Road from Hoi An to Hué

First grey rain in 3 months now. The land turns green green green. You'd think it was Ireland from the brochures, but for the palm trees and longhorn cows. Green paddies glow, flaring in the dim afternoon light. Sparks of white: scraps of cloth hanging from sticks topped with conical hats, sprinkled in the paddies to chase away Vietnamese crows.

The bus cruises, astride the centre-line; horn is relentless, every few seconds; we dip back into safety if we meet something oncoming, but the driver makes sure to blare his indignance. The trucks rush past, horns dopplering plaintively in return.

Here and there we pass a house, derelict, slate and brown in the green paddy; or a Chinese cemetery on a green slope, graves festive with orange and teal plaster. They peel as years pass, but not as much as one would think.

With >80million people one has to put them all somewhere. Apart from mountain roads, there isn't a stretch of highway that doesn't show some sign of habitation: roadside cafes, a shack, a farm. Kids in blue ponchos, some without; on bicycles on the way home, some without. The constant sprawl of humanity disorients me: I have no idea when we've left the city, nor when we've arrived at the destination.

A slash of red from the tilled earth; a lonely pagoda on the hillside: everything dashes out of the fog at us and retreats. The myopia from the mist doesn't let you see very far.

I fell asleep as we left Hoi An in sun, and woke up to this two hours later. The end of our trip draws nearer: 19 days left.

Party policies allow me to live a full and productive life

Follow-up to that last post: I so didn't feel inspired at 4 in the morning, as the Vietnamese seem to have two standing policies:

1. Put all foreigners at the back of the bus.
2. Never replace the shocks on the bus.

But at least I have posted again - scroll down to March 6th. Funny thing: I actually haven't been able to access cheesybeefpizza myself since we entered Vietnam, but I can edit it for some reason. In most of the hotel rooms we've stayed at, there's been a list of "regulations"; being one of the last Communist countries, these very often have included a ban on "subversive materials". Maybe cheesybeefpizza is a corrupting influence on the fertile minds of the youth: I should inject some content to get myself back in the good books. Progress through technology! The Party is Life!

Published again!

Well we've been in Vietnam now for a few days and it's not been as bad as all the news we've heard from people who've been. We haven't been killed by traffic in Saigon; we haven't been completely ripped off (only partially, and on several occasions); we haven't had our asses dragged 5 blocks by passing moto drivers attempting to snatch our bags. It hasn't been all lollipops and rainbows but it's been a lot of fun so far.

Will post more later when I get a decent computer (with cardreader) - have to catch up Malaysia, Cambodia AND Vietnam now, errant boy that I am. For now, we've been published in last Saturday's Vancouver Sun. You can look it up on www.vancouversun.com for the next while. This may be our last article; too busy to write these days. Mind you, we're on the bus for 16 hours tomorrow heading north, so maybe I'll feel inspired at 4 in the morning.

Welcome to the jungle

While the né-Shivjis went to Singapore, the two in-law husbands (Arzoo and I) decided to hit the jungle. Taman Negara National Park holds what is reportedly the oldest rainforest in the world (130 million years) -- having never suffered an ice age -- and as such is home to all sorts of friendly plants and lush animals.

With more time, gumption and stamina, we could have attempted the 9-day trek through the jungle up Mt. Tahan, towering above the canopy. We only had three days before we rejoined the rest of the clan, so time was short. Most of the first day was spent first in a bus, then on a speedboat along the river to Kuala Tahan, the little village that acts as park headquarters and sits across the river from the jungle proper.

The adventure began when we got to the hostel and the reception lady said something about how we'd have to share a dorm with a bunch of girls. Her choice of words: "You have to share with bi women". This raised eyebrows and hopes, but sadly we were eventually conveyed to our own separate dorm room. Our bathroom was open to the outdoors and, with no netting and a 6-inch gap in the bathroom door, before long we were sharing our room with all sorts of jungle friends, all night long.

Our first foray into the jungle was a hour-long walk with our guide, Mr. Herman, and our group of 5 (2 Swedish girls, 1 Japanese girl, and us) at night to a hide (a treehouse lookout for observing wildlife) and into the forest to check out bugs etc. There was little hope for spotting anything of a decent size: the hide is only about 5 minutes walk from the posh resort some enterprising wag had decided to build right on the edge of the jungle. In fact, it seemed like half our time was spent walking through the posh resort to get to the jungle, but that's progress. In all fairness, we did spot some deer at the hide, partaking of the salt-lick bait people have put there. During our walk we saw stick insects, scorpion holes, and learned all about leeches when the nice Japanese girl in our group felt something on her torso and made a new friend.

The next day was our full day in the jungle, beginning with a hike up to the canopy walkway as featured in all the brochures. We woke early to avoid a huge group of Chinese journalists who were in the park, sponsored by the Malaysian government in some mad bid to boost tourism. We'd heard they would be going through sometime in the morning.

The canopy walkway is a 510-meter-long rope bridge that, at its highest, snakes through the treetops 45 meters above the ground. "Stairs" are rickety aluminum ladders woven into the rope, ascending at desperate angles. As a matter of safety, only 4 people are allowed on a particular section at one time. Mind you, as most things are in Malaysia, it was all pretty regulated and well thought out, and the ropes are tested "daily". I suppose it'd be a setback for tourism if 50 Chinese tourists plunged to their leafy deaths.

