Volunteering in Natong, Laos - Unforgettable

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Yesterday was a very sad morning for me. It was the morning I had to say goodbye to some really amazing people I had the pleasure of meeting and working with over the course of the last 7 days.


As I wrote in my last post, I got in touch with a local community centre in a small town called Natong, just outside of Vang Vien to see if I could help them. The organization is called SAELAO and is an officially registered non-profit in France. It is run by two incredible people: Sengkeo and Anais. Sengkeo is originally from Laos but lived 12 years in Canada. Anais is from Toulouse France and met Sengkeo a year or so ago and this is when they decided to found SAELAO. The mission is a combination of education and employment opportunities for the locals. It focuses on three major areas of formation: english classes for local children and adults, sustainable construction and eco-friendly farming. The english courses started almost 1 year ago and have become extremely popular with the local children, with over 45 children attending daily english courses in the evening. They also employ 3-4 locals for construction needs and 1 local to cook in the restaurant. The restaurant and "shake shack" on the premises is a way to raise additional funds for the association and also to draw foreigners onto the property so they can learn about the association.

As they picked me up outside my hostel the first day, I announced to them that I would be open to doing any work that would be needed of me, but that my principal interest was in teaching english. And so, my first morning was spent lugging huge rocks in a wheel barrow over to the construction site for the foundation of what is soon to be the "volunteer bungalow".

Over lunch, sitting in the restaurant, I noticed that foreigners would come by, read the volunteers wanted sign, linger a bit, then walk off. I also noticed that the cook knew very little english and was overwhelmed with the cooking to try and push the association. I spoke to Sengkeo and told him I think I could be of better use, helping in the restaurant and marketing the association to foreigners who come and read the signs. He accepted, and my days of carrying rocks were over...I had been promoted!

That afternoon I spoke with a few guests who came to have shakes and handed out pamphlets about the association. Patronage increased and feedback was very positive. Having a "falang" (foreigner) around, really helped to increase business for the restaurant. On my 2nd day of work in the restaurant, revenue doubled. On day 3, the restaurant shattered all revenue records and recorded more than triple its avg revenue. Sengkeo was thrilled and wanted me in the restaurant all the time. Furthermore, I was able to push the cause and promote volunteering. During one conversation, I met a journalist writing about sustainability projects in developing countries and a meeting was setup with Anais so this journalist could do a piece on us!

In the evenings I would also teach english to 15 students (ages 12-18). These students easily understood words they read, but put into a spoken sentence, they rarely understood. I was nervous for my first lesson but it went well. I learnt that their main area of weakness was verbs and I decided to focus my remaining lessons on these. Over the course of the week, I saw improvements with key verbs To be and To have. Seeing the progress in my students was a really amazing experience. It made me not want to leave. I also got attached to several of the students. One particular girl named Sivan, was helping in the restaurant during the day and attending the lessons during the evening. She came from Ventiane, but when her mom became ill, her dad had to stay home and care for her and there wasnt enough funds to feed her and her sister. And so, they came to Ventiane to live with extended family, which happened to be Sengkeo. This girl was very bright, worked really hard, and always had a smile on her face. All the students were extremely polite, asking for permission to enter and exit the classroom and all bowing at the end of the lesson to thank me and say goodnight.

I would have loved to stay longer but given the time constraints of my trip and the fact that I'm departing from Hong Kong, I was unable to. In staying 10 days in Vang Vien, I made a crucial decision to cut Indonesia from this trip, a hard decision to make. In hindsight, I'm glad I did because this was truly the most genuine, incredible experience of my trip, one that I will never forget. I do plan to return to Natong and volunteer again, and also to help out financially once I am back in Canada.

Stay tuned for pics!

Mekong River Cruise & Luang Prabang & Vang Vien - Laos

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From Pai, Greg, Tara (Kiwis) and I took off for the Laos Border, where we would do a 2 day slow boat ride along the Mekong River from Chiang Khong to Luang Prabang with a stopover in this tiny town called Pak Beng.

The scenery along the Mekong River was unreal, trees and greenery I had never seen before, vines and jungle and gorgeous mountains. Small villages along the way where you can see the locals fishing and young children playing.

A small hiccup right before the boat took off though. The boats try to pack as many tourists in them as they can to the point where people need to sit on the floor because there aren't enough seats. Well, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook, if enough people make enough of a fuss, they will call in a second boat and split the group in 2. So an angry mob of people starting protesting and yelling at people to get off the boat, it sort of turned into a riot and finally they got what they wanted and a 2nd boat pulled up. Either way, I had bought a little butt cushion and found the floor to be more comfortable.

