2.20.2010
Gone fishin...
Hello all. For those who care, we will be unreachable for most of the next two weeks. We are island bound starting in the morning.
Adios
Adios
2.19.2010
a story...
Yesterday I karate kicked a Cambodian Jelly Beast. This creature of myth, similar to the common jelly fish roams the worlds seas in search of cross species combat. On Feb 17 2010 one of these Jelly Beasts in search of dual chose its last opponent poorly.
Emily and I had decided after our adventures in Vietnam to take a few week breather, for both our minds and our wallets. Picking a spot on the map we pointed our feet towards a town on the southern coast of Cambodia. The plan was to head to one of the islands and live in a bungalow for awhile. Upon arriving at the coastal town of Sihanoukville we decided to hang on the beach for a few days while collecting info on the islands.
Jelly Beasts are thought to be one of oldest living organisms on earth and have a life expectancy of over a century. It is not clear the system they choose there opponents by, but it is believed that once chosen, that opponent will be pursued till one is defeated by death. Because of the speed by which the jelly beasts travel, it is not uncommon for these chases to last upwards of a decade. It is not clear when this jelly beast picked up my sent and chose me as his mortal opponent by it would be on the beaches of Cambodia that the battle would ensue.
It was our fourth day in Cambodia and Emily and I were really starting to settle into the pace of life in a sleepy beach town. Wake up to the sun around 8:30 get out of bed around 9:30, throw on our suits and shirt grab a little grub and saunter towards the beach. On this particular day we were feeling especially sleepy due to the previous day’s water workouts. Water workouts are a new development to combat travelers fat, or as we like to call it “the fanny pack.” So instead of heading straight to the beach we got distracted and ended up hanging out at an old expat bar trying to catch an update on the winter Olympics. Around noon it gets too hot to think so we dragged our sweaty half stoned bodies down to the water for refrigeration. A half hour later the Jelly Beast made his move. Emily and I had been crouching in the shallows attempting to read each other’s lips when the beast struck my leg. Being a younger Jelly Beast and only the diameter of a car tire It was clear that its impatience would be its demise. In the deeper water, the jelly beast’s home court, I would be no match for its size and sneaky chemical rampage, but here, in the shallows my speed and dexterity reigned supreme. My adversary had also not calculated in my perfectly honed reflexive panic sweep kick. The well placed response hit the great Jelly Beast square in the guts coating my foot and ankle in its vicious chemical wrath. Though superficial, it stung real bad. The kick was not instantly fatal for the Great Jelly Beast but would later become evident in being the death blow. Winner by K.O, man beast. -C.
Emily and I had decided after our adventures in Vietnam to take a few week breather, for both our minds and our wallets. Picking a spot on the map we pointed our feet towards a town on the southern coast of Cambodia. The plan was to head to one of the islands and live in a bungalow for awhile. Upon arriving at the coastal town of Sihanoukville we decided to hang on the beach for a few days while collecting info on the islands.
Jelly Beasts are thought to be one of oldest living organisms on earth and have a life expectancy of over a century. It is not clear the system they choose there opponents by, but it is believed that once chosen, that opponent will be pursued till one is defeated by death. Because of the speed by which the jelly beasts travel, it is not uncommon for these chases to last upwards of a decade. It is not clear when this jelly beast picked up my sent and chose me as his mortal opponent by it would be on the beaches of Cambodia that the battle would ensue.
It was our fourth day in Cambodia and Emily and I were really starting to settle into the pace of life in a sleepy beach town. Wake up to the sun around 8:30 get out of bed around 9:30, throw on our suits and shirt grab a little grub and saunter towards the beach. On this particular day we were feeling especially sleepy due to the previous day’s water workouts. Water workouts are a new development to combat travelers fat, or as we like to call it “the fanny pack.” So instead of heading straight to the beach we got distracted and ended up hanging out at an old expat bar trying to catch an update on the winter Olympics. Around noon it gets too hot to think so we dragged our sweaty half stoned bodies down to the water for refrigeration. A half hour later the Jelly Beast made his move. Emily and I had been crouching in the shallows attempting to read each other’s lips when the beast struck my leg. Being a younger Jelly Beast and only the diameter of a car tire It was clear that its impatience would be its demise. In the deeper water, the jelly beast’s home court, I would be no match for its size and sneaky chemical rampage, but here, in the shallows my speed and dexterity reigned supreme. My adversary had also not calculated in my perfectly honed reflexive panic sweep kick. The well placed response hit the great Jelly Beast square in the guts coating my foot and ankle in its vicious chemical wrath. Though superficial, it stung real bad. The kick was not instantly fatal for the Great Jelly Beast but would later become evident in being the death blow. Winner by K.O, man beast. -C.
