A visit from the wife.

Once a upon a time, I had delusions of a EU citizenship and someone who might help me keep my house more in order. Into my life came Mandy - a domestic goddess with British citizenship. We got along well, I jokingly proposed to her, and she accepted. We held many a conversation discussing the details of our "wedding" and now she'll be a maid-of-honor in my actual wedding. She recently honored us with a visit and we got to explore Chiang Mai together. It was a fabulous time all around. I re-visited Doi Suthep with her and suprise, suprise... it was foggy and there was no view at all of Chiang Mai. We hit up the markets and visited a co-worker's newly built house with a wonderful view of the surrounding areas.

Mandy and I at Doi Suthep

The view from Matthew's house.

Bowls at a Buddhist Temple


Temple of the dogs...


...and cat

...and elephant.

Yet Another Reason to Love Bangkok

A coworker and I took a day to act like tourists and hit up some places in Bangkok where we haven't been yet. We were not sorry. I give you the flower market:









Another "happy place" to add to the list.

Viva Mexico!!! ... but not aerobus.

A few short days after the wedding, the die-hards found themselves in Mexico. Brett and I got a bit frantic in the airport as Viva Aerobus’ delayed and delayed and delayed our flight some more. Viva… pffft. In four hours time, we had ditched the South Terminal “Airport”, sought solace at the Hilton Airport bar, hightailed it back to the “airport” and walked up a plane. Eventually we landed in Mexico with not a swine flu germ in sight.

The South Terminal

Wee!!! We're finally taking off!

Our 1^st hotel, Luna Maya, was absolutely lovely. Anyone on a bit of a budget, I would strongly recommend their cabanas.

Our cabana

The private beach

Testing out the hammock

But anyone not on a budget, Nueva Vida de Ramiro is stunning. ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. Thank you, Dad and Sue. Thank you Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. Brett and I have never stayed in such luxurious, heavenly accommodations. My father and Sue, who due to health and mobility issues decided to bow out of Mexico, were generous enough to pass off 2 nights in their booked hotel room on to us. We are so grateful. One morning, I set my alarm to 6 am so that I could see the sunrise over the ocean. My alarm went off, I opened my eyes and from my bed, looked straight out our glass double doors and right onto the beach and rising sun over the turquoise sea. All from my bed. Satisfied, I went right back to sleep. H E A V E N.

Our Cabana.

The room

My favorite hammock since Peace Corps.

The Welcome Board.

The ruins were beautiful. They don't necessarily stand up against those other famous ruins like Copan or Tikal, but you just can't beat that real estate. Not to mention clouds of butterflies.

Two sisters.

Turtles!

Those sisters again.

Brett tries to blend in with the locals at a nearby beach-side restaurant.

Cenotes might be my new favorite natural wonder. Brett and I explored some free cenotes which were lovely. It was great to see the locals taking advantage of them.

This one a local hitchhiker was kind enough to show us our first day.

The top layer of water was warm, the bottom cool. It took some getting used to.

Local brothers excited about spotting fish.

We also, on the recommendation of Brett’s mom, checked out Hidden Worlds. The highlights were definitely the splashdown zip line and the snorkeling. The limestone structures the above and below the water were both so stunning, it was difficult for me to decide which to look at.

We lucked into a fantastic find in town: Pollo Pirata. That's right, Chicken Pirate. Brett was so brave as to try the habanero sauce. I was so proud. This is him devouring it:

Later we moseyed down to the reception area. It was gorgeous and very Conde Naste.

Oh so high-so.

Kit strikes a pose and strikes it well.

There was a wonderful buffet and what Mexican celebration is complete without a pinata?

Dylan's swing.

Kit means business.

All in all, a great, great trip.

Kit and Dylan's Wedding...

...was absolutely perfect. I received a panicked email from Kit as they were deliberating on what to be done. The international media was inundating us with headlines which threatened the dream wedding in Mexico with the new terrifying disease of the day. But, despite having their destination wedding hijacked by some scary, snout-nosed influenza, I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect wedding for the two of them. It was unpretentious, genuine, and filled with love. I realize that the previous sentence sounds really corny, but really. It was… and in the most un-corny way. One of Kit’s best friends, Callie and her mother worked wedding magic and turned their home into a gerbera daisy/Christmas light wonderland. Not being in Mexico meant more people could come and their friends and family couldn’t say enough wonderful things about the couple. It was a beautiful wedding.

