Disaster Strikes Northern Luzon: Please Help!

Dear Friends and Family,

This last year, Ian Kennelly and I had the tremendous opportunity to volunteer at ENCA organic farm, in the mountainous northern region of Luzon, in the Philippines. The family we were staying with live in La Trinidad, which was dealt the brunt of the recent typhoons Peping and Parma. The surrounding areas have reported 462 confirmed deaths, with the tally constantly rising. In addition,countless thousands of residents have been displaced by the multitude of mudslides that have ravaged the mountainsides.

Ian and I are collecting funds which we will send directly to Marilyn Cosalan, who owns and runs ENCA with her siblings. She and her partner Benny are very involved in the community, and will ensure that the money is used to directly benefit those who need it most. Please help us make good use of this connection in one of the worst affected areas of this disaster, and donate as much as you can afford. Literally ever dollar counts, where rice for a family costs pennies, and building materials cost only a fraction of what the would here in the first world.

Please have a glance at the following article, which paints a poignant image of the destruction.
http://www.earthlingorgeous.com/2009/10/typhoon-pepeng-destroys-northern-luzon.html

Cheques, cash, and online transfers of funds can all be accepted. My mailing address is 1706 W 51st Ave, Vancouver, BC V6P - 1C8, Canada. Any donation will be hugely appreciated and beneficial in the restoration of this destroyed community.

Yours,

Gaelen Krause

Trekking in the Himilayas

Dear Friends and Family and Friends of Family,

Yes, this is very delayed, and I am sincerely appologetic. Yes, I am in fact in Spain now. But there were fun adventures in the Himilayas not so very long ago, and i will detail them for you now. I must give a photo credit to my Aunty Lisa, who donated photos to make up for the diseased ones on my camera.

In early May, Ian and I met up with our respective parents for the end of our Southeast Asia tour. We spent a few terrific days in Chiang Mai with the Kennelly-Hott clan, enjoying a dose of luxery that approached fatal levels. After several months of dirty sheets and cold showers, the down pillows were enough to send shivers up a man´s backside. Throw in Egyptian cotton bath robes, an endless lap pool (the kind with jets to swim against), and a couple protein heavy meals, and Ian and I were almost rehabed and ready to return to the society we have been raised in. We attended a cooking course with Thailand´s top TV chef, and spent a day at the elephant rehab center outside of town. they teach them to paint, and aside from bob ross, never have you seen a group of educated people so earnestly watching paint dry. it was incredible on many different levels. After the necessary thai diversion of getting custom tailored cashmere suits, I flew down to Bangkok to meet up with my folks. A day of sightseeing, and another poolside at the riverfront Marriott were spent in a bit of a haze, so great was my excitement for the next item on the agenda: India, and the might of the mountains topped with that lovely white substance which i have missed so much on this trip. After countless sunburned appendages and mosquito bites, i was going to throw snowballs again.

It was a sad moment when Ian and I finally went our separate ways, but both on to new and exciting things. We had our final dinner at the uncomrehensible seafood market and restaurant, with the slogan ¨if it swims, we cook it.¨ We reminised, and told funny stories, and wept for the cruel twists of life that the world brings. WHY MUST THIS BLISS END!¿?¿?!!¿? Ian, as I understand it, is moving to Portland in about a week to help design and sell funny t-shirts. you can see the products, and read about the adventures of their entreprenuerial triumverate here: http://www.lonelydinosaur.com/

Alright! Yes, i will get on the point - India, snow, dzos, and sherpas. I flew with my folks into Delhi, and we were whisked quickly to the Imperial Hotel. I was made comfortable to the point of discomfort, and the acceptable level of attire was higher than my bag could support. All of a sudden, my Lao baby-blue jandles were a strike against me, and my long hair and bandana marked me as closer in class to the staff than the other guests. There was marble everywhere, and photos and paintings from the days of the Raj. Not that I didn´t enjoy it to the fullest; I reveled in it. Two days in Delhi, and the entire trekking group had arrived, so we shipped out to Darjeeling, beginning our acclimitization at 7,000 ft.

