Photo journals: Laos

We crossed Laos on the way from China to Thailand. We didn't have much time and we only stayed in Luang Prabang and spend a day in Vientiane. We left wishing to come back one day.

Luang Prabang is a little city by river Maekong. It has much colonial influence from the French and many temples. Still in most parts green is predominant and the city is like a tiny anthill.



Long boats on Maekong. This river is one of the main blood vessels of Indochina, it runs from China to Myanmar, Laos to Cambodia and Vietnam. These kind of boats carry everything. In most parts there were not many roads until recently, simply because there was not much need for roads when there was this river and all it's capillaries.



Colonial main street of Luang Prabang. LP is perhaps the most touristic city in Laos and this one street is where all the nightlife is. And it gets crowded, sometimes very crowded.



Among all the lush green, one suddenly sees a temple, with it's stupa sticking out between the trees. You want to be there, feel the peace, yet you don't want to disturb it, and you realize you have peace right where you are, right now.



Just like in Thailand, in Laos also most men leave their families to live like a monk for some years. It is amazing to even imagine a whole society where so many people at one point in their lives went into a long retreat to learn how to look inside and be peaceful. It certainly has its effect in Laos society.



Humans are not the only followers of Buddha. Perhaps they feel the peaceful vibes or smell the tasty offerings. With whatever reason temples and monasteries are always home to many dogs and sometimes cats. There is a peaceful coexistence (mostly, I must say, because I was bitten by a dog while meditating in amonastery inThailand)



House of Buddha in Luang Prabang. Laotian temples are extremely decorated and many things are covered in gold even more so than in Thailand



Waterfalls near Luang Prabang. The steep hills covered with rainforest is home to much wildlife, giant insects, amazing big trees, snakes. And many many streams sometimes form these gorgeous waterfalls and ponds.



Taking a dip in the waterfalls. When it's that hot, it's a great blessing.



Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is perhaps the flattest city I've visited so far. Even the buildings spread out like a thin layer with nothing sticking out except for this unfinished replica of the arch of triumph from Paris.

Survived my 37, got really high and found love

I survived 37 and I can't believe it. A part of me is reborn, dead and reborn. I wonder which part.

I had a great birthday. A unique one with no cakes, no parties. Yet I fully enjoyed it.

I got really high, as high as I can get when I'm in a city. Then I asked a very nice girl how I can find love. She told me the way to reach love and I found it there. Once again, I was in love.

I know it's cheesy but it was much fun. It was a great way to start my new life :)

The biggest phallic symbol on earth, Taipei 101. I wanna get high.

As high as I can get, at almost 400 meters high feeling dizzy.









And following the directions of the nice girl finally I'm in Love...
(check out the shoes, brand new birthday gift Koji found in the rubbish)

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Photo journals: China

After 5 months of blogging I realized, perhaps I won't have the time to write about the previous parts of this trip. So I decided to post a series of photo journals of places I've traveled between May 2007 - June 2008.

When I first arrived in Southeast Asia I didn't have a camera. When I went to China for the Rainbow gathering and met Maya there, we started to travel together and take lots of photos with her camera. So the photo journals start in Dali, China, where we met. I hope you enjoy it. I'll write a little about the places in photo captions.

Dali Old Town, Yunnan Province, Southwest China
Dali is a beautiful historic city at 2.000 meters enclosed in square shaped walls and moats.
It's one of the biggest local tourist attractions but when I was there I didn't feel it as being a negative influence. In fact it was very romantic.



Erhai Lake, near Dali.
This is one of the biggest lakes in China and a sacred one with many monasteries around.
We had the gathering just across the lake on a sacred hilltop.




Temple on the hillside near Dali.
Yunnan is a kind of autonomous region in China and they still have living temples and monasteries, as oppose to fossilized ones in East China. They are also allowed to make more than one kids. The mountains behind are full of rivers, waterfalls, little sacred locations and cable cars.



We saw this map at an entrance to the hills near Dali.
We looked at it some time, tried to figure out, deided to take a photo in case we get lost.
And we got lost anyway.




Shangri-la, Yunnan, Southwest China
I thought Shangri-la was an imaginary place but apparently it's likely that this remote plateau with it's peaceful Tibetan population was the Shangri-la which the early plane crash survivors told us about. Today it is known as Zhong-Dian and is a fast developing tourist spot.