2.06.2010
Scoots
It wasn't until a couple months ago that I started to consider successfully crossing the street something of a big achievement. At any given intersection, especially in the ginormous, roaring, screeching, sensory-overloading big towns like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, you are faced with a wildly chaotic, honking, weaving sea of cars, bikes, and mostly scooters, all swirling within millimeters of each other. Not even the sidewalks are safe from the scoots, as they double as parking lots and side streets, and scooters intermittently shoot in and out of buildings where they are stored in lobbies and living rooms. There is no helping little old ladies cross the street here. Instead, you're lucky to find one that allows you stand slightly downstream from her, using her as a shield as she skillfully maneuvers through the madness. Never mind that the top of her head may not even reach your shoulder; she knows infinitely more than you about this phenomenon and she will basically save your life. Unfortunately there doesn't always seem to be a little old lady in shining armor, or other unsuspecting local, waiting for you to leech onto whenever you want to get to the other side. After experimenting with a variety of methods- waiting for a gap in traffic (turns out you will likely reach and spend your entire retirement on the very spot with this tactic), using crosswalks (they're functionally limited to being decorative patterns in the road)- I've come to the conclusion that your best bet is to just close your eyes and take the plunge. With any luck you'll make it in one piece. Or maybe luck has very little to do with it, because upon stepping into the apparent chaos you find that your body is seamlessly absorbed into the weave, your little bubble bobs to the other side as the surge pulses and flows past you.
There seems to be no limit to the capabilities of these little beasts. They cruise by with loads that seemingly defy the laws of physics. Stacks of boxes piled three times the driver's height, chicken coops, bundles of re-bar fifty feet long, flower gardens, pigs in bamboo baskets, multiple bicycles, families of three, four, five. The other day in Saigon we watched a family of three hysterically lurch down the sidewalk on their scoot as a golden retriever (something of a rarity in the big city where backyards are mythical) circled and chased them, eagerly humping their legs. Turned out he belonged to them, because after he finally took a dump, he scrambled right up onto the scooter, all four paws balanced on the miniscule floor space between the driver's legs, and the little family happily bumped down the curb and melted into traffic.
Considering that traffic accidents and fatalities are supposed to be super high in Asia, we've witnessed very few mishaps. They've all been minor bumps, and no party involved ever seems to be the slightest bit ruffled by the incident. The most unique was during a torrential downpour in Hanoi, where everyone ignores the rain and continues about their business, albeit encased in long multicolored ponchos. A man on a scooter was pulled to a sudden stop because the tail of his neon yellow cape got wrapped up in the wheel of a passing car. Everyone was fine, and of course traffic carried on around them as they untangled themselves. Thankfully, our own mishaps aboard scoots have also been few and far between. At the end of a dirt road overlooking Niko Beach in Bali I learned the painful lesson that after your driver (in this case, one Christian Sellers, desperately chasing waves) pushes your little scoot to unthinkable limits on unimaginable roads, the exhaust pipe gets a little hot and won't hesitate to take a bite out of your calf. On Lembongan Island, Indo we rented a finicky little scoot that needed a lot of encouragement to start and had extremely minimal brakes- made for a very interesting ride around a very hilly island.
