It was supposed to be a scenic 190-mile cruise up the atmospheric Mekong River, a ride through nature, fresh air, and small, remote villages after almost two weeks in big and/or busy cities in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Instead, we found ourselves exposed for two full days to the smokiest air I have ever experienced. With an AQI score of over 500, the air pollution in Laos and northern Thailand tinged the skies with a sickly yellow/gray/brown hue and left its acrid taste in our mouths and noses. Slash-and-burn agriculture is alive and well in this part of the world, and we hit the peak of the crop-burning season, unfortunately.
We left Luang Prabang in the morning and boarded our boat in the small town of Ban Xang Hai. At first glance, we were skeptical, but once aboard, we quickly noted the many charms of our vessel. Long and lean, the wood boat had a variety of seating options, tables, and even a few bed-like couches along the edges. This would be our home for the next two days although we did disembark for the night in between.
Our first stop was Pak Ou, also known as the Buddha statue cave. The shores of the Mekong are riddled with caves, and this one, about two hours into the journey north, is one of two now-famous ones.
We climbed the steep stone staircase and were met by the unexpected sight of thousands of small Buddha likenesses. None is in great shape, but the imperfections – chips, broken limbs, and peeling paint – add to the cave’s aura.
Back on the boat, we continued north, snacking, drinking, chatting and lunching in the comfortable interior. Soon we were also sneezing, coughing, and squinting, as the smoke and its particulate matter settled deep into our nostrils and throats, the crevices of our fingers, and the folds of our clothing.
We tried hard to ignore the air quality, but it was certainly making things a little less pleasant with each passing hour. Although there was no escaping the air, we tried to take our minds off of it with the bucolic river scenes – an elephant being bathed by its owner, small gatherings of animals, passing vessels of all sizes and colors.
To add to our dustiness, we stopped at our first small village, Ban Bor, in the early afternoon. We trekked up a steep hill of sand and dirt to meet a classroom of children whose teacher is a friend of our guide. This enclave was well-kept and calm, and I mostly enjoyed the visit, something I had worried about because I have an aversion to “poverty tourism” in general, and the stops we had planned gave me pause as we moved upriver.
By evening, we got even creepier views of the smudged horizon; as we crept forward, it felt like we were sailing the River Styx, with the filth in the air backlit and yellowed by the setting sun. We got an overnight respite from the air in Pakbeng, a small town in the middle of nowhere but still home to a lovely set of cabin-like rooms high above the muted Mekong.
The following morning brought 90 more miles of smoky, blurry cruising up the river, as well as a second and much more unsettling village stop. We could immediately see and sense that Ban Huoy Lamphane, a poor Hmong village, was very different from the prior day’s visit. Known as one of the most fiercely independent hill tribes, the Hmong resist outside pressure to change; while not a bad thing in theory, the attitude has nevertheless left villages like this one adrift.
There was none of the industry (by which I mean weaving and other arts) of the first village, many children were clearly not in school, and the pride of place we had seen earlier was not to be found. I felt uneasy about our presence here; were we in any way helping, or was this exploitative tourism pure and simple? I happen to be fairly informed about the Hmong – one of my favorite books about a clash of cultures is Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down – and after having worked with several Hmong families resettling in the U.S., I was loathe to judge what we were seeing and torn about the efficacy of any help some passing tourists could really offer. A rough visit for me.
We completed our journey up the Mekong, crossing into Thai waters at Houay Xai in the mid-afternoon. We had high hopes, but of course we quickly learned that smoke knows no borders, and the thick air would stay with us until we left for Bangkok a few days hence. In spite of the miasma that enveloped our boat for two days and nearly 200 miles, the boat ride was a pleasant suspension of time, both literal and figurative, and I’m glad we did it.
Laos might have been the most confounding destination on my trip to Southeast Asia. It started under blue Bangkok skies with the most cheerful turboprop ever, and it offered a multitude of unique experiences, but everything about our time there was dimmed – quite literally – by horrific, smoky fires.
From our first stay in charming Luang Prabang, through a 200-mile boat ride up the Mekong River, and on into northern Laos and Thailand, the pervasive fires lent a sickly grayish-yellow tinge to everything we saw.
Still very much a user of slash-and-burn agriculture, Laos in late March/early April 2023 was in the midst of one of the most extended crop burns in recent history. Even before we touched down in our plane, my nostrils and throat began to register the smoke, and a quick glance outside made me think the pollution here was even worse than in Hanoi. We deplaned onto the tarmac and were hit by eye-watering particulate and the realization that this was no temporary haze.
Feeling a little bit ill both emotionally and physically, we proceeded into Luang Prabang for almost a full day of sightseeing before we could check into our lovely hotel. We started with the National Museum (formerly the royal palace) and went on to Wat Xieng Thong, both just outside the main downtown area.
The main attraction for me at both the museum and the temple were the stunning cut-glass designs on the walls, both inside and out.
Our young guide initially appeared to be very serious, but we were quickly surprised and amused by his deadpan delivery of some rather salacious facts about the palace’s residents. As our time with him continued for the next five days, we were regularly entertained by his blunt, slyly-joking manner.
Our lodging here was one of the places I had booked for J and myself in 2020, so I was eager to see if it lived up to my lofty expectations. The good news was that it did; the bad news was that we were unable to enjoy the gorgeous amenities because of the suffocating smoke. The pool, the outdoor bar, and the private patios outside our rooms were all off-limits if we wanted to protect our lungs. We partook of some of them in very small doses, but for the most part, we were stuck in our rooms when we were not out touring the city and countryside.
(Lest you think I am being dramatic about the air quality, for that period and the surrounding weeks in Laos, the AQI was a shocking 500+ for days on end. As a comparison, the recent fires in eastern Canada resulted in several readings of about 400, with the worst day in New York City registering 377 and causing all sorts of cancellations and flight stoppages. Unlike the mostly accidental fires in North America, the weeks-long fires in Laos and a few other Southeast Asian nations are set on purpose every spring despite educational efforts about the effects on the environment and human health.)
Still, we tried to avail ourselves of all of the charms Luang Prabang offered: cute little shops, a huge night market, distinctive architecture, delicious cuisine, and more.
One morning, we rose extra early to participate in Tak Bat, the giving of alms to the Buddhist monks who live in Luang Prabang. At about 6 am, the monks began their procession through the town, where locals and tourists alike lined the streets with baskets of sticky rice.
In fact, we saw very few tourists, which surprised and pleased me as I had worried that the whole alms-giving thing was just a touristy thing to do. On the contrary, the rice and other food handed out each morning is the main sustenance for these monks, and we saw many local people, women especially, who sat and supplied the monks long past our brief 30-minute stint of placing small handfuls of rice into the bowls that the monks carried.
After breakfast at the hotel that day, it was still early in the morning, and we had some free time before our next outing. Smoke be damned, I was eager to climb Phousi Hill for a little exercise as well as a view of the town. Although no one would join me, my inner badass compelled me to do this short hike after an innocent comment made by our van driver the day before.
Upon arrival in town, we had parked at the base of a long set of stairs up a hill, and when asked what was up there and if we could climb them, the driver let out a small laugh and said yes, we were allowed, but certainly no one in our group should attempt it. Challenge set and accepted, buddy!
As it turned out, the hike up was not difficult at all; it took me about 15 minutes to walk from the hotel to the top of the hill even with a second set of stairs that were hidden from view at the bottom. The joke was on me, though, because (a) there was no view to speak of given the air quality, (b) my lungs were now choked with that heavy, dirty air, and (c) I dutifully followed the “Way Down” signs and ended up semi-lost up on the back of the hill (with a bunch of gold Buddhas) and then totally disoriented when I arrived on the complete opposite side at the bottom, along the river and nowhere near the streets back to the hotel.
Using a general sense of direction and a landmark electrical pole I had spotted the night before, I half-ran, panting, my way back in the thick, hot air and barely made it before the van left for our next stop. (As a funny aside, I learned firsthand what our guide had warned us about when I asked for directions. I would point left and say, “Avani hotel?” Big smile and nod yes! “Or that way?” as I pointed right. Big smile and nod yes! Back to dead reckoning, I guess.)
I was reluctant to participate in our afternoon activity that day because I have a big problem with most kinds of animal tourism, and we had an elephant sanctuary on our schedule. After much questioning and my own research, I became comfortable that this place was ethical and positive. There were no elephant rides, no bathing of the animals by tourists, and only four elephants were in residence at the time, with a few mothers and babies out in the nearby forests but not in the visitor part of the sanctuary.
