Near the small city of Phonsavan, Laos lie 68 sites that contain over 2000 ancient stone jars.  While scientists have worked hard to find the origins and age of the jars, there has been little headway, and the odd feeling invoked when visiting the sites is reminiscent of visiting Stonehenge in the UK but with a higher threat of landmines.

Three sites are now open to the public after UNESCO declared them a World Heritage Site in 2002. Our guide told us that he and his friends used to play in the fields among the jars when he was younger.  At that time, the grass was so tall the jars were largely invisible. He explained that many local people collect the land mines to sell them as scrap metal which lead to many injuries. In one site alone, over 127 pieces of UXO were cleared. The Laotian government hopes to open more sites to the public, but clearing mines is expensive and time-consuming.

One unexpected feature of the Jars was the huge colonies of spiders inhabiting the shadiest jars. These jars had what looked like black splotches, which turned out to be thousands of daddy-long-legs-like spiders sleeping on top of one another. When poked with a stick they scattered, but would return in a few minutes.

In order to get a photo while inside of the jars, we had to be very careful not to touch the colonies of spiders.   It turns out that the movement of air from climbing into a jar was enough to scatter them.  With 100s of spiders dropping on us, we took very quick photos!

I just read a quick article in the Wall Street Journal about changes in visa laws regarding entering China. Currently it is $100 to get a Chinese visa which is valid for multiple entries within 1 year. As visas go, the Chinese visa was the easiest of all for us to get as we had a friend do it on our behalf in San Francisco and were not charged extra fees, nor were we hassled about documents. We were able to sneak through with multiple-entry visas for the same price, but apparently new legislation from China is barring issuance of multiple-entry visas until after the Olympics–potentially a huge expense both for tourists and business-people alike.

As we were able to get through, we technically could come back for the Olympics in August and not pay another $100.. so watch out! We may be posting a new most excellent adventure soon that includes a trip to the Olympics!

Hoi An, Vietnam is known for its fabrics and tailors. LIterally hundreds of tailors line the streets of this extremely small and heavily-touristed town. The last time I visited Hoi An I had seven shirts made. These turned out to be some of my favorite shirts and I wore them so frequently that they eventually needed to be replaced. I vowed to return to Hoi An and acquire some more.

Lisa and I spent two entire days visiting different tailors, inspecting fabrics and haggling over prices. In the end we ordered clothing & shoes from 7 different places. Here is what we can remember buying:

• 23 mens shirts (some embroidered, some with western stylings)
• 3 womens suits including some with pants & skirts
• 13 womens shirts of various design & fabrics
• 1 pair of spaceman style silver shoes
• 1 pair of custom designed high heels
• 1 pair of swanky white & black dress shoes
• 1 pair of multi-colored checkerboard shoes
• 1 bright orange 1970s style suit & vest
• 2 light jackets

We spent about two days just picking up, trying on, having adjustments made, packing and shipping all of this back to the US. The post office can send someone to your hotel with packing materials to pick up your shipment for you and whisk it away by motorcycle. We were very pleased with most of what we got.

For anyone visiting Hoi An or Vietnam: We didn’t really know how much shipping would cost. We shipped two boxes of 11 kg & 14 kg to the US for a total of $123USD, so about $5/kg. Our guidebook offered the following suggestions for buying clothes:

1. Give yourself an extra day to allow for modifications
2. Try your clothing on and don’t hesitate to ask for changes
3. Linings might cost extra (they didn’t for us), double stitching should not
4. You can take off an extra inch, you can’t add one
5. Ask for a sample of any silk and test with a flame, real silk burns
6. Try to be creative, if you could find it at home, keep brainstorming
7. Don’t be overwhelmed by the number of shops, the all sell about the same thing. Find one you are comfortable with
8. Be creative, get stuff you couldn’t get at home
9. Have the shop keep your measurements on file in case you want to order more from home

I would add the following tips:

10. If you have a piece of clothing you like, bring it with as a model so the shops can copy it
11. Print out pictures of clothes you like, the tailors can recreate it. This is much more effective than trying to describe what you want and translate it to Vietnamese
12. Ask for an extra button to be sewn into each shirt
13. Ask for small details like slots for collar stiffeners on shirts, everything we asked for was included at no extra charge (but we wouldn’t have gotten it if we didn’t ask)
14. The stalls at the Hoi An fabric market are less professional looking but they seemed to do very good work and cost less than the tailors that had their own storefronts
15. Don’t go to the first tailor you see or follow someone touting their shop on the street, make an effort to compare prices at several places
16. Talk about price before going into detail about what you want or spending too much time in one shop
17. Make sure the shop you are in has enough fabrics that you like before agreeing to buy anything (like 5 shirts for the price of 4)
18. Bring a notebook around to take note of what you bought at each tailor, we had a hard time remembering what we ordered and from where. Receipts typically are not itemized and are not in English
19. Don’t forget to have shoes made, they are a great deal and you can really get anything you can dream up
20. Make sure to try Cau Lao, its a noodle dish only available in Hoi An

