Back from Asia-Where is home?

The title of this entry was going to be “Why Hong Kong is Overrated” but circumstances have dictated a change in emphasis.. Bear with me.

After a few days in Chiang Rai,North Thailand,three amazing weeks in Laos,land of mystery,and quiet relaxation,and four days in cosmopolitan,pulsing Hong Kong here we are.back in Jerusalem. Laos has had its own blog pages,even though I could write on and on about it and post myriad pictures, I will restrain myself.

Our street in Jerusalem- I did miss the blue sky

 

How to describe reverse culture shock? Better writers than me in other blogs have done this,but I feel obliged to give it a shot.Here goes…Where is my wonderful Chinese life? Where are all my diverse friends from all over the globe- Philippines,Taiwan,Canada,Australia? I left them all behind to return to my family. In China our life seemed to be a constant whirl of the new and exciting.We had  a great time in class with the students,and we had many friends outside the classroom all clamouring to be our friends. Whenever we stepped outside our apartment in the city of Xiamen,there was always something new to explore. Every street corner held a surprise,every face turned curiously to stare at the “laowei” (foreigners)  walking past. Of course family is very important. We miss them when we are away. We were thrilled to see our kids and our siblings and my dad. But when we are with them things can be difficult.We fall back into patterns and rituals that are long ingrained in our behaviour,and that we don’t always enjoy.I am sure many people can relate to this. Reverse culture shock means that what should have been alien and hard to deal with became the norm,and our old familiar life suddenly became strange to us. We peered at the deserted streets and became amazed that we could understand every conversation overheard on the bus and in the supermarket.  The confusion and reverse culture shock we are now going through is compounded by the fact that the Hamas decided to resume shelling the day before our return,and in fact as we were passing through passport control at Ben Gurion airport the officer at the booth told us that sirens had just sounded a few minutes earlier in the centre of the country.Needless to say this was pretty disconcerting ,and we started feeling like turning around and heading straight back to the plane!

So to get back briefly to the last weeks of our trip. We returned to Chiang Mai on our way back to Hong Kong for the return flight home. On our first visit to Chiang Mai the curfew had still been in place because of the military coup there.Restaurants had closed at 6pm and the streets had been deserted. I had considered avoiding Chiang Mai but fellow bloggers assured me it was safe to go there. And on the whole I am glad we did,as the crossing over from CM to Laos was a blast in itself. However when we returned 3 weeks later the tourists had started coming back to Chiang Mai.It was still not  as crowded as on our first trip to Thailand,but it felt a bit more lively and fun.We wandered through the streets of the Old City,saw the Night Market (no big deal after the one in Luang Prabang) and I did something a little unusual- I took a Thai Cooking class! This for me was the highlight of our return to Thailand,especially the Drunken Noodles which burst into flame when we added the Palm Sugar.

Drunken Noodles

My Massalman Curry

The cooking school was called “Siam Rice” and I was presented with a certificate and a book of recipes at the end. It was well worth the money and very enjoyable. There are lots of different cooking schools to choose from but I think they are much the same, both in price and what they offer. In any case,this is a fun thing to do, and you have something to take home with you to remind you of your visit.

On arrival in Hong Kong,where we picked up our huge suitcases at the wonderful Butterfly on Hollywood Hotel,we were again upgraded to a larger room,this time with a view! Hong Kong was almost unbearably hot and stifling,but we managed to have a pretty good time,walking around the Soho neighbourhood,and making a brief trip to Lantau Island where after an awesome ride on the 360 degrees Ngong cable car we saw the huge Giant Buddha. This was the part where I was going to lay out my theory that HK is overrated as a tourist destination,but I think I will leave that for another post,as I have been rattling on long enough and with the sirens going off here every few minutes I am really not in the mood..

My friend asked me where this blog is going now that we are not travelling.I said I have no idea.So let’s just wait and see,shall we?

