Tag Archives: Laos

First Impressions

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As much as I would like to write something lovely and poetic for my first blog from Alaska, I’m too overwhelmed with the newness of it to be able to form complete thoughts of my impressions and emotions just yet.  This is only my second full day here, and I plan to be here three months—so there’s time for being poetic later.

Right now I just want to shoot out a few of the first thoughts I’ve had about Kotzebue:

It’s small.  I knew it would be small (3000+ people).  But man, it’s small.  Three paved streets.

Kotzebue is very different from the interior of Alaska.  There are no trees here.  None.

The friends I’m staying with have told me about their friends in Kotzebue for years, so in a way it’s like coming to a place where I already know people.  It’s fun to put faces to names.

Tundra is cool.  We drove outside of town yesterday and hopped out on the side of the road for me to take a few pictures, and I got to see what the plants look like up close—and I got to walk on tundra for the first time.  Spongy and squishy.  A little unnerving—literally unstable.  Or at least that’s what my feet thought.

24 hours of sunshine only contributes to the totally laid back atmosphere of Alaska. No need to get up early in the morning—it’s not like you’re working against time to get stuff done before the sun goes down.

A few weeks back I tried to get a library card in my hometown and was told I’d have to pay a fee because I wasn’t living in city limits. Yesterday, I walked into the library in Kotzebue, after being in town less than 24 hours, and not having a phone number, street address, or mailing address of my own, and they gave me a library card.  I checked out a book right then and there.  Again, totally laid back.  I got used to the laid back way of doing things in rural Asia over the past several years, and being back in the village atmosphere is kind of nice.

Villages are villages anywhere in the world.  In a really crazy way, being in Kotzebue reminds me of being in Luang Nam Tha, Laos (except for the part where it’s completely different).  The town itself seems about the same size, the streets are laid out in a similar way, and coming to Kotzebue from Texas gave me the same initial feeling as going from heavily populated and built up China to sparsely populated and less developed Laos—this feeling of “goodness, where did all the people go?”

Time will tell how these initial thoughts will change or intensify.

UPDATE: I’ve been around town a little more since that first quick tour on the first day here, and I need to update the number of paved streets – I don’t know how many there are all together, but I noticed that a couple of the side streets are paved as well as the three main streets.  But most of them are topped with dusty grey gravel.

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Over and Out

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Immigration officials on the Lao border stamped my passport with one last re-entry to China, and I’m down to about four weeks before heading to Texas. I don’t want to have a public countdown of the days, either here on my blog or on Facebook—nor do I feel compelled to bore you over the next four weeks with reports like “Today I gave away my couch.”

So I’m signing off this China blog. I’ve posted all my thoughts on leaving that are worth posting, and I don’t want to wear out my welcome in your newsfeed. I’m grateful to all of you who have supported and encouraged me over the years by regularly checking and commenting on my website, first with my photos and my amateur stab at podcasting, and later with this blog. It’s been a great outlet for me to share about life and work, and I hope it’s been a help to you, too.

From April until some time in the summer I’ll mostly be in Texas, with visits to family and friends in North Carolina, Connecticut, New York, Oklahoma, and elsewhere along the way. I’ve worked on most of the book research with Lydia in hours here and there over the past few months and will continue to develop the project as I visit folks in the spring—but writing in earnest will begin this summer. My current plan, God willing, is to spend a year with friends in Alaska and Washington. We’ll see how it all unfolds.

I hope to resume blogging once I get semi-settled somewhere this summer. But for now, find me by e-mail or Facebook. Zai jian.

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Recent Silence

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In the past few weeks my blog has taken the back burner, and without any explanations on my part. I don’t pretend to myself at all that there are great numbers of people anxiously awaiting my next entry—but I do want to acknowledge the four of you reading this right now, to thank you for checking in, and give a bit of an update on where I’ve been and where I’m going.

