happy new years (from the future)

its december 31st here, about 830 am. we're in doi ankang, the switzerland of thailand. its high in the mountains in northern thailand on the burma border. the mountains here are stunning. and its freezing. freeze-your-butt-off cold.

this is where we are: http://www.angkhangstation.com/index/index.php

we're staying in the staff quarters (for free!)- its like staying in a cabin in the sierras. the lodging is free cause of the EWB school house project we're doing... building a brick school house in a small village close by. pretty fun work... not sure if it'll be fun after 2  weeks.

 

happy new years all. 

dragon dances

From cambodia

From cambodia

lkm and i went to phnom penh's olympic stadium a week ago. its a huge colesium with lots of tennis courts and soccer pitches surrounding it. theres also tons of food vendors. lots of activity all around it when we went just before sundown. including group aerobics classes for everyone from kids to grandmas in jeans. its an informal class- instructors start up in front of speakers blasting house music and the crowd starts to gather. there must have been at least 10 different groups, each with 20 to 200 people doing the aerobics class. here's a snippet of the action.


olympic stadium dance from kevin smith on Vimeo.

we also caught two guys practicing a really strange dance routine on top of metal poles. i figure they are supposed to have on a big dragon costume and they're practicing for some folk festival. or maybe not. maybe they just love doing their dragon dances with funny pants.

group dances at olympic stadium from kevin smith on Vimeo.

phnom penh

we spent about 10 days in phnom penh. jennie made it an easy city to live in b/c she donated her apartment to us for that time. her housekeeper came with the apartment, so we put her to work washing our clothes. she was very thorough and ironed everything we had. i've never had my underwear ironed before - and i'm not sure why someone would need perfectly flat underwear - but i think it speaks volumes about the quality of the housekeeper at jennie's flat, and by extension jennie. she's a classy lady.

and here she is doing a shakeface (not so classy). From cambodia and here's a scary one of mine: From cambodia we took a 2-hour, sunset boat ride on the mekong river with jennie and a bunch of her friends. she played christmas carols on her guitar and lkm and i taught her shakeface. it was an even trade. in this pic, she was saying that i was going to get worms from eating the dog meat in the meat sticks i bought off street vendors. we had a great time in phnom penh- its an interesting city. i think my favorite activity was riding through the city in tuk-tuks with a can of beer in hand. makes you feel like you're in a convertible limo drinking the cambodian equivalent of schaffer's beer. From cambodia more pics are up on the picasa site. merry xmas everyone.

lkm will sue your cambodian pants off

how many US labor laws does this violate? lkm says 2 too many, dammit!

From cambodia

russian sneakers

i bought a pair of knock off adidas shoes at the russian market, phnom penh's most surly market. they call it the russian market because back in the eighties, russians were the only tourists here, and this market catered to them. the market used to sell guns (of the machine variety) and drugs and who knows what else. even today you can find moto drivers asking if you want to go fire machine guns at chickens for a couple dollars.

i bought this pair of kicks to play soccer in. $10. i figured they'd last a few months and i'd eventually toss them. jennie and i went out to kick around with some of her high schoolers and her adopted american family here in cambodia. within 5 minutes, the entire sole of my left foot came off. the right stayed on until i took a shot. the "leather" on the shoe quickly flaked away, revealing a cardboard like outer sole. so i paid $10 too much for my shitty $10 shoes.


i went back to the russian market yesterday to find my shoe saleswoman. my plan was to stand next to her for the entire day showing all her customers her shoes until she gave me a refund. it didn't take all day, but it did help that there was lady buying shoes when i walked up. i was arguing with the cambodian shyster when the foreign lady asked if i bought the crappy shoes from the cambodian woman. at this point the cambodian woman grabbed my broken shoes, threw them behind the stall and bitterly gave me my $10 back.

biking through ankgor

took this video as we were going through one of the giant gates at angkor thom. its pretty shaky.

angkor wat bike ride from kevin smith on Vimeo.

those statues on the right are 63 angels in a giant tug of war with the 63 devils on the left side. they're churning the milk of the ocean to release vishnu's turtle. or something like that... look it up why don't you.

we found peanut butter

chunky style. we were very excited about it and ate 2 PB sandwiches a day for 4 straight days while touring angkor wat. PB and banana sandwiches.