Despite my worries, it was an amazing afternoon. After an informative and enthusiastic talk by the sanctuary spokesman/manager, four mahouts brought out their elephants and “introduced” them to us. I don’t imagine I will ever stand so close to such magnificent creatures again, and I’m glad that this chance was one that felt acceptable to take.
After the trip, I happened to read a long, fascinating article about the musical genius of some elephants; apparently, they have naturally perfect pitch and an uncanny sense of rhythm. In that essay, I also learned that in some places, female Asian elephants are used by human mothers to babysit their children because of the elephants’ very high levels of intelligence, sense of nurturing, and responsibility. Having seen them up close, I can very easily picture this scenario. They are gentle, sentient souls.
Our last outing in the Luang Prabang area was another activity I initially pooh-poohed but ended up really enjoying. We traveled outside the city to a working rice farm that allowed small groups to come in and both learn about and help out with every aspect of rice cultivation. Over the years, I’ve seen rice paddies and terraces, watched farmers plow with their water buffalo, and cooked and eaten rice (obviously), but I have never really thought about the enormous number of steps involved in getting rice to my table.
We got started by taking off our shoes and wading into a small square of clumpy mud into which we scattered rice seeds (grains) to start the process. Rice fields must be flooded at planting time and remain constantly waterlogged; there is no clean way to do most of the jobs in a rice field. A short distance away, we stepped into a section a bit farther along in the growing process; here we pulled up small clumps of rooted rice plants that had just started to grow, carried them to another field, and planted them in new mounds of mud.
In the next paddy, we learned (out of order) how the water buffalo-powered plows turn the soil for new plantings (with a few of us getting to “drive”), and in a final section, we helped cut the mature rice with a scythe before knotting the bunches and carrying them under a roof for the next series of tasks.
Threshing, dehulling, winnowing, cleaning – the list went on and on until the rice was finally hanging over a wood fire, cooking in its bamboo basket before being spooned onto a plate. Here, as in most of Laos, the rice is sticky rice, and I am now an ardent fan.
In fact, I might miss sticky rice more than any other food in Southeast Asia … those plump grains all glutinous and full of nutty texture, baked to a slightly crusty perfection inside their baskets, scooped out in chunky spoonsful, and piled with fresh vegetables, meats, sauces, or just eaten plain and simple … Oh, I miss that rice!
It was a highly instructive day overall, and we felt like we’d been in an outdoor classroom while also helping, in a very minor way, with the work of the farm. Covered with mud to our knees and an ashy film everywhere else, we shuttled home and blissfully showered before our final stroll around town and a much-enhanced appreciation for the scrumptious sticky rice we consumed at dinner!
Next up: a cruise (seemingly into the apocalypse) on the Mekong River
Expectations and I have a rocky relationship. I am a wishful thinker, an eternal optimist, and an unreasonable believer that everything is going to go my way. I’ve tried, really and truly tried, to tamp down my travel hopes and dreams because I’ve learned the hard way that a thick blanket of fog can get stuck over Mt. Fitzroy the whole time you’re there, a week of rain might materialize at a Mexican beach, and a heavy snowfall on a trail in Bhutan can and will cancel a trek that can probably never be rebooked. So, when things not only follow my scripted expectations, but even exceed them, I am a pretty happy traveler. Cambodia as a whole, and the Angkor complex in particular, can be happily filed in this category.
I have spent at least the last decade pining to go to Cambodia. During that time, I went plenty of other places, but I kept pushing this one down the list because I wanted to combine it with its neighboring countries since that is a very long trip for me. So many of my blogging friends have been there, and all I could do was read and dream. My son went years ago, and I was pretty jealous. Then my sister who rarely travels managed to get there, and I was even more envious. Finally, we booked a long, painstakingly planned, independent trip to the region in February/March of 2020. You know what happened to that attempt.
We rebooked for that November (this Covid thing wasn’t going to last that long, right?) and watched that itinerary blow up as well. I tried for the spring of ’21, then the fall, then twice again in 2022, but every time we tried to wedge a 3-4 week outing into our schedules, it just wouldn’t fit. Knowing that most of the conflicts came from his calendar, my husband finally suggested I find a small group and take the trip myself. I needed no extensive coaxing and was booked a few months hence within days of our conversation. Sorry, honey!
So there I was, finally in Siem Reap, Cambodia, getting ready to see the largest religious structure in the world. We would also spend days covering the vast overall complex of Angkor, the capital city of the Khmer empire, a site which many researchers believe was the largest pre-industrial city in the world. Sprawling over nearly 400 square miles (1000 square kilometers), Angkor had an estimated population of up to a million people in its heyday, the 9th to 15th centuries.
We started with Ta Prohm, the temple made famous by the Tomb Raider movies (which I have never seen) but so striking in its own right that it hardly needed a bunch of Angelina Jolie movies to recommend it!
When the Angkor temples were found and slowly rebuilt, Ta Prohm was left more untouched than others, apparently because it was one of the most imposing temples in the ancient city and also because it had melded with the jungle in a particularly picturesque way – man’s creation and nature intertwined to glorious effect. As our first stop of the morning and introduction to Angkor, Ta Prohm was a big winner, eliciting dozens of photos and much energetic roaming about the grounds.
We moved on to the city of Angkor Thom (the largest of all sites within Angkor) and Bayon, the grand temple at its exact center. With 216 smiling Buddha faces carved into its towers, and an incredible three-tiered bas-relief that depicted scenes of everyday life and historic events, Bayon was captivating.
The bas-relief alone might have kept me there for days (we covered only the exterior galleries; these were mirrored by a set of interior carvings), but by the end of this site tour, at the peak of mid-day, we were huddling behind every column we could find, in search of any thin strip of shade in the 100-degree (38 C) heat and stifling humidity.
There were so many stories in the bas-relief that I couldn’t begin to photograph or memorize many. A woman giving birth, a cockfight, kings carried on elephants, battles between Khmers and Chams; all were realistically carved into the stone and have survived centuries of weather and neglect to tell the stories of the Khmer people. Many are quite funny or charmingly quotidian: a woman holding a turtle so that it bites the man in front of her, a seller’s fingers tipping a scale to cheat the buyer, scenes from a beauty parlor, the tweezing of chin hairs, etc.
Angkor Wat itself was, as anticipated, the highlight for me. It was followed by a number of delightful surprises, but still, this monumental structure and its grounds are a tourist hotspot for a reason. Despite its scale and popularity, there was something very quiet and peaceful about Angkor Wat, perhaps because we visited in the late afternoon as the sun hit the edifice at a slant and most of the visiting hordes had left for the day. Even in its busiest areas, though, the temple exudes a quiet spirituality that even the non-religious can appreciate.
We approached over a vast moat that surrounds the temple and reflects its western face, an anomaly among Khmer temples, which mostly face east. Like Bayon, Angkor Wat features a long wall of bas-reliefs, in this case spanning 800 meters of wall space (nearly half a mile!) and centuries of history. Here, they are more deeply etched, and with a bit more shade in which to view them, we were able to study the carvings at leisure.
As we stepped inside, one of my favorite aspects of the site appeared – a stack of partially sunny doorways – and to my delight, similar scenes were repeated over and over throughout the first and second floors of the temple.
At one point, our guide pointed out a different colored stone in the floor and laid his phone’s compass down to show us that the temple was centered at exactly 0 degrees north; how did they calculate that and build from there with absolute symmetry over 1000 years ago? I’m a sucker for this kind of evidence of ancient expertise.
On the second floor, there was a large plaza from which Angkor Wat’s five iconic towers rise, all with tiny, vertiginously steep stairs leading to their tops. One set was for the king only (and he was carried up them); on a different set, some metal steps had been added on the corner of another tower so we peons could climb to the third floor ourselves. A few of us scrambled up and were rewarded with golden hour views of the lower floors and the grounds.
Our final day in Angkor began with a tour of Banteay Srei, also known as the pink temple because of the red sandstone used to build it.
The name translates as “citadel of the women;” though the origins of the name are unknown, theories include the more petite dimensions of the structures, the intricacy of the bas-relief carvings, and the existence of many female deities carved into the rock walls.
Because it is so small with such immaculate handiwork, Banteay Srei is a visitor favorite, a tiny gem in the lineup of temples at Angkor.