I didn’t make any posts in December because I spent most of the month away from my computer. A wonderful way to spend a month, I must say. After a few days of meetings (the best I’ve ever attended, I should point out), I traveled in Laos for a couple of weeks with a friend. It was one of those memorable trips in life with one experience after another that I will cherish for years to come—Taking a slow boat down the Mekong for two days and arriving by glorious sunset in Luang Prabang on Christmas Eve (see photo above). Having a Buddhist monk ask us on Christmas about the meaning of the day. Hiking in the jungle for three days, staying in an Akha village that doesn’t have electricity or running water, being given the best food our host family had on such short notice. Touring the countryside by motorbike on a sun-soaked afternoon.

I have these memories, along with some that I will think on and laugh about in years to come even though they weren’t exactly funny at the time. Being ripped off by a tour company with false information on visas and hidden hotel fees. Having our guesthouse owner unexpectedly pack up and go on vacation for a week—with my friend’s laptop locked in storage in the room behind her restaurant. Sitting on the roadside in numerous buses with broken gear shifts, flat tires, and other unexplainable ailments. Awaking in the night in the village because an old man pulled back the covers from my face, just to see what the white lady looks like.

I could easily write full blog entries about each of the memories. But time is short, and ideas for writing abound. One day I’ll flesh out these stories into a book, along with others from the past few years of living and traveling in Asia. One day, when I have the time and an advance check from my (imaginary) publisher.

But that won’t be the first book I write. The first one will be about Lydia, and she and I are working on the research for it now. Think the Little House series meets girl growing up in a village in Yunnan.

So, while we focus on this research, the time I can dedicate to writing for my blog will be limited. I don’t want to give it up completely, but I’m trying to be realistic about what is possible in the time I have.

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Burmese Days Conclusion: Why I Travel

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When I’m back in my own apartment after a trip like this one through Burma, when I’ve rinsed the dust out of my hair and the laundry is out of my backpack and in piles by the porch, ready to be washed, I begin sorting my thoughts and impressions into piles, too. Those that I will share with others through these stories, through online photo albums, through conversations in the days ahead. And those that I will keep and ponder and mull over on my own, letting them soak into the depths of me and become part of how I view and interact with and face the world.

My understanding of myself becomes much clearer when I’m away from my everyday surroundings. The nature of my job for the past few years has involved projects that require intense focus and discipline for a set period of time—usually in the form of compiling, writing, designing, revising, editing. A girl can only take so much sitting behind a computer before her thoughts begin to carry her away. Better to get away of my own accord than to be carried away. By spending time away from home (wherever home is at that moment) I regain clarity of thinking, refocus, and am refreshed to the very core of who Rebecca is.

In new surroundings I am more able to recognize what it is that I value in life, and I can point a finger more definitely to the places inside me that need to change or mature. Sometimes I can do this in a two hour bike ride out to some nearby villages; other times it takes two weeks of busing across Laos. It was by staring at a glacier for several days in Alaska that I was able to comprehend how truly joyful I am to be in my 30s now, something that had escaped me for the entire previous year in Yunnan. And it was sitting under a palm tree in Vietnam, watching a young boy drive a herd of cows across the beach, that I knew the focus of my job needed to change, to become more village-centered, more language-centered. Though I had fretted for months over making this decision, I left Vietnam and returned to work with a sense of both assurance and determination.

I know God hears my prayers from my own couch just as clearly as He does when I’m traveling along the Mekong or looking out a bus window at flooded rice fields. And He does speak to me in the mundanity of answering e-mails and cooking dinner and paying bills. Yet, in the interlude of being somewhere new, somewhere different, even somewhere difficult and unsettling, I have a deeper grasp of who I am and who God is and how it all works in this life that He gives.

In that way, this trip to Burma was no different from others. I had just finished up one major project and need to hunker down and get a couple more wrapped up in the next few months. Being in a new country, talking to folks along the way, helped me think through some ideas that have been on my mind and in my heart for quite some time, and though I didn’t make any life-changing decisions on this trip, the impressions I’ve brought back will simmer and stew and blend themselves into the rest of me in a way that is just as life-changing.