Big Buddha Lantau

Up the Mekong to the Thai Border

We decided to leave Luang Prabang by slow boat- we had travelled down the bumpy Lao roads by bus and taking a slow boat up to Huay Xai over two days seemed like something worth trying.After a short research project I found there are basically 3 ways to do this- public boat,private VIP boat or Luxury boat.There is a fourth way called speed boat otherwise known as sudden death or suicide mission.The thought of hurtling through the water very fast with no safety,a roaring engine and no crash helmet did not appeal.So regarding the other options- the public boat is apparently crowded, noisy and you chance ending up seated on the engine on a hard wooden seat for two days.The two other options seemed much the same except that the Luxury one costs twice as much,and the only difference is you overnight at Pakbeng (the halway point) in a fancy hotel.This didn’t seem to justify the expense so we plumped for Nagi of Mekong, a well publicised outfit which boasts long boats with about 50 padded bus seats, tables, a toilet and lots of room to walk about.Since we were going off season and upstream (most people go the other way) the chances were the boat would not be full.As it happened Adisak,the owner answered me promptly by email and replied to all my questions, and booked us on with just our passport numbers and contact info at the hotel.We would be picked up at 6.15 and depart the pier at 7.00. It indeed turned out that we had tons of room as there were only another 3 guests on the boat (a Canadian couple and their lovely 12 year old son) and the crew of driver,guide ,cook and boss lady.So we had lots of room to lie down and sleep, read, eat and walk about during the 2 day trip.

 

Our long boat

The price of the two day trip was $150 each which included breakfast and lunch and the overnight hotel stay in Pakbeng,plus a visit to the Nam Ou Buddha caves, a steal as it turned out.

The next two days passed like some mesmerizing dream.The boat was cool when it was baking hot outside, comfortable and relaxing.The gorgeous scenery drifted by and we saw kids swimming,fishermen, water buffalo, cattle grazing on the river bank, people washing their clothes, and even an elephant.It was like being in a National Geographic movie at times.

On the first day we stopped off at the Pak Ou caves,with their thousands of buddha statues. The next day we visited a small very remote village which had no electricity  or water and no school. Most of the inhabitants were out working in the fields, leaving the grandparents and small kids at home. Pigs and chickens ran around and kids gawped at us as if they had never seen outsiders before. The overnight stop at Pakbeng was nothing amazing- it’s just a small place all the boats stop off halfway between Luang Prabang and Huay Xai with just backpacker places and restaurants.

Buffalo along the river

Village kids

Along the way Khae our guide told us various things about the places we saw, and answered all our questions.He told us about his ex wife who wasted all the money provided by the sale of 4 buffalo his father had given for their wedding, and told us things about his ethnic group,the Yao.

It is hard to convey in words how wonderfully relaxing this trip was, how the scenery glided quietly by,how the rhythm of the boat lulled us into calm.This was really only brought home to us as we left the boat and arrived at Huay Xai. Khae helped us board a tuk tuk which took us over the Friendship Bridge and back into Thailand,where we spent the night in Chiang Khong,the Thai town over the border. Here too we saw the Mekong from our guest house balcony- but it was all different.

The beautiful Mekong (0ur Mother in Lao)

Off we go again- Hong Kong,Chiang Mai, and … LAOS!

We have finally had our last goodbye party and taken our last goodbye photo in Xiamen.We have returned our house keys and our teachers’ cards and boarded a bullet train to Shenzhen.After a couple of days there we crossed over to Hong Kong and after a couple of days there and a bit of sightseeing we boarded a flight to Chiang Mai,Northern Thailand,with a slight bit of trepidation due to the recent military coup and curfew there. However on arrival in Chiang Mai all was well despite the lack of tourists and the restaurants shutting down very early. We felt safe,even though we saw soldiers stationed at the city gates.I will kind of catapult the trip from Xiamen to Laos, since there is so much to write about in Laos,I don’t want to bore everyone with minutae,especially since we have visited both Shenzhen and Hong Kong before.

Chiang Mai is a well-known tourist destination,full of attractive Buddhist temples, massage salons and lovely really cheap restaurants. We did take one trip from there to the Tiger Kingdom,which is definitely a must see.According to the internet it it not one of those places where tigers are subdued with drugs.The tigers there are genuinely placid as they have been reared there from birth,and are not capable of hunting in the wild.They are sleek and well-cared for,and you pay a price to stroke smallest,small or big tigers for about 20 minutes.It is an amazing experience,rather hard to describe.You walk into a cage full of tigers (and the small are pretty large!) together with a handler,who reassures you.You leave your bag outside and enter only with a camera.You must not touch their paws or head,just tickle their tummy and you can move their tail and sit next to them,and even lie down next to them and put your head on them if you are feeling really brave.It is well worth it in my opinion.I was overawed by being so close to such a beautiful creature.