The most recent incident was in Mui Ne, Viet Nam, when we temporarily lost my mom in the desert. My parents, Christian, and I were wrapping up our whirlwind adventure through Laos and Viet Nam, and we wanted to check out the sand dunes before we caught our afternoon bus to Saigon, from where my parents were to fly home the following day. Motorbike taxis cruise the Mui Ne strip looking for fare and for a couple extra bucks they'll usually pull up a stool at their buddy's shop, hand you the keys, and let you roam freely wherever your little heart desires. We found two such drivers, piled on and we were on our way. We cruised along the beautiful coastline, mistakenly turned inland, passing through a couple dusty towns speckled with waving school kids and finally found our way to the majestically rolling dunes. We had to rush back to town to catch our bus and a Skype date with Christian's ma, so when we got separated Christian and I figured my parents had just taken a different turn-off. I had a little feeling that something was amiss, and the sight of my dad pushing their scooter down the road, sans Mom, confirmed my suspicion. They'd gotten a flat several miles back; my dad came for help while my mom trudged on foot down the desert road. Christian and I had already given up our scooter so another driver was enlisted to carry out a search and rescue mission. He turned up empty handed- "5 km, no madam!"- and kindly handed over his scooter so my dad could give it a go. Finally, he returned with my hot, sweaty, parched, but glad-to-be-rescued ma in tow, just as our bus pulled up, ready to haul us off to Saigon. Exactly according to plan. -E
There seems to be no limit to the capabilities of these little beasts. They cruise by with loads that seemingly defy the laws of physics. Stacks of boxes piled three times the driver's height, chicken coops, bundles of re-bar fifty feet long, flower gardens, pigs in bamboo baskets, multiple bicycles, families of three, four, five. The other day in Saigon we watched a family of three hysterically lurch down the sidewalk on their scoot as a golden retriever (something of a rarity in the big city where backyards are mythical) circled and chased them, eagerly humping their legs. Turned out he belonged to them, because after he finally took a dump, he scrambled right up onto the scooter, all four paws balanced on the miniscule floor space between the driver's legs, and the little family happily bumped down the curb and melted into traffic.
Considering that traffic accidents and fatalities are supposed to be super high in Asia, we've witnessed very few mishaps. They've all been minor bumps, and no party involved ever seems to be the slightest bit ruffled by the incident. The most unique was during a torrential downpour in Hanoi, where everyone ignores the rain and continues about their business, albeit encased in long multicolored ponchos. A man on a scooter was pulled to a sudden stop because the tail of his neon yellow cape got wrapped up in the wheel of a passing car. Everyone was fine, and of course traffic carried on around them as they untangled themselves. Thankfully, our own mishaps aboard scoots have also been few and far between. At the end of a dirt road overlooking Niko Beach in Bali I learned the painful lesson that after your driver (in this case, one Christian Sellers, desperately chasing waves) pushes your little scoot to unthinkable limits on unimaginable roads, the exhaust pipe gets a little hot and won't hesitate to take a bite out of your calf. On Lembongan Island, Indo we rented a finicky little scoot that needed a lot of encouragement to start and had extremely minimal brakes- made for a very interesting ride around a very hilly island.
The most recent incident was in Mui Ne, Viet Nam, when we temporarily lost my mom in the desert. My parents, Christian, and I were wrapping up our whirlwind adventure through Laos and Viet Nam, and we wanted to check out the sand dunes before we caught our afternoon bus to Saigon, from where my parents were to fly home the following day. Motorbike taxis cruise the Mui Ne strip looking for fare and for a couple extra bucks they'll usually pull up a stool at their buddy's shop, hand you the keys, and let you roam freely wherever your little heart desires. We found two such drivers, piled on and we were on our way. We cruised along the beautiful coastline, mistakenly turned inland, passing through a couple dusty towns speckled with waving school kids and finally found our way to the majestically rolling dunes. We had to rush back to town to catch our bus and a Skype date with Christian's ma, so when we got separated Christian and I figured my parents had just taken a different turn-off. I had a little feeling that something was amiss, and the sight of my dad pushing their scooter down the road, sans Mom, confirmed my suspicion. They'd gotten a flat several miles back; my dad came for help while my mom trudged on foot down the desert road. Christian and I had already given up our scooter so another driver was enlisted to carry out a search and rescue mission. He turned up empty handed- "5 km, no madam!"- and kindly handed over his scooter so my dad could give it a go. Finally, he returned with my hot, sweaty, parched, but glad-to-be-rescued ma in tow, just as our bus pulled up, ready to haul us off to Saigon. Exactly according to plan. -E
2.04.2010
Picture-palooza!!!
Just dumped a TON of pics on Photobucket. Check the rhyme.
"Viet Nam-O-Rama"
"How Now Little Laos"
"Tasty Thailand"
"Window to Indo"
"Viet Nam-O-Rama"
"How Now Little Laos"
"Tasty Thailand"
"Window to Indo"
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