jinja, uganda.

i just arrived in kampala a few hours ago, but i had a great 36 hours in jinja, a few hours east of here. the city is at the start of the nile, as it comes out of lake victoria. uganda has been a nice change from kenya, it's so green!

i'm staying at a friend's apartment in kampala, but will be moving around a lot in the next 10 days. i'll spend a few days east in iganga, a few days north in lira, and a day an hour west of kampala.

today i went for a killer mountain bike ride. it was just me and my guide alex. i told him to push me, and he did! a few photos below.

remember to always bike with appropriate gear. 

alex's favorite food item is a 'rolex,' a rolled chapati with egg, cabbage and chiles. the chapati man in the village we stopped in didn't know how to make a rolex, so alex showed him. 

class 5-6 rapids along the nile.

take a soda.

tipping in kenya (like much of the world) is very uncommon outside of major resorts and hotels. i still choose to tip for two reasons: 1. i tip at home and it feels natural to do so here. 2. i'm compelled by the debate over whether just giving people money (vs. other services we deem as vital) is an effective way of helping people.

although this article alludes to cash transfers on a much larger scale (say oportunidades) i feel like my tips serve a similar (albeit dramatically smaller) purpose. many (maybe most) people in kisumu still earn between 1-2 dollars a day. a tip of a dollar or two may amount to a day's income. today i took a tuktuk home and because the driver told me (because i asked) that most days he struggles to take home any money at all (because of the rising price of gas) i paid him twice the rate we'd agreed on ($2 instead of $1). this is a tough moral debate. many people would probably criticize me for doing this -- they might call it patronizing or an artificial inflation of prices in a way that will affect other customers. for me, it's the most direct way i have to get money into the hands of those who need it.

silas and jennifer (head nurse) in front of rota dispensary building 1 (30 minutes nw of kisumu)

rota dispensary building 2, with rota village behind

over the past two days i visited three different health clinics, and sat down with a bunch of government officials, as part of my attempt to better understand the health care system in kenya. in a country in which a lack of significant development progress over the past few decades can be blamed as much on corruption of local government as on the (woefully inadequate) good intentions of the nonprofit industry, i take any opportunity i have to get small quantities of money into the hands of the 'right' people. i'd be curious to hear what others think on this. i could write for pages on kenya's healthcare system (in fact, i did, but am sparing you), so i will stop here!

the title of the post is a reference to what multiple people have said when i tip them. instead of saying thank you, they say 'oh, now i can take a soda!' silas, the kisumu local i've spent the last two days with, shared with me that because soda is considered a luxury item, when people come across extra money, they allude to the freedom they now have to buy something above and beyond basic necessities. this truth may also compromise my argument about giving people money -- many would worry (somewhat condescendingly in my opinion) that people will just take cash and spend it on frivolous goods -- but who am i to decide how it's spent?

more photos from kisumu to come.

on sierra leone, from kenya

i'm actually writing this post from nairobi, where i arrived yesterday at 4:45am, after flying through the night from freetown via accra. nairobi is an amazing change from freetown, much more developed than i expected.

nairobi skyline

i've been trying to come up with an adjective to describe sierra leone, and all i can come up with is REAL. sierra leone ranks 180 out of 187 on the UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI), making it the poorest country i have visited to date. the most important thing to keep in mind about these numbers, though, is that they are an average of the total population, meaning there are inevitably people who are much wealthier and much poorer than the average indicates. what this means is that the poverty affecting sierra leoneans also affects subsets of populations in other countries. i've seen this poverty elsewhere, just not with the same frequency.

freetown, like many other major cities in africa, is struggling to manage the influx of people from the countryside, who continue to pour in with the hopes of earning more money. a few people told me the population of freetown is approaching 2 million. the city is a winding network of single lane roads, meaning getting from one side of town to the other can take more than 2 hours. hundreds of people stream by, weaving in and out of traffic, as cars inch forward slowly enough that people often just turn them off in the street.