Darjeeling is known world wide for two things: a very funny movie (none of which actually takes place in Darjeeling) and the tea. The tea was incredible, and we had the luck to have in our ranks a good friend of tea importer in the uk. This friendship enabled us to go on a tour of one of the top plantations, remarkably devoid of any chance for marketing. Not only did they not actively try to pull a profit from the tour, but they wouldn´t sell us the tea! It was another of these rare, and wonderful experiences which was devoid of the commericialized barating I´ve grown so used to.

Uncle Phursumba and I, celebrating the end of the expedition.

I will keep the description of the trek itself quite brief, and let the photos do most of the describing. We were a group of nine, composed of myself, my parents (Lesley and Richard), aunt (Lisa), and several of their good friends (John, Dorset, Mike, Caroline, and Geoff). All experienced hikers from various parts of the States and the UK, and all with remarkably high spirits despite blisters, altitude, delhi belly, and other ailments common on long walks. Everything was arranged by a good friend of my mum´s, Phursumba Sherpa. He has been living in Seattle for 38 years now, and has led over 300 expeditions to the top of Mt. Ranier. Although he says that this trek was to be his last, we all have doubts about that. After all, he´s still a youthful man at 68. We had the tremendous honour of being joined by his brother in law, Gumbu Sherpa, who was the first man in the world to summit Everest twice.

Sherpa and Dzo, on a murky morning . Check out his footwear!

Many of the evenings were filled with the incredible stories held in his indelible memory: of reaching into his breast pocket for a Nepali scarf to give to JFK, and having the secret service pulling their weapons in surprise; of meeting the Queen, and Indira Gandhi; of his climbs and run-ins with every famous mountaineer of the 20th century. The unanimous favorite of his stories was that of his escape from a monastary at the age of 12. This is how i recall the tale, and please forgive my butchery of it:

Gumbo Sherpa, mid-laugh

When I was a young boy, my father sent me to a monastary in Tibet to study as a monk. It was terrible. There were beatings, the food was poor, and I hated life there. After a year or two of thought, at the age of twelve, I conceived of a plan to escape. I shared it with my best friend, and he rejected the idea outright. When i exclaimed that I would be leaving with or without him, he relented. After collecting meager rations of rice, we excaped on the night of a full moon. We snuck out through the toilets, dropping through the hole into the snow below. Knowing that we had until morning before we would be missed, we made haste to cross the river three km away. Bear in mind that this is in the middle of winter, in Tibet. After the river, we made straight for the great pass that separated our monastary from my home in Sikkim. At the base of this mountain, we found the home of a herdsman. We told him that we had been sent to find food, and were from the monastary up the hill. Surely he knew what we were attempting, and he fed us and gave us shelter for the night. Over the next three days, we crossed the 18,000 ft pass, and walked home. My father, when i arrived, beat my severely, but did not send me back to the monastary.

Our highest campsite, at around 15,000 ft.

The trek was eight days, with just over 17,000 ft of total elevation change. We started in lush rainforest, then spent about three days in varying types of high-altitude rhodedendoren forests before reaching the tree line at 15,000 ft. Our final goal was Goache-la, the pass that must be crossed when walking from Sikkim into Nepal, at the base of the third highest peak in the world, Kanchengzanga. And somebody up top was really looking out for us, because the skies cleared for the two days we spent in the high elevations, and the scope of the mountainscape was excruciating. I was in the very highest of spirits, walking in this crushing wilderness, singing along with Al Green and Marvin Gaye, the sun (and a rather light pack) upon my back, and a pack of 15 dzos and 6 ponys carrying a majority of the gear, knowing that dinner would be a three course affair, and my tent was set up for me before i even ate lunch. Playing frisbee in high alpine meadows with our porters, and backgammon at night with John. These are memories I will maintain to share with my grandchildren, and yours.

Suddenly, I was travelling by myself, if only briefly. adios, for now, from España.