We continued on to Banteay Samre. Also much smaller than the places we had seen the day before, this site featured a single tower reminiscent of the ones at Angkor Wat and the same rosy limestone used at Banteay Srei.
Although I was almost at max temple absorption by this time, we undertook one last outing, to Preah Khan in the afternoon. Here we observed even more clearly the flip-flopping of religions that occurred at many of the sites, first Hindu, then Buddhist, back to Hindu, and Buddhist again.
Preah Khan was the least restored temple we saw, and that in itself was revelatory, putting into perspective much that we had seen in the days before. I love puzzles, but when I contemplated the jumbled heaps of giant stones inside and outside the tree-encircled outer walls, I could hardly imagine the jigsaw skills that would be needed to recreate even this one temple, let alone the assortment of reconstructed temples we had visited in our time in Cambodia.
Beyond the Khmer treasures, Cambodia was also my favorite stop in the region. The people were exceptionally kind and gentle, and we were able to talk with several individuals whose lives had been terribly torn apart by the Khmer Rouge in the time of the killing fields. The grace of these survivors, their ongoing ability to find joy, and their pride in what their country has done to restore itself in ways far beyond ancient ruins were powerful and humbling. I am so grateful that I had a chance to meet them and see a small bit of their past and present lives.
Outside of bustling Hanoi, Vietnam felt like a very different place. Not a huge surprise with the change from big city to smaller locales, but the two other locations we visited each left very distinct impressions themselves – one a remarkable but understated natural atmosphere, and the other a sunny and cheerful yet somewhat overdone destination.
Halong Bay was, in spite of gloomy weather, a wonderfully moody excursion. Our group was able to rent a private boat for a four-hour cruise in the Gulf of Tonkin, located in the northeast of Vietnam. The drive itself was a great way to see the new-ish (2021) major expressway connecting Hanoi, Hai Phong (the 3rd largest city in Vietnam and the largest port in the north), and Halong Bay in half the time it used to take.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Halong Bay contains over 1600 islands and islets, nearly all of them uninhabited, and the limestone karst landforms rise almost eerily from the warm bay waters – usually turquoise, but more of a murky green on this rainy day.
We sailed through the foggy, misty landscape, taking cover when the sprinkles became real rain, emerging again and again to ogle the clumps and pillars of land covered in tropical vegetation, the rock beneath etched by centuries of erosion into arches, caves, cones, and lateral cuts.
For once, I allowed myself to enjoy the scenery as it was, not how I expected and wanted it to be – all sunny and shiny, the light glinting on the gem-colored water – and I found myself actually feeling glad for this muted view. The bay was serene for our visit, with few boats out, and the peaceful, quiet cruise was a welcome diversion from the activity of the past few days.
*****
We arrived in Hoi An at night after a final, full day in Hanoi, a flight to Danang, and a drive south. The city at night had me a bit flummoxed, uncertain about why this small town collected such accolades. Its trademark lanterns were beautiful and festive, and the streets away from the river were busy in a fun way, but the raucous, brightly-lit party atmosphere along both sides of the riverfront felt like we had accidentally landed in Las Vegas or Disney World.
Inebriated and minimally-dressed tourists roved the riverside promenade, sloshing drinks and cutting us off as we walked and tried to find a photo shot without dozens of heads in it. Put off by the scene, I retreated to the quieter streets lined with shops and restaurants, and all was okay again.
We stayed in an attractive old colonial-style hotel away from the downtown but easily accessible by “buggy” or on foot. It turned out to be a haven in the heat and bustle. Here in Hoi An, we had our first days of real sun, and after a few short hours, we were beginning to regret what we had wished for in cloudy, gray northern Vietnam as the temperatures soared into the 90s (30s C) and the humidity ratcheted up even more.
For me, one of the highlights was a Japanese covered bridge from 1593, totally intact and the centerpiece of the old town.
In the light of day, I enjoyed walking street after street, even along the river, popping into small shops, looking at art, trying on a few pieces of clothing, and admiring the centuries-old homes and bright, modern coffeeshops. My companions were avid shoppers; I am at best a reluctant one, so I split off and walked the town on my own, free to peruse the goods but buy nothing.
In spite of its popularity and sporadic excesses, Hoi An still charmed with plenty of signs of simple, daily life. These humble vignettes, along with the upbeat cheer at every turn, will remain happy memories of my visit to this small, ancient town.
It was 1971 or ’72, and I remember sitting at my school cafeteria table, wearing my POW/MIA bracelet for the first time. For those too young to remember, during the Vietnam War, many of us wore a metal bracelet with the name of a prisoner of war or missing-in-action soldier on it. (About 4-5 million bracelets were sold at about $2.50 each.) A recent story I heard about a woman who has spent over 50 years searching for “her” soldier made me realize what a loser I must be. I don’t even remember the name or the outcome for my soldier – how sad! I hope that means it ended well and I was able to forget for a good reason.
What I do still remember is the way the word “Vietnam” made me feel back then; it was a very scary place to imagine for a naive teenager. Later, as an adult, I watched so many sobering movies about the war and its aftermath (Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Good Morning, Vietnam, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, among others), and the frightening view I had of this time in history was only reinforced. Given those dark and upsetting memories, I was thrilled to see what a vibrant and joyful place Vietnam is today.
The first week I spent in Southeast Asia last month was dedicated to Vietnam, and it wasn’t nearly enough to see the country in full. We spent three days in Hanoi and its environs, including a day trip to Halong Bay. Then we flew south to Danang and drove on to Hoi An, two very different cities.
(Parenthetical note from this linguistics geek: I learned while there that the Vietnamese language only contains one-syllable words, connecting them in speech to form different meanings. All of the place names above are more correctly written as Viet Nam, Ha Long, Ha Noi, Da Nang, etc. I would prefer to write them this way because it more accurately reflects the local pronunciation, but I feared that would be too distracting, so I have Anglicized the spellings. Thank you for reading this aside that is basically for me to see in the future!)
As expected, Hanoi was a big, noisy, crowded, gray-skied metropolis, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Like many cities outside the West, this one had a full range of socioeconomic levels living side-by-side. The elegant old French Quarter with its wide streets and monumental buildings had plenty of tiny side streets, some not nearly as nice as the big ones, and the Old Quarter (Hoàn Kiếm) and City Center pushed right up into each other with a mish-mash of architectural styles and old-new contrasts. As an inveterate walker, I took the opportunity to wander this safe-feeling city in multiple directions.
My first outing on foot was not alone. Because my husband finally gave up his chance to join me on this trip, I signed onto a small group adventure and met the best strangers I could have ever found to spend three weeks with. On the very first evening, four of us decided to walk about 20 minutes to dinner. I slipped on the only pair of nice sandals I’d brought and set out into the humid night. The very humid night. The moisture in the air is the only explanation I have to explain how the 2-inch woven wedge heel on my left shoe separated from the sole and began to slap against the pavement, tenuously connected to the front of the shoe.
At the restaurant, I removed the offending thwapper altogether and kept it in hopes I could glue it back on at the hotel. Alas, no – as I left to hobble home after dinner, clumpity-clumping as if I had one much shorter leg, the right heel detached itself from the sole! That one I ripped off with little fanfare and tossed both woven wedges from my very favorite sandals into a garbage can on the street. The next afternoon’s foray into the city on my own was to find and purchase a replacement pair of sandals, and I had so much fun hunting around and then chatting with a charming salesgirl at a shop that I deemed my shoe disaster to be a lucky addition to my adventures in Hanoi.
Official sightseeing in Hanoi was hit or miss. We visited the Temple of Literature, whose raison d’être was commendable – built in 1070, it is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars, and the site of Vietnam’s first national university – but it just didn’t really grab my interest aesthetically, and our guide went on a little too long as we stood in the dusty grounds. It was still a fun visit as throngs of local high school students were taking their graduation photos there.
(Another side note: Vietnam’s literacy rate growth is seriously impressive. After WWII, about 5-10% of the population was literate; now it is over 95%, one of the highest rates in the world. By way of comparison, the U.S. literacy rate ranges from 79% to mid-80% depending on the source.)
Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and home were similarly tedious, especially because we failed to go in the morning when we could have actually seen his body. I’m not particularly morbid and interested in corpses, but the stories about sending (or not; there is controversy) “Uncle Ho’s” body to Russia for refurbishment each year was just too sensational to ignore! The park and presidential palace were literal bright spots in an otherwise gray day. Without getting too far into political ideologies, it was also interesting to learn about Ho Chi Minh’s goals that transcended simple Communism, namely Vietnamese independence and the idea of blending Communism with nationalism, including his success in allowing markets to continue to flourish within the system.
The last touristy thing we saw was the most interesting – the Hỏa Lò Prison, aka the Hanoi Hilton. Many of us have heard so much about the American prisoners held there during the Vietnam War, but a number of fellow travelers and I were unaware that this famous prison was actually built by the French in the 1880s and used to imprison, abuse, and torture Vietnamese detainees. Left there in the brief period between French control and the war as a symbol of colonialist exploitation and the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French, it began a new life in 1967 when the North Vietnamese began using it to hold and similarly mistreat American servicemen. Needless to say, it was a depressing but eye-opening place to behold.
As is often the case, the parts of Hanoi I enjoyed most were the daily street scenes and experiences. One morning we walked in a local market with zero tourists and saw all kinds of strange produce and an even larger assortment of squirmy animal products.
We crammed into a coffeeshop for egg coffees, perching on tiny stools and sipping this odd but tasty combo. I so enjoyed seeing the industrious local ladies in what looked like silk PJs, pushing their carts and balancing their huge woven baskets on a pole throughout the old part of the city.
Another afternoon, I left the group and walked the mile around Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the historical center of the city. It was a brutally hot, humid, and smoggy day, but it was great to get in a brisk walk while watching local families and couples enjoy their city.
We ended our time in the capital with a fancy dinner in the French Quarter, the only really high-end meal we had on the trip. Housed in a restored French colonial villa, the restaurant served traditional Vietnamese cuisine and provided a calm oasis in the middle of this bustling city. It was a perfect last evening in Hanoi, itself a great introduction to Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
It’s countdown day 10! A mere week and a half separates us from takeoff on our long-awaited flight to Bangkok and Southeast Asia. We drained a couple of frequent flyer accounts for some cushy Business Class seats, and we cashed in a bunch of hotel and credit card points for a string of comfortable hotel stays throughout Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
We made plans to meet several blogging friends; we have tours set up and hikes charted out. I’ve practiced my Vietnamese greetings and refreshed my internal map of Bangkok’s streets and the way to a fun rooftop bar. I’ve even started a little pile of clothes and toiletries, shoes and sunscreen, plane entertainment and sundry supplies.
But with each passing day this week, our trip becomes a little more untenable. The Wuhan, China-based coronavirus is putting a growing crimp on things, and it’s not because we have any real fear of getting the disease. Our concerns now are that we could get stranded in a country that has decided to close its airports (we route home through Hong Kong, for example), or that once in Southeast Asia, we will find things shuttered or devoid of life.
A few days ago, we were still gung-ho on going. Fewer crowds – yay! We are not going to China itself – no problems for us! The news media always overblow everything, we rationalize. Today, we are beginning to worry for real. Bangkok department stores are scanning temperatures, Hong Kong’s streets are emptying out, a few more cases are cropping up in the countries to which we are heading. What if …? we keep asking ourselves on a burgeoning list of topics. Wahhhhhhhh!
Unwinding the trip may take as long as planning it out. Can I shift everything to fall; will we be safely out of the woods with the virus by then? Will my airlines and hotels let me make changes or cancel without massive fees? Where else might we escape in these two and a half weeks we have carved out of our busy schedules?
I’m curious to hear some of your thoughts. Do we stay or do we go?
I’m short on fully-formed thoughts about Bhutan. There’s no real story here, just some impressions that are as disjointed as my memories from this trip seem to be for some reason.
The flight into Paro. It’s a doozy. By some accounts, Paro is the third most dangerous airport in the world. On nearly every list, it’s one of the top ten scariest. I manage to get a window seat for the thrill of descending into that valley and twisting and turning to land on the runway at the bottom.
Are we gonna scrape?!
The prayer flags. I love a good mess of prayer flags. And by mess, I mean that joyful jumble of color, caught in the wind, sending good thoughts up into the universe. Added bonus when these vibrant supplications are attached to swinging suspension bridges, my favorite Himalayan mode of passage.
Church and state. Buddhism and its often cheerful monks are ever-present, a perennially appealing backdrop to life in the Himalaya, and they exist here in relative harmony with an elected government and a king (and his father), who are impressive stewards of all aspects of Bhutanese life. National happiness is a holistic goal here, with a balance always being sought among economic interests, environmental concerns, health, education, living standards, and psychological wellbeing and resilience. Noble ideals, seemingly well carried out.
Color and geometry. I’ve always been a sucker for Himalayan art and architecture in their native habitat. A mash-up of colors and shapes I would not abide at home makes me inexplicably happy in this part of the world.
Animals, animals everywhere. Temple cats, bridge and courtyard dogs, and a few stray cows to boot. Most are well-fed, and all are secure enough to sleep just about anywhere.
The landscapes. I went to Bhutan for the mountains and the trails that lead up through those elevated rocks and trees. I may not have gotten the trek I signed up for, but I got plenty of altitude, exercise, and other views. I could/should do a whole post on our day hike to the Tiger’s Nest alone; people find it fascinating, and it was a fulfilling day with a very special prize at the end. But … maybe some other day!
As I’ve recounted a number of times (especially here and here), the weather and I have a troubled relationship. Occasionally, we are the happiest of companions in everyday life and moments of adventure, but too often we are at odds, and the likelihood of weather-related disappointment seems to rise with the remoteness of my destination. Drop me into a place I’ve dreamed of for years, somewhere that costs thousands of dollars and double-digit hours to reach, and the tease of a few days of sunshine inevitably morphs into unseasonable cold or precipitation or both.
A long-awaited high-altitude trek in Bhutan was no exception. My pre-trip materials listed daytime temperatures in the 50s to 70s, ideal weather for some steep hiking in the Himalaya and sleeping in our tents above 12,000 feet for several nights. As the trip neared, however, my weather app showed numbers that were half the predicted temperatures, and I tossed an extra gaiter, a second pair of gloves, and a third layer of clothing into my duffel.
In our first few days exploring the capital, Thimphu, and warming our legs up on a few day hikes at 8-10,000 feet, we all breathed a sigh of relief as the cloud, shower, and snowflake symbols on our phones each morning proved totally inaccurate. As the days went on, we laughed, carefree and blissfully ignorant, at the crazy disconnect between what we were seeing with our own eyes and what the forecasters were suggesting. Our trek would be fine! The weather app clearly didn’t work in Bhutan. All of the prognostications were wrong!
Until they weren’t. We started a drive into the remote Haa Valley to begin the trekking and camping portion of our trip, and only an hour or so into our ascent to Chele La, a pass at 13,000+ feet, we were on slushy roads and enveloped in mist and rain, then sleet and snow. We slowed to a crawl – thank god, as I was terrified on the one-lane road with two-way traffic, switchbacking up and down the S-curves with no guardrails – and finally reached our small lodge for the night before the trek began.
We learned the next morning that the weather wouldn’t just make our trek miserable; it would cause the entire thing to be cancelled. I was crushed. Seriously heartbroken. I’d come to Bhutan for two main reasons – to hike to the Tiger’s Nest (a very successful foray – stay tuned for that) and to trek and sleep among Himalayan peaks like Chomolhari, Kanchenjunga, and Jichu Drake. Beyond that, my hiking mates and I had specifically come prepared for the possibility or rain and snow, so when we were told the horses and porters and guide were not up for the trek, we were doubly dismayed.
The next day’s eagerly-anticipated trip on foot became, instead, a slow and bone-jarring drive back east, past Paro and on to Thimphu again, where lower elevations might mean better weather. A frigid, wet night of camping along the Wang Chhu river did not initially bear this out, but our luck returned briefly in the morning, when the rain ceased and the sun came out for a solid day of hiking above the Punakha valley, a verdant expanse of pine forests overlooking lime green and yellow rice paddies below. A little extra consolation was a chance to see Punakha Dzong, an impressive fortress at the Y of two rivers, site of the original capital of Bhutan.