The stopover was in this tiny village called Pak Beng in the middle of the jungle where the entire village runs on generators and there is a 10:30pm curfiew. I had my first experience at lao food here, trying water buffalo out, really good.

Arrived in Luang Prabang, 6 of us had become good friends from 2 days on the slowboat and we lucked out finding a large room in the attic of a guesthouse with 6 beds. It was Greg and Tara (kiwis), Evelyn (NYC), Sarah (Victoria) and David (Madrid) and we spent our 3 days in Luang Prabang together.

Luang Prabang was much more luxurious than I expected. It also had hints of french culture and architecture, left behind from the old French Indo-China period. For example, the schools, banks and other public locations all have their signs written in french. At breakfast, I was served a baguette rather than toast. This town is also very relaxed, with an 11pm curfiew and the only place that stays open late is the local bowling alley, which picks up after everything is closed. I indulged in a foot massage one evening ($4/hour) and also hot steam sauna, which was quite neat. The other night we hit the bowling alley. I guess for the locals its a big deal to go out to the bowling alley since they were all dressed up like they were going to a club, it was funny to watch.

Aside from the language, Lao and Thai culture is rather different. Lao people are much less pushy and salesy and much more laid back. They also tend to smile alot more. I have yet to see any prostitution. Its almost as though they haven't "sold out" their culture in the face of the big rise in tourism, which is nice to see.

The last thing we saw in Luang Prabang was this really beautiful waterfall, where you can swim at the base and further down there are several other pools to swim, do tarzan rope, and even swim under and behing smaller falls.

From Laung Pabang, Evelyn, Greg and I left for Vang Vien.

Vang Vien is known for pretty much 1 thing: tubing. The town is flooded with mainly British and North American tourists all there to do a 3.5 km tubing experience down a river lined with bars. Its absolute insanity. Every bar gives out free lao whiskey and they all have competitions for you to win even more free drinks. Everyone is covered in body paint and later on actual spray paint and all along there are slides, trapeze and zip lines to hop into the river along the way. Most people don't make it passed the third bar and never actually end up using their tube. That's what happened to our group. I did it 2 days ago now and I don't think I will be doing it again (no details needed). I met this Canadian guy named Trent who has been doing it everyday for 331 days straight... trying to hit 365.

Aside from the tubing, there are also cool caves a few km's away from Vang Vien. We rented scooters and took off for Pukham caves. It was a stint of bad luck that day . Two nails ended up giving me two flat tires in the span of 10 minutes and my friend Tara bailed and crashed her scooter. The day had a happy ending though as on the way back from the caves I came across this small village where there was a community center looking for volunteers to teach the local children english. I met the owners and they were very eager for any help I could offer.

My group of friends all left today for Vientiane but I decided to stay behind and see if I can firm up some volunteer work with this tiny center. I will keep you posted on my progress.

Chiang Mai & Pai / Northern Thailand

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From Kanchanaburi, I had to return through Bangkok to take an overnight bus into the north of Thailand. The main hub for northern Thailand is a city called Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai is the second biggest city in Thailand but it doesnt feel that big in comparison to Bangkok. The beauty of Chiang Mai isnt the city itself, but all the amazing nature and landscape it has to offer in the surrounding country side.

My bus arrived first thing in the morning and I headed straight for Julie's guesthouse, which was suppose to be the most popular and chill place for backpackers.. i lucked in since i was the first one to arrive i had priority. Upon check-in, I met a cool kiwi and german and we agreed to share a triple... I would end up spending the next several days with these guys, good people.

First day in Chiang Mai we toured the old city and chilled out by the river. We visited a few Wats (buddhist temples). It was pretty low key from the bus-lag most people had from the long overnight bus.

Day two, we rented scooters and headed up the big mountain nearby for a gorgeous view of the city and country side. We stopped off at a nice waterfall on the way and a monk temple as well. We also stopped for lunch at a beautiful lake where they built small huts right over the water for groups to eat. This is where I had my first experience with Jumping Shrimp... they serve it in this little bowl with alot of thai spices and herbs. When you open the bowl all the little baby shrimp are still alive and start jumping out. That's when you're suppose to get your spoon in there and shove them in your mouth alive as they are still jumping around. gross. I had to try it though since everyone in our small group had and didn't want to be the wimpy guy. It was soooo weird to eat something still alive, but kind of tasty.