i was in sierra leone to meet with two nonprofits: door of hope (doh.seeyourimpact.org) and village bicycle project (vbp.seeyourimpact.org). these organizations are doing incredible work with very limited resources.

doh is run by a man named joshua handy who was discovered by our us 501(c)(3) partner, develop africa about two years ago. doh started when joshua began to use much of the salary he earned as a teacher ($100/month) to buy school supplies for the children in his community. with help from develop africa and seeyourimpact, joshua's program has grown to include a daily after school program for over 300 children taught by 8 volunteer teachers, a mosquito net distribution program (1000 mosquito nets distributed), and a tailoring school with almost 20 female students.

after school program

unexpected thank you/dance party from DOH's director, joshua sandy

meeting with the board of the FAWE girls school, a partner of DOH

vbp is an organization with an established presence in ghana (almost 50,000 bikes distributed), that is just getting started in sierra leone. i was able to be there for the second shipment of bicycles they have received (each shipment contains between 400-600 bikes). the process vbp uses to remain sustainable is fascinating. they sell more than half of each shipment on the local market to help pay for the approximately $11,000 it costs to ship the bikes from where they are donated and get them through customs. the remaining bikes are distributed in rural communities at half the market price. the founder of village bicycle project, dave, and i spent all day in the town of lunsar (80 miles east of freetown) and a few surrounding villages. it was amazing to see how many of the bikes his team distributed from the first shipment that are still in use and running well.

checking up on bikes from the previous distribution - the man on the right is the local bike mechanic, kareem

with dave and jack, a program coordinator, in the village of mofuke

i'll be in nairobi until monday, when i fly to kisumu, a town in western kenya. i'll spend four days there with two different organizations, humanity for children (hfc.seeyourimpact.org) and innovations for poverty action (poverty-action.org). i'm enjoying having a quiet weekend, catching up on email and sleep. last night i met a few rainer arnolds fellows working in social enterprise in nairobi. it was a great glimpse into the expat nonprofit life here!

freetown hotel view

and so it begins!

stella to prepare for my 3 hour layover in paris -- cartoons because i like cartoons

hey team,

it has been almost three years since my last post on this blog... last week, one of my mba applications asked me to 'describe a life experience that has shaped you.' perhaps not surprisingly, i wrote about my bike trip, and in the process, i had a blast rereading the posts on this blog.

tomorrow i leave for africa, and i hope to write a few posts while i'm on the road. my rough trip itinerary is:

• sierra leone - 10/30 - 11/3
• kenya - 11/4 - 11/12
• uganda - 11/13 - 11/21

check back for the occasional story!

b

3750 km (ho chi minh city).

the end!

i've gotten a little lazy with photos in the last few weeks, but here are some highlights from vietnam:

before coming to the mekong delta, i spent five days on the island of phu quoc.

sunset from my phu quoc bungalow.

while in cantho, i visited some floating markets. it was, unfortunately, a very overcast day.

this was how you could tell what people were selling.

much of the cycling i did in the mekong delta was on roads like this.

i almost got engaged on this ferry. clifford watched.

ho chi minh traffic! there are 4 million motos in hcmc. it was kind of a thrill to bike in.

ho chi minh rush hour.

well, this is the last post on hifromhk. thanks so much to all of you who've followed my adventures. tomorrow morning (very early) i'm flying to hong kong, where i'll spend four days before returning to the us on november 24th, just in time for thanksgiving. i can't wait to see many of you in the weeks to come! have a safe, warm and wonderful holidays. love, b.

