new things, old things

As I cross the mountains of Laos into northern Vietnam, only vegetated mountain peaks peek out from a blanket of cotton clouds that tuck in the upper half of Vietnam for the long monsoon season, just now coming to an end. The mountains are the atmosphere's seashore; the tidal clouds can be seen creeping up the meandering valleys in search of shadows that need extinguishing.

drive thru bbq

As we dive into Hanoi, dip below the cloud mass, there are a million stooped below. Vietnamese curved over florid geometrics - rice paddy rectangles that fractal away in every direction.  I am in a place that not so long ago was a scene of war, a place into which our country reached its long arms, touching everyone here in one way or another.

into the surf

rattan/bamboo weaves used as fishing boats, despite looking quite un-seaworthy

unsuspecting random tourist

Sometimes southeast Asia feels like a strange jumble of new things and old things - new ones that won't last but a few years, erected in fervent moments to fulfill the needs of a rapidly developing land. Largely devoid of flavor and cultivation, these buildings and ways have little foundation. They are not attractive, just an outcome of a freshly globalized world. The lines of identical shops without customers, the half-built skeletons of resorts that the waves laugh at.  But its also home to old things - really old things - customs and beliefs and physical structures that are clearly dripping with history and belief. Why are we drawn to these ancient crumbles of brick and stone and symbology? Well, old things are, by definition, before us; they were likely crafted with thought and care, they often have something to teach us. 

Citadel in Hue, Imperial Capital from early 19th century

Japanese/Chinese/Vietnamese architectural amalgam in Hoi An

roofs

 

Through the hinterlands of Vientiane Province by bike!

I will be joining Team Dai, the bike team here in Vientiane, Laos, on a four day, 450km loop through the mountainous and unexplored hinterlands of Vientiane Province in March in an effort to raise money for Friends International, a local charity working to reintegrate street children here in Vientiane. Please consider supporting me in this worthy and potentially painful endeavor. Consider it your investment in our country's foreign policy, use it as good PR, write it off on your tax return, tattoo it on your bicep, or yell it in the streets. More information, complete with an online secure donation site is below.

TeamDai Cycling Team: https://sites.google.com/a/teamdai.org/team-dai/
Secure Online Donations: http://www.gofundme.com/TeamDai2012

Come join us! Just follow the signs!

Note: question mark denotes questionably existent roads

Songkhram river basin - symphony of biodiversity

The Songkhram meets the mekong

Bi-colored river is the translation. Where the Songkhram, Thailand's last free flowing tributary, meets its overlord, the river of giants, the mighty Mekong. This is the northeastern region of Thailand, Phagg Issan, the poorest and most resource dependent region of Thailand.

A meeting with some local woman

These woman hand us boughs of tropical leaves to sit on, and pour us ice water as we look out over a stretch of the Songkhram - their front yards, their grandmother's front yards, the front yards of their children and children's children. They tell us about the fishing pressure, and their newly demarcated fish conservation zone. As usual here in Thailand, the river stretch in front of the waterside temple is sacred and needs no signage or buoys to mark it as a non-fishing zone.

Net fishing is common - while net sizes and catch limitations are slow to be embraced by some villages, they are self-imposed by others, in order to preserve once limitless wild-caught fish resources that are slowly being depleted by rising populations, flood plain forest degradation, and commercial fishing.

Empty boats sit quietly along the rivers edge. The early morning and late afternoon are when they are paddled into the river, carrying net casting villagers eager to supplement their family's diets with their local protein of choice.

Drying fish for preservation

 The surplus catch is dried in the sun as a means of preservation.

Seasonally inundated forest is a key spawning habitat for fish species that migrate from the Mekong River - protecting this important tributary ensures a strong resilient Lower Mekong Basin.  During the rainy season, this river may rise as much as 7 meters - up to the front doorstep of the villager's houses.

Local village fish processing

Village woman process these fish for the market. This is an essential form of revenue and employment for the village.

comings and goings

Greetings friends/family. I am back in Laos after a short but incredibly refreshing holiday hiatus. And what an unlikely place to be for a young Mainer! I often think this as I re-adjust to life in southeast Asia. I often ask myself... what am I doing here? or, in the words of David Byrne, How did I get here?

From the salt crusted coastline of Maine - jagged unforgiving glacier-carved rocks with old veins, peeling birch forests, things that are not so gentle to the touch, deep blues and greys, slow decomposition, an old fellow stuck in his ways. It seems to me a place simultaneously beautiful and simple, a place not moving too fast in any one direction, but content to wobble silently and calmly on the axis of the future.