My spirits rose. Surely we would wake to another balmy day in the valley, get in one more good, long day of replacement hiking, and finally be able to at least see Chomolhari and the string of mountains visible from Dochu La, the pass on the high road we would retrace as we returned to Paro yet again. We celebrated in our dining tent with beer, wine, and numerous rounds of 505, the Bhutanese card game we had learned from our guide the night before. My unrelenting (some might say unreasonable) optimism filled me with a bubbly buoyancy; our group’s courteous reaction to disappointment and our lack of anger and complaint were being rewarded. I’m prone to karmic explanations in everyday life, and being in Bhutan, coached daily on Buddhist precepts by our guide, had reinforced the idea that we get what we deserve.
A crack of thunder in the early hours of the next morning shattered that notion. Seconds later, a torrent of water lashed my tent, and I leapt to close the ventilation flaps. The rays of hope that had lulled me to sleep were as obscured as the plastic window out the front of my clammy abode. I stared past fat droplets of water to a low-hanging mist and abandoned any thoughts of an adequate hike again that day. We packed up the camp, walked desultorily on a short muddy path to a small temple (another in a string of temples that became poor substitutes for outdoor exertion) , and clambered into the van for the return trip over socked-in Dochu La. In ten days in Bhutan, I never once laid eyes on the high peaks I had come to see, never hiked a full, long day to collapse contentedly into my tent, ready to get up the next day, and push forward again, and again, over the 14,000-foot passes and through the rhododendron forests, high meadows, and rarefied air that I crave for years until I can get back to the Himalaya. It had been 6 1/2 years, and for all I knew, it could be 6 1/2 more before I’d get back to this part of the world.
The weather and I will always knock heads, it seems, but perhaps our guide, Sonam, was right when he said that karma does not mean good or bad luck; rather, karma simply takes us where we are meant to go or be, and in our case, this was perhaps the Punakha Valley, one of the most compelling landscapes in Bhutan and one that we were sorry we were going to miss because of our far-western trekking route. Maybe we needed to be present on the prayer flag-draped suspension bridge where one of our group members scattered the ashes of her late husband.
Or bonding with five new friends in a dripping tent, united in our shared frustration. Perhaps we were meant to visit the Sunday produce market in tiny Haa, a town and valley that only opened to outsiders in 2001, or the home and farm of our guide, where we ate breakfast and played darts with his elderly father in the yard.
Maybe we were just supposed to learn not to cast blame for decisions we might not have made ourselves, or to see that other treasures exist outside of the places we expected to find them. Maybe all I was meant to learn was that if the weather is the biggest of my problems, I am a pretty lucky gal!
Yolyn Am canyon was a welcome stop in our exploration of Mongolia last summer. We had been on the steppe for over a week, baking under the Eurasian high summer sun, and we were headed to the even hotter Gobi Desert when we boarded a tiny propeller plane for the south and the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains.
From flat, scrubby expanses, we arrived in a deep, cool gorge for an invigorating hike inside towering walls. Yolyn Am (named after the yol, or lammergeyer, a vulture-like bird) is known in part for its ice field that lingers well into the summer, and we saw remnants of this as we criss-crossed a running stream at the base of the canyon.
Although the hike was lengthy and we had to pick our way carefully in some of the narrower stretches, there was only minor danger encountered that day. Nevertheless, we got a huge kick out of all the warning or admonitory signs on our way into the trailhead! Can you determine what to watch out for or refrain from doing here?
We are nearing Day Zero, the day we drive away from one house and start the move to another, so I’m posting an entry from my blog’s earliest days today. The perspective from atop the world, almost literally, does my mind good at this bittersweet time.
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Driving in countries around the world is always an adventure. From the careening traffic on the autobahn and the peripherique, to the stop-and-go progress on a Scottish Highlands road full of sheep, to the heart-attack cliffs with no guardrails in mountains the world over, there is always a story about our international brothers’ driving habits. Penjo, our driver on the Friendship Highway – the route across the Tibetan Plateau (the “Roof of the World”) from Tibet to Nepal – was no exception.
We left Lhasa early one morning for a cross-country adventure in a 4WD Mitsubishi SUV. A few hours out of Lhasa, we experienced the first of many so-called “pee breaks” which were really designed for our guide, Pasang, and our driver, Penjo, to take a smoking break. Timed passage on the road also meant that if we were going to arrive at a checkpoint too early, we had to either slow down or stop and wait until the time was OK. (This happened at every checkpoint since the law, meant to slow drivers down, really seemed to signify “drive as fast as humanly possible and then stop and wait until enough time has passed.”) Even using this finely-tuned strategy, Penjo managed to get a speeding ticket as we approached Shigatse, a hellhole (at least at that time) we discovered we should have been in no hurry to reach anyway.
Getting to our hotel and dinner in Shigatse was like a barrel race as we were stymied by street after street under construction. We drove in circles through an apocalyptic landscape, a bombed-out scene of heavy construction equipment and vehicle-swallowing holes in the powdery streets. Penjo showed some serious moxie by driving on sidewalks, down one-way streets, in front of bulldozers, and through numerous barricades. Shigatse is a dusty town by nature, and all this earth-moving and car maneuvering left a deep coat of grime on the Pajero and a sneeze-inducing mass of dust in our nostrils.
The next day, after lunch in Tingri, we turned off onto a dirt road for the next three hours. This was a true washboard road, with constant ridges and bumps, along with switchbacks, steep climbs and descents, and barely two lanes across. Penjo did not disappoint, spending large periods of time on the oncoming traffic side of the road and squealing to dustcloud-raising stops in the loose gravel, precipitously close to various drop-offs, as he attempted to pass large trucks, SUVs and, really, any moving vehicle, beast, or human on the road. Penjo finally slowed down and the air finally cleared as we crossed our third and final high pass for the day at 17,500 feet, with a view of the entire Tibetan Himalaya range, including Makalo, Lhotse, Everest, and Cho Oyu.
On our way back to Lhasa, we took a different route through a gorge along the Brahmaputra River. Penjo was at his finest today, offroading anytime the main road was closed. In Tibet, barricades indicating road closures are apparently simply something to drive around. This road was clearly closed, but Penjo decided we would take it anyway, which meant that at certain points we had to totally drive off the highway and go through pastures, fields, and people’s property. Many others had the same idea, including giant 18-wheelers! Penjo passed semis in a blur of dirt, drove through sagebrush, which we dragged along behind us until it shook loose, and swerved even more than usual.
Penjo’s driving was truly a thing to behold, with brake slamming, high speeds then incredibly slow ones, random veering, and aggressive crowding of other vehicles. Somehow we never worried too much; we decided people here drive like maniacs and have constant near accidents but never any actual accidents. At one point, Penjo almost nailed a dzo, but neither he nor the female owner of the dzo seemed the least bit perturbed as he screeched to a halt mere inches from the animal in the middle of the road.
Penjo was a soft-spoken (Tibetan language only) man who was quite mild-mannered out of the vehicle. He had a sweet, shy smile and since we are alive to tell the tale, we have only the fondest memories of him!
Chaos sometimes happens when I travel and in retrospect, it has created many of my most powerful trip memories. Life at home is rarely chaotic; it follows a fairly predictable rhythm and most days I’m a slightly boring creature of habit. Drop me into a foreign locale, though, and I’m usually (strangely) OK with all hell breaking loose after a few days of acclimation.
Kathmandu has to be the all-time winner for daily bedlam. On first arrival, the sensory assault here was overwhelming in an almost frightening way. As I left the airport late at night, alone, I wondered if my days of solo female travel needed to finally come to an end. A good sleep later, I was feeling intrigued by the cows in the street; a few days into it, I was charmed by the jumble of vendors jammed into alleys; and two weeks later, I was truly, madly in love with this colorfully outrageous and unruly city, even when an electrical box exploded a few feet away, sending me and dozens of Nepalis running for cover.
Athens – in full summer, blazing in 100-degree heat, and polluted by thousands of belching vehicles jam-packed into an overpopulated metropolis – ranks a close second. The chaos here was mostly car-based: the sharp and constant cacophony of horns, the shouting of drivers at one another, the parking on the sidewalks, and once, the abrupt and spontaneous gathering of four men to pick up and move, in a fit of pique, one of said cars parked on the sidewalk.
A skinny street in Istanbul, approaching Taksim Square, seemed placid enough – until we rounded a corner and came face to face with the beginnings of a protest. Waving signs and chanting mobs thickened in minutes, and the sudden crackle of firecrackers set my heart pounding, my head panicking, and my feet beating a retreat.