3665 km (ben tre).

have you ever read mezzanine by nicholas baker? if i ever become a writer (ha) i'd be happy if my writing could be only half as scattered and rambling as his.

it seems to be a thing in vietnam to customize the ringtone your motorcycle plays when put in reverse. i've heard everything from beethoven's 'für elise' to 'santa clause is coming to town.'

yesterday was one of those days (i've had maybe a dozen of them on this trip - examples include meeting buela in the middle of nowhere southern laos or getting help from a handful of different people in northern cambodian who positioned clifford (and me and my bags) on the back of a moto in ways i never thought possible) when it feels like particular people were placed along my path for the sole purpose of completely altering and greatly improving my day's plan. since that sounds super egocentric, let me try again. perhaps i'm just finding myself in awe of how again and again, i head out in the morning having only a vague idea of how to get to the next big town, oblivious to the events of the day ahead, and somehow i always end up, in an admitedly roundabout but totally unexpected way, at my intended destination.

yesterday's chance encounter was chin, a vietnamese sign designer in his mid 50s who pulled up beside me on his moto about 40 km outside of cantho. he asked if he could practice his english with me, and i said yes. over lunch and coffee (which he insisted on buying despite my repeated attempts to pay, because in vietnam he said, the person who invites must pay) chin and i talked about life in vietnam. his english was pretty limited, but we managed to cover a lot of ground. after lunch, chin told me that the route i'd intended to take was dumb (he said too long), and that there was a much better way. soon i was following him on a bumpy road to an unknown destination. about five kilometers out of town, a ferry appeared, and after handing me his business card (write me a letter!) with directions written on the back in vietnamese, he told me to get on. then i got on the ferry, amid giggles and taigaoles.

at this point, i knew i was in the mekong delta, but that was about it. i got off the ferry, gave the business card to a teenage boy who then pointed straight ahead and drove off. then a man stole my oranges. then i biked the wrong way (on a thin path through beautiful countryside!) for five kilometers before showing the business card to someone else who told me to turn around. after retracing my pedals, i found another ferry, which i soon learned was the one i wanted. then i got on the ferry (third of four). on the ferry two men, using sign language, communicated that they would like to arrange a marriage for me and the woman sitting to my left. i smiled awkwardly at the woman sitting to my left, who didn't seem to know any of us, and said (in sign language) that i didn't think that was such a good idea. after parting ways with my ferry companions, i soon rejoined the larger highway i'd left with chin (his shortcut saved me maybe 40 km), and made my way to ben tre.

clifford and i are separating for good in two days. we've been fighting more than usual, but i just think it's our natural way of creating distance to ease the heartache. whenever we're not fighting (not often these days...), we talk about how much fun we've had together, how much we've both changed. and besides, i'm leaving him in good hands. i'm just hoping the next owner can tighten his spokes as well as i did.

3545 km (cantho).

i'm in the mekong delta!

this afternoon while i was biking along at my usual 80 km/h, a bee hit my handle bar and literally shattered to pieces. as if that wasn't surprising enough, i then watched (in slow motion) as the stinger (sans bee) spiraled up my sleeve and stung me on the chest. it hurt.

more to come from ho chi minh, including photos and a map update, when i have internet that is actually useful.

3175 km (takeo).

it's november 4th in cambodia. when i wake up tomorrow morning, we'll have a new president.

i read hemingway's a moveable feast in phnom penh and felt inspired to do some slightly more personal writing. i can say with 100% certainty that this would not have happened a year ago.

i actually wrote this two days ago, but thought i'd share it with you now:

i've loved phnom penh, but somehow i feel guilty about this. guilt guilt guilt. thanks, pomona.

phnom penh is such a contradiction: a bustling, forward looking city that is still haunted by the atrocities of the past. a city proud of its independence after shaking off colonial rule in 1953, that now thrives on and grows with the heavy aid of outsiders. french colonial buildings that age and then crumble in poorer parts of the country are here maintained by expats and developed into leafy restaurants, bars and boutique stores for the benefit and enjoyment of other westerners.

phnom penh, a ''backwater capital,'' feels very cambodian. it is also the easiest developing capital city i have ever spent time in.

easy, for me, has always been the source of guilt.

the last thirty years have been a constant struggle in cambodia, as every person in this country tries to move on from the genocide of the khmer rouge. families attempt to recover, if they can, from losing a quarter of the cambodian population.