Stroking a tiger at Tiger Kingdom- yes it’s real and alive

 

From Chiang Mai we took a minibus package with a few other people which picked us up at our hotel,and drove us via Chiang Rai to the border with Laos,and helped us cross the border,including do all the visa paperwork and deliver us onto the bus from Chiang Khong (the Thai side) to Huai Xi (the Lao side) and then get a Lao bus to Luang Namtha. On the way we stopped at the beautiful Wat Rong Khun,or White Temple in Chiang Rai.This temple was damaged in a recent earthquake and has since been restored.

White Temple,Chiang Rai,Thailand

When we arrived at the border,we just had to fill in a couple of forms and [ay $35,add a passport photo and board a shuttle bus to cross the 4th Friendship Bridge over the Mekong River into Laos.On the other side we were dropped off at the Bus station for the trip to Luang Namtha.This was rather longer than we thought and the bus was a bit ramshackle and the road very bumpy and primitive compared to the Thai side.We finally arrived it Luang Namtha,northern Laos at 9.30pm.The bus station was in the middle of nowhere,and there were no taxis or tuktuks in sight.Eventually we asked a guy to help us by borrowing his phone and calling our guest house.They thought we wanted a room,and said they were full.Finally we explained somehow that we just wanted to reach the place and had no transport.They didn’t really understand.The man with the phone pointed at a minivan which was loading local people and goods,and said he could take us for 40,000 Kip (about $5).The man said he knew our guest house.So we climbed on and at 10pm reached our guest house.The main street of Luang Namthat was just one long strip of  backpacker guest houses,restaurants and tour companies.THere was very little else there.The scenery was stunning.After discovering that our guest house had no hot water we moved the next day to a neighbouring one called the Zuela,which is without doubt the best bet in Luang Namtha, a  gorgeous log villa,with hot water,clean rooms, a/c, a downstairs restaurant, tour operators and intermittent wifi connection.

Zuela Guest House,Luang Namtha

After spending a day strolling around Luang Namtha and discovering its very basic charms. we opted to take a one day tour to see ethnic hill tribes in the area by tuktuk, near the town of Muang Sing. There are some beautiful treks around that area which you can do if you are looking for something more challenging, most include a homestay with some ethnic peoples. During the wet season (when we were there) trekking is more strenuous,due to the mud and the hilly terrain. We took the trek with Elaine, a Californian who had spent 5 years teaching in SHenzhen,China and now lives and teaches in Indonesia. The tour was wonderful.Our guide,Hak, from the Black Tai minority was wonderfully knowledgeable and charming with a great sense of humour and excellent English. He took us to various ethnic minority villages. We began at the Muang Sing market,about 3 hours driver from Luang Namtha. The road was pretty bumpy and rough in places.IT was also muddy so you had to watch your step. We took lots of photos and of course asked people before we did this. Most were happy to be photographed,although some younger women were very shy. WE then saw some Hmong, Yao, Lolo and Leu. There are many ethnic minority groups in Lao, some originating in Tibet,others in Vietnam but most have been there for a few hundred years. They speak Lao language but also their own language which is very different, and each group cannot often understand the others’ language. They are mostly Buddhist,but some are also animist.One very intersting part of the trip was a long chat we had ( with the translation of Hak) with a lady who does hand embroidery. She provides pieces for an NGO which sells her work in the capital and abroad,and gets paid over $100 for most pieces,as her work is very fine,and often takes more than a year to complete. She said she has a brother living in Santa Barbara, and has visited him there, and she produced photos of her visit there,and also of her two sons at university,one here in Laos and one in Guangzhou,China. IT was hard to imagine her travelling abroad let alone to the US whilst seeing her squatting in the mud hut of the village,surrounded with ragged children….