Egg-throwing mobs similarly interrupted a pleasant morning stroll in Buenos Aires, and hurtling rickshaws threatened to cut us down as we tried in vain to cross a main street in Lhasa. Sweaty clumps of young men pressed (a little more than necessarily) close to my college girlfriends and me on a morning ride to class on Madrid’s metro years ago, trapping us and blocking our ability to get off at our station. Perhaps most frightening of all, a dense crowd at Sydney’s Y2K New Year’s celebration caused us to lose our 12-year-old for almost an hour as we were sucked into its vortex at the end of the fireworks show.
We could play it safe. We could skip the crowds and the bigger cities. We could leave the kids at home. I could travel with others to some of the exotic but underdeveloped places I like to experience. Some of the chaos has been simply unpleasant, some horribly frustrating. A few situations have been potentially dangerous, and one or two downright scary. But when push comes to shove (literally!), the deepest imprints of my trips have often been the unexpectedly crazy moments that started the adrenaline pumping and the opening of the veins that take in the lifeblood of a place.
Fall is upon us in the eastern U.S. and no matter how much I wished for these cooling breezes and drops in temperature and humidity over the past three months, I am already feeling nostalgic for summer. More than the weather, however, I am missing the yawning span of free and easy vacation days that are one of the perks of being a university professor.
More specifically, I am reminiscing about the weeks I just spent in Mongolia, a place that in itself brought back poignant memories for me: my days of horseback riding as a young child and teenager, sleeping under the stars on a totally black night, county fairs, rock-hopping in mountain streams – all thousands of miles and decades away. As I ride a last wave of nostalgia with my final post on Mongolia, I revisit a summery landscape that caught me by surprise.
I’ve said it before: I’m not a desert lover. One of my new travel mates in Mongolia couldn’t wait to get to the Gobi. I, on the other hand, would have been quite happy to park myself in a ger out on the steppe and never leave, riding my horse off into the soft, green hills. I’ve never been drawn to arid landscapes and don’t naturally like places that are dry, brown, or barren. But just as I did at Zion National Park in the U.S., Wadi Rum in Jordan, and other famous desert destinations, I put aside my distaste for desiccation in order to see one of the world’s famous deserts.
I traded a shiny-coated horse for a mangy camel, elevation for endless flatness, and verdant hills for rust-colored cliffs, but the Gobi’s sere, simple beauty grabbed me after all and seems to have stubbornly parked itself in my memories.
Sunset happens precipitously here; one minute there is searing heat and glare and the next, the sun has sunk below the horizon in the blink of a squinting eye. Mornings are equally hasty in arriving, with the deep blackness of desert night quickly shattered by sunlight that has no natural barriers. I am missing that unimpeded view of the sun each morning and night here in my city home.
The Gobi has a few salmon-colored, ridged sand dunes, but on the whole it is a land of reddish dirt patterned with olive-green scrub grass. Four of the usual Mongolian suspects ply the paths; that is, the sheep and the goats, the horses and the camels, always in those pairs.
Vehicles are few and far between, and with no marked roads, routes, or landmarks, I have no idea how they find their way around. There were long periods of time on our drives when we saw no other vehicles and when faced with a choice of three identical dirt paths at just slightly different angles, our driver always seemed to know exactly which one to take. (I normally have a very good sense of direction, and I occasionally had the feeling that we were doubling back after making a wrong turn, but that was just a hunch. We did always end up where we wanted to go!)
One exception to the stubbly green topography was the Flaming Cliffs, a series of sandstone formations that are most famous as the site of Roy Chapman Andrew’s expeditions in the early 1920s that led to the discovery of the first dinosaur eggs, as well as thousands of dinosaur bones, all of which were packaged up and carted away on the backs of camels to their new home in the American Museum of Natural History. After a hike of only several hours on the parched cliffs, I found the notion of mounting such an extensive expedition in this harsh and remote environment – nearly a century ago, no less – to be truly staggering.
A final stop in the Gobi provided a brief respite from the heat and sun as we hiked deep into Yolyn Am, a narrow canyon in the Gurvan Saikhan mountains that is home to an ice field that often lingers the whole way through the summer months. We stream-hopped back and forth until we could go no farther into the gorge, but try as we might, we did not glimpse any lammergeiers, the large birds after which the canyon is named.
The Gobi was the last stop on a wide-ranging trip around Mongolia, chronicled in the posts below, and the final travel spree of my summer break. Soon it will be time to stop looking back in longing and start contemplating the next memory-making escape.
Bracketing my glorious time in Mongolia last month were two short stays in Seoul, Korea. Knowing that flights into and out of Ulaanbaatar could be iffy due to windy conditions, I was happy to arrange a day south of the Han River on the way there and two days on the north side coming home. After my husband’s trip to Korea in the 90s that was full of unfortunate stereotypes (mostly dog and smog), I knew I would not be accompanied there anytime soon, so I had to make this happen on my own. Luckily, I fared much better!
A common theme of the two stopovers was an old/new mash-up – historic structures and streets pushed up against the edges of the very modern parts of the city. Both sides benefitted from the contrast: temple bricks and wood with the patina of time added texture and depth to the glint of skyscrapers in the Gangnam area,
while the blocky, mirrored facades of distant towers made a contemporary backdrop for the monochromatic old hanok houses and their curly-edged rooflines in the more northern, traditional part of the city.
In Gangnam, my hotel was sleek and cool, but at the push of a button, the curtain panel drew back to expose a giant Buddha standing amid lanterns and upturned eaves in the Bongeunsa temple complex.
In Insadong a few weeks later, the tables were turned; my lodging was small and backward, but my view was into the future. There, a morning stroll along the edge of ancient Changdeokgung Palace led me uphill to Bukchon Hanok Village, a 600-year-old urban area from Joseon Dynasty days, which looked out over an array of new high-rises shimmering in the summer haze.
Seoul is a huge city, but its most captivating sights always seemed to be at the edges of my vision: a quiet man on the edge of the urban Cheonggyecheon stream,
artwork on the edges of buildings in Insadong,
the boundaries between fanciful old design and the angular solidity of new architecture,
a glassy line-up on the river’s edge, or a tiny restaurant wedged into a zigzag alley.
Seoul teeters on the edge between ancient temple cuisine and trendy coffeehouses; dank, lukewarm showers and fancy, self-heating toilet seats; gritty fish shops and Samsung’s funky HQ; old men in drab clothing and young girls in full-blown Hello Kitty. I barely dented the surface of Seoul, but in three short days I walked these borders of past and present, ageless and innovative, to find a city looking both forward and back in a most agreeable way.
(Huge shout-out to Shelley, a Seoul resident and blogger at Travel-Stained, who really gave me the biggest edge of all with her priceless advice on where to go and what to see in my short time there.)
Eight centuries ago, Genghis Khan and his armies rampaged across the steppe in central Asia, conquering lands and peoples to create a Mongol kingdom whose reach exceeded that of any other empire before or since. History gives us a view of the Mongols as vicious and unkempt heathens, but we know from books such as the 13th century The Secret History of the Mongols that cultural life on the steppe was alive and well, ritualized in both athletic and spiritual realms.
Mongolia’s most famous festival, Naadam, has its origins in the steppe celebrations and competitions that began in Genghis Khan’s day, perhaps in concert with weddings and other spiritual assemblies. Then and now, sporting competitions took place in three areas: horseracing, archery, and wrestling. Starting in 1639, these “Three Manly Sports” were integrated into an event called Danshig Naadam, a yearly gathering of nomads, nobles, and monks from across the country to participate in both sports and spiritual activities.
Nowadays, Mongolia aficionados may know that Naadam is held on July 11-13, and in fact, it remains a national holiday on those dates. But that festival – still the most popular time to visit Mongolia – is actually the secular celebration of this ancient gathering. After the 1921 People’s Revolution, the government recast the event as a sporting event only, eliminating the religious and spiritual aspects.
With the end of Communism in 1990 came a return of Buddhism, and the monks and monasteries began to flourish once again. Finally, in 2015, the city of Ulaanbaatar and the monasteries came together to reestablish the original Danshig Naadam festival, held August 6-7, adding back the religious competitions and cultural performances, such as the Buddhist tsam dance, to the Three Manly Sports.
We spent two days enjoying the carnival atmosphere of Danshig Naadam. Like a state fair, the festival is filled with animals, game booths, crafts, picnics, cotton candy, and happy crowds under the beating summer sun.
