an open letter

(in the hopes that it will pull on at least a few heartstrings)

hey everyone

in just over a month's time i'm returning to Viet Nam to pick up where i left off in august. i'm filling in as operations manager for about six weeks and then will be helping to run one of our placements in the south central provinces in the new year. i feel i need to tell you, in case you don't already know, what's keeping me here.

this boy, Phuc, has changed my life. the first day i met him i was afraid of him, afraid of his deformity and disability, of all i didn't know. now i know i should have been afraid of what he would do to my heart! he has changed everything and awakened in me some unknown feeling that can only be akin to maternal love. he isn't the only child i will be helping when i get back, but he was the first one to break into my heart and you know what they say, the first cut is the deepest...


this child has nothing. owns nothing. does not understand the concept of material possession or desire for such things.he celebrates loudly and joyfully the smallest things that we have all taken for granted everyday of our lives; being picked up, held, talked to, loved, just touched. every pore of his tiny nine year old body exudes the purest happiness and love, lust for a life we could never conceive of.

so this is why i'm staying. Phuc and all the children like him that GVN Vietnam is helping. and they're here for you to see in all their technicolour joy and sadness.
it's three and a half minutes of your life, please turn up the volume and watch. please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRIHm6lv5bI

if you think there's anything you can do to help them or to help me help them, i'd love to hear from you. it doesn't have to be the $30 a month, it can be a contact who might be able to help, a one off fiver or tenner or something much bigger than all of that. (for example, one or two of you have mentioned parachute jumps, i'm liking that kinda thing! ;)
we always always always need more volunteers too, you could join us even for just a month and who knows what you could do...

even though i'm travelling right now i haven't forgotten these forgotten children.and now i'm hoping that once you've watched this video that you won't forget either.

i'm sorry, i feel like i'm always asking and so many of you have been so good already...but these children can't ask you themselves

love and luck

eadaoin

one night,

in a monastery, in laos...

it's about 9.30pm, patrick and i are sitting on the steps of our 'bedroom' for the night.
we're in the grounds of a bhuddist temple about 90km north of vientienne, the capital of laos. i'm on a few days break from my work in vietnam and pat is on his way home from his two months with gvn.

how we got here is a result of our shared lack of any ability to make a proper plan and sheer luck. we've just spent the last hour and a half in the common room of the monks house sharing coffee and conversation with the visiting lao-born-france-dwelling monk.

earlier that evening we stopped across the road to watch a stunning sunset along the river. it just so happened that there was a temple across the road and we went in to have a look around, as we had done a few times during the day. it just so happened that gilbert, the french speaking monk, was visiting for a few days and it just so happened that pat speaks very good french. (i haven't spoken french in about seven years at this stage so even though i understood almost all of the conversations i said little, which in it's own way was quite nice.) somehow, through a misunderstanding as much as anything i think, we are invited to stay the night at the temple.
pat looks at me, did you get that? do you want to stay? the sun has set, we're a good two hours out of the city, i'm driving and we've just been invited to spend the night at a temple, do i want to stay?! this is the kind of experience you could never buy at any overpriced tour agent, the kind of thing you could never plan. and even though the monk tells us he doesn't think they have any moquito nets i'm not going anywhere.

well we did go, to the next village to buy some cigarettes by way of token of appreciation to the monks. we also bought them a pack of cards, not sure what they've done with them, i wonder if they play cards at all? it seemed better than washing powder or soap at the time anyway.

so here we are, sitting on the porch of one of the outbuildings. the monks are chatting upstairs in the house, we can see them, they can see us. our beds, two mats and two very square pillows under one of those cake cover mosquito nets, are behind us on the tiles. the porch is fronted by two roller shutters but the gables are only half walls. we're neither inside nor outside. we're sharing scotch out of a plastic bottle and the moment. the monks disappear and leave us in the quiet of the night. there's a sense of peace and contentment around that i could never describe or explain. no photograph could capture it, but it's there.

we decide it's time to hit the hay, we pull down the shutter, i'm not sure why but it seems like we should. i lie down to sleep shoeless and clothed, hot and happy.
i can't say i slept much though. cats, insects, goats, cars and motobikes are the stuff of the night in the middle of nowhere, laos. i can't say i really minded though, it was part of the whole experience.