The plateau where Shangri-la is located is a vast flat land surrounded by high mountains.




Streets of Old Shangri-la.
The Town is already around 3.000 meters high.
Everything moves s-l-o-w-l-y.



Old folk on Shangri-la streets.
They don't have much teeth but they have the biggest smiles.



Their corner in Shangri-la.



Turning the big prayer wheel in Shangri-la.
This is the biggest one I've ever seen. Fortunately there is a kind of engine inside so you can make it faster but it never stops. People literally run and fall around it, it's a fun way to pray.



Every evening people gather in the main square of Shangri-la. Music comes from the speakers and hundreds of people do this amazing circular dance. It's not just a simple walk, there are many quite complex moves but people eaither know them or pick them up quite fast. It's great to watch people practice harmony together in this way.



Rock honey in Shangri-la market. It's sweet and medicinal.



The famous Tibetan butter tea. It's literally hot butter, milk and tea, more like soup.
Very suitable for the cold climate and almost a complete food.



The big Tibetan monastery near Shangri-la.
We were very surprised to see this little model of Potala palace in Lhasa. They are continously building and expanding it and there is a little town growing with it.



The big Tibetan monastery near Shangri-la.
We thought religious activities were restricted in China but apparently things are changing fast. That's why they are also uilding very fast. This huge temple-monastery complex looks pretty new with some age old parts.



I love the natural materials they still use today (except for the rain water drain pipes).
And as temples usually do, we felt tiny and surrounded by a greater energy.



Old gate in the modern city Kunming.
The last couple of decades China developed so fast sometimes old structures are almost sandwiched between new ones. But it's still a pleasant surprise when you're walking in busy streets full of shopping malls.

Few Random Impressions of Thailand

Over the last two years I keep transiting Thailand without spending much time there, except the first time. This time I intended to stay a month but they changed the duration of visa on arrival from 30 days to 15 days and I quickly arranged my way to Taiwan. So before I leave I thought it’d be good to share some impressions.

Bangkok has these very nice, very green and free bicycles you can ride around the touristic area.
Although you have to show them your id when taking one, knowing that you can even
get a pilot certificate on the next street, they also take a photo of you, just in case.

Thailand is one of the most touristic countries perhaps in the whole world and it is one of the easiest to find your way around in. The internet is full of material on Thailand and whatever I may write here has the possibility of having been already written down somewhere else. Since I don’t want to pass by without blogging anything about it and not repeat anything else, I’ll just write down a few random things that caught my attention about Thailand, and most will still be repetitions :)

Colorful Ayutthaya tuktuks. Busses and taxis are also extremely colorful here.

Thailand is the only country in South East Asia that has never been colonized. It has been a neighbor to other colonized countries all around but it always kept the kingdom strong. The current king, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is eighty something, is the world’s longest reigning monarch alive, with 61 years on duty. But Thailand is not a monarchy, it’s a parliamentary democracy. Well, on the other hand Thailand has the greatest number of military coups in this side of the world. In other countries around, like Myanmar or Cambodia, when army takes power they seem to hold on to it. Whereas in Thailand army takes power, makes elections in a couple of years, the same guys they made the coup against gets elected, they kick them down and make another coup, sometimes silent. But whatever happens, Thai people really trust the king and almost worship him. Little shrines devoted to his highness can be found all around the country and being disrespectful to him is a big crime. (As a side note, I have first time experienced in Thailand such a strong single superhero, revered almost as God almighty, just like the worshipping of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey. But this time he’s alive.) Unfortunately King Bhumibol is very old and sick and there are no good heirs to the throne, with the son being a corrupt womanizer of a socialite and the daughter, although very charitable and much loved by the people, being single with no children (plus Thailand never had a queen without a king before).

One of the millions of shrines in honor of King Bhumibol.

What happens when you cover all your temples in pure gold?
Your neighbor gets jealous. And in this case, the Burmese invaded the capital Ayutthaya
and to take the gold –by melting it- burnt down all the temples and palaces.

The king’s color is yellow but every year people choose a new color for the shirts they wear with the royal seal. When I arrived everybody wore yellow because the king was 60 years on the throne and he was born on Tuesday, the yellow day. This year they all wear pink, which creates a very soft feeling when you look at a crowded market place where many Thai people proudly carry the royal seal on their pink shirts.