Day three was early wake up for Greg (the kiwi), Manu (german) and I to leave for Pai, 4 hours north east of Chiang Mai.

I fell in love with Pai. Its worth repeating, I fell absolutely in love with Pai.

Pai is this small little town built along a river with gorgeous unbelievable landscape. During the day, you tour the countryside, visiting waterfalls, tiger temples, elephant camps and hill tribes. In the evening the town transforms into one big lively market, thats all lit up and full of life. There are also relly great chilled out bars and amazing street food. I had my own hut right near the river for 100 bacht ($3) and my own scooter for $1.5/day...

Day 1 I toured around on the scooter. We headed for hot baths to start... as we approached the entrance to the baths we spotted a girl riding a young elephant. Turns out she was also a kiwi and she told us how amazing this little elephant was and how much she recommended the tour.. I told myself I would do it the following day. She ended up on the back of one of our scooters and off we went for a waterfall. This waterfall wasn't particularly big, but deep and you could swim underneath it, which was cool. In the evening, I ran into Gus (swede) and Melvyn (dutch) from previous city. By early evening, we had a possy of about 10 people hitting the town. It was really cool to have a big possy of friends all travelling solo, you sort of build this instant connection you wouldn't normally have being at home with your normal friends.

Day 2 - Was a late start and off I went with Melvyn and Manu for the elephant ride. I shotgunned the little elephant. To get on him, I had to step on his trunk and he would lift me up onto his back, it was really scary and cool. He was the cutest elephant ever! Manu and Melvyn shared an older big guy. Off we went on our hike. My little elephant spent the whole time veering off course to eat and doing as he pleased. Then we got to a small river and thats where the fun started... they told us we could go in the water with our elephants so I expected us to walk through water. Boy was I mistaken... Upon seeing the water, my little elephant got excited and marched full speed ahead into the water while I held on for dear life. Once he got deepp enough, he plunged himself underwater with me on his back. It was incredible! My little elephant was like a little kid in a pool splashing around and rolling over, grabbing me with his trunk and trying to twirl me in the water too. I could even stand and surf on his belly...that little elephant was definately a highlight of my trip so far. In some weird way, he reminded me of TT (tina's dog) in the way he was so playful. It took forever to get him out of the water, he just kept playing!

Day 3 in Pai was spent touring again and just relaxing, enjoying the town and touring to see more waterfalls and countryside.

That evening I left on an evening bus with Greg (kiwi) and Tara (elephant kiwi) for the Laos border, where we would begin a two day slow boat journey on the Maekong River to Luang Prabang. I will give you more of this later!

Hope all is well at home.

Volunteer work with local Thai business in Kanchanaburi

After I wrote my blog post last night, I went back to the guesthouse. Inside the guesthouse there is a small tourist desk where you can book excursions in and around Kanchanaburi. The young woman at the desk had been very helpful with me the day before and so I went to chat with her a bit to thank her. The previous day, I had noticed several spelling mistakes and overall poor writing in their excursion brochure; their only real sales and marketing documentation. I explained how I wanted to help them by re-working their excursion brochure. Due to the language barrier, she didn't understand what I was trying to offer but I did manage to understand that their main office was down the road and the woman in charge was named Charlie.

And so, this morning I woke up a bit early and headed over to the main office to introduce myself to Charlie. She was extremely receptive to my help and began to give me blank paper, a copy of her brochure, a desk and a bottle of water so I could begin work. It took me about 1.5 hours to go through the brochure and clean it up. Then I spent about 20 minutes with her going through my suggestions and she liked them. We exchanged contact information and I told her I was open to helping her at any point down the road.

Unfortunately my timing was a bit off. She had just printed off 20,000 copies of this brochure for the upcoming busy season and would not be able to make the changes until next season. Nonetheless, she was very thankful for my help and said she would use mu suggestions down the road.

Thai people being rather proud and headstrong, I wasn't convinced that offering my help would yield a positive response. Now that it has, I will continue to offer up help as I continue my trip.