and now, thirty three years after the khmer rouge took over, i bike in from the north, and everything comes so easy. the cambodians i meet are warm and friendly. the weather is wonderful. i hear more english and see more westerners than i have in weeks. i eat well and stay in a beautiful apartment.

before my arrival, i'd only focused on the difficulties of the past. now, it seems, i'm surrounded by a very optimistic present.

i force an acknowledgement of the contradictions, both hidden and overt, to make my experience feel more real, which maybe means more difficult. why does privilege bring the desire to make things harder?

i spend the morning aimlessly winding my way through the stalls of central market, bargaining with women over cashews and ray bans. i bike slowly along palm shaded streets, in a futile attempt to stay cool as the midday heat descends. motos with three, four, five people speed by, dodging the young children splashing in puddles from last night's rain. i see victims of khmer rouge landmines begging outside of enormous, gleaming temples. lunch is on the shaded, open roof of a colonial building. i treat myself to a chocolate almond crepe, as i watch the traffic circle independence monument below. i spend the afternoon in a khmer rouge detention center made queasy by the sight of elementary classrooms turned into torture chambers. before spanish tapas, i find myself at the foreign correspondents club drinking sangria beside belligerent foreigners as i watch men fish with mosquito netting from the banks of the mekong below.

how can this all happen in one city, in one day?

3085 km (phnom penh)

phew, that kilometer count is starting to look a little silly...

i arrived in phnom penh friday after a speedy 440 km, 4 day ride from the 4000 islands. i'm staying with a fellow pomona grad, nora petty, in her beautiful downtown apartment. i'll be here until tuesday, at which point i'll make my way to the coastal city of kampot, before turning east towards the small town of kep. i'll cross the border into vietnam on sunday, and then cycle through the mekong delta to ho chi minh city. i have to move pretty quickly in vietnam, because i fly back to hong kong on the 2oth, before returning to the us on the 24th. hard to believe, less than three weeks left!

i can hear the macarena playing outside my window.

some photos:sin and clifford get acquainted, while papa looks on.

4000 islands

4000 islands

cambodia. i can't get enough of the clouds in this part of the world.

2845 km (kratie).

i'm in cambodia!

cliff is pretty upset with me these days. so far, he's broken 14 spokes, and gotten two flat tires. i did teach myself how to true a tire on the side of the road today. that was fun.

we've spent a good deal of time in the past few towns with bike/moto mechanics. i think, though, i've started to enjoy sitting on the side of the road at random bike shops as much or more than visiting sites. it's a great way to melt into the surroundings and just watch the world go by. today, after replacing three broken spokes, we completely took apart the free wheel (layer cake of gears on the back tire) and repacked the ball bearings inside (all things i didn't know were possible until about two hours ago). the mechanic/father was careful to show his son all the steps involved as he repaired it.

southern laos was wonderful - it was hard to leave. heading south out of pakse, i met a bicycle gang of thai grandpas who i joined for most of the ride to cambodia. they were a lot of fun (not much english - lots of arm waving and broken thaiglish), and one of them even started calling himself my papa. i spent four days in the four thousand islands, exploring the thin dirt paths that crisscrossed the islands, and living my life long dream (i have other more admirable aspirations) of sitting in a hammock with a stack of books on one side and a beer on the other. i met up with a few scripps grads (jill helped connect me with mollie royer) which was lovely.

anyway, i'm still moving (as quickly as cliff allows) towards phnom penh. i'm hoping to be there in time for halloween. then it's southwest to the coast before turning east towards vietnam. i'll put up some photos when i have a faster internet connection in phnom penh.