About an hour outside of Ulaanbaatar, at Hui Doloon Hudag, the main stadium and the other sporting venues became my substitute for the Olympic Games this summer. In marked contrast to that modern extravaganza, however, here the opening ceremony featured bleating Buddhist horns and clanging cymbals, chanting monks, and colorful parades of horses and flags.
Also unlike modern sporting events, the competitors here wear traditional clothing and follow ancient customs as part of their sports. In wrestling, male participants don an unusual outfit of briefs, a skimpy open-chested, sleeved top and leather boots with upturned toes, and they perform an ancient eagle dance before and after they clash. Top-ranked wrestlers choose their opponents, so early matches are uneven and quick, while later ones can be long stand-offs. Matches are not timed, and competitors lose if they touch the ground at any time with a body part other than hands or feet.
Mongolia has a horse-based history and culture; children learn to ride early and are seemingly as comfortable on horses as we are in chairs. The main horse race at Danshig Naadam is a 30-km cross-country event with children aged 5-13 as jockeys. By the end of that age range, many children are already too heavy, so the races are usually won by tiny youngsters. We stationed ourselves near the finish line and, true to form, this year’s winner looked like a 6 or 7-year-old boy, galloping in a cloud of dust as he whipped his mount to victory. Boys and girls compete together in this race, and many of the top finishers we saw were female.
Men and women both compete, but do so separately, in the archery tournaments. The handmade bows and elegant costumes captivated me so much I don’t even know who won these events! Men shoot from 75 meters and women from 65 meters; both are so accurate that officials stand right near the targets to repair the walls after a hit.
Danshig Naadam was a great way to experience Mongolian culture, ancient and current. Families rode in from near and far, on horses or in pick-ups, and set up tents for the festivities. Competitors and spectators alike were dressed in colorful fashions, and there was a sense of holiday merriment in the air.
I felt very lucky to be part of the real Danshig Naadam festival in only its second year back in existence after its Communist-triggered hiatus. If you have a chance to visit Mongolia in summer, aim for mid-July or early August to take advantage of these fabulous opportunities to mingle with Mongolians at their most famous festivals.
Part of a series of posts on my trip to Mongolia in August 2016. Other posts can be found here:
When we build a house in most of the world, we start with a permanent foundation and frame the structure from there on up, and we hope and expect that our home will exist in that spot for years to come. In much of rural Mongolia, there is some beautiful house framing going on, but the resulting structure – a ger (often known as a yurt in other languages) – is a fully collapsible and movable one that has been used for thousands of years.
I’ve spent a good amount of time in tents the world over, and I expected a fairly similar abode when I went to Mongolia last month. I was in for a striking surprise in several respects. For one, gers are quite large and sturdy. Gers are sized in terms of the number of expandable panels, and a typical ger for a family might be a 6-panel affair. Each panel is an accordion-like grid of lightweight wood strips that folds up into a bundle that can be loaded onto a camel (or these days, sometimes a pick-up truck) for transport to the next season’s pastureland.
Between each lattice-work panel is a post, and the panels and posts are lashed together with leather or rope ties. Between the front two panels is a wood doorframe and heavy wood door.
In a ger of this size, there are usually at least three couches or beds that serve in those capacities, respectively, during daytime and night. One side of the ger is used for food preparation, and other sections have traditionally been designated for men, women, children, and guests. In the center of the ger is a wood-burning stove whose chimney rises through a hole in the tent’s ceiling.
My second surprise was how complex and stunning those ceiling designs were, in both the gers for tourists and those of the nomadic families. An open circle, or crown, at the top of the tent has a series of radiating poles – a gorgeous geometric array of orange or red painted rafters – that settle onto the side panels. This roof is often self-supporting, but in larger gers, it may sit on the support posts between the side panels. The crown is partially open for the stovepipe and for air circulation, but it can be covered with a canvas tarp that usually lies over the roof for extra protection.
The entire structure is covered with felt, usually made from sheep or goat wool from the family’s animals. This material insulates the ger in both hot and cold weather and is often wrapped again in a canvas covering that is more water- and sunproof. The entire tent is held together by long ropes tied horizontally around the dwelling.
(As a fun aside, we visited the Mongolian version of Costco one day to gather supplies outside Ulaanbaatar, and what should we find in the back of the store but a generic ger! Like most things in a big box store, this one was plain and characterless.)
Gers are round in order to redirect the fierce winds on the open steppe. Their circular shape helps them resist gusts from any direction, which is critical in a place with no natural windbreaks like trees or tall grasses and shrubs, and their rounded tops protect the roof from being ripped off.
A nomadic family can disassemble and reassemble a ger in an hour or two, and most family-sized gers can be transported on two or three camels. We were lucky to see one camel loaded up with long poles as the summer grazing season was coming to an end during our trip.
We were even luckier to spend half of our nights in Mongolia in these aesthetically pleasing and comfortable tents. I loved tucking my modern belongings into the lattice-work walls that have characterized these gers for centuries. I slept like a baby with my crown view of the stars and my door open to the sweeping grasslands (in spite of a hungry visitor one night – a vole? – who ate my snacks right out of my backpack, and a toad that hopped in one night after it was too dark to find him to scoot him out). We visited a number of families on the steppe and in the Gobi Desert, sitting around their stoves and enjoying their unmatched hospitality in their cheerful gers.
I think a good quarter of my photos are of gers – gers at sunrise, gers in the distance, gers on a glowing evening, and gers with their charming owners – and I’m sure one of those remembrances will end up in a frame of its own on my wall one of these days!
Part of a series of posts on my trip to Mongolia in August 2016. Other posts can be found here:
I’ve always had a fascination with the word “steppe,” a term I’d read in various books to describe the land over which impossibly exotic characters ranged – legions of Russian soldiers, swarms of Genghis Khan’s archers on horseback, camel trains of nomads traversing a vast, empty plain. I pictured the steppe as a massive shelf, an unbounded plateau taking a giant stride down from Russia and Siberia into Central Eurasia. I might even go so far as to say that I went to Mongolia solely to see the steppe, with its grasslands and treeless plains that spread out for miles and miles under massive blue skies. I saw the foray into this land as a rare opportunity to step off the grid and into the pages of history right up to this day.
In my last post, I noted my surprise at the newness and modernity of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. While I took pleasure in getting to know that city, my real joy in Mongolia was heading out to the steppe land west of UB. With one of the lowest population densities on earth, Mongolia is literally wide open, and I wanted to get out there and breathe in the vastness and, maybe, see a little of the life that takes place there, a life that feels far removed from that in the city.
The Mongolian grassland plateau is part of the biggest steppe region in the world, one that stretches from Eastern Europe (Ukraine) through Central Asia – a number of the ‘Stans (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Russia, and others. While there are now paved roads connecting most of the country’s provinces, the majority of roads on the steppe are bouncy dirt paths, often with no discernible lanes or traffic patterns.
The verdant plains of summer spread out like ruched fabric, rising and dipping, folding and wrinkling like thick, crumpled velvet. Often, the greenish-yellow moors are framed by brown and purple mountains, unfolding in layers for miles on end. The vistas are like watercolor paintings, gradations of color and light stacked from foreground to background until they melt into the heavens.
Little white gers off in the distance dot the landscape, and herds of animals roam freely, the sheep with the goats, the horses alongside the camels.
Unlike the leap into the 21st century that UB has taken in recent years, much of life on the steppe takes place just as it has for centuries, with people living in harmony with the land. Nomadic families move with the seasons, packing up their gers and their animals at least four times a year to find new pasturelands. In summer, access to water is critical, while winter brings a need for grasslands with minimal snow cover. In spring, the herders look for early flora to nourish the animals before birthing time arrives, and in fall, they seek out later-growth foliage to fatten up before winter comes around again.
Both the livelihood and sustenance of these nomads depend on their animals – primarily horses, camels, cattle, sheep, and goats. The Mongolian diet is heavily based on meat and dairy products, and days revolve around animal care and putting up food for future seasons. On a visit to a wonderfully engaging nomadic family, we helped milk the mares and the cows, then cut huge blocks of soft cheese into smaller pieces that were dried on the roof for winter consumption.
We drank airag, a fermented mare’s milk, nibbled on mutton dumplings, and savored a creamy rice pudding made with the cow’s milk we had helped procure minutes earlier. Animal fur, hair, and skins can be sold for use in the city as rugs, the famous Mongolian cashmere, and other products as a way to earn money to buy agricultural staples the nomads cannot grow (rice and flour among them), animals to breed (the most expensive, a camel, costs about $750), or supplies, like the gers themselves ($1000 or so).