Preparations:

Kit poses while decorating.

Gerbera Daisies

colorful fans!

The Ceremony:

Waiting for the Pilgrims to arrive....and this time, I can't be blamed.

Dad walks Kit down the aisle.

The ceremony.

Someone neglected sunblock. One guess who it was.

Callie, the Wedding Miracle Worker makes a drunken toast as promised.

Let them eat cake!

For more pictures of the big event, just click here.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog

Its so good to go home. Just so so so good to go home. And this trip was extra super special. Not just because I got to go home and stuff my face with mexican food and good beer, and not just because I got to hang out at my favorite haunts, like Town Lake, eh hem, I mean Ladybird Lake, Barton Springs, Draught House, Ginger Man, and Reimers Ranch. No, this trip was special because I got to come home and watch my little sister get married to a wonderful man. And to add to that specialness, I also and got to show Brett to Austin and Austin to Brett. As I expected, the 2 got along splendidly. And, as usual, a trip to Mexico was thrown into the bargain.

Considering that we're planning on leaving Asia next year, it's not a trip we would have done otherwise. So Kit, thank you for making me make the trip. It was a whirlwind of a trip and as usual there wasn't enough time to do everything, but we can't be accused of not cramming as much as we could into our limited time. So here's a brief rundown/highlights:

After our hellish 29 hour journey across the Pacific and Western US, we got picked up by Kit and were dropped off at our fabulous accomodations courtesy of the charismatic Argentine, Estebi. He was gracious enough to let us use his lovely apartment which is just a 5 minute walk down to Barton Springs and walking/biking distance to many of my favorite spots. My friend Lauren, who I still consider part of Austin even though she moved to Tahoe, was in town at the same time with 2 other friends. There were lots of Barton Springs and Town Lake runs. There were also sprinkles of Taco Cabana, one of my guilty pleasures.

We had countless fantastic meal with friends and family. We started off at Threadgill's with Amy and Kurt followed by a crazy Karaoke session at Austin Pizza on the drag. Kit's wedding meant that one of the other Pilgrim girls, Kate, came to town, as well as her mother, Lee. I haven't seen Lee since I was in college and we got to enjoy a delicious if not noisy dinner at Maudie's. On Sunday, I had what used to be my traditional Maria's Taco Express breakfast tacos (which got even busier than I remember but the migas breakfast tacos were still really yum) followed by climbing at Reimer's. Erik prepared his famous steak which exceeded expectations and actually put me into a food coma. Seriously. I joke about food comas, but this was an actual food coma. I got up after the last bite, went to the couch, and was unconscious. A vague recollection of chocolate getting pushed into my mouth comes up but nothing else. Magnolia's Mag Queso made an appearance in the trip followed by Shady Grove and topped off with camping chairs and a BIG pick-up truck as we gulped down an array of ambers and browns in the parking lot of the Draught House. I made another attempt at paella at Erik's house which allowed Brett and I a stroll through Whole Foods flagship store, the disneyland of pricey, socially-conscious groceries. A yuppy dream come true. A walk down to the Barton Creek greenbelt with Omar was planned to show Brett New Wall and Flintstones but Brett passed out from exhaustion. Next trip. There was dinner with Esteban and Maria at, where else but Arandas - a place you either love or hate - followed by a sad sad attempt to see Her Space Holiday at Mohawk. Brett had a nap. But I guilted myself into taking Omar for a quick hike down the Shoal Creek greenbelt. We arrived. I payed cover. I started to fade, and fade, and fade. I discovered it was another hour until Her Space Holiday came on. There was NOT A CHANCE I was going to be able to keep my eyes open until then. I missed Her Space Holiday (kicking myself). Brett tells me it was a great show. Poop.

OK. That about rehashes the visit except for the main event: The Wedding. Oh, and MEXICO. I will be spending more time on that one later.