Bangkok and Kanchanaburi (Bridge over the River Kwae)

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Bangkok

I spent 3 nights in Bangkok in the famous backpacker district of Banglamphu near Kao San Road. Its basically a backpacker ghetto with lots of bars and restaurants and really cool shopping where you can find dirt cheap clothes and designer replicas...
I was told that the nightlife was crazy here but was surprised to notice on my first night that bars closed at 2am just like back home and then smaller quieter restaurants stayed open later if you wanted to stay up. The best thing to do is wonder the streets, look around at the action, shop and taste all the amazing street food.. BBQ'd corn on the cob, padthai, fresh fruit, fruit shakes...

Aside from that, after 3 full days in Bangkok, I can truly walk away stating one fact assertively: Bangkok is the most amazing shopping city I have ever been to. Huge shopping center's with amazing designer replicas of everything under the sun, and DIRT cheap. You can go to a suit store and pick up 2 custom fitted suits + 2 shirts + 2 ties for.... drum roll.... $180 USD. 1 suit will cost as low as $60 USD. Incredible. I plan to return to Bangkok to do my xmas shopping prior to going home. The wheels were also turning in my head for all the amazing import opportunities there could be here. other amazing examples of cheap stuff:
-packs of 100 earings: $5 CDN
-packs of 10 bracelets the kind you find in the market in ottawa for $10 each: $4
-designer wallets (good replicas): $9
-designer jeans (diesel): $22 CDN
and the list goes on and on....

Aside from shopping, I can't say that anything really stood out for me. I saw the main tourist attractions: Great Palace, the huge laying buddha, Jim Thompson's house (1st american to import thai silk), Siam Square and Night Bazaar. All these were pretty cool. After 3 days though, I felt like it was time to leave, especially since I knew I would come back afterwards for shopping and likely to fly out to Indonesia later on in the month.

My travel buddy Arnold wanted to hit Chianot where he had met a guy who was starting a bird watching Guesthouse and offered him a place to stay. I was fascinated with the history of Kachanaburi famous for the Bridge over the River Kwae. And so, after several weeks of travelling together, we split ways. It was a bit sad as we had gotten to know one another quite well and had become good friends. I am sure we will reconvene in northern thailand or perhaps in Laos.

Kanchanaburi - historical and weird random local encounter.

The bus ride took over 3.5 hours. I thought the bus ride out would give me an understanding of just how big Bangkok is...but the suburbs NEVER ENDED. So the entire bus ride was actually felt like it was driving threw Bangkok suburbs... Bangkok really is amazingly big and sprawling.

Kanchanaburi itself is a small peaceful town right on the River Kwae. I'm staying at a chilled out guesthouse with hammocks right on the water. There are cool floating restaurants along the river. Today I rented a motorbike and decided to do the historical sites on my own rather than pay alot to do a guided tour.

I began at the Railway museum to learn about why the bridge over the river kwae was so famous (all I knew was that there was a movie made about it). Turns out this railway bridge was commissioned by the Japanaese during the second world war as a strategic way of getting supplies from Thailand into Burma while Japan occupied SE Asia. Due to the rough terrain, this railway would prove extremely difficult and labour intensive. To this effect, the Japanese would force thousands of British, Australian and American POW's as well as locals to build it. They would labour in awful conditions with little food, medical attention, and rest. Thousands of POW's died in the construction of the railway (which is now dubbed The Death Railroad) and the worst of this was in the construction of the Railway Bridge crossing the River Kwae. With normal labour circumstances, estimations were that it would take 5 years to complete the railway but with these POW's, the japanese were able to complete it in 16 months, the bridge taking only 6. The bridge was bombed several times by the allies but rebuilt.

So I walked the historical Bridge, visited the museum and also the beautiful Allied Cemetery nearby. I really enjoyed learning about this historical town and also enjoyed the low key vibe.

Then later this afternoon, I encountered the most random thai local woman. I met her while in a shopping center looking for shampoo and soap. She just walking right up to me and asked me where I was from smiling and, I think, trying to flirt with me. I knew this woman must of have been at least 40 but despite this she kept on. I remained polite and answered her questions, thinking, this is kind of cool to be interacting with a local. Then she asked me if I was single. I proceeded to give her my age and tell her I was too young for her. She laughed saying she was 40 but then asked me if I would have a coffee with her. My first reaction was to decline but then I thought, what the heck, I'll put a smile on this woman's face by accepting. Right after I acccepted she bluntly says "Can you pay for me"... oh boy. I say yes sure. We get to the coffee shop, I order a coffee, she tells me she doesnt want coffee and orders herself an expensive ice cream sundae...lovely. I dont protest but thought all this was either a setup or this woman had a few screws loose.