2425 km (pakse).

i try to avoid writing long posts, because i don't read them, and don't expect you to, but this is sort of the culmination of what i've learned during my time in laos, and although it goes against a consistent positive/optimistic energy i think i've done well to maintain thus far, i wanted to get this all down before i head into cambodia (if this sentence exhausted you, it might be better to wait for my next post).

traveling always makes me (sometimes painfully) aware of how ignorant i remain of much of the world's political/social/cultural history. that's a big statement, and unrealistic, but i'm a cynic and expect too much of myself. being in laos has been really difficult at times, because i've learned so much about the enormous impact the united states had (and continues to have) on this country that is simply not taught in schools. sadly, se asia is not the only region this is true of.

i was hesitant to talk too much about my plans for the past week, because i really didn't know what to expect. on the 16th, i headed east from savannakhet, despite it being out of the way, because i wanted to see a part of laos that was and continues to be heavily impacted by the second indochina war (the vietnam war in the us, the american war in vietnam - actually occurred in vietnam, laos and cambodia for much longer than the us involvement, from 1959 to 1975). two days out of savannakhet i reached the small village of muang pinh, intending to head south on route 23 to the town of salavan. i wanted to take this road, originally built in the 1940s, because it at one time served as part of the ho chi minh trail (much of the trail didn't go through vietnam at all, but ran through eastern laos and northeast cambodia) until the us bombed the two major bridges along the road in 1966, forcing the vietnamese to find a new road, which they did. without bridges, the road quickly fell into disrepair. with this much in mind, i knew the road would be in very very bad shape, but that was when i was still operating under the assumption that i'd be dealing with a road. no one in town could give me any information on the road, but they did laugh at me when i said i wanted to take it. not a good sign.

the road ended up being 140 km, 55 km of which was on a treking trail. in the place of the two bombed out bridges (mind blowing to see these huge bridges in pieces in the river) i paid people to take me in small boats. the first and last thirds of the trip were on bumpy dirt tracks, but still pretty usable. after crossing the first river at the village of tad hay (after 35 km) i lost the road, and took off on a trail into the forest. although i was never, distance-wise, that far from larger towns, this 55 km leg of my journey was the most out there i've ever felt. the impact of the bombing was most obvious from the way people responded to me. multiple times, teenage girls ran from the road and hid in their fields as i approached, parents scowled at me and grabbed their children, and at one point, as i asked at a laos home for directions, a young child sobbed and rocked in the corner until i left.

needless to say, these interactions (in contrast to the incredibly warm reception i've received elsewhere in laos) left me shaken and confused. the reason, i, as a foreigner, am still viewed with fear and suspicion, has to do with the fact that almost all of the bombs dropped on laos during the indochina war were by american planes trying to stop the transfer of goods from north vietnam to south vietnam along the ho chi minh trail (pause: despite being largely a neutral force during the second indochina war, laos was the victim of the largest bombing campaign in the history of the world (1964-1973). of the 260 million cluster bombs dropped over laos during this period, it is estimated that 30%, or 78 million, failed to explode. these uxos (unexploded ordnances) still present a real and devastating risk for a large majority of the laos population. it's estimated that the 2 million dollars a day the us spent on 'the secret war,' or the bombing of the ho chi minh trail in laos, only affected about 15% of the cargo being transfered. the us army contributes nothing to the seriously underfunded clean up efforts.)

20 km into this 55 km leg i met buela, an english teacher (being an english teacher in laos doesn't mean you speak much english) who joined me for the next 35 km, intent on visiting his family he hadn't seen in a year. despite their being separated by only 35 km he rarely takes this journey due to the quality of the path (with at least 15 river crossings, it took us 7 hours). that night, after i had covered 90 km in 13 hours, buela and i stayed with his family in their small village. they were, as always, incredibly hospitable, and it was great to have buela serving as translator. at this point, clifford was a mess, and i spent much of the next morning trying to get him working again. with the bike vaguely in working order, i said goodbye to buela and his family and completed the rest of the trip, arriving in salavan around noon.

some photos:

the (still good) road passes through tad hay.

the morning light made this hard to take, but gives you an idea of bombed out bridge #1.

river crossing #7?

buela waits for me on the other side of river crossing #12.

it always takes a group to get clifford back on the road.

