ECPAT International could not help us provide a tax deductible donation system, we are funneling our donations to ECPAT International through ECPAT USA
http://www.ecpatusa.org/whoweare.html. ECPAT USA is excited about our ride and is anxious to help us get our money to ECPAT International.

We know that touring Southeast Asia via bike will present fantastic opportunities and incredible challenges, which is exactly why we're so excited about the prospect. Biking brings happiness and freedom to our lives in a way that nothing else does and we hope that by raising money for ECPAT International we can contribute, even in a small way, to bringing some kind of happiness and freedom to children in need.

This blog will track our journey.