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Burmese Days Part 6: Tourism

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Did you know that in the 1990s Aung San Suu Kyi asked Western tourists to begin a boycott on travel in Burma to prevent their money from entering the coffers of the junta?

I didn’t either, until I started planning my trip. I respect Aung San Suu Kyi and would like to support her in her stand for democracy. But I decided that since I’ve spent the past ten years giving my tourism dollars to Communist governments in China, Vietnam, and Laos, and I don’t agree with them any more than I do the junta, then that aspect of the boycott doesn’t jive with me. Visiting people in the Burmese countryside and trying to get a better understanding of what their lives are like—that was a major purpose of my trip, and surely The Lady would agree with that. Thank goodness, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t ask her if she agrees—several weeks before my trip, she spoke from house arrest and encouraged tourists to come back to Burma.

Despite the newness of the lift on the boycott, we met quite a few people on our trip who speak very passable English and whose livelihoods depend on Western visitors. Guesthouses, restaurants, drivers, shop owners—everywhere we went, we found someone who could help us or translate for us. Early October is still the end of rainy season in Burma, so the number of travelers was at a low point for the year. Hopefully business will pick up and the empty places we visited will begin to draw more customers as the weather cools down over the next few months.

The evidence of tourism as an industry was particularly noticeable in Bagan. Since the whole area is an archeological zone, businesses and factories haven’t developed nearby, which helps the town maintain a quiet, rural feel. The bulk of the available work in Bagan is in catering to tourists, both national and international. When the owner of the vegetarian restaurant told us he wouldn’t send his children out to earn quick money off of tourists, he was referring to the abundant number of people waiting outside and inside the ancient stupas, trying to sell souvenirs at a high mark-up. Lacquerware bowls and bracelets, sand paintings of Burmese scenes, longyi made of cheap material, postcards printed circa 1980, the photocopied Orwell novel.

Erin and I were met by a small gang of children outside one of the more popular pagodas, and they wouldn’t stop bugging us to buy something from them the entire time we walked around the grounds of the site. One girl asked repeatedly if we would come look at her father’s sand paintings. Another offered to let me trade for souvenirs using as payment a Tibetan bracelet I was wearing. Giggling, cute, and annoying, they made me feel like the Pied Piper of Bagan as we made our way en masse around the premises.

The most persistent of the bunch was a little boy, probably 8 or 9 years old, who kept calling me señora and wanted me to buy some bamboo bracelets coated with lacquer. I told him I wasn’t going to buy anything until I was finished looking around the pagoda, and then I’d think about it. “OK, I’m waiting here for you,” he said.

Four steps later, he was at my side again offering the bracelets. “Wait here, and I’ll come back and buy them,” I said. “But stop following me.”

“OK, señora, I’m waiting here for you.”

A minute later, he was back. He was so darn cute, I couldn’t get mad. What decent Texas girl could get mad at a Burmese kid for addressing her in Spanish?

We repeated the whole process several times, me telling him to wait, him saying he was waiting here. Finally I clued in to the fact that he wasn’t trying to be obnoxious—he genuinely didn’t know the meaning of the English word wait. I let him follow me around and then bought the bracelets for $1 before I left. The last thing he said to me (and as far as I could tell, it was a complete non sequitur) was, “Mei guanxi. Weishenme?” Chinese for “It doesn’t matter. Why?”

I don’t know why either, kid. I’ve been asking that question for years.

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Con Artist“

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Visa Run

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My current Chinese visa requires that I leave the country every 60 days.  No one cares how long I’m out of the country, as long as I leave.  Holders of this type of visa who live in central parts of the country have to make regular trips to Hong Kong.  Living as I do in the most southern reaches of Yunnan, I’m a quick three hour drive from a very open border crossing into Laos.  So, once every two months, I hop in the truck with a fully charged iPod and head down the highway to spend an hour or two eating lunch across the border.