from salavan i headed into the bolavan plateau, a mountainous region famous for its coffee (plants originally imported from costa rica and colombia). i spent two nights in the plateau at, you guessed it, two more waterfalls (tad lo and tad fane) before heading down to pakse. one highlight was a stop in paksong at 1200 m (clifford needed some more work) where i spent the hottest part of the day with a dutch man who taught me how to 'wok-roast' coffee. he didn't let me leave until i got it down.

i apologize, that's a lot to handle all at once. i've learned so much since i've arrived, and since i know (and many of you know) i have a habit of getting a little obsessed, i'm going to stop there. it's going to be hard to leave laos. despite the persistent shadow of the second indochina war, i've had such a wonderful time in the past five weeks and have met so many accommodating, warm and friendly people. i've gotten attached to more than the sticky rice in a way that sort of snuck up on me.

clifford is in pretty good shape now. i can only use my top 16 of 24 gears, and i still have a back spoke that can't (for now) be fixed, but i'm hoping we'll limp along to phnom penh, where we might be able to get him back up to 100%. in my last few days in laos, i plan on visiting wat phu champasak (a famous temple south of paxse) and the 4000 islands, an area just north of the cambodian border where the mekong fans out and is filled with (during the dry season) 4000 sandbar islands. and then (both sadly and happily) it's on to cambodia.

1950 km (savannakhet).

have you ever tried a custard apple? i feel pretty mixed about them.

well, i'm back in laos after a quick trip through thailand. i didn't stray too far from my original path; i just followed the mekong on the other side. i decided, rather last minute, to do this, because i'd heard the roads and scenery on this leg were better in thailand.

the two (tourist spot) highlights from my six days in thailand were the sala keoku sculpture park, just outside of nong khai and wat phu tok.

sala keoku is a collection of sculptures created entirely out of concrete by one man (ban leua sourirat) after spending several years studying buddhism in a cave with a hermit whose lap he fell into one day (or so the story goes). the park was really unexpected, grotesque and fantastical to the extreme. the highlight was an interactive wheel of life sculpture that you had to crawl into, but photos of it didn't really turn out.

the temple at wat phu tok is nice but not the reason i visited. the monks of wat phu tok have built seven levels of meditation huts into the limestone hill that rises behind the temple. the different levels are connected by a rickety maze of wooden bridges. i spent the night in the town of ban phu tok with a family who ran a small restaurant on their front porch. the restaurant owner's husband was pretty excited about my bike trip and would occasionally tell my story to fellow diners, pointing me out and yelling 'you! bicycle! vietnammmmmm!'

my favorite meditation hut, on level 5.

i also really wanted to see northeast thailand as it is by far the most remote area in the country (as well as the poorest). called isan, northeast thailand is actually more lao than thai, and maybe more lao than laos itself (in the late 1700s, vientiane was sacked by siam and thousands of lao peasants were forcibly moved into northeast thailand and reduced to serfdom. now, many more ethnic laos actually live in thailand than in laos itself. this was further compounded in 1893 when the french created an administrate unit, named laos, that was half the size of the former kingdom known as lan xang). to me, isan still felt very thai, although there were a lot of things that reminded of laos (what does it mean to be lao?). the most noticeable difference is the wealth, though, creating a social and economic infrastructure that is still impossible in laos.

with that being said, it feels wonderful to be back in laos. savannakhet is a beautiful town on the mekong, famous for its crumbling french colonial architecture and palm lined dirt roads (reminding me constantly of st. louis in senegal). yesterday (as so many of you remembered! thank you!) was my birthday and the full moon festival. it made for a great evening. a few other travelers in my guesthouse joined me for an evening along the river, eating street food, drinking beerlao and watching hundreds of lao families place candles and incense on the mekong. unique and wonderful.

before i go, i'll leave you with two photos from rock climbing in vang vieng, and two photos from na nam, a village i stopped in on the way to vientiane.

limestone cliffs outside of vang vieng.

i really do almost always wear a shirt - this is a hot country though.

ang nam ngum reservoir.

rattan ball in na nam village.

the festivities continue today with boat races, street food and more beerlao. tomorrow i'm off again, heading east towards vietnam, before turning south. my route is more uncertain in this part of the country, although i'm aiming to be in cambodia within about ten days or so. thanks again for the birthday wishes! more soon.

