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Got only 5 hours of sleep last night, and I’m feeling it. I didn’t get to bed until 1 o’clock, what with the campfire and a before bed snack. I do really like it here, and am really sorry to go so soon. I’m staying at a place recommended to me by the Irish couple I met at Ban Pha Pho called “Magical Moments with Mr. Man”. The family that runs it are all real characters, and were pretty true to the description the Irish couple gave, from the Grandma missing teetch who chew beetle nut and sounds as though she’s got a mouthful of rocks when she talks [I was thinking about this on the bus, and realized that’s it’s not rocks she’s got, but beetle nut. Duh.], to the naked boy who runs passed dragging different things on a piece of string (no string this morning, but a huge length of bamboo on one shoulder, some sort of fruit in the other hand). The people here are very nice and very welcoming, and I wish I could spend longer. Somehow, what I’ve seen so far, despite the similarities, doesn’t leave the bad taste in my mouth that Vang Vieng did. As SE Asians would say - samesame but different.

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One last thing about my mucus, and then I promise I’ll stop. The worst part about being on a bike with large volumes of snot is management. You can’t exactly pull out a tissue exery minute to blow your nose. It’s just not practical. So I’ve resorted to the disgusting habit of “snot rockets”, whereby you close one nostril, and launch a wad of snot from the other by blowing. But often, the desired launching effort fails, and end up with a dreaded “klingon”. Which must be carefully pinched off and flung, to frevent it clinging to and sliming your hand.

Yesterday, riding to the bus station in Pakse, I had a klingon of massive proportions. I thought I’d managed to fling it clear of my hand , and put my hand back on the handlebars, which all of a sudden seemed a lot slimier than before. I drew my hand away to see this huge snotwad now strewn all across the grip. Ewwww! I thoroughly grossed myself out.

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I saw my first WTO graffiti here. Unlike the States, where WTO graffiti says things like “Fuck the WTO”, here it just says “WTO”". Nearly as bad as the contreversial “I love you” grafitti.

And road motorbike graffiti. I’ve seen a lot of road over the past month, and I’ve see tons of motorcycle graffiti in the road. Sometimes it’s bicycles, and occasionally a tractor or two. The only explaination I can come up with is that it’s when there was an accident or fatality. But that seems horribly progressive for Laos.

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I replaced my panniers today with new bags. At $2 a set, which lasted a month, I feel like I’ve gotten my monies worth. I gave the old bags to Mr. Man at his request. They’re sitll useable, though a bit worn and a few holes. He was thrilled.

Mr. Man’s sign has a picture like the Mr. Happy, Mr. Sad, etc books I read as a kid. It’s pretty clever (I think his name really is Mr. Man). Some falang(foreigner) must have thought it up.

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As always, I’m apprehensive about going to a new country. New language, new customs and culture, new food. And at the same time excited I’m excited about a new country, but sad to leave Laos.

After several days of excessive email and internet use in Pakxe, I took a sangthaew (pickup truck converted to passenger vehicle - it literally means two rows, as there is a row of seats on each side of the truck which face each other. They are the universal means of transport to outlying areas in Laos) to Don Det today. It’s a nice little island - a typical backpacker bungalow hangout type of place. Similar idea to Vang Vieng, but not so disgusting, some how. I would have liked to been able to spend more time here, but alas, my visa is up tomorrow. Definitely a place I wouldn’t mind coming back to.

Chris posted (which he was inspired to do by laurie)some New Years observations and resolutions to his blog and I like the idea, and think I’ll follow suit.