Sitting down for dinner with the whole group.

The peak of one of the neighbouring peaks, Pandan.

The icefield and holy lake from the viewpoint just below Goache-La

The Peak of Kangchenjunga, 28,169 ft

Mummy and me at the viewpoint!

Southern Vietnam, and the untimely demise of the Pipi Family.

Vietnam, a country where no americans should rightly be welcomed, turned out to be a real delight. We spent a blissful, entire day busing from Siem Riep to Ho Chi Minh City (which i will refer to as Saigon from now on, because it is easier to type and sounds cooler). The following day, we discovered that our hotel was rather more expensive and poorly located than many others, and changed locations, after a wonderful breakfast of Vietnamese savory pancakes (which are served with a salad, and contain all manner of seafood treats).

We spent the afternoon at the War remnants museum, which was just as dour, and much more personal, than the Pnomh Penh equivalent. There are relics from the American presence: tanks, airplanes, jets, 1000 ton bombs, land mines, artillery pieces, and uniforms. The most disturbing part of the museum was devoted to America's favorite defoliant: Agent Orange. This has proven to be a particularly effective substance for stunting the growth of both plants and humans. There are many thousands of babies who have been born with awful birth defects, missing limbs or with severely stunted growth. Another particularly evocative exhibits was dedicated to the free press who covered the war for both sides. It was full of the photographs and stories which they lived, and often died for. Of the journalists covered in the exhibit, more than 70% were dead by the time the Americans went home.

The next day we went on a two part tour, first to the incredibly gaudy Divine Temple, epicenter of the Cao Dai religion, and then to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The first was almost unbearable; the high temple of poor taste. We attended a mass, and were as dismayed by the ceremony (a mix of Buddhism, Catholicism, and Shinto, i think) as by the decor. The primary symbol of the religion is a giant, all-seeing eye, which is depicted all over the temple. The ceremony's main purpose seemed to be the entertainment of the hundreds of tourists who were somehow fooled into thinking the experience would somehow be worth while. That's not to say that we regretted our visit, as it's not everyday that somebody gets to witness such an impressive train wreck.

That we had overlooked the six hours of bus time, and the questionable nature of the temple was made up for by the Cu Chi Tunnels. They are a network of tunnels over 125 km long, with three levels (as deep at 15 meters), and a veritable warren of accommodation for the fighters who lived there. Forced underground by American air raids, the Viet Cong rebels survived because of the tremendous scale, concealment, and booby-trapping of their turf. We were able to crawl through both enlarged (Supersized for full sized tourists) and original (tiny) tunnels, which were lit enough to see corners but not the 6" centipedes. There were working models of all of the booby traps, including a six-foot revolving trapdoor over bamboo spikes. At the end of the tour, and heightening the ambiance for the preceding hour underground, is a shooting range with many of the same options as Cambodia's offered. George and I decided to share a full clip on a Colt-45 pistol. It was a unanimous declaration that it is louder than either the AK-47 or the M-16, and significantly harder to shoot 50 meters than we had hoped. but very, very fun. disturbingly fun, perhaps.

We traveled north the next day, to the coastal city of Nga Trang. The intentions of the pipi family during our last days together were simple: to laugh a lot, and to deepen our suntans on the beach. Difficult though it was, our mission was a complete success. There was another massive beach party, there was the best meal of the trip to date (soft shell crab, and the vietnamese version of fondue bourguignonne). Ian got a pair of black eyes from a painful encounter with a surfboard, and we almost went sailing. We watched some terrific soccer, and we met some very beautiful women. Our good friend Charles described the days most eloquently:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

And then, suddenly as nightfall in the deepest of valleys, we were two again. A brief two days in Mui Ne followed, but was not entirely what we were expecting. We arrived expecting a beautiful beach, with the potential for more surfing, but found a row of expensive resorts on mediocre beachfront, and no waves to speak of. we spent a day exploring the nearby fishing village by bicycle, where i was given a beautiful seashell by a young girl. She wouldn't accept a present back, and had the kindest smile. My second favorite child of the trip (after Shiosa from the organic farm in the Philippines). We rented motorcycles for a day, and drove out to the sand dunes for some sand-sledding. It was surprisingly fun, although the experienced was dampened somewhat by the afternoon rain. That evening, we ate the dinner at Luna Artuna, where we sampled some of the best italian food in Vietnam. Before the arrival of our overnight bus back to saigon, we went to a bar and competed in a 28 person poker tournament. Ian, a self-proclaimed poker loser (one who loses regularly at poker) came third.