1505 km (vientiane).

change of plans. i'm going to thailand (briefly).

hopefully i'll be back in laos in time for my birthday, which also happens to coincide with one of the biggest festivals in laos (bun awk phansa), marking the end of the rainy season.

short for now, but hopefully more from thailand!

1275 km (vangvieng).

'ten weeks with clifford (a love story)' continues.

it's strange to be so far away during the madness leading up to the us elections. now more than ever, i feel like fellow travelers see me as such a representative of the us. i've actually gotten hoorahs when i've said i'm absentee voting for obama. as if it was a hard choice. i guess i shouldn't be surprised, when the vice presidential debates i just suffered through are actually taken seriously. my dad sent me this about a month ago, but i'm reminded of it daily, as i'm questioned about the us elections.

i wanted to use this post, not to rant about politics (you at home are probably tired of it) but to talk about my recent obsession with sticky rice. and to also talk a little bit about the biking i've been doing.

i've really been struck by the warm reception i get as i bike from town to town. as i wrote previously, people frequently come to the road and say hello, give me their hands, try out random english phrases ('my name is' without the name, 'good afternoon' at 7 in the morning).

i tried to take some video as i passed through a few of the villages, none of which worked all that well. the one i tried to post didn't work for some reason - i'll try again in the next few days. too bad i didn't have my camera out when i had 30 kids running beside me through their entire village... so much for subtlety.

i've decided (after much consideration (and i don't use 'much' lightly here)) that my favorite response is the occasional one i get from people over 60, mostly because it's so unexpected. usually, older people see me and probably think, 'pshhh, just another 2 meter white kid on a red bike with a yellow helmet and short shirts.' but then, occasionally, a 72 year old woman with a machete will make eye contact with me, give me a look that says 'what's wrong with you?', and then, just as i'm passing, throw me a thumbs up and a hurried sabaidee! it's those moments that make me happiest to be biking. and the downhills. oh, the downhills.

when i bike uphill, i think about sticky rice. biking downhill has become meditative - the wind has a calming and clearing effect.

the most common response i get after people hear about my bike trip is 'whoa. ok. i assume you've done a lot of biking before?' to which i usually respond 'um, no. well... no. my bike is red, though.'

what this has actually caused me to think about, though, is whether i see myself becoming a 'biker,' whatever that means, in the future. in the first few weeks i would have said definitely no, but as time has gone on i've really started to fall in love with biking as a mode of transport. halfway between luang prabang and vangvieng, i got stuck in the village of kioukacham due to a pretty intense rain storm, and spent the afternoon watching buses full of tourists stop, grab a sandwich, and move on. i was surprised to find myself quite content to watch them pass through, knowing i'd be spending the night in the middle of nowhere, and biking on the following morning. i'm not sure this is something i could have said two weeks ago.

i also realize i've been talking a lot about 'hilly' biking but haven't really told you what that means. so, courtesy of the lonely planet se asia biking guide i found in a book exchange in luang prabang, i give you an elevation guide of the two day ride i did between luang prabang and vangvieng.


it's a little confusing because i've done the ride in reverse. i started in the upper right hand corner in luang prabang, and biked to kioukacham the first day, then continued to muang phukhun and on to vangvieng (along the bottom) the second day. elevation is marked on the left, and distance on the bottom.

anyway, that's probably enough for now. it's been raining a lot today. writing felt like a nice alternative to getting wet. over the past few days i've been eating more mulberries than i ever thought possible, and tomorrow i'm going rock climbing in some limestone caves. should be exciting. and then i'm off to vientiane - i'll hopefully arrive by tuesday. hope you're all well!