From this place, this home, to a place of slow thick movement. Not gentle saline tidal undulations, but flowing viscous human turbidity. Smells of ancestral spirits hang in the air, feral dogs can sense the excitement and sound their siren of progress. Neighborhood vegetable shops are expanding, soy milk is being heated at an incredible rate. Some of what is here will no longer be here very soon. A lot of what was once here is only preserved in the minds of grandmas and in the concentric circles of a few trees that have been saved by that sash of orange monk robe adornment.

Yes, how did I get here? Did I choose? Are we meant to allow this world to move us? Or do the laws of physics require that we push back on it equally and oppositely? Or is it the inevitable realization that no matter how still we remain, how hard we try to make the chaos and confusion of the world forget us, we are hanging onto dear life as we are whipped at an incomprehensible speed around a sun and a solar system and something larger that encompasses all of these.

Or maybe we should just dine in phonebooths and sleep on the job.

A video about a project not so dissimilar to the ones I work on:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,30490,00.html

from the region

First Chiang Mai - my return, almost exactly two years later, to the stomping grounds of my first Asian adventure. Chiang Mai feels like a thriving metropolis compared to the cow-town that is Vientiane. It was a beautiful thing to again stay with  my old Thai host family. We will be strung together in an amazing web of culture and continents forever I hope. My brothers and sister have grown up a lot, and together we braved the cold weather and nausea-inducing roads of northern Thailand to camp together on Thailand's highest mountain, Doi Inthanon.

 

Next - Hmong New Year. Hmong are upland tribal people that live throughout Laos. Amazingly intricate dress, ball-throwing flurting games, and of course grilled meat.

on the forest track

Hands blistered by car strut machete hacking, arms, recently swiped by jungle brambles, stripped of skin to reveal raised red mountain ranges. I stand erect, bracing myself in the bed of this truck between the tree measurement equipment and the small Lao military man and his not so small rifle. We search these forests for locations, randomly assigned by some unknowing distant algorithm that describes the one thing impossible for a feeling, thinking, human - absolute objectivity.

These plots stand as blind proxies for this forest at large - from these relatively few samples, for which we brave limb and thorn and pest, we will extrude the sacred patterns of this forest.

The truck passes near to the low hanging branches above. Standing in the bed of the 4-wheeled groaning beast, I am forced to dodge the oncoming leaves or thorns or spider webs in order to stay intact.

We pass forest long ago selectively logged and stripped of vitality.  When the illegal logging track becomes impassable, we drive on anyway. When they become impossible, we pack and set out on foot. The national protected area employee, in pine green ranger suit, the local guide adorned with flip-flops (the jungle trekking footwear of choice), the district military man with his wide smile and AK-47, the international consultant with GPS in hand, and me - part translator, part field technician, part cultural liaison - all wonder.

Before long, we are into the deep old growth primary forest. Even blindfolded, nose-plugged, ear-muffed and drunk, you would know... its the feel of the place. Many things have lived here, died here, decay and regrowth blabber on back and forth in the language of smells and carbon.  Moist, undulating, a loud and ominous silence full of bird and insect interjections. Small trickling streams reveal butterfly fantasy lands and prime dinosaur habitat.  Enormous contemplating trees - or groups of tree-wine-woody-matter-amalgams - they supervise this visit. This forest feels softer, darker, more cave-like than field-like - it certain reverence comes over all who pass through it.

Approaching the hallowed plot, one might expect a treasure chest or shiny prize - a return for the steep machete wielding huffing and puffing that got us here.  But no, there is little glamor out here. To this lucky plot's surprise though, so oft forgotten far from trail or stream or road, we have come to pay it mind. We will trim it up, measure it, fawn over it, consider its composition and characteristics. We will write about it, type its secrets into our GPS. Ritualistic cigarette breaks will proceed and follow, the occasional buttressed tree trunk will stir intense discussion, and our routine is honed. Onto the next plot. And then the village for handfuls of sticky rice and hammocks. A story for another day.

That Luang Festival - a beautifal redistrubiton

That Luang Festival - a massive redistribution of wealth, a lesson in social services. 

 

Relatively well-off Vientiane city folk flock to the country's most important stupa to give alms to monks on this 6 am cool season morning.  Good luck and merit are culturally/religiously associated with this giving ritual.  From silver alms bowls, fruit, candles, milk, sweets, rice, and other foodstuffs are placed with a prayer in the bowls of passing monks. A procession of giving. 

 

Monks, young and old, returning in the backs of pickup trucks to their villages, bring bagfulls of these snacks. This is the welfare system. Those parts of society most in need - sickness stricken families, bankrupt businesses, disabled street dwellers - they go to monks and temples for help. When a family can't take care of a child - they are sent to become monks.
 

 

 The culture and religion, therefore, has a built-in civil society, welfare providing, wealth redistributing system. And nicely colored robes.