Back to Saigon, with high hopes for gastronomic success. In his travel show, Anthony Bourdain enthusiastically celebrates the lunchlady (http://gastronomyblog.com/2008/08/09/meet-the-lunch-lady/), and we set out to test our opinions against his. after trekking around the area where she is known to be for around fourty five minutes, and having located an incredibly similar tree to the one she is known to work under, still lost, we retreated to an internet cafe for reinforcements. pulling up the above blog, we called to the residents around us (playing various first-person shooter video games, mostly 12 or younger), and asked if anyone recognised her. of course, they all did: she lived about a block away. the owner of the cafe ran outside, and returned two minutes later puffing hard. "She is upstairs in that building," he proclaimed, pointing to the third floor, "She is in her apartment." Thinking that our luck had finally changed, we returned to the tree in suspect, and sure enough, she arrived on the street a moment later.

"Hello! we have travelled far to taste your blessed soup."

"No Soup Today. Monday"

"Really? Oh no! (forlourn glances) We leave Saigon tomorrow!"

"hmphh"

"thanks"

by the time we had settled on the fact that we weren't going to experience the best soup in the world on this trip, all of the other street vendors had stopped selling their lunch: it was too hot out. Fortunately, we had researched backups, and had for dinner incredible softshell crab at Quan 94 (84 Dinh Tien Hoang Street, District 1). It was cooked three ways, deep fried, sauteed with tamarind sauce, and in pure crab spring rolls. it was heaven, in the most unassuming of ways.

Sorry for the lack of photos, but my camera has picked up a virus and kills computers instantly upon contact. hopefully soon!

Laos: Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng to The Four-Thousand Islands

The contrast between the smoggy insanity of Bangkok and the serene, picturesque Luang Prabang hit us with an audible whump. Our tiny hotel was made in an old French style, with carved wooden banisters and a quiet garden around back. The trees along the street were blooming fragrant pink flowers. Gone were the deafening drone of motorbikes and choking haze of exhaust, gone were the hawkers and the sad mini elephant that parades Kaosan Road while tourists slap its skin and take pictures. Instead we found Luang Prabang to be everything we could have wanted out of a remote fishing village. Within its few square blocks of the city center are at least five massive, ornate guilded temples, all still in use by the resident monks. The monks are young boys, all of whom must spend at least a few months of their lives living in a monestary. They wear brightly colored robes and have shaved heads, and their presence gives the town an ancient feeling, as if they could at any moment realize that they are in the year 2009 and just give up. We spent our time in Luang Prabang riding in a boat down the slow moving Mekong river to visit a waterfall, and later taking a cooking class through a local organic restaurant.
We bused down from Luang Prabang, through the magnificent limestone karst formations of southern Laos, into the growing riverside village of Vang Vieng. This town is known mainly as a place to get very drunk and float down the river in an innertube, all the while stopping at dubious ropeswings and bars blaring old 90's raprock. While the four of us did have an amazing time floating down the river and hitting the ropeswings, the entire experience felt slightly obscene...especially in contrast with Luang Prabang.
Another issue altogether was one of safety: after floating up to one of the more popular bars, we learned from some fellow tubers that not more than half an hour before, a girl had drowned at that very bar after sliding down a large waterslide. Apparently she slid under the surface and wasn't even missed until she had been under for over a minute. She was dead when they found her 15 minutes later. There are no lifeguards in Vang Vieng, and Laos is a third-world country without the resources to enforce adequate safety measures. No one knows how often people are hurt or killed at this dangerous and unregulated waterpark, but it has to be many. Thirty minutes after she was pulled from the water, we saw people still sliding down the same slide, heard the same music blaring from the bar's speakers.
We took an overnight bus down to the southern tip of Laos and the Mekong delta, where scattered across the lazy river are the famous 4000 Islands. There was not much to do in the 4000 islands aside from swing in a hammock, swim in the warm Mekong and eat freshly caught catfish, so we took advantage of the situation. George celebrated his 23rd birthday on our third night there, and we actually managed to stick a candle in a pancake and get a little party in order. We paid dearly for our insolence on an early morning busride the following day.