Lao international busses are not customer service oriented, they are focused on transporting as many passengers and cargo in one trip as possible. My second time riding the bus from Laos to Vietnam proved to be *slightly* more pleasant than my first (with Preston in 2005). At 6:30 AM in Phonsavan, Laos, thirty-five tourists ambled onto a bus with 29 seats headed for Vinh, Vietnam. Luggage was stored across the back five seats and hoisted in through the back windows. We later determined that this was because entire bottom compartment of the bus was full of scrap metal destined for Vietnam. After seats ran out people started getting angry.. we all paid $15/ticket expecting a seat. They piled 9 people (including Lisa and myself) on top of the luggage, which was stacked about 5 feet high in the back of the bus.

The bus stopped every couple of minutes to pick up more locals who ended up sitting on small stools in the aisle and in the first seat which had been converted into a couch like area that could cram 5-7 people. It turned out that the people in the aisle were the ones in charge of the load of scrap metal. In total we counted about 45 people on the bus. Each time we stopped more people got on, additional cargo was strapped to the roof of the bus and more people would cram into the already full aisle and be passed a small plastic stool from the back.

The trip was not entirely unpleasant as we met some very nice German and Japanese tourists with whom we shared the same nest of luggage in the back of the bus. It was also not extremely humid which made the trip much more bearable than the first time I attempted such a trip in the middle of August.

Thanks to Lisa’s hard work, we’ve finally updated our map section to show our route through Asia. This might help anyone who cares to make sense of where we’ve been and how we got there. It might be useful to anyone planning a similar trip as well.

Recently have decided to modify our trip plans. Instead of going all the way through Russia and Europe, we’re going to spend a month and a half in China/Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. We decided that the whole trip was too long to complete without rushing through places worth visiting. Also, we have really enjoyed Southeast Asia so far, and thus stayed longer than our original trip itinerary would afford.

Currently we are in Vietnam, and we plan to enter China around the first week of April. The plan is to cover most of coastal China, Hong Kong, and Macau with a few exceptions in the middle of the country like the 3 Gorges Dam and Xian. All legs will be overland by train/bus/boat, and we will be leaving to go back to the U.S. on May 16th from Beijing. It will still be a stretch to finish all of it before leaving around May 16th, but at least we have a fighting chance now! Russia and the Trans Siberian will have to wait till the next time.

While wandering around in Luang Prabang, admiring the Frech colonial architecture, we wandered into Ock Pop Tok–one of the many shops in town which offers local tapestries and weaving.  They have some of the most beautiful pashmina scarves I’ve ever seen and they are completely made of silk with distinct patterns. I immediately signed up for a 1-day weaving class.

The day began with a lesson on how silk thread is made with silk worms. A single silk-worm cocoon produces 300 meters of silk thread, which is then boiled along with other cocoons and spun into thread.  This is amazing considering the cocoons are only about 1/2″ diameter and 1.5″ long. Next, we learned about Lao techniques for weaving–including kit (two-color, mostly basic), chok (multi-color, advanced), and ikat (pre-dyed yarn that weaves into a pattern). We also learned about the natural dyes that they use to dye their yarn including turmeric root, bark from trees, and indigo plants.

Next, we got to dive in and actually dye our own yarn using the same ingredients. I chose to dye my 3 skeins blue using indigo, red (from a local root and alum) and yellow and orange batik using turmeric and limestone to perform the “magic” change to orange. After turning our hands blue and hanging our silk to dry, we headed over to the weaving hut to begin winding our spools for the afternoon weaving lesson.

I have to admit I was a bit scared of climbing into the large wooden and silk contraption to begin what looked to be the most difficult and coordinated action of my life. However, I stumbled onto the bench, and quickly picked up the pattern of sending the saddle across the web to weave the pattern. After 2 hours of weaving I finished a placemat-sized piece of shiny brown silk with a green Lao pattern in the middle. It was quite exciting to see the finished piece and think that I had completed it without too much help! The whole experience left me excited to try weaving again, to find the possibility of finding such materials in the U.S., and to support the hard work of local Lao people in the form of buying their wares at the night market!

There are few options when traveling from Northern Thailand into Laos. When the road is functioning and the weather good, a bumpy mini-bus is feasible, but most opt for a boat trip down the Mekong.

