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Entries in nature (129)

Saturday
Nov212009

This Waking Dream

Greetings,

I've been sitting down and exploring Saigon now for three weeks. Some travelers shared their story.

...The couple from Poland. They recently visited Borneo and camped for four days with an eco-friendly outfit in the jungle. Their operation has been going for 20 years. The couple said they saw orangutans, amazing plumaged birds, scorpions, snakes, and butterflies. Their future travel dreams include Madagascar to see the lemurs, Komodo Island dragons, and the Panda Conservatory in China.

It's refreshing to meet people traveling to experience the natural world, rather than those focusing on museums and cities. Some prefer their comfort zones, others take the road less travelled. 

  • The Korean man and his family returning on a vacation. In the 60's he worked in remote areas of Laos constructing roads and airfields for Air America, the secret CIA funded airline from 1950-1976. He also worked in Da Nang.
  • The family with two young kids from Darwin, Australia. The mother said, "This is a good experience for my girl and boy. It teaches them tolerance."
  • The two girls from Chile and Argentina. They met by chance in Sydney and teamed up. They left their respective homes, much to the dismay and concern of family and friends to travel for a year. It's their first time away from home and they've settled into the routine and joy. They've headed north to explore Ha Noi, the coast and mountains before eventually turning south to Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. They have no time limitations. As one said, "I took the first step."

Metta.

Sculpture at Fine Arts Museum.

  Shirts made of tree bark.

Petrol and tires, Saigon curbside business.

 

Saturday
Nov142009

Mekong - River of Nine Dragons

Greetings,

I've just returned from three days in the Mekong Delta. It was marvelous to be on the water, this swirling powerful natural endless flow of time - past, present and future. To realize it's source in Tibet. It runs 4500 kilometers through China, between Myanmar and Laos, through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. 

Travelers shared their short sweet stories. Icelandic, German, English, and French. The majority were on quick 2-3 week vacations through Southeast Asia. I felt their anxiety and time schedule pressure, some had adjusted in some small measure to the rhythm of the Asian way. Others were suffering from sensory overload and in a hurry to get somewhere else. So it goes.

The Icelandic team of two brothers and their sister left Reykjavik in August and landed in Mumbai where it was 40+. I'm melting!

They stayed with boats and buses, reached Kathmandu, flew to Beijing and overland to Saigon. They left by boat to Cambodia and eventually Thailand. Two will continue to Sydney for New Year's. 

I took an Open Tour to My Tho, Ben Tre and Can Tho. It included a home-stay with a family deep in the jungle along a tributary. The tourist sites on small islands in villages included: a coconut candy production operation, honey bee processing, a python wrapped around your neck, fish farms, an alligator farm, a floating market, a rice paper making village, a Cham weaving village and a climb up Sam Mountain offering 360 degree visions of the huge delta and Cambodia to the west. Stunning and sublime.

At the home stay I awoke at 4 to sit by the river with the crescent moon and stars reflected in water. 

An extensive Saigon color gallery is up for your visual enjoyment. 

Metta.

 

 

Release birds to gain merit.

 

Tuesday
Oct272009

Sapa Tale

Greetings,

Before shifting my fluid base to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) this weekend I will post more Sapa material lest it become lost in the dusty archive of a Moleskine. Besides the words, here are three images to share with you. The Nikon and Leica galleries hold extensive Sapa visual stories if you have time.

Sapa is a remote mountain city in the Northwest and a favorite among tourists and travelers. I blogged and linked to Sapa earlier. Fresh air, amazing friendly local people, the H'mong, Red Dzao and Tay. 

+

All night a heavy rain decorated the lake. Ripples from the center. Water echoes.

 My room is on the 4th floor of a cheap local hotel overlooking the lake, away from the typical tourist backpacker joints.

Above the lake are heavily forested eastern mountains with high granite ridges running north. Fog and water and low clouds rumble over the peaks, down the valleys bringing rain, fog and mist. It’s a perfect environment. 

The moving, falling water creates whirlpools on the lake with a steady falling mist.

The air is clean and pure. It feels marvelous. 