Major things that happend in my life in 2002:

- I left the US (actually Dec 1999)
- Ankota died while I was away (our family dog of 15 someodd years)
- I learned to truely appreciate the third world, and the people who live there
- I experienced severe insomnia for the first time, and had my first panic attack
- I got my wish of seeing how other people in the world live
- I had knee surgery
- I left most of my stuff in Bangkok, in fvor of travelling really light
- I bought a bike
- I bought and sold a car and learned how to repair it along the way
- I made a huge set of friends that live all over the world

Things I want to try and do in 2003:
- Continue getting regular exercise
- Say things for their inherant value, not to prove myself and my intelligence
- Keep in touch with people I’ve met, and promptly answer the emails set to me
- get a job that I believe in, working less that 40 hours a week
- Volunteer regularly
- Get involved in technical user groups
- Apply for university

I came to one village which had a decent sized river running through it. The section where the road crossed the river was all volcanic rock. Just upstream of the crossing was a bamboo footbridge still well maintained. I took off my shoes and waded across the river carrying my fully-laden bike (not an easy proposition) and then stopped to take a picture of the bridge.

A man cam down from a nearby house, and after some confusing gesturing, finally led me a short distance upstream on the rockflow. He showed me a depression in the rock, which at first I couldn’t figure out. At first I thought it was a huge dinosaur footprint. Turns out I was looking at it upside down. It was the form of a man, carved in bas relief in the rock. It was maybe a foot and a half long, and several inches deep. I took several pictures, and then the man led me down and across the river to a larger one, maybe three feet long.

I asked if he made them, miming scratching at the rock. He said yes, but it’s hard to tell if he made them, or someone else did. I also couldn’t tell how recent they were. I’m guessing that they’re religious objects, and I couldn’t tell if they were still worshipped. It’s definitely possible they are.

I thanked him profusely and continued on my way.

In the same village, I saw the smallest school I’ve sen yet. IT was little more than a three walled thatched hut, with a few benches and a very worn blackboard. I regret not taking a picture.

About lunch time I went through a small village where few people said hello. At the far side was a river crossing, with logs on one side making a sloping ramp for trucks down into it, held together by rusting steel cable. Surely a remanent of the war.

A man and his sone were bathing in the river. They didn’t have any soap. Instead, they were squatting on a stump, and scraping their skin with a strip of bamboo, then diving into the water.

About 2 o’clock, I was going through the umpteen millionth water crossing, having long abandoned my shoes for sandals to speed up the process. Just as I’m pulling myself and the bike out the muck and deep truck ruts, I hear “psssssss…” I have a punture.

I wheeled the bike up a short hill, and set about replacing the tube with my spare, and then painstakingly pumping it up. I took a short break from pumping to hear “pssssss…” Argh! My spare tube also had a hole. I had no puncture kit with me, relying on the roadside mechanics and my spare tube up until then.

A few men on bikes had stopped to watch me at that point, and I asked one where the next village was. One kilometer further. Not wanting to walk that far pushing a fully laden bike unless I absolutely had to, I rummaged through all the stuff I had, as I’ve built up qutite a collection of random stuff travelling.

I thought I had some rubber glue, but instead found some superglue (in my first aid kit, for small wounds, instead of stitches) and a bit of vinyl from a jewelers screwdriver set case. Worth a shot.

I tested the superglue wouldn’t melt the tuge, and then glued a section of vinyl over the hole. It seemed to work ok, though it wouldn’t stretch when the tube was inflated - possibly problematic. I put everything back together, and started pumping the wheel up. “psssssss…” Argh!

Disgusted, I put all the gear back on the bike, and started walking in the direction of the next village. I couldn’t have walked 5 minutes before I heard a logging truck come up behind me. (Mind you, I was in a National Biodiversity Conservation Area, where there isn’t supposed to be any logging. But there is, and everyone knows it.) I asked them for a ride, and they uncerimoniously hauled my bike into the back, and I climbed up behind it. They told me to stay away from the sides, and off we went with a horrible screaching noise coming from the engine.

Soon I understood their warning. Branches whipped into the truck - a serious danger to anyone not in the center of the truck.

We battled through a couple water crossings and up a hill, and arrived in a fairly big village. Not being able to stand another minute of the intense screaching coming from the engine, I asked them to let me off, praying someone in the village had a puncture kit. With hardly a goodbye or a chance for me to thank them, they were off again with a screech and a cloud of dust.

I asked a man at what looked like a village shop cum mechanic shop if he could fix my tire. He said yes, and then went off to get something. I soon had a crowd of 50 around me, including lots of kids in various stages of nakedness.