It really isn’t very far to Luang Prabang and two types of boats make the journey. Death-defying speedboats fly down the narrow and rocky Mekong River and complete the journey in just a few hours. These are extremely tiny and extremely loud boats on which at least a couple of tourists die each year. Due to the danger and relative unpleasantness of the speedboats, most travelers opt for the 2-day slow-boat which fully lives up to its name: SLOW. Wanting to arrive to Luang Prabang with our hearing and our lives we also chose this option. Rumors of a boat that can complete the journey in a single day abound, but from what we could tell this has been shut down by the “slow-boat mafia” or “Pak Bang Cartel”.

Pak Bang is the only place along the route that can support tourists staying overnight. It seems to exist primarily for this purpose as most of the establishments in the town seem to be guest houses or restaurants. Almost no one stays more than overnight. It would seem to be in the interest of Pak Bang business owners that the boat between Thailand and Luang Prabang Laos take two days.

Our boat “left” at 9 AM, but really pulled out of port at 11:30. At 6 PM we squeezed between dozens of other boats at the landing in Pak Bang and off-loaded via a narrow plank that was roughly half a foot wide.  We found a guest house (they get cheaper as you climb uphill) and got dinner. The lights & power in Pak Bang shut down around 9 PM, so its best to get an early start on the evening.

The following day our boat departed only one hour behind schedule but was crammed with people. A little mutiny goes a long way and when it was clear not everyone could fit aboard for the 8 hour journey the operators agreed to launch a second boat (which, unannounced to those who changed boats, was scheduled to leave 2 hours later). We decided to stay on the first boat as our luggage was buried under the floorboards. Both boats arrived in Luang Prabang at the same as we made a dozen stops at random beaches to on- or off-load passengers and their cargo and to allow Lao school children come aboard with baskets of pringles, coca-cola, and water to sell.

The journey, while slow, was very enjoyable. The river is very rocky and nestled in a very steep valley with only extremely small villages lining the shore. The Northern Mekong has a very different character than the wide, smooth Southern part.

Today we ventured out to take a cooking class at May Kaidee–a local Vegetarian restaurant in the northern city of Chang Mai, Thailand. It all started yesterday when we stumbled upon the restaurant in one of our seemingly-endless searches for good food. Looking at the menu, we decided to order their special–green pumpkin curry. I can say with certainty that it was far and away the best curry I’ve ever had (and we’ve been eating curry at least daily for the last few weeks). As we made our way through the other dishes we had ordered (fresh spring rolls, green papaya salad, and veggie tempura with a wonderful peanut sauce) we decided that we had to take their cooking class.

May Kaidee has 4 branches–3 in Bangkok near Ko San Road and 1 new branch in Chang Mai, run by the sister of the original owner who is also the teacher of the course. We happened to be the only people in the class today (in Chang Mai), but there is space for only 4–guaranteeing personal attention.

During 4 hours we learned to make Tom Yam Soup (vegetable  soup with tofu, and spices), pumpkin soup, stir-fried mixed vegetables with ginger, stir-fried vegetables with cashew nuts, pad thai, masaman curry, green curry with pumpkin, peanut sauce, spring rolls, pumpkin hummus, and green papaya salad (which is available at most Thai restaurants in the U.S. and is a must-try for everyone). Along with the 4-hour class in which we made 15+ dishes between the two of us, we received breakfast, a detailed   explanation of each ingredient at the market, all the leftovers, a recipe book, and even a lesson on the “May Kaidee” song for the bargain price of 1200baht (or about $40).I know what you’re thinking.. when are you coming over to my house to make all of this for me? Perhaps when we get back, we’ll be able to outfit our warehouse with a wok, and we can share the yuuuummmy food that we had today with all of you!

We have been taking lots of photos on this trip. I’ve got my trusty Canon Digital Rebel XT which has been with me on many trips, and we bought a cheap point and shoot off of a friend in Singapore. Normally, I bring along my portable-photo-dumping-device, a clunky but effective enclosure for a laptop hard drive made by vosonic that reads compact flash cards and writes them to the drive.

On day 5 of our trip, tragedy struck. The hard drive in my laptop failed, so I removed the hard drive from my photo device to save my laptop. That hard drive (which had been slogged around the world on numerous trips in all sorts of weather) failed a few weeks later.

Now on hard drive #3, my laptop is stable. Singapore’s Simlim Square (see photo) provides bargain prices on all things electronic, especially computer components. I’m also fully restored from both hard drive failures thanks to Amazon S3 and Jungledisk.

With a stable computer and a few days with solid internet, we’ve managed to recover & sort all of the photos from the trip this far. The best are now on flickr.