At 7:30 a.m. I jump in a van for a three hour trip to the Sunday Bac Ha market south of Sapa. It is “famous” for the Flower H’mong women’s elaborate colorful clothing. In the van are four Australian girls completing their nutritional studies program in Ha Noi.

It’s a splendid wild nature ride up, down and through narrow mountain passes, often with zero visibility as we are surrounded by thick cold fog. It is pouring in Bac Ha and the market is flooded with locals huddled under blue tarps buying and selling. There are lots of foreign tourists. It’s the Sunday “happening.”

We drop the girls off in Lao Cai so they can catch the night train to their dietary studies I and return to Sapa through the clouds as twilight sweeps over peaks into deep valleys where roaring rivers sing.

One Morning.

I rescued a brown moth from room #402 so it could fly into the sky.

At dawn I saw a bright white, yellow sunrise over the eastern mountains. Behind me was a brilliant rainbow arching over the high green western hills. Perfect natural equilibrium. 

I met Sa, a H’mong woman and we walked around the cloth market discussing the finer points of fabric quality. She told me a story about a H’mong woman in the far north mountains who was kidnapped by Chinese men from Yunnan, taken over the border and forced into prostitution. When she became pregnant she was taken to a remote cabin in the Yunnan mountains and kept there as a prisoner. One day she escaped and returned to Vietnam. Human trafficking is a growing problem in the world.

Sa also talked about how there is a lack of minority owned shops in Sapa.

By now most, if not all the H’mong women and kids know me. I’ve been here longer than the average tourist who does 2-3 days; takes a trek, explores the area, maybe really gets to know the local people and then they vanish, back on the train southbound.

I smile and speak with everyone along the path. In-out, up-down the steep sunrise street, past tourist shops and restaurants. “Same-same, but different,” goes the t-shirt proverb.

I am just sitting with the mountains, sky, clouds, kids and dancing stories.


How to travel inside the market. How to carry fresh meat in a box on your motorcycle so you can stop, chop, weigh and sell to the people on the street. 

The village of Sa. Small steps going down, Steep trails, dirt, plants. She identifies wild plants on the hillside used to create the indigo colors in their clothing.

The wild terrain. Rising rice terraces where people harvest. People cut, thresh, stack of stalks and burn them. Isolated puffs of smoke dot the valley below rising green forests and mountains.

It’s a long simple home with a dirt floor and bamboo walls. There are also some wooden walls but wood is expensive. The home is divided into a kitchen on the left, main room and bedroom. The main room has a TV and DVD machine. Under the roof is a storage area.

Outside is a faucet for water, water buffalo pen, pig pen and writing pen. Actually there’s no writing pen. 

Indigo cloth that has been repeatedly dyed in a large vat hangs to dry along a wooden wall. Stacks of straw for winter feeding are stacked. Twenty-five kilogram bags of rice in blue, white and orange plastic bags made in Indonesia are piled in a corner.

Sa's husband returns with the water buffalo and we share a simple lunch prepared by one of Sa’s three daughters. She is 19, a mother, a trek leader and speaks excellent English. Many girls marry at 16. They begin families. We share rice, tofu, and greens.

Metta.


 

  

Sa's husband. One harvest per year.

Tuesday
Sep222009

Riding the rails

Thanks for your patience. The 2015 Lao Cai express to Ha Noi pulled in at 0430. I rested in an crammed narrow upper sleeping berth.

A boisterous group of Thailand tourists on a quick four-day "buy and see," from Elephant Town wrestled impossible suitcases and cheap Chinese appliances into the passageway. Their young leader works for Herbal Life and freelances as a tour guide. He leaned over and with unmitigated glee displayed his lapel pin with the company logo and heart. 

"Wow!" I exclaimed, "It's all natural!"

After brushing aside the Ha Noi taxi touts my dream sweeper collected dreams from the sleeping monkeys.

Sapa was magnificent, just what this little explorer needed for a peaceful, awesome, fresh aired human and nature connection. Bliss. Mountains, fog, mist, clouds, rain, sun, valleys, rivers. Beautiful people. You know you're in the zone when 10 days feels like 10 aeons. 

Armed with my trusty Moleskine, camera tools and an open heart-mind I ventured forth. I will create galleries for your visual enjoyment and share Sapa stories along the way.

Metta.

 

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