then the drums started. 4am, the temple nearest this one. it's a particular rhythm and it's lovely to listen to. but then at 4.30 they started in the temple we were in. i didn't realise it was so loud! of course it's loud, it's supposed to call to all the people, land animals and fish for miles. but i didn't realise how loud that had to be!
there's a drum and a one stringed instrument which is thwanged at particular intervals. in the black of the night, with the reverberations all around it felt almost ominous, the soundtrack to a scary movie.

after that i slept again for another hour or two and woke to daylight. the monks were moving around so i got up. pat was still asleep, one of the best sleeps he's had in years apparently! the monks were in the temple having breakfast.
in the cities they have morning alms where the monks parade around the town and people give them food. in the country the food comes to the monks. the women from the local village carry bowls of fish, vegetables, rice and eggs and eat with the monks in the temple.
pat woke up and we were invited by gilbert to join them. it was delicious. i couldn't eat the fish and gilbert enquired as to my hesitance to eat but pat explained i was allergic and he pointed out all the 'non poissons', even going to get me more eggs. all the while gilbert is smoking, this morning it's a cigar. he explained to us the night before that there isn't really very much for a monk to do once the prayers are done and the novices take care of the grounds so they just mostly sit around smoking. what a life!

while we ate, a woman in her thirties sang. she was dressed in jeans, a vest top and camouflage shirt. she had a beautiful face, the voice of an angel and a crew cut with chunks of hair missing. she was smoking too. and burning bits of paper and fake money in a saucer (a bhuddist tradition) all the while she's singing sort of sean nos style lamentations. gilbert explains to us that she's crazy and gets a cup of water to put out the fire. i wonder how she came to be 'crazy'. was she born like that? did something happen to her? i wonder where her place is in this world? she is tolerated in the temple but i doubt she gets any help. maybe she doesn't need it. but the bald patches on her scalp remind me of a girl in our spc centre in quang ngai and it's obvious she's not happy.

after breakfast gilbert shakes pat's hand and we leave. monks are not allowed to touch women. gilbert was married but became a monk after his wife died. he has a son and i think i remember him saying a daughter too. i don't know if they're allowed to touch female family members. it was facinating listening to him tell us about life as a monk. how the core values are the same but the rules differ from region to region. how his life in france is much different to that of his lao counterparts. it seems a funny picture when i imagine him on the streets of his town in northern france with a jumper on under his bright orange robes.

my motobike and me

two days in the mountains in northern Thailand

sadly enough, due to a seriously crappy internet cafe in chiang rai, i have lost the few photos i took of this trip. but most were of windy roads and the like so they probably weren't that interesting to you anyway. in an effort to illustrate this entry though, i have found a few pictures on the internet, so they're all stolen but are somewhat representative of what i did see.
what i did see was amazing, stunning. possibly the most beautiful countryside i have ever experienced. if i had taken a photo every time i had wanted to i would never have gotten anywhere. i left chiang rai at around 10am on saturday morning. after i got out of the city limits i pulled over to fix my backpack to the seat behind me only to notice this rather violent hissing noise which i quickly realised was coming from my back tire. oooops. i'd checked everything, the lights, brakes, indicators, all that jazz. i'd forgotten to look at the tires though, the back one was so bald that a tiny piece of broken glass had managed to rip it.
*insert expletive here*

so i went to a tire place that just so happened to be a little up the road, got the tire pumped to near bursting point and made my way back to the rental place as quick as i could. and i nearly made it! except by the time i was within 200m of the place i had to give up, get off the bike and push it. *insert stronger expletive here, about 10 times*
is this a sign, maybe i shouldn't go...? or maybeeeee, now that i've taken the bike back and the owner is more than happy to give me another one it's just luck that i'm getting a way better bike. even if it did cost me over an hour.

so back on the road, my vague plan is to head a community that has opened itself to tourists in a pilot scheme where they actually get some of the profits and the guides are actual locals. (may seem like common sense to you but see the bit the long neck karen people at the end). then i was going to go to mae sai for the night via doi tung and back to chiang rai via the infamous golden triangle.

