Laos pics

                                  

Laos

Laos.
January 24, 2017

in 2015 six scientists searching for new species identified a previously unknown snake just a few km from where we are now, Luang Prabang, Laos.  The new species, parafimbrios lao, is just one of over a hundred new species recently identified as part of an ongoing international project to better define the ecology of the Mekong River.  Today, following a six hour expidition by boat on the Mekong, I would like to offer my contribution to this effort, the previously undescribed Laotian Sand Cow (see grainy photo).  While the sand cow is here proposed as a new species it was not a previously unknown animal, as was the snake, but its status as a separate species has heretofore remained unnoticed, as were the 4 different species of giraffe, historically assumed to be a single species; a paradigm overturned only a few months ago.  The sand cow emerges from the jungle in the morning to browse on the sandy riverbanks, where we spotted several on our journey.  It appears to subsist on sand and an occasional gulp of rivermud.  This impoverished diet no doubt explains its lethargy.  In several hours of, admittedly intermittent, observation, no movement beyond an accasional tail swish was observed.  DNA sequencing will be required to establish the suspected evolutionary link to the now endangered dugong, or sea cow.

Luang Prabang turns out to be the very model of a modern major tourist town.  The streets swarm with Westerners, divided roughly equally between English and French speakers. Most of the native population appears to be employed in service to the tourists.   Markets proffering knick knacks made in the surrounding villages fill the streets night and day, manned (more accurately womaned) by eager natives hoping to sell something for a dollar or two to the passing parade of blasé millionaires (a million Laotian kip will set you back a little over a hundred dollars).  I am struck by the high ratio of sellers to the value of the merchandise.  If Walmart worked like this there'd be a separate salesperson standing next to each little rack of t shirts or bin of apples.  Oxfam says the world's eight richest people have as much wealth as the world's poorest 3.6 billion people, a fact that's hard to fathom.  But the stark poverty of these market workers makes it a little easier.

Still we didn't come for the knick knacks, and neither did anyone else.  We came looking for a remote (which it really was before they built the airport), beautiful, old Lao city full of history, elegant temples, great food (don't miss the fresh grilled Mekong fish with lemon grass and tamarind sauce) and, of course, third world prices. And if you can look beyond the throngs of tourists (including ourselves) you can still find most of that.  Did I mention the stunning mountain setting, and the perfect weather?  Apparently one of the unexpected benefits of a calcified one-party state is that the government can mandate the preservation of the architectural character of the town if it so chooses, and it has.  The result of that, along with a coveted UNESCO blessing, is that Luang Prabang is almost perfectly preserved, and remains free of the usual contemporary atrocities that despoil so many otherwise lovely spots around the world (it's amazing, all the things you can do with bamboo).  But it's not nirvana; the coffee's weak, and they don't seem to have gotten the news that chocolate is one of the five major food groups.

It was pretty easy in December to feel a bit smug telling all your friends you're leaving them in the cold to take off for southeast Asia for the winter, until you get here and start meeting the real travelers.  It makes our long anticipated adventure seem a little pathetic by comparison.  Take, for example, the Dutch couple we met in Vietnam who are in the midst of an 18 month jaunt that will next take them to Perth, where they plan to buy a 4wd vehicle and sell it three months later in Sidney.  Or the American pair, youngsters really, who've given up on Manhattan after a few years of trying and are returning to their native Atlanta, but not before taking advantage of the dislocation to travel around Asia for six months.  There seems to be a bottomless well of stories like these among the milling crowds, mixed in with the college kids on a break year and the do-gooders teaching English or computer coding to unschooled children in remote villages.  It all makes a person feel like he ought to have constructed a lot more interesting life for himself.

First impressions Vietnam

Jan 19, 2017

We've been in Vietnam a little over a week. Yesterday the sun filtered through the clouds for a solid ten minutes; the first time we've had any evidence of its existence in Asia.  This is the dry season here, according to the elitist weather services. Evidently the dry season is a Chinese hoax.  