Thailand, Round 1, and the Birth of the Pipi Family

After our short stay in Singapore, we bade farewell to the inspiring June Abdullah and caught a flight to Bangkok, Thailand. This was our first venture into mainland SE Asia, and it was immediately apparent. Tourism in SE Asia is thriving pretty much everywhere, but Thailand carries the brunt of it. Upon arriving at our hotel, (where we would, hours later, meet Shane and George, bedraggled and jetlagged) we were confronted with a tourism establishment unlike anything so far (except maybe Bali). Our hotel was a few streets off the "backpacker mecca" of Kaosan Road. Kaosan is its own tourism-powered ecosystem thriving within the larger Bangkok madness. They serve hundreds of local Thai dishes on the street, but most are overpriced and made with less spice to suit tourists' tastes. We strolled through the main street and were costantly hooked and grabbed by people selling anything and everything, from tshirts to blowdarts, sunglasses to pingpong-themed sex shows. Our initial reaction was dismay. Thailand had been built up in our minds as the peak of the SE Asia experience both gastronically and culturally, but so far we had only been met with "farang" shenanigans.
Late that night, Shane Lohnes and George Maroussis, our two good friends from Seattle (and of course GHS) met us at our hotel. They had been planning to meet us somewhere in Asia for a few months, but the plans never seemed to materialize. And then, quite suddenly, they both had tickets for Bangkok. We spent only a day and a half more in the capitol city (during which we witnessed an amazing rainstorm that flooded many of the streets in our area) before we booked a tour bus down to southern Thailand, with beaches on the brain.
I had traveled with George and Shane before (in Greece and France, respectively), but traveling in a group of four was at first a strange experience. We quickly began amassing inside jokes, and while it may have been somewhat intimidating to other travelers, everyone appreciated us with wary glances. On our way down to the island of Koh Lanta in southern Thailand we stopped for a few days in a local fishing village, and more memorably a bizarre themepark designed to simulate Hell. Grotesque statues - one involving a pregnant woman being stabbed to death by a giant corkscrew- made for an interesting afternoon.
The small island of Koh Lanta, while ringed by touristy bungalows, still has some of the finest white sand we've yet to come across. We spent these three days in full relax mode, staying mainly poolside and admiring the phosphorescence in the warm Andaman sea.

Cambodia, briefly

After a(nother) very long day of busing, and another scramble to get together enough money to obtain our entry visas (bringing back painful memories of our entry into Indo), we arrived at midday into the capitol city of Phnom Penh. Being very short on sleep, having celebrated George's birthday the day before, we let most of the evening festivities go to waste. Outside of our lake-side hotel was a small stand selling hamburgers to rival those of Dicks', something that Ian and I have been aching for over the last months. Between the four of us, 10 burgers were demolished, and several servings of french fried (a particularly endearing misspelling found all over SE Asia).

The next day, we went on a bit of a soul-shocking tour, learning about the horrific recent history of cambodia, and most notably the khmer rouge. We started, however, at the local fun range. hmm, freudian slip. the local gun range, where one can fire almost any firearm they could hope for, at targets ranging from the mundane (a paper target), to the awful (a selection of short lived livestock). We tried a russian AK-47, an american M-16, and the quintessencial "I have no money in counter strike" MP-5. Although tempted by the full size machine guns, the $120 price tag was a bit steep.