1010 km (luang prabang).

laos is really beautiful.

and hilly.

i've been in luang prabang for the past few days after taking the two day slow boat from houay xai. this all came after two days of biking from luang namtha on a brand new (hilly!) road (built by the chinese, intended to connect china and thailand, but still without a bridge over the mekong into thailand, so largely unused). i stopped at the village of nan phe on the way, finding a place to stay by making sleeping gestures to everyone i saw until a lovely family took me in. we made baskets and ate cucumbers. it was nice.

biking through laos has been really great, despite the hills. both the people i've met as well as those i just see as i pass on my bike have been so warm and friendly. there are small villages every ten minutes or so along the road, and often groups of kids come out to the road yelling sabaidee! (hello). sometimes i even get a high five. it's pretty great.

luang prabang has been a nice break from biking. i met two german women on the slow boat who introduced me to their swedish friend who grew up in laos and speaks both laos and thai. he, and the four laos bartenders we met through him, have been great guides over the past few days.

on the slow boat from houay xai.

there are lots of waterfalls around luang prabang. this was the first we visited - tad sae.

after this photo was taken, i got in.

bathing elephants in lower tad sae.

returning from the waterfall.

this morning i biked out to kuang si waterfall which was just spectacular.

after this photo was taken, i got in.
are there other ways you can pose in front of waterfalls? maybe i'll have to think of something more exciting.

tomorrow morning i'm going to start heading towards vangvieng, which will probably take about three days. i'm hoping to stay at an organic mulberry farm a bit outside of town, and exchange my mulberry picking expertise for free room and board. we'll see how that goes.

485 km (jinghong). and lots of photos!

surprise! things didn't go according to plan.

i ended up spending 5 days in yuanyang, and didn't really bike much between yuanyang and jinghong. i knew the road would be bad, but i didn't expect it to be that bad. big hills, frequent landslides, and a few points where river and 'road' became one meant i wasn't able/didn't want to be on a bike. i ended up hitching a bit, and taking a few buses, making my way to jinghong over two days.

i arrived in jinghong yesterday, and will be leaving to head south toward laos early tomorrow morning. jinghong is a really interesting city in that it feels so generically se asian. the autonomous region of xishuangbana (jinghong is the capital) is heavily influenced by laos, thai and burmese culture, although the chinese government only officially recognizes the dai influence (an ethnic group originally from thailand although now dispersed throughout laos, burma and china). the thick humidity of xishuangbana has been a huge change from the cool mists of yuanyang. i got up early this morning and explored the city and countryside on bike, and am now hiding this afternoon from the heat.

i ended up getting a bit stuck in yuanyang, when i stopped in the beautiful village of duoyishu as i was leaving yuanyang (or so i thought). there was a small guesthouse in the village run by a couple from guangdong, and i ended up staying with them for three nights, which included celebrating the mid-autumn/harvest festival on the 14th. staying in the village was wonderful, and i especially enjoyed an epic 8 hour hike through the rice terraces with the other guest, a chinese man named stephen (who actually lived in the us for 11 years).

here are a bunch of photos from the last month, going backwards in time. click on any of them for much larger versions!

duoyishu is in the right of this photo.

on the road between yuanyang and duoyishu.

talking to kyle in the middle of nowhere (during our hike).

making dumplings for the mid-autumn festival.

approaching tonghai, a city between kunming and yuanyang.
signs like this make me very happy.

(notice the characteristic factories/pollution)

clifford and i, dressed to impress, just before setting off from kunming.

with some friends i met during a quick weekend trip to dali (four hours nw of kunming).

sunset over kunming from my apartment.

below are a few photos from yangshuo, my first stop after entering china over a month ago. the last photo is identical to the one that appears on the back of the 20 yuan note.

well, that's it for now. i'm hoping to cross the laos border saturday and then make my way sw over four or five days to the laos/thailand border. from there i'll hop on a boat and head east-ish down the mekong over two days to the city of luang prabang. hopefully more from there!