The traffic in Hanoi is Vietnam's answer to China's one child policy.  Which will prove more effective in combating overpopulation has yet to be determined.  Here there appear to be neither traffic cops nor traffic laws.  Pedestrians, cars and motorbikes, especially motorbikes, compete freely for the same space on the roads and sidewalks.  The paths of vehicles and pedestrians interdigitate in random directions. At intersections streams of traffic cross at right angles, never stopping, swerving around and past themselves, using every square meter of pavement, yielding only to the thousands of motorbikes parked on the sidewalks and driveways.  In the vast expanse of central Hanoi the sheer density of traffic is overwhelming, even for this new yorker, comfortably enured to walking the length and breadth of Manhattan.  But the most startling feature of this 24/7 scrum is that it seems to work.  Traffic flows.  Get into a taxi and enter the fray and somehow you glide through the teaming hoards and emerge at your destination without suffering the nerve wracking gridlock that typifies any midtown Manhattan cab ride.  Step off the curb and steel yourself to cross the the street, effectively offering yourself up to the phalanxes of bikes and cars you know have no intention of stopping for the likes of you.  Swerve slightly, maybe; stop, never.  But somehow you make it to the other side, the sea of traffic having parted just enough to allow you to slip through, and then having closed up behind you.  But let me make one thing perfectly clear: this system could never work in America.   In America we would kill each other before we got halfway to wherever we were going.  Not by collision, but by road rage.  In the course of one 15 minute car ride I witnessed a dozen incidents that would have led to criminal assault in America, but here didn't cause a raised eyelid.  Cars cut each other off; pedestrians step out in front of trucks; motorbikes pull out in front of cars, which in turn squeeze them to the side of the road, and so on and so on.  And no one gets mad. No one yells.  No one curses. No one hits.  No one stabs.  No one shoots.  You know you're not in Kansas anymore.   I can't claim to know what the people here are thinking.  I can't even speak two words of the language.  But I can say with some confidence that they have a calmer temperament than we do, and the comparison does not reflect well on us.

Vietnamese has six tones; Chinese only four.  I, myself, have none, which is reason enough for me to not even try to learn any of it.  Beth, on the other hand, put in some time listening to Vietnamese language tapes and can now sort of say hello and thank you in Vietnamese.  These words come in handy when walking into and out of rooms containing other people. Hello, Chào ban (I can write it; I can't say it), proved particularly useful whenever we'd encounter little kids on the sidewalks, who all say "hello" to us, in English.  Apparently everyone is learning English.  They're certainly not learning French.  I'd hoped that my French would be useful here, seeing how this was a French colony for over a century, and the North was never occupied by Americans, as was the South.  But it most certainly is not.  The only vietnamese person I've encountered so far who spoke any French looked a bit like Ho Chi Minh, and he only knew a few words.  I get the impression they really hate the French, more so than the Americans.  I guess a decade of unprovoked invasion, warfare,  mass killings, biological warfare and arrogant , antidemocratic subversion doesn't trump a century of colonialism.  Says something about colonialism.

It seems appropriate that we spend the last few days of democracy in America in Vietnam, a country we (i.e., America) so wanted to keep from determining its own fate that we killed thousands and thousands of people, some of them our own citizens, wrecking our own economy in the process.  And all that effort, all that evil, wasted, all for nothing.  Vietnam emerged beholden to no one, and seems to have won it's core battle of the twentieth century: overthrowing the cruel totalitarianism of feudalism, while America has voted, essentially, against democracy and for a new feudalism, the cruelty of which is only tempered somewhat by the enthusiastic support of its most gullible victims.  So, here in Vietnam, where a brighter future is eminently feasible, we can enjoy a modest respite from the slow motion trainwreck that's just getting started at home, and that looks to go on longer than the years left to us.

But enough of this pompous moroseness.  Let's move on to what's really important: sightseeing.  The karst landscapes we're seeing here are beyond breathtaking.  They are, in fact, ridiculous.  Unreal.  Even the dreary weather doesn't hide it.  I can't even imagine what natural process could have created this stuff.  Thousands of brute block mountains set on Florida flat plains, or emerging as islands from a gentle sea. The local creation legend has something to do with dragons, and, frankly, it makes as much sense as the limestone erosion story that seems to be the received geological wisdom.  In any case, walking, or rowing, through it, is to be immersed in a Disneyland fantasy world.  The effect is only magnified by the myriad temples and pagodas scattered throughout the area, many of which seem to have been situated primarily to enhance the visual, or dare I say spiritual, experience of being here.  You find them tastefully nestled into rocky crannies halfway up nearly shear cliffs, or gracing the edges of bucolic lakes and rice paddies.  There's obviously an esthetic sense at work here.  These locations weren't chosen to attract crowds of dutiful tithers.  They were more likely chosen to attract tree huggers, like me.