Hugging toilets and massage school

Hi all. Without a computer, it’s a little difficult get blogs off everyday. But, now that I’m settled (or as settled as I can be on our ship-turned-construction-site) I’ll try to be a little better about it. The journey from Thailand to San Francisco was long, but uneventful. I didn’t sleep much, so I arrived at the ship very sleepy and very glad when they told me I didn’t have to start work until the next day. We’re (the ship and crew) are docked in Alameda, right outside San Francisco, for about a month to do ship repair and maintance. The Sea Bird is here too, so we have two rotations constantly moving from one ship to the other. So far I’ve ripped out insulation, deep-cleaned the crew lounge, made a giant calendar, inventoried our entire library, stripped the nasty moldy caulk from the bathrooms and applied fresh caulk (which envolved hugging the toilet), and lots more that I can’t remember right now. There are so many projects, I’m just glad I didn’t have to go down and scrape the bilges. 

Good news though! I got accepted into massage school! It’s the Vancouver School for Bodywork and Massage and I’ll be starting in February.  I’m so excited! I sent in my letter of resignation today, but I’m hoping to come back when I’m finished and work as the Wellness Coordinator (aka Masseuse). Finge

More Buddha than I thought

I knew there was a good chance of it happening, but I thought I had made it through my month and Thailand/Laos without any mishaps…. My computer was stolen the other day and I don’t have much hope of getting it back. It was mostly my fault because I left it sitting out on our balcony for a few hours. I was upset at first, but I’ve pretty much gotten over it.  One of the four poisons in Buddhism is attachment, so I’m looking at this as simplifying my life. Of course, I plan to buy another one when I get back on the ship. I think I’ll get an Apple this time. I’ve never had one, so if anyone has any advice/suggestions, let me know!

I don’t think I lost too much… All my pictures (besides this trip, of course) were backed up and all my music is on my Ipod, which I’m hoping I can transfer to my new computer. C’est la Vie!

A bit of catching up to do…

I haven’t written in awhile, probably because I’ve been sucked into the slow, lazy lifestyle of the Laos. I can’t even remember what I wrote about in my last blog so I’ll have to check later to make sure I haven’t left anything out. Every evening I’ve been sitting on the porch of our guesthouse in Luang Prabang stealing WIFI from the Lao Wooden House. I think I mentioned that Tim and I would be leaving Luang Nam Tha and heading north to Phongsali. Well, that never happened. We took an early bus out of Luang Nam Tha and traveled southeast down to the province and town of Udom Xai. Arriving at lunchtime, we discovered that the one and only bus to Phongsali departs at 8:00 am every day. Not wanting to waste half a day in the highway truck-stop town and then spend a-whole-nother day on a bus, we checked out what busses were leaving that afternoon. And that’s how we found ourselves in beautiful, mountainous Nong Kiaow. After a long and stunningly gorgeous ride in the back of a dilapidated bus, we arrived in the town after dark. A bridge connects one side of the town to the other and on the far side, the high banks of the river were illuminated by bright lights from several guesthouses and hotels. We toted our bags over the bridge and found a simple bamboo cabin with a river view and a hammock strung outside on the balcony.

We spent two days in Nong Kiaow, not doing much else besides reading, sleeping and eating. I did rent a bike and headed out of town for a few hours. The landscape reminded me of southern China where tall limestone mountains extend toward the sky in narrow peaks. We also met a couple from Georgia, Lane and Sarah, who we would later reunite with in Luang Prabang and celebrate Obama’s victory at a bar with a big-screen TV.

From Nong Kiaow we had the option of taking a one-hour boat ride up river to the backpacker town of Maung Ngoi Neu or we could enlist a captain to take us five hours south to the UNESCO World Heritage City of Luang Prabang. We decided on the latter because we were both tired of traveling on buses and boats and tuk-tuks and were looking forward to staying put for a week or so.

The boat, or what Lao’s consider a boat to be, was long, narrow, and low-riding with a flat roof and wooden chairs for seats. The trip to Luang Prabang was approximately 4-5 hours, passing nothing more than stilted wooden huts, corn plants growing on the clayey banks, kids jumping off high rocks and slithering down make-shift slides, and young boys fishing from the backs of their precariously low-sunken vessels.

The trip was uneventful and peaceful. I fluctuated between reading my book, gazing at the passing mountains, and trying to capture the terrain with my camera. When we reached the area where the Nam Ou River met the Mekong we were planning on stopping and visiting the Pak Ou Caves where hundreds of Buddha figurines are displayed. Our diver cut the engine, but couldn’t get it started again. So, we were stranded on the banks of the Mekong (there was a restaurant and some vendors) for almost three hours until another tour boat with only four passengers came to our rescue and brought us the rest of the way to Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang

The city is located on the banks of the Mekong River. The Khan River forms a peninsula where it empties out to meet the Mekong and this is where the Old City endures. At first I was a little put off with the city, imagining it to be beautiful and old and full of character (which it is). But as we disembarked from the boat and ascended the steep ramp into town, we were bombarded by touts trying to sell us their guesthouses, restaurants, bars, and tuk-tuk services. We managed to find a reasonable guesthouse and when we had dropped our bags and figured out the no-water situation, we went in search of food. The main avenue in Luang Prabang may as well be a side street in Rome, a promenade in New York city or a boulevard in Paris. At least that’s what it felt like when I first saw all the lights and out-door restaurants and cafes and white people for the first time (remember, this is after I’ve been sleeping in treehouses and eating at street vendor stalls). We walked a little further down Main Street and came upon the red tents of the night market – a open-air mall laid out each night exclusively for tourists. It took us 15 minutes to fight our way through the crowds and past rows and rows of the same stuff until finally we found the vegetarian buffet Tim remembered from a year and a half ago. It’s perhaps the best authentic buy and most certainly the best deal in the market. 5,000 kip (approximately .75¢) will get you a heaping plate of delicious Lao food. Fresh bamboo rings, fried morning glory, sprouts with tofu, stir-fried vegetables, plain rice, curried rice, fried noodles, pad Thai, and sweet pineapple for dessert. Luang Prabang was beginning to grow on me.