I tried to start helping with repairing the tires, but before I knew it,I was almost pushed out of the way by people eager to help. Being as there were two tubes to fix, there were probably eight men and boys helping at one point. I gave up, and started taking picttures, and letting kids look through my camera (incidentally a great way to get portraits of kids - you let them take turns with you looking through the camera, only when you look through, you take a picture - instant unposed portraits with short lenses).

I got the best reaction from the zoom lense, which absolutley astonished the few boys I showed it to. They were fish faced, moths agape.

I pulled out my map to try and get directions and distances, but didn’t get very far.

The tires were fixed in record time, having patched a total of 4 holes. As I was readjusting brakes and reloading gear, a guy on a motorbike rode up, selling popsicles out of a cool box on the back. A feww kids bouht popsicles and so I bought one as well.

Right as the man was about to leave, various people came up with money and hurridly bought a few more popsicles. I figured out they had bought the last few popsicles the guy had, aso that he’d five them the ice in the bottom of the cool box. There was a huge unorganized crowd around the motorbike, men running up with buckets, and kids running off sucking on chuncks of ice. Clearly a big treat.

This isn’t an infection, it’s a mucus invasion! It makes me thankful for the asian culture of long, noisy, involved spitting in public, as I can now participate with gusto.

Flowin’ flowin’ flowin’, keep that mucus flowin’, rawhide!

It’s a good thing I amuse myself…

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It’d be two days ago now. I woke up to the sunrise, and a cacauphony of bird calls,and shortly, the blaring noise of pumpboats on the river, after a fitful nights sleep. I ate what little food I had left from the night before (a carrot and some very mushed bananas), packed up, and headed back to the village I’d just come from to see if I could get some sort of food.

I asked at the first village shop I came to if they had any food, but they pointed me to another little shop. It certainly wasn’t a restaurant, and hardly a shop - just a few hanging bunches of candy and treast and rubberbands for the kids.

I sheepishly asked the lady if she had any rice, and she immediately beamed and ran inside to get a plastic bag, which she filled with a generous amount of sticky rice from her basket. I tried to pay her, but she adamantly refused, saying it was for good luck. (Later, I man who spoke english translated that if I ever came back, I had to promise to come visit her). Later, she also gave me some boiled water to refill my bottles.

I was standing there, eating rice, when a man came up who spoke english pretty fluently. It turns out Thavone is the english teacher at the secondary school in Sanaxay. When I’d gone through Sanamxay the day before, apparently I’d talked to the headmaster of the school. (I think he was the guy I’d quizzed about directions and distances when I stoppped to buy water). Thavone said he wanted to come speak to me, but I guess by the time he found out I was there, I was already gone.

It being Friday, he was teaching english at his village’s primary school, which has no english teacher. I ran into him on his way to work. We chatted for a while, and tossed the frisbee around. I was lucky enough to make a quick photo of him alongside a very photogenic old man with about three teeth who’d been looking onthe whole time, who I’d been really wanting to take a picture of.

We eventually parted ways, as Thavone had to get to work, and I had to hit the road.

I rode back past where I’d camped, and the road soon turned away from the river. It was passable, but barely. Even a motorbike would have been difficult. Mostly it was a single foot track but sections were quite rocky. Almost the whole way I was surrounded by lush forest. Huge trees and bamboo as thick as my leg towered over my head. The few villages I passed were very poor, probably the poorest I’ve seen. It was rare to come across a bicycle, most people were walking.

At one point I stopped part way up a hill to make some adjustments to my bike and two buys came down the hill towards me on bicycles. The bikes had no pedals - just the bar the pedals used to rotate around, but that’s pretty normal to see, even in the city. But these bikes didn’t have any brakes, either. Each man had one flipflop clad foot jammed against the front tire, acting as a crude brake.

Waiting for it to be 5 o’clock so I can go ssee the doctor who supposedly speaks english. I’m sick again in a bad way, my sinuses throbbing and oozing green stuff and now my lungs gurgling as well.

My bike trip from Atapeu probably wasn’t the best thing for me, though it was really good.