From cambodia

we're now in phnom penh. we're staying at jennie buechner's place (tj and uva)- she's been living here for 3 years teaching little cambodian kids about social studies and the beastie boys. in an absurdly kind gesture, she let us have the run of her apartment while she stays with friends. we've been enjoying the simple things, like refrigeration, gas stove cooking, and satellite cable. jennie also has about 500 pirated dvds (criminal) so we've spent a good chunk of time indoors in phenom penh. last night we made tuna melts, had white russians, and watched 7 episodes of 30 rock. in phnom penh.

we promise we'll leave the house tomorrow.

angkor wat

From angkor wat

From angkor wat

we toured around angkor wat for 3 days. 2 days on bicycles and one day in a tuk-tuk. needless to say, the ruins are astonishing. there's a ton of temples- some are old and decript, some the jungle overtook, and some have been restored to like-new condition. i couldn't even begin to describe them... so here's the link to our pics of the ruins.

and here's a surly looking monk.

From angkor wat

and here's pictures of bicycles.

From angkor wat

From angkor wat

From angkor wat

From angkor wat

From angkor wat

From cambodia

makeshift trucks

cambodia has awesome trucks. some seem to be homemade. and most of them have their engines exposed. this one is basically an I-beam with an engine block on wheels.

From cambodia

From cambodia

From cambodia

sit n shit

this is not the only sign like this in cambodia.

From cambodia

balang reservoir

From cambodia

prior to going on the trip, i got in touch with engineers without borders about a reservoir project they are helping out on near siem reap. its a reservoir project for a group of villages (about 6,000 people) about 30 km outside of siem reap. the primary construction (earthwork and installing a concrete gate structure) was completed a few months ago. here's the skinny on the project from human translation (HT), the NGO in cambodia managing the project: http://www.humantranslation.org/project_dam.html
and here's EWB's blog about the project: http://www.ewbnycambodia.blogspot.com/

we met some great folks working on the project: tobias (human translation PM from northern california), fred (english engineer), ceda (cambodian wunderkind), samet (cambodian monk), and chris (german journalist/traveler). on wednesday we did a site visit. we passed by many farms and villages on the way out to the site and the 4 of us in the back of a pickup were continuously greeted by little kids running out the road waving, smiling, and shouting "goooodbye!".

the gate structure was put in place a month or two ago- the community had a big celebration and blessing ceremony (written about on the ewb blog). its now the start of the dry season and HT is trying to get all the final pieces of the project in place before the rains come. Right now they are focusing on erosion control- there's been significant erosion at the foot of the gate structure and on several of the embankments. they're also working on water user groups- working with the villages to establish a way to manage the reservoir and allocate flows based on land use. we've been helping on the erosion control issues and also developing some information on reservoir management... looking at flows out of the reservoir and how that affects water levels throughout the year. its been fun dorking out on excel again.

From cambodia

From cambodia

this is a family that was living on the reservoir embankment. they agreed to have their house moved for the reservoir, once they realized the importance of the project for the greater area. apparently they had a group of men just up and lift the house and walk it a few hundred feet away. we sat around with these folks and had a bunch of fruit. pomogranites are delicious.

From cambodia

at the end of the day, samet took us to his parents place. they live in the country near the project site, in one of the villages that will benefit from the reservoir. samet is a pretty amazing man- he initiated this project getting tobias and HT involved. he is also building a community center for the villages... a building for villagers to learn trades, get education, and use a library. i guess you can say he's a community organizer... like obama, someone he spoke about highly.

when we showed up at his parent's place, his dad immediately shouted for coconuts. a middle aged relative climbed up the palm tree next to the house and hacked down about 8 coconuts. he cut off the tops and we all sat around drinking the sweet milk and trying to communicate with samet's family. his mom and dad were there, his dad's sister, and a bunch of grandkids.

From cambodia

From cambodia

From cambodia

there's a bunch more photos from cambodia on the picasa site... link is on the right side of the page.

the cambodia i hate

we're in cambodia! getting here was a little piece of hell... from the thai/cambodian border area to the town of siem reap, every single person you meet is trying to extort money from you. including the official border patrol, who require a bribe to obtain a visa.

on the books, cambodia charges $20 US for a visa. at the border, they charge 1000 thai baht, or about $30 US. at the border crossing - after getting our exit stamps from thailand but before entering cambodia - there is the cambodian visa building, and in big block letters above the border patrol official is the sign "VISA - $20 USD". this, the border patrol official explained to us, was an old sign. the new sign will say 1000 thai baht. when are they getting the new sign? oh, new sign... maybe next year.

here's some more info on the thai/cambodian border crossing.

we were able to split the difference and give him a smaller bribe. corruption is rampent in cambodia. there's a story circulating about how bangkok airways - the sole airline flying bangkok to siem reap direct - had a 10 year bribe going with the cambodian government to ensure that the road from thailand to siem reap was not paved (anyone find a story about this online?). the road is infamous. i took it 5 years ago and it took us 7 hellish hours. this time around, the road is now mostly paved (the 10 year moritorium on road building ended this year) and it took roughly 3 hours.