King Naalesuan was sent to exile when the Burmese invaded Siam. He became a hero
with his later victories and his fondness of cock fighting is remembered by
all the big and small rooster statues in shrines and monuments in his honor.

The current political situation in Thailand is very strange. Couple of years ago the army took power against Thaksin Shinawat, the Thai Berlusconi, who was charged by corruption. Apparently people were not that happy with him and his privatization and selling government companies and other property to his family. After less then 2 years they held an election and although he himself was in exile (in fear of being jailed in Thailand) his supporters won the elections. He briefly visited Thailand but was forced back to exile when the court cases started to show results against him. Then the opposition started to make mass demonstrations and asked his party to give up. They had a few incidents when demonstrators on both sides clashed and killed each other on the streets of Bangkok but recently they’ve been first occupying the party headquarters, when some people threw hand grenades on them and then they went on to occupy the two main airports of Bangkok just before Christmas time. Reports said 300.000 tourists were stranded for almost a week when thousands of supporters of Peaople’s Alliance for Democracy took over the airport by literally chasing away the few hundred airport security and policemen there. And in the end they got what they wanted. The irony is that People’s Alliance for Democracy didn’t accept the results of a democratic election and pushed army to force a man in uniform to be the prime minister once again. After all it is just a light scale social class war between these urban middle class and the rural population who still support the old prime minister. The unfortunate result of this is the crippling of tourism industry which is one of Thailand’s main sources of income.

The giant swing of Bangkok. Who else would have thought about holding competitions of high swinging
to the point that it becomes fatally dangerous? I tell you, it's no coincidence they love Red Bull.

Thai people are also different than other SE Asians, they are in a way more fiery. SE Asians in general are very kind and gentle people and in most cases this applies to Thai people also. They have these big smiles and they know how to make fun of life. But within the region they are the more aggressive and violent ones perhaps. As far as I know, Thailand is the only country in the region which has a living fighting sport tradition, muay Thai, or Thai boxing. They consume unbelievable amounts of really strong red bull and other stimulants all day long. In fact red bull started in Thailand where the local versions have too much caffeine and taurine to be legally exported.

Picking drinkers from the street on the new year day in Bangkok's Khaosan Road.
It is very strong and you can be 12 and still have it!

Most Thais are Buddhist (some Muslims and Chinese also) and in traditional families men still spend a couple of years time as a monk in a monastery (somehow like the military service back in the west but not compulsory of course). This is a tradition of the whole Indochina region and even the king does his duty as a monk, and for some years every morning takes his bowl and goes begging. On the other hand, also like other societies in the region, there is belief in spirits, supernatural powers and honoring of the ancestors (sometimes wrongly mentioned as ‘ancestor worship’). They make these tiny houses in front of their houses where they keep little statues of their ancestors and honor them with offerings of rice, fruits and Fanta every morning. Many Thai people are crazy for amulets. You can find amulet markets by the sidewalk where vendors sell little clay figures of monks in meditation, or sometimes Buddha. The clay from each amulet supposedly comes from a sacred location and they are sometimes produced in monasteries. After you put the jewelers magnifying glass in your eye and check out all the tiny detail of workmanship and you decide to buy one amulet, you find a suitable house for it, which is a little transparent plastic ad silver pendant that you can hang on your neck with a heavy chain. And some people carry really big ones.

A shrine for dead ancestors shared by a living neighbor on the basement.

Thailand used to be called Siam but changed their name because Siamese is just the main ethnicity here, whereas Thai means free, thus Thailand ‘Freeland’. I really appreciate this kind of name changes. Burma changed into Myanmar with the same reason as there are other ethnicities than the Burmese in Myanmar. I wish the same will be possible for Turkey and other countries where racial identities try to dominate a whole country.

Monasteries are home to many dogs, to the point that there are more dogs than monks like this one.
And the first time I was seriously bitten by a dog was when I was in a monastery in South Thailand,
sitting and meditating under a tree early in the morning. Bad karma dog!

Being a foreigner in Thailand makes you a ‘farang’ and you are recognized as a money source in most places. It is so strong that it feels like in return of most Thais seeing all foreigners as tourists, most foreigners treat the country as an oversized hotel. Although this makes the country very convenient to travel in, I cannot say it is a good feeling not to be seen as a real person.

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I rushed this one to post it just before I leave for Taiwan.
I hope to write more about Thailand when I’m back here in March.