It was a grand old time for most of the way, wandering through the canopy, with nothing but birdsong and the squeak of ropes. I don't think we spotted any animals, but if at any point we were feeling jaded, we could always just look down at the drop and things would pick up considerably. Alas, our reverie was shattered by the foreguard of the Chinese group, who came racing up behind us. For whatever reason, they were in a hurry; pretty soon the 4-person rule was tossed aside (as we were about to be) and we were being harassed by a scrum of Chinese tailgaters.

After the canopy walkway we hiked up Bukit Teresek, a hill much favoured for its nice lookout over the forest to Mt. Tahan. It was a long sweaty climb but we finally made it up. Arzoo and I brought up the rear while the others went ahead to the lookout. As we neared, we heard screaming and looked up to see the girls racing back towards us, arms flailing. We thought this was a pretty silly dance until we found out someone had pissed off some bees, apparently. Then the bees thought we were in cahoots and started for us. We all fled, limbs akimbo, to where our guide was waiting for us, where he very helpfully pulled stingers from our now-lumpy arms. Arzoo got nailed right in the eyebrow. I think I may have caught a glimpse of something faintly resembling a mountain before I met the business end of the swarm.

As we went for lunch, both Arzoo and I discovered our own little lunching leech buddies, who'd managed to get into our boots and under our socks. Sure enough, pulling them off left a little circular wound that wouldn't stop bleeding, little anticoagulant-injecting bastards that they are.

Our afternoon was spent on the river, heading up towards a indigenous village and home of a nomadic band of natives. I was expecting something pretty circusy, like the village-cum-souvenir plazas we'd seen in Thailand, but this was something different. We happened to visit during moving day. Their previous village had had all the rustic accroutrements you'd expect: grass-roofed huts, fire pits, etc., but they'd only managed to get up a few shelters at their new place, and they seemed pretty happy to just sit around on logs and have a chat through our guide. We did get our Kodak moments when they pulled out blowpipes and we all had a go at a styrofoam target a few meters away. Then one of the older boys spotted a bird and went after it: he nailed it but apparently this bird had stamina, flying away out of range with a dart in its side.

I'd arranged with Mr Herman to go full tilt through the rapids we were due to hit on the way back to the camp, the better to douse the girls who were sitting in the back of the boat. This all went well according to plan and their waterlogged squeals echoed through the dense forest.

Once night falls, there's not much to do other than go on a night safari; as we'd had a rough approximation the night before and didn't feel it necessary to crash through the foliage in a 4x4, we sat at the floating restaurant and had a nice chat with Yuki, the Japanese girl whom we'd gotten to know quite well by that time. She's got an interesting story for sure: a few more weeks on the road in Malaysia, then back to Japan to prep for a 2-year stint with an NGO, teaching accounting practices in Senegal.

The next morning we all awoke early, congregated at the bus, and swayed our way along the dirt road back to civilisation and the family, whom we were to meet in Malacca. All in all, a nice gentleman's foray into the wilderness: decent conversation, a sporting game of blowdarts, a good amount of exertion and river-water intake, and enough creepy-crawlies to keep it from being just another walk in the park.

Hussin and his Mah-Meri men

There's a store on the main street in Tanah Rata that sells local handicrafts. Ordinarily we're pretty blase about these things (overpriced tourist dreck) but something made Nazma stop, and we went in. Then I looked up. Wooden masks on the walls, dozens of statues lining the showcases everwhere, and not the cheapo phony "antiques" you normally see. Every one was different, and they were freaky: I mean Lovecraft-esque stuff-of-nightmares freaky; you'd think this was the Cthulhu Museum and Gift Shop. We'd never seen anything remotely resembling this level of artistry, skill and just sheer twistedness.

Turns out they're made in a village of Orang Asli ("aborigines") living on an island on the west coast of Malaysia. Actually they're made by only about 6 guys, and each statue takes about a month or two to do. Apparently each of these is a character from their many folktales, as interpreted by the individual carver, so either their stories are all uniformly scary, or the sculptors are all sick sick geniuses.

In this store, one medium-sized statue, say a foot tall, could cost you over $3000 CAD, so it's definitely a step above the usual trashy souvenirs. And if you had the money you'd pay it: the marquee piece is a tiger holding a chain: real wooden links carved from a single block of solid hardwood. We found out later that actually only one guy in the village knows how to carve the rings, and he doesn't need the money badly enough to spend a month whittling, so not very many get made these days.

In any case, it stuck in my mind and wouldn't go away after we'd left town. This led to a fool's crusade across several Malaysia sultanates that spanned the rest of our time in Malaysia. Long story short, if I've been vague about the descriptions, and you're wondering why I haven't bothered including any photos, or what the big deal is anyways, it's because we've ended up finding, buying and shipping 3 of these bad boys back to Vancouver, and no, we didn't spend $3000 each. Everyone's welcome to come over, hear the story, and draw your own conclusions.

I still love Pai

Just a note that the Pai piece has been reposted with photos now. I'm frantically trying to post using the pseudo-modern computers here before shipping off to Cambodia tomorrow: will be too busy clambering around Angkor to write (though I guess we haven't written much here either). Any posts on Malaysia will be backdated to before this one, just to keep everything in chronological order, since I'm picky that way and revisionism is so easy on the internet.