My pictures of Austin can be found here.

Day Two, Houay Xai.

We woke up fairly late. It was, maybe, ten o'clock. We got ready and went back to the restaurant with the ants. The ants were still there. The breakfast wasn't very good. We walked back down the street to see if the Gibbon Experience had opened their office yet. They had not and the note was still there saying that they would return at two. Marcus and I decided to take a walk and see if there was anything more happening during the day than there had been in the evening.
Marcus, having been to Houay Xai earlier in the year, remembered there being a market. We started down the road. We walked past the same ten people on the same ten motorbikes. We stopped at a couple of shops so that Marcus could try to find a long sleeved shirt for the jungle. We also bought a couple of other things out of no real necessity, save conveniences, like shaving cream, toothpaste, some razors, and, later in the day, a flashlight. Marcus didn't have any luck finding a long sleeved shirt.
We walked up to the market. There, we found a store selling mats. Mats are great for keeping your climbing gear clean. We had forgotten to bring a mat, so we bought a new mat from a very nice lady who then was also kind enough to sell us some water. It was hot, close to noon, and there was very little shade. We checked out the market. It was full of all kinds of things.


The thing that I remember being the most plentiful, however, were the flies. They were everywhere and all over everything. They swarmed the meat as young mothers haggled over prices with the vendors who absentmindedly swished the flying pests away with plastic bags. I decided, in that market, that I was no longer eating meat in Houay Xai. This resolution was short-lived, but, at the time, I was convinced.
We quickly lost interest in the market and continued walking up a steep hill. When we got to the top of the hill we turned left. We walked some more and came upon an old concrete machine gun bunker. As we were admiring the craftsmanship of Vietnam era military engineering some young girls sitting on a patio down the hill noticed us. They started shouting all the English words they knew, "Superman", "banana", "stop", "bunny", "monkey-carrot-dollar-same". I laughed and said 'hello' and then we kept walking.
We walked past the Laotian military barracks and down another hill back into the main part of the city. We saw a baby chicken in a ditch who couldn't find its way out. It was chirping wildly trying to get its mother hen to come and save it, but the momma didn't seem too concerned. I still don't like chickens. That is why I eat them. We stopped in at the cafe that I had been to the night before for lunch. This was done mostly because it was right across the street from the 'Gibbon' office, which was just down the road from where we were staying. It was getting on to two in the afternoon and there was still no sign of activity in or around the office.
Marcus started to wonder if maybe they had gone bankrupt and just not bothered to tell anybody. Marcus is a bit paranoid. We ate our food and, as we were finishing, we saw some young men walk up to the 'G' office. We got scared. It was a combination of the way they were dressed, the bad hair, bad sunglasses, bad posturing, and the way that they walked that caused Marcus and me to simultaneously begin to pray that they would not be on the same 'experience' as us. There was no way in hell that we wanted to be stuck in the jungle with these boys for company. I took it as a sign that I am aging (that, and the gray hairs). A few minutes later a land rover and a jeep pulled up in front of the office and people started getting out and going into the office. We payed our bill and wandered over to check in for the trip we would be taking in the morning. We chatted a bit with the people just returning from the trip and the excitement for what we were about to do began to escalate. The people were thrilled with the experience. They told us we would love it but they couldn't explain why, we would just have to do it ourselves. We signed our waivers and release forms and were told to be back at the office at 8:30 in the morning. The boys with the bad hair were no where to be seen. We were, honestly, relieved.