first stop was a waterfall that just happened to be signposted and i figured i may as well have a look. for some reason the image of the venus razor ad popped into my head and i decided to shave my legs while i was here. i know it sounds daft but it was fun in the you-don't-do-this-everyday kind of way. and the water was so lovely and cold and i thoroughly enjoyed myself! if i had a picture of course i'd post it, but you can see me now can't you? long legged and suntanned....eh, yeah! well i have a great tan but my legs will never be long, only in my dreams!

on my way back to the bike a group of thai boys called me over to their spot by the river. as soon as i got there i was presented with a shot of thai whisky, well it was only small and it felt rude to refuse! so the usual, where are you from, what's your name and all that came next. they introduced themselves, names i cannot pronounce or remember. i noticed the almost empty 'water' bottle and then realised they were all pretty drunk. and it was still only 1.30
they had a guitar and after the photoshoot was over, they love the photos, they asked me if i knew zombie. hilarious, i couldn't name you one thai singer (or vietnamese for that matter) but they knew the cranberries and that they were irish and the guy almost knew the chords. (well, he may have known them but he was probably just too drunk.)
so after singing (all filmed by their impromtu camera man) and refusing about five more shots of whisky i left them to it. not before they'd asked me where i was going though. and like all the thai seem to do, they gave me directions. it's lovely. initially, i thought it was just conversation or curiosity, but this question is borne out of a genuine desire to make sure you're going where you want to go. they're all tourist information points by choice. i've never experienced that before!

at the village, ban lorcha, i was led around the village by a woman who kept insisting i take photos of everything. even though i knew this place was the best place to go to see the hilltribe people and feel like i wasn't intruding i still felt like i was intruding. as soon as i'd taken the picture off we'd go again. she doesn't speak any english, like most of the guides, but there are posters up at the relevant points to explain everything.
at the end i met a girl called nittya, a 17 year old local girl who studies in the next city and comes back at weekends. she was embroidering as we chatted and the work was beautiful. her english wasn't great but it was enough to get by; maybe a few months ago i wouldn't have been able to have a converstion with her but my simple english is pretty good now and i'm getting better at guessing what people are trying to say! best bit was when she was asking me if i was married and instead of the usual gesture to the ring finger she started to hum the wedding march, brilliant! she told me about how she was christian and how some of the people in the village are actually bhuddist, as if they were thick or something. it was funny, in a pretty judgemental way.

after that i headed up into the hills and this is where the fun started. i was up and down gears at the rate of knots. the roads inclined at ungodly degrees and the only variety in bends was between hairpin and 90 degree. i've never thought it was possible to have to break going uphill before but i now know that it is. and i wasn't even going that fast, i couldn't. i kept getting shocked by these absolutely arresting views down to where i'd just come from or the valleys on either side. it was so beautiful, i couldn't even show you many pictures if i did have them, i was too busy just enjoying them for myself to take any pictures.
i did stop to take a photo of the sun setting over the mountains but never got to take it. as i took the camera out of the case i realised i had almost no gas left. ooops, again. so, a little distracted, i put the camera away and headed off to find some gas.
eh, where exactly? i wasn't near any town, at all.

so i ploughed on. this particular sign put me in mind of the art of freewheeling. saving gas and the environment all at once, fantastic! i was reminded of my dad as i turned off the ignition (with my left hand, right hand and foot firmly on the brakes). the night he did a 'magic trick' and drove most of the way home from cavan without the engine on. i thought it was amazing, how did that work? i think i was probably about four. it was probably that time when petrol got ridiculously expensive and families spent their sundays crossing the border to get it cheaper. by the way, i'm quite aware that the idea of the low gear is to get more traction than freewheeling could provide but it was 'E for eadaoin on empty' and the brakes were good so i went for it.
the needle was now below empty. below empty. i didn't know it could go below E, was i running on fumes or what? i pulled over at the bottom of a hill and checked the tank, there was still a bit left. a bit...
a big black chevrolet suv pulled over and a man got out to see if i was ok, a man on his holidays with some friends from bangkok. he looked in, looked at the reserve tank, told me i was ok for another 10 or 20 km at least and gave me his phone number to call if i was in trouble or just to let him know i was ok. i feel like i'm being disloyal to vietnam when i say this, but i think the thais are my favourite people in se asia.

