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.

Ms.Loh’s Guesthouse, my home away from home

Teluk Bahang bay and village. Ms.Loh’s is in the green behind the big school buildings.

Ms.Loh’s place is not for everyone but for the last couple of years it became my base in Southeast Asia. When I first arrived in Malaysia with Ayşegül, we learned that we had to wait for two months for her passport extension and started looking for a home. It was clear from the beginning that, one, we couldn’t spend so much time in a guesthouse room, and two, we couldn’t stay in a big town like Georgetown no matter how much we may like it for a short time. So we ended up looking for a house for rent on the far side of Penang Island, in a fisherman village named Teluk Bahang. And we were fortunate enough to have read the few lines on a friend’s guidebook, saying that in Teluk Bahang, there is this place with such an endearing garden that some people end up staying a long long time. It turned out to be true.

Our street with Ms. Loh’s place on the right.

The bungalow building in the garden.

The garden is on one of the backstreets of Teluk Bahang, away from the packed fisherman village, surrounded by a durian plantation. Because of these giant trees (it takes a big tree to carry such big fruits) there are no neighbors around. And in this garden, on one side of the road are some 4 buildings spread out among all kinds of fruit and flower trees, coconuts, durian, starfruit, rambutan, mango, hibiscus and others. All buildings are made of wood and even from a short distance they are lost among the vegetation. The main house is just a ground floor one with a long veranda in the front. It has 10 rooms for guests, one main room which also houses the protector deity of the house and a big kitchen. Then there is a side bungalow with 3 rooms, and two separate buildings which have some rooms on the upper floor while one of them has a nice big shaded area looking the garden under it. The place is big and there is much open space.

The protector of the house

Home Day (winter solstice) morning Ms.Loh appeared early in the morning to
light up this huge incense and give lots of pink offerings to the protector of the house.

As soon as I saw the kitchen I knew I’d choose to stay there and I’d love it. The kitchen has a great diversity of equipment that concentrated there over many years. Some bowls and utensils almost look antique but it also has two working refrigerators and a working stove which makes all the difference. Anyone who has lived in a community knows how important the kitchen is for the social interaction there. And it’s the same here. You meet everyone around the kitchen. And the tap water is drinkable, what a great rare luxury. And you can do your yoga or whatever practice in the shade, or play your guitar on one of the garden swings all around the place (Ms.Loh loves garden swifts so we have many).

Enjoying one of the many swings.

Ms.Loh is a Chinese lady in her 70’s. She’s been running this guesthouse for over 35 years. To have space and freedom for the guests she has moved from inside the village into this garden 25 years ago. At that time there were many travelers on this side of the world. Those were the good days of 20th century, before islamophobia stopped travelers from visiting so-called Muslim countries (as if countries have religions). So the tourism development stopped and small places shut down. But Ms.Loh survived thanks to all the people who saw this place as their home and kept coming. The place has this potential to make one dream of old time travelers places because it’s one of the few remaining relics of that age. You can actually find travel guides and magazines from 70s and 80s and it’s not hard to loose time.

The front veranda where most of life takes place.

Apart from the trees and flowers, the garden is a home to a lot of animals. First, we have the dogs, the numbers of which is usually between 5 and 10 but can get over that if two bitches give birth at the same time. Then we have the rats and mice, which are the nighttime visitors. They seem to enjoy having big football games up on the roof every night but luckily not for a very long time. The first month here it was one of my favorite evening pastimes to sit and watch them carefully but with short rapid moves approach the dogs’ food bowls, grab a chunk of leftover rice and make their run behind a rock or up a tree. They are responsible for the cleanup. Then we have some lizards, the millions of geckos which make these birdlike sounds and eat mosquitoes (which is why we like them I think) and the occasional monitor lizard. Monitors are huge lizards. First time I saw one I was really scared because I thought it was a crocodile. The big ones you can see around here are perhaps 1,5 – 2 meters but they can get bigger than that. Raja, one of Ms.Loh’s handymen, tries to convince us that it’s the monitors that take the puppies when they get lost and not the Muslims (Muslims here don’t like dogs and sometimes kill them). There is a family of these monitors living under the bridge just on the border of the garden but they are very shy and they’re also very scared of the dogs. Raja also says they caught some really big snakes in the garden just on the other side of the road but I only met one green tree snake in the bathroom once (which turned out to be a quite poisonous one). Philip swears he saw a black cobra in the toilet once. Macaque monkeys make their ways all the way from the nearby national park to the durian orchard on the other side of the road but luckily they don’t cross the road and enter our territory. Then there are birds. Mynas are also big fans of dog food and they also come to clean the dinner table. Then there are small colorful flowerpeckers which hover in the air and suck nectar from flowers with their long curved beaks. A little after noontime comes the golden orioles and sometimes you can see a fish eagle nesting on one of the highest trees. Wire-tailed drongos make their number 8 dances almost look like they want to catch that black butterfly following their tails. And there are butterflies, many big colorful butterflies.

There is an endless cosmic dance in the garden.

The flowerpecker having his breakfast.