In the end we had a good conversation and I learnt alot about her and she asked alot of questions about me, despite the strong language barrier. She asked for my email and then when she gave me hers, I noticed it ended with her name 1963@hotmail.com. 40 eh??...roight...Then I confronted her about her age and she told me the truth. She was 46. After coffee, I told her I needed to go to the bus station to buy my next ticket, she followed....I started to feel uncomfortable...but turned out she actually helped me at the bus station. Finally I managed to loose her by noticing a backpacker at the bus station and starting a convo with him...that was my first authentic long conversation with a local...random.

Well looks like I'm headed north tomorrow. Sorry if this was a bit of a windbag post.

Pat

Pics Available!

For those who are reading this message and do not use facebook, you can find pics of my trip so far by clicking on this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2268446

Pat

The Boat Ride of Doom.

I finally arrived in Bangkok after a long bus ride and before that, the absolutely wildest bumpiest boat ride of my life from Koh Tao to the mainland...huge waves everywhere crashing and rocking the boat from all sides... I think about 50% of the boat was sea sick with their little gross puke bag full...awful. Naturally, I was within that lucky 50% of sick people, probably the first to kick things off... it was absolutely a nightmare. My travel buddy Arnold is a sailor so he spent the whole time eating munchies and loving life while I had my head in the toilet bowl in the washroom... more news from Bangkok once I settle in.

Half-Moon and Koh Tao

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Half Moon party was everything I imagined and more. Picture 1000 half naked neon-painted backpackers in the middle of the jungle with rave music blarring until the early hours of the morning. The vibe was incredible.

It also included one very sobering event that was quite tragic. We arrived and began dancing on these large stone steps. We noticed this really drunk dude passed out on a small bench at the top of the steps and was sort of just sitting there past out. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere, passed out, he topples over, tumbling head first down two levels of stone steps hitting his head and landing on his back. When we went down to see, he was completely unconscious and bleeding from the eye and ear. He snapped out of it and regained consciousness. He had nobody with him. The police came, flashed a light in his eyes, gave him some water and left. We had met a Kiwi at the party who was a doctor and was convinced this guy needed to be in a hospital, so we carried him out and found him an ambulance, which they were initially reluctant to take him. Anyway, this event made me realize these parties are good fun but dangerous and the concept of liability and accountability in Thailand is non-existant.

In line with that, last night my travel buddy Arnold was struck nearly in the face with a flamming numchuck (they were putting on a fire show on the beach). The fire struck him in the chest and blackened his shirt, scaring the crap out of him in the process. The bar's response: "you shouldnt have been sitting so close"...guess what?the bar sets up the cushions for people to sit on and we werent close. They even refused to clean his shirt.

Moving on to greener pastures...

We left Koh Pagnan (half-moon party island) for a much smaller island 40 km north called Koh Tao. The vibe here is much more low key. It is known as divers paradise. it actually has the world's busiest dive school and people from all over the world come to get their certification for cheap. The people seem to be much more active and the focus is less on nightlife and more on what the islands underwater world has to offer. We have been here for a 4 nights and I'm really enjoying the tranquility. I decided not to dive since I had already tried it in Panama, instead I stuck to the more cost efficient alternative of snorkelling which was still really amazing and saw lots of really cool fish. I even did a 1.5 hour swim to this tiny island at the north of Koh Tao. The beach there was the most beautiful I had ever seen and the color of the water was unbelievable (I'll post some pics to try and do it some justice).

I also celebrated Halloween here. It was sad, for the first time in several years I would not have the props to be my usual character of Harry Potter.... instead, getting our hands on some blue paint and a chef hat, I became Papa Smurf and my friend Helen Smurfette. My dutch friend Arnold needed barely a costume to pull off Schwartzanegger. All we needed was to paint an ammunition belt over his chest and give him a bandana and some wounds... it was spot on. The lady boy cabaret bar even put on a special halloween cabaret show which was a bit disturbing but fun to watch. Then we headed out to a few halloween parties around the small town. Arnold loved his first Halloween (they dont have it in Holland) and vows he wants to make it to Canada for the next one.

Anyway, my days of beach bumming are coming to a close, tomorrow I leave for Bangkok. I think after three weeks on small islands, living the beach bummer dream, its time to move on to a bit more adventure and nature. The plan is to get a feel for Bangkok for a few days and then head into northern thailand.

Hope life is good back home.