I went to the Pakxe hospital, which was pretty comparable to the other hospital visits I’ve had in Laos. They did a basic blood test, saw I had a high white bloodcell count, and prescribed penecillin and panadol (like asprin). Didn’t even bother to look at me.

The hospital itself was big, and scary. I had to go through the inpatient section to get my blood test, and there were entire families living there, sleeping on the floor, in the hallways, etc. In retrospect, it wasn’t that bad. While I have no problem walking down the street and seeing dirt and dust and trash and filth, and go knows what, somehow seeing even a dusty floor in a hospital sets off major alarm bells. Is that a double standard?

A long day and a half. I didn’t sleep much night before last, as it got really cold, and I kept having to feed the fire.

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a detour into geekry for a sec…

decentralized “open frequency” wireless network + peer to peer services == completely decentralized information structure. The way of the future? Can decentralization replace and surpass the existing framework? Does stability and reliability suffer? Who handles naming/numbering? Does there need to be someone in charge?

I’ve been reading:
www.guerrilla.net
dev.wirelesscommons.org

And thinking a lot about enhancements to current peer to peer applications. Things like gnutella meets freedb, allmusic.com, and fairtunes.

I found a decent spot under some tress by a beautiful river. After getting my hammock and mozzie net setup, I went for a dip in the river to see a beautiful sunset beneath a crescent moon. I can hear birdcalls everywhere around me.

This is the first time in a while I’ve felt like I was in the tropics. Where it’s been logged, or farmed, it’s so dry. I left ATtapeu today for Pakse, via Route 18, Sanamxay, and Champasak. The last bit of road today, after I left Sanamxay, wound it’s way through uncut forest and was gorgeous! How I’d love to have seen Laos before it was logged.

The last village I cam through was amazing. It had tall trees all aroung, including some palm trees, and all the houses were on high stilts, made out of weathered wooden planking. Like something out of a movie. Of course, just then is when my camera decides to act up. Always the way.

I’m writing by campfire light, as I got dodgy Chinese batteries again for my flashlight, which aren’t worth a damn. I’m down to my last pair, and the first pair lasted about five minutes. Writing by the fire’s a bit frustrating because I keep having to feed it, and it’s making me sweat my balls off.

Dinner was sticky rice, buffalo jerky, tomatos and carrots. Mmmmmm!

I reached the river at 4:30 today, and saw immediately that there was no bridge. There were a few boats around, but none that seemed too interested in taking me across. I saw one ferry/barge type deal, made from two canoes lashed together with a wooden platform in between, but no one was near it.

I finally asked a guy who was cast net fishing if there was a boat that could take me across the river. He said there was, adn yelled something in the direction of the village. “Kroi Ma” he said - my mother.

Soon a woman about 40 or so dressed in a traditional Laos skirt came down, uncerimoniously led me over to the ferry/barge, and helped me get my bike on board. Then she hopped in the water and walked across the river, pushing the boat. I felt pretty silly, perched up there with my bike. The river looked a lot deeper from the bank. (The boats going up and down and across it didn’t help)

I got a puncture in Sanamxay. I found the local mechanic/bicycle repairman, asleep in a hammock next to his shed. After rousing him, he immediately set to work. When he finished with the puncture, I took a risk and asked if he could retrue my rear wheel.

Once he pulled out a jerry-rigged truing stand, it was pretty clear he’d done it before, and I sarted feeling a lot better. The truing tram was mage from an old bicycle front fork, nailed to a block of wood acting as a base.

He got going and almost immediately found a broken spoke that had somehow been hiding. He went to replace it, and before I know, he’s got a hammer and chisel and is hanging on the sprokect set.

Eeek! I sort of half stiffled a scream. Surely that’s not necessary. But then I figure out he was only using it to help unscrew a tricky plate which real bike shops have a tool for. Ok.

But then my heat is back in my throat, my mouth hanging open, making sort of a “Gaaa….” noise as he lays down a grimy piece of cloth and proceeds to dump umpteen zillion ball bearings and tiny little parts, along with the outer half of my sprockets.