Then there are the inhabitants of Ms.Loh’s place. Since this is not the kind of place that pops up as a guesthouse in the minds of people who carry guidebooks, the fast travelers usually leave a bit disappointed. Most places these days offer rooms with attached toilets or even air conditioners, and of course, newer beds. But some see the garden, get hooked up on cooking and end up staying longer than they intended. The main crew of the place however are people who make it their base when they travel and mostly for many many years. There are people who keep coming back here for tens of years and of course they are old. Because of this mostly it is a good place to hear some old travelers’ tales and get some good advice. But of course some old people complain a lot and are not flexible anymore, and some people cannot handle old travelers. So there is this social dance that takes place in this garden and without taking parts or feeling included in any group, I like doing this dance. I like communities anyway. Some would say this is not a community because we pay for things, have our rooms and things and we don’t have any prior agreement with each other. But I like to see it as a small experimental society. A unique one.

V for Verygraceful

I love Penang

Penang is an island just a little off the Western coast of North Malaysia. It was virtually uninhabited until the British East India Company thought it could make a good port to compete with the Dutch port of Melaka (today also in Malaysia) during late 18th century. They needed to clear the jungle and create a town and to do it fast, the story goes, they loaded the cannons with silver coins and shot towards the jungle. The workers now had a good incentive to cut all the vegetation to get the silver and create land for development.

Koh Kongsi, an early Chinese trade union. Until early 20th century, Penang was under
unofficial control of this sort of Chinese trade unions and secret societies (mafia).

Muslim village in Batu Ferringhi, as oppose to the Chinese and Indian villages just next to it,
this one, like other Muslim villages, doesn’t have any dogs because they are considered non-halal.

Very fortunately they didn’t cut it all but created more land by filling the sea. And soon Penang became a bustling port full of merchants from everywhere but mainly Chinese. As far as I know, today Penang is still the only majority Chinese state in Malaysian Union. The other founding state which was also majority Chinese was Singapore and was forced to leave not wanting to give away the economic power of its Chinese population only two years later. Today Penang still has all sorts of people but none seem to be majority and there seems to be a general feeling of “sharing” this land.

Georgetown as seen from the terrace of Kek Lok Si Temple.

Main pagoda of Kek Lok Si Temple

Georgetown, the capital, has the old and the new city right next to each other. It has great colonial architecture and an alive little India, while next to them is one of Asia’s longest towers, Komtar, and once longest bridge on earth, the 13.5 km long Penang bridge connects the island to the mainland. There are great many temples for all religions, Chinese and Indian temples, mosques, many churches, Thai and Burmese Buddhist temples, and others. The Thai temple has a huge reclining Buddha which used to be the biggest in Southeast Asia. Today Penang is known as Malaysia’s Silicon Valley and the microchips for my next passport are being made here. But a traveler never notices this.

Penang Bridge, which connects Penang with the mainland.

Gurney Drive, where the old city turns into the Cyber City Penang.

When you leave town along the coast first you see big posh shopping malls and tall condos with swimming pools. Later on you come to a long beach called Batu Ferringhi, the Foreigners’ Rock. I don’t know where the rock was and where all the nudists who discovered this beach have gone but today this most promoted touristic beach of the island is full of resort hotels and Saudi tourists. Unfortunately, especially for those who decide to spend their holidays here after seeing the brochures of the place, the seas around Penang are not good for swimming. Because of the Melacca Straits, which runs between Mainland Malaysia and Sumatra, and is one of the busiest sea highways thanks to all the Chinese exports, the sea here is usually murky and quite full of jellyfish.

Local people of Penang having a sunset dip on
Teluk Bahang beach, with their clothes on as usual.

Air Hitam dam lake

But the center of the island still has some amazingly old (like millions of years) untouched jungle and in or around this jungle it’s possible to take a dip in a waterfall or a pond on a river. Many people who stay here enjoy the long treks to these hills or the peninsula at the Northwestern corner which is the Penang National Park. This park is home to the cheekiest little macaque monkeys I’ve ever seen anywhere. They treat your belongings like theirs, completely ignore you and even fight with you to take them. This applies especially to plastic bags and drinks. I’ve got lots of food stolen by monkeys in India but I had never in the past experienced a monkey coming to claim the drink in my hand and even playing tug-o-war with me for it.

Cheeky monkeys of Penang National Park.

One of the roads on the edge between a fast developing city and an ancient jungle.

Before I arrived here I didn’t know what a “food enthusiast” meant and now I think I turned into one in Penang. The ethnic mixture in Penang gives one great many choices of food and especially the street food is very special. There are so many books on hawker food of Penang, one can help acknowledge that the foods from these kitchens on wheel are sometimes better than the food from well established restaurants. If you were obsessed with food in the past and came over it after much effort, don’t come to Penang. It’s to a food lover, what Jamaica is to a pothead.

Evening food court on Gurney Drive where you get the best variety of food.

The main temple of Penang is Goddess of Mercy Temple
which is recognizable by the smoke rising from it.
Although it has big fans to clear the air inside, still the walls have all turned
black and in front you can always see these 2 meter incense burning.

There are also other things about Penang which you’ll have to discover yourself. These were just a few things why I love this place and see it as my base. Ah, and there is Ms. Loh’s place…

Smiling for peace, Golden Smiling Buddha in Kek Lok Si Temple