that was the cambodia i hate. however, after arriving in siem reap, things have been peachy. its a great town and a seemingly wonderful country. we met a bunch of good locals and travelers - mostly through engineers without borders. they're doing a reservior project over here that i'll write more about later. and today we did day 1 of 3 biking around angkor wat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_wat). pics on the way.

ko phangan

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on thanksgiving day we arrived on ko phagan and met up w/ kevin and marian on had salad, a beach on the northwest corner of the island. the monsoon season took an extra few weeks this year and kept us waiting for the sun and the water level at the beaches was also significantly higher than normal. we moved on to thong nai pan beach on the east side. half the guesthouses and bars on the beach were closed cause it was so early in the season, and there was tons of trash washing up on shore. the first few days of beach life on ko phangan were decidedly un-beachy... except for the constant stream of bob marley and jack johnson in every restaurant (kim, you'll be in heaven here).

From thailand!

we made another beach switch down to had rin and the weather turned... it was gorgeous for 4 solid days. this is where morton almost caught fire.

From thailand!

we had been eating extremely delicious thai food for our entire trip up until ko phangan. in most towns, the street cart pad thai for less than a buck is usually the most tasty thing you can possibly have. its like getting a burger from in n out or 5 guys... simple and devastatingly delicious. we had good luck on food until ko phangan, where we got food poisoning from a crappy restaurant. fortunately for us, the islands cater to honkys with weak stomachs.

From thailand!

From thailand!

From thailand!

khao sok photos

From thailand!

From thailand!

had a great time with ksenya in khao sok, one of the many jungle national parks in thailand. finally uploaded the pics... there are from about 2 weeks ago when we took a 1 day tour of the lake in the park. a 1 hr truck ride to the boat, then a magnificent motor boat ride through the reservoir (definitely man made). there were tons of shear limestone mountains throughout the reservoir which made the trip fly by. we motored out to a floating guesthouse. it was like going to lake in the summer in the US... complete with a dock, canoes to take out, a diving platform, and delicious thai food (just like mom used to make). we hike through dense jungle, through streams and mud, and up to a cave. with headlamps we climbed into the cave as far as possible.

From thailand!

From thailand!

From thailand!

on the hour long boat ride back, we got caught in a storm. it was a torrential downpour, but short luckily. unluckily, it turns out that only 1 person gets really wet in a torrential downpour when a boat is going really fast on a lake. its the first person. i was completely soaked and everyone else was dry. i should have clued in when the guide - who had been sitting in the front of the boat - decided to move to the very back right before we hit the storm.

From thailand!

here's laura after the storm. she's wearing a pack cover as her rain jacket.


laura excited from kevin smith on Vimeo.

lazarus camera

i dropped my camera on a boulder and it cracked open a bit and drown in a stream. thought it was a goner. this is a photo it took later that day.

but after 5 days of laying in my pack, it came back to life! here's the proof (first pics we took after it started working).

thanks for the camera offers A, lucas, and yus. yu, i took your tertiary camera from morton... i'm not convinced my camera is totally healthy.

just uploaded a bunch of pictures from our time in thailand. we got into cambodia last night after a 32 hour transport marathon. from ko phangan we did truck to boat to bus to train to subway to taxi to bus to tuk-tuk to taxi to tuk-tuk into siem reap. it was surprisingly fun but definitely exhausting.

morton on fire

we had an incredible week with marian and kevin. can't say enough how much fun it was to be on ko phangan with them. possibly the best moment of the week was captured on film. or 2 of the 3 best moments: on hat rin on ko phangan they like beach parties. the thais do their full moon parties here every month. and it seems on nights that are not the full moon, they still get the party atmosphere going, primarily by using fire.

one bar at the southern end of the beach unleashed a huge flaming jump rope for the night... the thais stand a good 20-25 feet apart on platforms head height, and start swinging the rope. laura, morton, and i are about two buckets of whiskey in at this point and time (marian, unfortunately, had food poisoning and was stuck watching pirated videos in their room) and morton gets real excited about the rope. real excited. as only a kid from tennessee could. here's his first attempt.


mortononfire1 from kevin smith on Vimeo.

now, given the circumstances (moderately inebriated, unlevel sand, firey rope of death rapidly twirling towards you), you can excuse his lackluster performance. its a giant firey rope afterall. and if you've ever met kevin morton, you know he's not going to let that mediocre performance stand. he had a second attempt which, unfortunately, was not recorded on film and there is no evidence that it ever took place. i'd like to say it went grandly.

here's his 3rd attempt in all its glory.

mortononfire3 from kevin smith on Vimeo.

he was perfectly fine.