Traditional herding life is likely to change and fade out in coming years as pressures to join the global economy increase and as younger generations develop ambitions beyond a life in the country. The families who still make their home on the steppe may live simply and freely, but they take small bites of the world beyond. They use solar panels for energy in their gers, their children go to school (which is compulsory), and, of course, they own cellphones, which are almost as attached to their ears as they are anywhere else! The darling girls I bonded with one evening knew their way around an iPhone – insisting we take selfies together and then taking (many, many) videos of me riding their horses.
I didn’t get enough time on the steppe. I understand the difficulty of taking people out into such unpopulated, unsupported areas and I get that most people can only take the ger camps for so many nights before craving a real shower and some wifi! But I could have stayed much longer, waking at dawn to see horses wandering through camp, bouncing down the dirt roads into the green suede hills, stopping to photograph a shimmering, lemon-lime wheat field or a posse of Bactrian camels, meeting the industrious and endearing local people, and reclining outside my tent at midnight to see the entire Milky Way clouding up a night sky unpolluted by other light sources.
The steppe was a rare treat, a dream come true, a step out of time and place, a pause button in the universe that I needed to see and experience for myself. If history holds, I will crave a return someday soon, and I will add Mongolia to the list of places I’ve felt compelled to revisit.
The first stop on my two-week sojourn in Mongolia was the exotic-sounding capital, Ulaanbaatar. I had pictured a frontier kind of town, a high-altitude patchwork of nomadic ger tents and hulking concrete apartment blocs, jumbled together in a hazy valley. Part of that vision was accurate, but I also found sparkling glass skyscrapers, quaint Buddhist temples, an old Soviet department store, and upscale malls in this city trying very hard to be the next swanky Asian destination.
Founded in 1639 as the headquarters of the leader of Mongolian Buddhism, Ulaanbaatar (“Red Hero”) became a permanent city in its current location on the Tuul River in 1778. The city lies in an east-west valley surrounded by four sacred mountains and is still home to hillsides full of gers, the traditional Mongolian round tents, on the edges of town.
In 1990, when Mongolia emerged from Russian communist rule, the population was only 500,000, but UB now has 1.4 million residents, almost 50% of the country’s total population. (The escape from Soviet grasp also marked the change of the city’s spelling from a Russian-based transcription to the current one, for those who have known this capital as Ulan Bator.)
As a result, the capital city of this young democracy is growing by leaps and bounds, creating marked contrasts between old and new. The Choijin Lama Temple sits in the shadow of the glimmering Blue Sky Hotel and other glassy towers.
The posh Shangri-La Mall, opened just 6 days before my arrival and the site of the country’s first IMAX theater, rises up from a weedy field.
On the other side of that scrubby grass and trees is another anomaly: a colorful amusement park in the middle of the city.
Huge construction cranes teeter over a battered log cabin.
Humble venders sit in shabby kiosks less than a block away from a Louis Vuitton store, and the Gandan Buddhist monastery peers down upon a sea of those boxy Soviet buildings as well as the shiny new high-rises.
I loved the city. I expected to tolerate it in between forays out into the countryside, but I found myself looking forward to our sporadic returns, and not just because it was a respite from sleeping in a tent with no running water or electricity! It would be a tough place to live permanently – it’s blazing hot in the summer and the coldest capital on earth in the winter – but I enjoyed every minute we spent in this curious mix of the traditional and modern laid out under a huge canopy of blue sky.
Stay tuned for the “real” Mongolia: the steppe landscapes and the nomadic families that live there, a glimpse of the Danshig Naadam cultural and sports festival, and the Gobi Desert – all coming up in future posts!
Dawn and dusk have offered some of the most beautiful scenes here in Mongolia. I’ve spent the last few days in the Gobi Desert on the southern border of the country and was able to capture the sun rising over the pale green scrub that stretches for miles, as well as the soft, blue-tinged white of the gers as camp awakes each morning. It is a setting of great peace and quiet; I am sorry to leave it.
Could there be a worse Weekly Photo Challenge prompt for me this week? The only narrow thing I’ve seen in the last few days was my airplane seat in the economy section of a U.S. carrier that should be charged with inhumane treatment. And that was not a pretty picture, literally (I did take one) or figuratively, so I’ll spare you.
No, these next few weeks are not going to be “narrow.” I’ve just landed in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, to begin a trip through this vast, wide-open country. A land of unfurling skies, rolling grasslands, and big new ambitions, Mongolia and its most famous leader, Genghis Khan, have nothing narrow about them.
Genghis Khan cut a huge swath through the world in the 13th century, leading relatively small, nimble armies of highly-skilled horsemen with insane archery skills against robust militaries from Korea to Vienna, Russia to Viet Nam, and all over Central Asia. In 25 years, this man (who was also known to be physically large) conquered more territory than the Roman Army did in centuries.
Those with a narrow knowledge of Genghis Khan know him solely as a rapist and pillager, and those things he apparently was, according to most sources. But he was a complex character to many historians; some see his numerous accomplishments as “worth” the multitudes of deaths he ordered, while others can’t see past the killing, even as it led to a whole new world order. In the fullness of time, men and events can lose their distastefulness when seen in the context of later developments, and revisionist history has a way of softening the personality traits and actions that “great men” used to change the world. When we narrow our eyes and look closely at Genghis Khan, what do we see as his legacy?
In coming days, I hope to learn more about this multifaceted man and his role in Mongolia’s history, and I will venture out into the land of the nomads who still populate much of rural Mongolia. There will be few shots of small things or narrow spaces; my eyes, camera, and mind will be prepped for panoramas, wide angles, and the very big picture. Stay tuned!
I’ve been a vegetarian since 2009 and have rarely felt any need to eat meat since then. My reasons for choosing a meatless diet were many and varied, ranging from a waning interest in the taste of meat in general to the environmental and health concerns of raising and eating animals from huge, industrial farms. (Truth be told, my aversion started even earlier – after I read Alive, the book about airplane crash victims in the Andes who ate human flesh to survive. But I digress, unappealingly.)
I have not been a zealot about my stance, however, and many people outside of my family and closest friends are not aware I’m a vegetarian, even when I share meals with them. I’m reluctant to ask dinner hosts for special foods and have always quietly found plenty of things to fill my plate in almost every setting. When I’ve traveled, I’ve sustained myself perfectly well, even on arduous treks in locales where meat is prized, like Nepal, where I hiked for weeks in the high Himalayas, fueled mainly by carbs and eggs (and the occasional protein bar!).
So why am I even considering eating meat in Mongolia next month? For one, the traditional Mongolian nomadic diet is highly meat- and dairy-centric, with vegetables and fruits very hard to come by in the grasslands that cover much of the country I’ll be crossing. They are not easy to grow in the strong winds and harsh climates (both summer and winter) out on the steppe, and the nomadic population is on the move from season to season and could not tend them anyway.
(Pixabay)
Animals, on the other hand, move along with nomadic families and provide a consistent source of meat and dairy products to their owners. I’ve read that I can’t even count on eggs here, as I have in other meat-oriented cultures; Mongolian herders do not keep chickens because they are considered dirty (not to mention difficult to herd!). Beyond logistics, Mongolians also believe that meat is critical for the spirit as well as the body; in fact, they are often disdainful of vegetables, considering them food fit only for animals.
This disapprobation would not be enough to persuade me, but one other factor might: the strong sense of hospitality that Mongolians dearly value. In the nomadic grasslands, travelers are always welcome in any ger, the round tents that herdsmen and their families live in. The custom is to walk into any tent, even a stranger’s, and there are many greeting rituals that include vodka, snuff boxes, tea, and food. Much of my upcoming trip will be spent in the grasslands, staying in ger camps and meeting the local people. I’ve been told to bring along some small gifts, and I know from previous travels that refusing what is offered to me may be considered rude or offensive.
(Pixabay)
Will I need to eat a few bites of meat to be polite? Will I find enough to eat during my days on the steppe without resorting to meat? I don’t think I have a philosophical problem with it; many of my objections to meat are moot in Mongolia, where animals are treasured and raised responsibly. The bigger question is whether it will be at all appealing, or even bearable, to eat some of the animal products I may be served?
Have you ever had to, wanted to, or refused to put aside your preferences or beliefs when traveling?