Then, as if I haven’t had enough trauma, he starts pounding with the hammer agaim. It’s all I can do to sit on my hands and try to remind myself he knows what he’s doing and that he does this all the time. More banging, a spoke replacement, and an expert truing job.

Now to put it all back together.

The first time he puts it back together, with a dallop of grease in the bearings, instead of freewheeling, just sort makes this sickening gritty noise. No “clickclickclick”. Through liberal use of sound effects I explain that it’s supposed to “clickclickclick” not “grindgrindgrind” and am well supported by the growing crowd, who have all coincidentally chosen this exact moment to bring their bikes to the shop. (AT the high point, there must have been five bikes in various states of assembly, the owners borrowing the necessary tools and doing the work themselves).

Convinced, he took it all apart again, hacksawed a bit off (turning me into a gibbering mess) - turns out he was fixing a bit mshaped from all the hammering - and finally got it back togheter and going “clickclickclick”.

We got everything put back together and one of the guys standing around gave it a test ride, as he couldn’t believe how high the seat was (a comment I get almost daily). AFter tottering around in a circle, barely able to reach the pedals, I had to give it a go, to show them I could actually ride it comfortably.

Still sick with chect gunk and nose gunk that’s gradually turning colors. I’m ignoring it until I get to Pakxe.

Just before I stopped for the night, the road turned into a one track path. It will be itneresting to see what tomorrow brings.

On info from some other travellers, I rode out to a section of the HO Chi Min trail about 30km from here. There was an old Vietnamese rocket, and some evidence of demining, bombing, and defoliants, though I didn’t really figure out that’s what I’d seen until I talked to some strallers this evening who knew what to look for. (The difference between a bomb crater and a buffalo wallowing hole can be small after 30 years of erosion) I did explore the area a fair bit, though i was careful to stick to the roads, as there’s still mines everywhere.

I found two beautiful rivers, and some amazing pockets of rainforest. I ran into a buy carrying a live iguana he’d found in the jungle, with it’s mouth tied shut and tied back to it’s hind leg. Wonder what pet shop it’s bound for. (though the locals do seem to keep a fair number of pets)

Saw some women walking on the road, puffing away on their pipes and home rolled cigar sized cigarettes clamped in their teeth, rolled with green leaves instead of paper.

Riding in the dark wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the potholes and bugs. Luckily the ferry across the river was still running.

I slept in, then did badly needed laundry. I grabbed some lunch, and then took the bike out for a little ride around town. I found a nice shady spot on the grass next to some bamboo on the river bank, and have been camped here ever since.

I got almost immediately visited by Noy, a girl waiting to cross the river to her village, who wanted to practise her english. I wasn’t really in the mood, but it’s not exactly easy to say no. Fortunately, her english was good, and she was quite nice, and eventually her friend came and took her across the river in his boat.

I’d like to do a day trip tomorrow across the river with the bike, but again I think about visa time. This illness has taken up a lot of time, though I haven’t been hating being sick that much.

The rucus in my nose seems to have died down, or rather migrated down into my chest. Not as much colored slime though.

I’ve started in on a novel about WWII, which is keeping me preoccupied. It’s called “War and Rememberance.”

When I’m on the bike, I’m drinking roughly 8 liters of water a day. But seeing as I sweat most of it off, it doesn’t really seem like that much.

I wonder if my history of illness, while not at all digestive-related, has something to do with my cavalere attitude towards eating anywhere and everywhere - from food in the markets, to stalls, to roving food sellers. I have yet to be ill with any sort of stomach bug (excluding a day of minor discomfort here and there) but have had numberous bouts of cold and flu.

Now, being sick, and pondering this line of though, I start to notice things I missed before - the baguette woman blowing into the vent hole of the sweetened condensed milk can to push out the last little bit; the girl sneaking a taste from the ladel of a broth; the little girl chucking bits of lord knows what into the soup when her mom’s back is turned.

But you can’t think about it too much. You just have to put it in the back of your mind. For one, I could catch a cold or the flu simply walking down the street. Secondly, there aren’t a whole lot of “safe” food options, particularlly around here.