bangkok on fire

actually, its not on fire and there is no civil war. there hasn't been
much violence stemming from the protests in bangkok these last few
weeks. to recap: a ton of protesters first marched on government
buildings and shut down government activities. then they expanded
their protest to the airports in bangkok, shutting down all flights in
or out, which got the international attention they planned on. you all
probably know more than i do from newspapers- we've been totally
insulated from it since we've arrived. we're down on an island in the
gulf of thailand (ko phangan) and the thai's here don't seem to give a
rats bum about any of it. except that there are few tourists arriving
now.

from what i hear, there has only been some fighting (and a bomb or 2)
on the front lines of the protests... nothing around the backpacker
areas we pass through. so. we're fine. how are you?

an american/thai guy living here gave us the best explanation of whats
going on... we met him on the beach and he used some sand diagrams to
convey the information. here's a go at it: if the thai population were represented by a 5 gallon jug of water, half a gallon would be the social economic elite (1), one gallon would be the educated middle class (2), and the remaining majority would be the lower class pobres (3).

the social/economic elite (1) had power with the PM Thaksin over the last 10+ yrs. they obtained and stay in power in large part by providing for and getting the support of the pobres in the lowest economic (and social?) class (3). the slightly larger, educated middle class (2) also tries to court the the pobres (3) but has been less successful in doing so. some things went downhill last year, the PM got ousted, but the elite class's party stayed in power. after some shifting around, they recently placed Thaksin's brother in law in the PM spot. which enraged the middle class. so, here are the protests. and the thai courts ruled that the governing party is... no longer governing.

this made more sense on the sand.

so i'm not sure whats happening. but in the last 20ish years, thailand
has not had a violent coup, which is reassuring. we're on the island
for another day, then we make our way to cambodia. headed to siem
reap, angkor wat, hopefully to balang to help out on an engineers
without borders project (EWB), and then to phnom penh through xmas.
we'll be away from all the controversy for the forseeable future once
we transfer through bangkok via train or bus.

my dad sent me a great line that his brother - my tio pat - had used
often when bolivia would go through periodic unrest. its pure pat, and
good advice in times like this:
"keep your head down and your beer cold"

crack! plunk, plunk, plop!

thats the sound my camera made when i dropped it on a waterfall hike.
i dropped it while standing on a boulder... crack! it hit the boulder,
then plunk plunk, it skitted down the boulder, and finally plop! as it
dropped into the fast moving stream under my feet.

besides that, ko pha ngan has been awesome. met up with marian and
kevin morton and crashed for one night their sweet bungalow with a
porch overlooking the hat salad beach. yesterday we did the waterfall
hike from the bottom of a stream, climbing higher and higher through
larger and larger pools of water finally to find pretty big waterfall
and swimming hole to hang out in. ask morton for the pictures. my
camera is dead.

obama stickers

From thailand!

we met this nice couple on a long tail boat from ko ngai ("ko hi") to the mainland. they we thais on a weekend trip, very nice, and asked us a few questions. they conversed in thai for a bit, then asked if they could give us a ride to trang (40 km away), the town where we needed to catch a bus to krabi. so we gave them an obama bumper sticker. they didn't seem to have any reaction when we tried to explain who obama was and why his presidency is so special, but they seemed to like the sticker.

also, if you haven't heard of this, check it out: hungry for obama. our friend louis had a great and simple idea for a grassroots fundraiser and he raised over $50K for obama.

ralfting

From thailand!

cow socks

khao sok is awesome. we went to the gigantic lake shown in the google
maps previously. spent the day boating around the limestone cliffs,
jumping into the lake from floating docks, hiking through some serious
mud and jungle, and finally exploring a cave with a small river
flowing through it... it was awesome.

pics to come, but to get a sense of it, check out tall dirty
backpacker's account of his trip:
http://www.geocities.com/tall_dirty_backpacker/khao_sok.html
actually, you can just read thompson's site to find out what we'll be doing in the future. it has far more descriptive MS Paint drawings than i can muster:
http://www.geocities.com/tall_dirty_backpacker/

krabi

met up with ksenya in krabi yesterday and we've been eating delicious cheap street food constantly. there's some sort of festival in town so the night market has turned into your average american county fair, complete with a big performance stage, rows food and craft stalls, and tons of school kids. we've been eating at this festival, so i guess we've been eating the equivalent of corn dogs, funnel cakes, and kettle corn for every meal the past 2 days. its been good (and rainy).

From thailand!

From thailand!

From thailand!

today we took a ride to a temple outside of town and climbed the 1200+ steps up the limestone mountain to the gigantic golden buddha up at the top. it must have been 20 ft tall... we've been seeing it from krabi as a giant gold thing at the top of the mountain in the distance, but didn't realize that it was a buddha we were looking at till we got up there today.

headed to khao sok tomorrow, a national park with waterfalls, a lake, tons of hiking, and the possibility of canoeing or tubing. if anyone's been there before and has some suggestions, shoot me an email.

here's where we're going:

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