by Mike

Wandering around the dusty roads of Bagan, we took a turn toward the river and discovered a thriving little shoreline where women washed clothes, kids splashed and others bathed modestly. As we strolled past gardens that hugged the sandy bank, we met a little boat pulling to shore, letting passengers off. Three kids paddled people across the river to what must have been a small village on the other side (though, as you can see in some of the pictures, it doesn’t look like there’s anything there. I suspect the town was far back from the shore, out of the way of floodwater).

We waved the kids over and asked if they’d take us on a little tour down to the gold-covered pagoda that commands the river’s bend.

Read More

by Mike

This is Amaya, proprietor of our current farmstay in St. Laurent de la Cabrerisse. She’s pretty rad. She does things we all wish we could do but are too self-conscious to pull off, like riding a fierce fox (above) or pooping under the dinner table during dessert, as she did last night (not pictured). This afternoon she managed to sneak a whole Coke and then spent the next hour running in circles screaming.

Amaya only speaks French and she speaks it better than we do, though I’ve been learning French for five times the length of her life. Occasionally she’ll bust out in a song she’s written.
“Do you want to hear my song? Do you want to hear my song?”
“Yeah! Let’s hear it!”
“Poulet poulet. That’s the song.”
“That was very nice!”

Amaya is friends with most people she meets, especially the old men in the courtyard who pass their days on the benches. They’re always happy to have her pulling on them, climbing on them or playing the guitar in the middle of the group. She’s quite a gutsy gal.

by Mike

Kids playing in the surf – near Krabi, Thailand.

(more photos)

by Mike

Two immense trees tower over parts of the landscape in southeast Bali. In the evening, when it’s cool and beautiful, the trees are visible against the orange sky like temples on the horizon. They can be seen across emerald rice paddies where farmers work late into the evening; they’re visible to the farmers’ kids socializing on the street; they’re visible to duck herders, using long sticks and whooping noises to herd their frantic flock past the kids. All this happens on the road as it bends between rice paddies to the ocean. We set course for the trees.

The first tree – the one that seems the tallest – is in a small fenced area that might be used for farming, it’s hard to tell. This tree is fuller than the other, it looks solid from afar. The road then drops down a hill, at the foot of which the second tree stands. It is much higher than the first, considering the hill. The tree is decorated with a piece of checkered fabric wrapped around its smooth, white trunk, as is the fashion for large trees. The sarong seems to be worn as it would on a man: waist level, for modesty. The tree is strong and proud. It is dizzying from beneath.

Another 50 feet down the road is a volleyball court made of packed dirt. When we drove by there was a small crowd of men watching a match between two pretty impressive teams. The crowd was more interested in the two of us, though, as we parked the scooter to do a little scouting. Other than Azure, there were no women anywhere beneath the trees tonight – just men and boys. We tried to exchange some words with the men but my volleyball vocabulary isn’t very thorough. So we just watched.

Past the court, to the ocean, the sand dunes rise. We followed a couple boys up the dunes and when they reached the ridge they threw off their shirts and sprinted down the steep slope. We crested the hill to a beautiful sight – sunset on an almost-empty coastline with the ocean spraying onto the black beach. The boys who ran down the beach went to join a sand fight consuming 20 boys. They crashed in and out of the waves, throwing sand at each other, jumping on one another. They were 20 brown bodies on black sand playing in the waves. The high beach giving them privacy with the ocean. Often, traveling, I can imagine I’m witnessing something from another time, but hardly any imagination was necessary tonight.

by Mike & Nicole

This morning someone asked me if I was ok. I was fine, I just wasn’t smiling. Stoic, you know, to show I wasn’t taking their culture for granted, not treating it like an amusement park.

I hailed a cab to the train station and we immediately hit gridlock and it looked like I’d miss the train. Instead of stressing about it, I resigned myself to waiting in the station foyer for the next departure – I regretted having taken such a long walk up the side streets in the morning. But surprise! we got to the station in plenty of time. The best approach to the ordeal would have been harboring neither expectation nor regret, but just sitting in the cab watching.

On the train a young man sat across from me and stared out the window – his feet were very dirty, his hair hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, and he was unhealthily thin. He had a damaged blue backpack that was very simple, and through a tear a checkered blanket poked out. He was one of the city’s very poor. He looked at me and we smiled at each other. I realized that if I had chosen to be stoic, you know, to show I wasn’t taking their culture for granted, I would have robbed us both of a nice fleeting moment.

A man selling boiled peanuts walked by and I indicated I wanted a bag. He quoted me 20 Baht (60 cents) and a fellow seller threw him a look. I paid it, but I knew the price should have been 5 Baht. In years past I would have been upset getting cheated like that – “it’s the principle of the thing!” – but not so much anymore. First of all, I kinda consider it equalizing the monetary imbalance between our world and their world, like a tax on those who have won the birth place lottery. Second, I need to separate my money from my pride anyway. Finally, that guy is not intending to cause me any personal harm. He’s only trying to make his situation better in a way that’s relatively painless to me. I should be glad it’s so easy to help. (Of course it might be a different story if it ever happens in Norway.)

I was still thinking about the quality of smiling at the very poor young man across from me, and I decided I should start searching for things to smile about more often, which is very unnatural for me. So the train passed a bird sitting on the nose of a cow, and I pushed out a smile. There was a row of abandoned railway cars that had been turned into consecutive rooms of a person’s home (kitchen in one car, living area in another, bedroom in another), and I smiled.

When I got to Petchburi I looked for people to smile at. There was an old lady who stared at me as I picked my way down the street, and when I got to her I threw a big smile and her face exploded into a smile itself, the wrinkled map of her face being dramatically redrawn. It’s so different than mutual stoicism! So I tried it with everyone I passed, and it was a really nice way to walk through town.

I used to think that smiling at strangers was the last thing a person did before getting sucker-punched outside a bar, but now I’m reconsidering.

When reading the comments on various websites (like The Seattle Times, for example) I wish everyone who was about to post would take a second to ask themselves the following question: “What am I trying to make other people feel?” Many of them try to make other people feel bad intentionally, whether through direct insult, sarcasm or a subtle slight. If they asked themselves that question, hopefully they might pull back the comment and cleanse it of venom.

Point is that the flip side of that whole “What am I trying to make people feel?” thing would be the command, “Find something to smile about.”

God this sounds vacuous.