As we were in the process of filling out the forms we met an American woman named Constance. Constance was, by all definitions, a soccer mom. She was traveling through Laos with her son for his 21st birthday. I am not entirely sure, but I believe she said that his name was Q. I also can not quite recall the exact line of questioning that she engaged in with us but it was strange enough that both Marcus and I almost instantaneously started coming up with reasons that we needed to leave. Since we were in Houay Xai, this was not exactly an easy thing to do. We settled on the idea that we needed to go for a run and that is exactly what we did.
We went back to the guesthouse, paid for the room for another night and made a reservation for a room for the night we returned from the jungle, and then went for a run. Our run covered almost exactly the same course that we had walked earlier in the day. I am pretty sure that the Laotians are not big on running. I am also sure that they don't see many people, especially foreigners, who go for runs while staying in Houay Xai. As the two of us passed by there was lots of pointing, confusion, and laughter as the by-standers saw us, proceeded to look for what we were running from, and, then, realized that we were not running from anything. During the run it again became apparent that Laos was trying to asphyxiate itself. The air, while not filled with same kind of pollution that we had been acclimating to in Bangkok, burned in your lungs. And it was really hot.
After the run, we took turns getting cleaned up and washing our clothes in a bucket in the shower and hanging them out to dry. While Marcus was getting ready, I went to the roof to try and catch a bit of sun and get some color in to my pasty white skin. The boys that had previously been no where to be seen came up to the roof as well. Fantastic!, they were staying in our guesthouse. I said hello to them and got absolutely no response. I felt justified in my early stereo-typed condemnation. They proceeded to roll up joints, open beers, get fucked-up, and hold conversations consisting mostly of monosyllabic insults. Based on the difficulty that I had understanding there monosyllables, I decided that they were most likely young South Africans (nothing against South Africans, I wouldn't have liked these kids no matter where they were from). Marcus came and got me after he was finished and I took my turn washing the filth off. When he came back down from the roof I got the impression that he was, yet again, praying that we would not be spending the next few days in the company of those gentlemen.
We went back to the same restaurant by the river for dinner. The ants were still there. Marcus continued to terrorize them. At one point he had one of the vicious little bastards hanging by its mandibles from the tip of a pen. He then dipped the monster in the cherry dipping sauce for the spring rolls and then returned him to his compatriots. The ant's buddies started alternating between tearing the poor guy limb from limb and realizing that he was one of their own. It is definitely interesting to watch ant behavior when they are forced into an ethical dilemma. Constance was also at the restaurant. She introduced us to her son, again I am pretty sure his name was Q, and, to our relief, informed us that she was not on the same trek that we were. She spent the rest of her meal with her son glancing at Marcus with a very strange expression. We ignored it the best we could and pretended to have interesting conversations about things that we had already talked about and, eventually, she and her son left.
After we finished dinner we went back to the little cafe we had lunch at, ordered a few beers and had a very interesting conversation with an older Irish lady named Mary. She had been traveling for most of her life and entertained us with her stories of those travels. After a couple beers and a couple hours of chatting, we headed off to sleep.