Here's a Cambodian fact which we would all prefer not to dwell on: 40 years ago, 1/5th of the Cambodian population was killed by the Khmer Rouge regime. Today, the youth are not taught about it in school, and only learn of it from their parents or during their post-secondary educations. One and a half million dead, from an original population of only seven million. After our celebration of Americanism at the gun range, we were seriously sobered by a visit to the S-21 prison, where thousands of "enemies" were incarcerated. These were the educated, the wealthy, political enemys, foreign journalists, and anyone who broke any of the many rediculous laws established by the Khmer Rouge.

These were the rules at the S-21 prison:

• You must answer accordingly to my question – don’t turn them away.
• Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
• Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
• You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
• Don’t tell me either about you immoralities of the essence of the revolution.
• While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
• Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you do something, you must do it right way without protesting.
• Don’t make pretexts about Kampucheas Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
• If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
• If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

These prisoners, once tortured beyond the limits of their strength or usefulness, were taken to the killing fields about 20 km away. By the time of the Vietnamese invasion in early 1979, only 7 people of 20,000 had survived. There is a giant monument to the dead erected here, encasing the sculls of those killed in a glass tower. Needless to say, this was a very heavy day, and we looked forward to the Angkor temples a great deal.

We decided that another long day on a bus was in order, and got on the road early to Siem Riep, home of the largest temple complex in the world, at Angkor Wat. But before we could go to the temples, we had to spend an evening unwinding. We did this at BSC Entertainment, a brothel skillfully hidden inside a snooker hall. We were amazed to see this George had been there before, to pose for the sign outside. There was a beautiful girl assigned to each table to keep score, bring drinks, and place the balls, and by the end of the the night, she had been offered to each of us independently. very strange place indeed.









I will let the photos of Angkor speak for themselves. the day was very hot, and the temples were delightful places to hide from the sun. We arrived before sun rise, and saw it come up over the main complex. Interestingly, although this is the most well known temple, it is (in this simple man's mind) one of the less impressive in the complex.









I prefered this one. double click on this picture (making it larger), and look closely at the towers. Very trippy temple.













This was my personal favorite, still overgrown with gargantuan fig trees. At one point, it housed over 2000 monks.

These temples so completely dwarfed anything that we have seen so far, that i cannot imagine going to any more temples and fully enjoying them in the near future. There is a term for this, often quoted by people fresh from Angkor. We are templed-out.

On to Vietnam (by bus, ugh) !

Three Days in Singapore

Singapore popped up on our agenda randomly and without warning. We have all heard the stories of people being caned for chewing gum, or getting their hands cut off for jaywalking. We wanted to see if this was true...and also get some cheap electronics. Before landing in Singapore, we probed the couchsurfing community online for friendly faces and spare bedrooms. Our only positive response was from one June Abdullah-- who turned out to be the nicest, most welcoming and informative host we have had yet. She met us at the monorail station near her small apartment (where she lives with her mom and a boarder who we never met named 'Mr. Fred') and led us to her room. Against all our protests, she demanded we take the bedroom while she slept on a couch in the living room. The generosity of the people we've met has at times been staggering. Conveniently, that night June had been planning to attend a massive outdoor party at one of Singapore's many artificial beaches (they ship the sand in from Indonesia). She brought us along, as well several other members from the couchsurfing community. The party was crazy. Bikinis, dancing in the pool and hot tub, and a bizarre interlude of firedancing and Thai floating lanterns made the night something special indeed. The next day we spent at the Singapore national history museum, learning about the country's history of British colonization and the terror of the Japanese occupation in WWII. The museum had some cool futuristic features, like smell-o-vision and a 360 degree video installation. Singapore is, without a doubt, the cleanest city I've ever seen. What happened to their homeless population is a mystery, and the contrast with Indonesia and the Philippines is outrageous. One exhibit briefly attempted to explain Singapore's rapid transformation from an inpoverished third world country into a major world class economy. We failed to understand how this happened so quickly and so totally.