This past spring, a teammate and I were questioned by Chinese immigration officials, both entering and leaving the country, setting our nerves on edge for future visa runs.  On my most recent trip to Laos, I was particularly anxious to avoid a certain official who, in the midst of asking, “Are you working in China?” and “How long do you plan to stay in the country?”—kept sneaking in, “Can I call you in town?  What is your phone number?”  Nowhere on the entry form does it ask for a contact number, and the last thing I need is a border agent calling me at all hours of the night to go karaoke on his weekend off.  I persisted in not telling him by smiling and shaking my head each time he asked, hoping he would assume that meant I didn’t have a phone, praying my phone didn’t ring in my purse while I was standing there.

But I didn’t encounter that official this time around.  Or anyone else who asked me anything.  No buses of tourists from Thailand were crossing at the same time, nor Chinese merchants who run stalls in Lao markets.  The immigration buildings on both sides of the border were oddly silent, and the officials were agreeably sleepy.  Not a single question asked coming or going.  Relief.

Another difference between this trip and earlier ones is the precautions both countries are now taking against swine flu.  A Lao official took my temperature before allowing me to apply to enter his country.  I passed.  Re-entering China, I had to fill out a form declaring myself symptom-free.  The official at that counter became impatient with how long I was taking to check “yes” or “no”—even though I was the only person in the building who wasn’t an employee of the immigration department, and I’m not sure what his rush was to get me through the non-existent line.  While I was trying to figure out if the question was “Do you have these flu symptoms?” (no) or “Are you free of these symptoms?” (yes), he took the pen out of my hand and checked “no” on my behalf.  I’m glad he thought I looked healthy.

The bowl of pho for lunch on the Lao side of the border made the six hours of driving all the more enjoyable.  I go to the same stand every time—where the owners speak to me in Lao, not Chinese.  We can communicate enough for me to order lunch (with beef, not pork) and for them to tell me the price.  I savored my noodles and soup to the background noise of a Thai soap opera on the TV, lingering in this place more foreign to me than China has become.  Afterwards, I walked the 2km back through no-man’s-land to the Chinese side of the border, back to the country that has been my temporary home for the past several years.  Knowing I only have 60 days before needing to leave again increases the sense of temporariness.

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Water Splashing Festival

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Water Splashing Festival (a.k.a. Songkran, Pi Mai Lao, Po Shui Jie, and other names depending on which country you’re in and which language you’re speaking) is a Southeast Asian Buddhist holiday, the traditional New Year in Thailand and Laos and for the Dai people here in China.

There’s a local legend about how the tradition of splashing water on each other started, though I’m not sure if it’s the same story in other countries.  The following is a typical description of the legend, taken from an English language website in China; I find the story to be more “demonic” and “gruesome” than “beautiful” and “happy”:

There is beautiful story about the origin of the Water-splashing Festival. Long ago, there was a devil in the place where the Dai people lived, doing all kinds of evil. All the people hated him to the extremity, but had no method to punish him because of his powerful magic. Then one day in June by Dai calendar, his seventh wife, who had been robbed from the village, fuddled and induced him to speak out his own weak points. When he was sound sleeping, the seventh wife and the other sisters together used his hair to cut off his head. But once the head touched the ground, it began to burn fiercely. So the girls rushed over bravely to pick up the head and hold it in arms tightly, and the fire died out immediately. Therefore, the seven girls took turns to hold the head, each for one year. Every year at the time of changing turns, people would splash water on the girl who has held the head for a whole year, to wash away the blood on his body and the one-year fatigue. By and by, it developed into a happy festival to send off the old year and welcome the new.

In the villages of the Dai and other Buddhist minority groups in border areas of Yunnan, the holiday is spent with family and visiting the temple, with lots of eating and drinking and being merry.  The splashing of water on each other is generally fun and good-spirited in villages, unlike in town where the Han Chinese have taken over the holiday and made it into a tourist experience and an excuse for people to be drunk and obnoxious for several days.  On those days, it’s best to stay inside if you don’t want to be drenched to the bone as soon as you step out the door….

(to be continued)

Next in the series:  ”Water Splashing Past:  MS“

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