The girl said it wasn’t her baby

Temple wall drawing showing punishment for gossip and lying

 

We had lunch in one village house, and ate sticky rice (with our hands,rolled into a hard ball) ,spicy pork and chicken,bamboo shoots and spinach.IT was delicious but rather spicy. Dessert was a small very sweet banana. We also saw a village temple,with some amazing wall pictures,highly ornate, depicting the fate of those in the afterlife who have gossipped or lied about their neighbours.IT reminded me somewhat of Hieronymous Bosch. Towards evening we drove back again over the bumpy road back to Luang Namtha,which suddenly seemed like a throbbin metropolis in comparison to the tiny villages around the area.

The next morning we boarded a bus at the Luang Namtha bus station to travel to Luang Prabang, the famed UNESCO heritage city of North Laos.I had been anticipating this city very much and was afraid to be disappointed. After a 9 hour extremely bumpy bus journey the risk of anticlimax was pretty high. The bus journey itself was pretty great. The air conditioning consisted of travelling with the door open. There was a mix of passengers, locals, foreign backpackers – young Americans and French, a Chinese guy from Shandong who works in Shenzhen,and  a couple of very well-travelled Liverpudlians.At one point,it being rainy season, there was a landslide on the road,and we had to get out of the bus and wait for the road to be cleared by bulldozer.There were several food and toilet stops on the way in some tiny rural villages. The view was stunning all the way- thick jungle, tall mountains swathed in mist, river valleys of the winding Mekong and its tributaries, rice paddies complete with picturesque buffalo – all you could ask for in  a South East Asian travel video We finally arrived in Luang Prabang at around 6 pm and very easily got a tuktuk to the hotel,glimpsing a tantalizing view of a gleaming gold Wat on our way there.

More about Luang Prabang later. IT is an amazing town.

Will continue later as internet here is a little intermittent….

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How good are you with Uncertainty?

Can you cope with uncertainty? Are you flexible? This is a question you always need to ask yourself if you embark on an expat existence,or if you do independent travel for any length of time. WE are now into our last couple of weeks in Xiamen. We are due to leave here June 7th and travel by train to Shenzhen in south China, just across the border from Hong Kong.From Hong Kong we have tickets to fly to Chiang Mai in North Thailand and the original idea was, after spending a couple of days up there- to cross the new 4th Friendship Bridge over the Mekong, to enter Laos and hang out there for about three weeks till we cross back to Chiang Mai and fly back to Hong Kong and thence to Tel Aviv. I say “the original idea was” because suddenly on Thursday, martial Law was declared in Thailand ,and a curfew between the hours of 10pm till 5am was imposed by the military junta. So now we need to decide what to do.We can of course give up the $300 we spent on the ticket,buy a new air ticket from Hong Kong to Vientiane in Laos ( probably around $400) and cut our losses. We can fly into Chiang Mai and just take another flight into Laos without going into Thailand (also probably around an extra $300 or so).Or we can wait… and see what happens.Trying to get solid information online is tricky.Everyone outside Thailand says of course don’t go there.Some people in Thailand say everything is fine,don’t worry.Others say hang on and see how things develop. Of course nobody has a crystal ball and and tell you what the situation will be like in another 2 or 3 weeks. But the idea of being in Thailand with a curfew (no bars, no restaurants, no night markets) is not overly encouraging.On the other hand, things seem to be pretty normal apart from that,acccording to the folks on the THaiVisa Forum  We really don’t have a whole lot of options here.We thought originally of crossing into Laos from the North via Yunnan province in West China. This option however does not exist any more as D’s visa was only renewed until June 11th.( Mine is until July 13th but obviously I am not going without him!)

Friends at our party

So that’s how things stand now.We had an amazing farewell party with lots of our friends,with about 25 people. We had a farewell meal in a seafood restaurant with some other friends. We are going out again this week to our new favourite haunt, the Brewhouse .It’s a bar belonging to a Texan, and they have great Western food and live music most nights. So we have mixed feelings. We know we will miss this place and these people a lot. We have had a great time.But it really is time to go. We will have to live with the uncertainty now for a couple of weeks and see how things pan out.Meanwhile the one certain thing here is our flight date home which is fixed.And what we will do once we get home… well that’s as uncertain as everything else! We have no clue.Our usual retort to people who ask us that question is : “The plan is we have no plan!”

Doris from our Public Speaking Elective Class

 

 

Can you cope with uncertainty? Please leave a comment!

,t