Post the Third

We settled in to our seats on the bus and started to take in the scenery between Chiang Rai and the Laos border. Lush green rice fields, amazing karsts, wooden huts, and an ever present acrid smoke that seemed to choke the horizon. It seems that, in preparation for the rainy season, most of Northern Thailand and Laos light everything on fire right around the beginning of March. I have never spent a lot of time studying agriculture but I seem to remember that field burning was one of the less desirable ways to prepare land for the next seasons crops. They don't seem to have gotten the memo in this part of the world. As the bus traveled on, we not only saw the acrid smoke on the horizon but also the remnants of the recently charred fields and then, as we got closer and closer to the Laos border, we were actually driving past hillsides and fields that were in the process of being burned. I imagine that a controlled burn is a lot less labor intensive than some of the other ways you could clear land for cultivation but, I must say, it does kind of rob ones appreciation of the natural beauty of a place when it hurts to breathe.

For about the first thirty minutes of the ride, Marcus and I had a great time. We were on the road and heading to Laos for a fifteen day adventure that promised to be a great time. We took in the sites of the country, so refreshing after several months of the pollution, concrete, and craziness of the city, chatted about the plans that we had and how we were going to implement them, and laughed about the situations we had already found ourselves in within the first six hours of the trip. The windows on the bus were down, the air was thick with the smells of the countryside (we hadn't been overwhelmed by the smoke yet), the scenery was beautiful, and, by god, we were going somewhere.
That somewhere, according to the English signage on the bus, was Chiang Khong. As we got further and further away from Chiang Rai, a subtle shift in Marcus' demeanor started to become apparent. "Hey, Brett" he eventually said to me, "what if we got on the wrong bus?" The bus slowed down, some people got off. Marcus, newly worried with the seeds of doubt, changed seats. I went to sleep. I woke up a little while later to see Marcus on his cell phone trying to get a hold of someone in Bangkok to confirm that we were, indeed, supposed to be going to Chiang Khong. He was unsuccessful. I could read the stress on his face. I went back to sleep and had a lovely dream about unicorns. The dream caused me a bit of an epiphany when I realized that we never stop fantasizing. As adults, we just limit our fantasies to the world of the possible and then pin all of our hopes and dreams on things that are just as imaginary as unicorns, but they are things we can justify as being 'possibilities' and we are just as upset when these fantasies fail us as we were when we found out there were no unicorns.
We finally arrived in Chiang Khong and were immediately relieved to find a host of tuk-tuk's waiting to take people to the border crossing. It was about 5pm and we were not sure how much longer the border would be open. We threw our bags into the back of the tuk-tuk and energetically encouraged the driver to get us there quickly. Unfortunately, there was nothing quick about the tuk-tuk we chose. I am not sure if it was the weight of our bags or the 1% grade of the hill we were driving up, but the man's motorbike definitely struggled. I started debating whether or not we should have walked. Eventually, we got to the top of the road leading to immigration and that is as far as our driver was willing to take us. We paid the man, grabbed our bags and walked down to the little office on the banks of the Mekong River. We were still not sure if immigration on the Laos side would be open and we still had not acquired our visas for Laos but the man at Thai immigration happily stamped us out of Thailand. We walked down to the bank of the river and hired a boat to take us across to Laos.




The boat ride took all of five minutes and then, after collecting our bags, we walked up the boat ramp to find the Laos immigration and visa services office....open!
We handed over our passports and filled out our applications. We changed money. I, for the first time in my life, had over two million units of a currency on my person. We got our passports back with the Laos visas, paid our fees (it's cheaper if you are an American than it is if you are a Canadian, go figure). We then gave our passports to the immigration officer and we were officially in Laos. This really consisted of, yet again, grabbing our packs, and then walking up the road in to the little town of Huay Xai (Hoo-ay-sigh).
As I said before, there was nothing happening. Marcus and I checked into the Friendship Guest House, dropped off our bags and then went to find the Gibbon Experience office.



The office was just down the street from our guest house, as it would turn out that everything else was as well, and there was a note on the door that said 'will be back at 2pm'. It was already six in the evening so we assumed they meant 'the next day'.
We ate at a pretty nice restaurant just down the street from our guest-house (ha!)which had the added benefit of having these huge red attack ants all over the riverside railing. These ants were HUGE! They were so huge that when they snapped their mandibles shut...YOU COULD HEAR IT! The ants also had these crazy black eyes and you could tell that they could actually see because they would stop and look at things (like you, or your finger, or the tip of a chopstick, or each other) While we were waiting for our dinner to arrive we observed these creatures capturing all sorts of bugs and we also observed that the gecko's, which were easily ten times bigger than the ants, were terrified of them. Marcus started alternating between catching bugs to feed the ants and then flicking the ants off of the railing into the dark oblivion of the riverside grasses.

Our food arrived. Marcus ordered sticky rice and spring rolls. I had a very nice fried rice with chicken that, while delicious, really hurt to eat because of the burn in my mouth from the pizza earlier in the day.
After dinner, Marcus decided he still wasn't feeling too great from the previous nights escapades and that he was going to go to bed. It was 8:30 at this point. I decided to stay up and check out Houay Xai. I wandered down the main street and saw the same ten people on the same ten motorbikes driving back and forth down the road. I saw people eating dinner at little impromptu cafes and food stands. I heard a lot of Thai pop music blasting at speaker-blowing levels out of tiny little radios. I found a little cafe that was playing Jack Johnson (at least is wasn't the Eagles), ordered a beer, and began writing in my journal. And that was about it. Thus ended the first day of our trip to Laos. I was in bed by 11:30 in order to prepare myself for the day ahead, little did I know that Houay Xai was so sleepy that I wouldn't have needed to sleep at all and would have still had plenty of resources to deal with what there was on offer.