so, i got gas, first a bottle of about 80c worth from a shop and then i filled the tank a little further on. remember how i mentioned that it was sunset when i'd noticed? well it was pitch black by now and i was nowhere near where i had intended to stay for the night. so i asked the guy at the petrol station where i could stay for the night and he pointed down the road a bit.
for a massive $10 i got the most beautiful double bed, clean, new looking white white sheets, a television, (i'd forgotten they existed!), a hot shower, a sink that didn't empty onto the floor, a fridge, and my very own frog to keep me company. we made an agreement, if he didn't hop up onto the bed i wouldn't bother him either. i think he kept his side, i think i was too tired to even notice.

next morning it was beautiful. i headed back about 15km to doi tung where the kings mother kept a villa while she was renewing the local area by replacing the opium plantations with forestry. i know little about the thai royal family but this was worth it just for the house.
teak floors, walls of pine salvaged from transport crates, stunning art work and there was a real sense of love for this woman in the whole house. she died around 10 years ago but the house is still used by her granddaughter once a year while she carries on her grandmother's work. this was an ordinary woman elevated to the status of the king's mother late in her life. she was the original celebrity do gooder, using her new found status to change thailand for the better; to encourage education, eliminate opium plantations and all the while cook for her family and garden and still be an ordinary woman. i think i'd like to have met her!

the weather had turned now and it was miserable, bucketing down. i asked a woman where i could buy a rain coat, she offered me hers for about $5! after she'd assured me she could get another one (well i hope that was what she was saying) i gladly took it off her.
i must admit, i regretted it a little when i got back on the bike and noticed it smelled sort of like a fart that no one i know would admit to....but it was raining and i could only smell it if i sniffed the coat, which, eh, i refrained from.

back down the hill (more freewheeling, just for the fun) and i was on my way to the golden triangle, the place where myanmar, laos and thailand meet. where most of the opium trading was carried out. it is, as the lonely planet describes it, 'an all out tourist trap', but it was intersting all the same and the town next to it had a fish market with hundreds of eels leaping up out of the water in the bottoms of buckets and crates and plastic bags. a sight in itself.

after that i headed back to chiang rai via mae sai, the most northern town in thailand. it was a town like any other, about ten seven-elevens and tons of guest houses and hotels. i had given my passport as collateral for the bike so i couldn't go to myanmar just for the stamp. it's starting to get a bit full anyway, what with all these vietnamese visas i keep having to get...

i got back to chiang rai at 4.30 so i decided to head south to see the white temple everyone kept talking about. this part of the world is full of temples. you've seen one wat, you've seen 'em all. so i don't know what i was expecting but this place definately wasn't it.
it's just surreal. like a fairytale, some sort of religious theme park or narnia's temple.
the entire building and surrounds are pure white, decorated with mirror mosaic. it was beautiful.
the inside was the strangest though, the mural inside depicted, as well as bhudda, aliens, skyscrapers, spaceships, wristwatches and i am not joking, neo from the matrix. are these the evils of this world today? that coupled with the wax monk sitting in front of the bhudda sort of compounded the theme park idea but it didn't detract from the sheer beauty of the outside of the building.

fin.



the long necked karen tribespeople in northern thailand:

burmese refugees rounded up and placed in to synthetic villages designed for tourists to see all the various tribespeople at once. a themepark, a human zoo. these people have escaped the war and refugee camps in their homecountry only to be led in to this equally redundant (albeit not as dangerous) life in thailand. they are bought by businessmen, taken to live in these villages and paid to sit around and have their picture taken, sell some trinkets maybe. the men don't get paid, they get food allowance. they're not photogenic enough to pay, they don't wear the brass neck rings.

it's difficult enough to be a responsible tourist, hard to know who's for real, but it's not hard to know that this sort of exploitation is disgusting. the thai hilltribe museums seem to be doing a fair bit of campaigning to stop this practice but it occurs to me that the only way it is still happening is if stupid tourists are still going. eugh.

TalesofAsiaPaduang

I'm a little mahout

that's an elephant handler to you

so the internet in Laos just ain't great. therefore there has been absolutely no time in the last two weeks when i could have possibly published a blog. i've written a few entries into my old fashioned journal but i'll type them up another time. for now i'll just tell you about my two days learning to be a mahout.

well, travelling solo has it's ups and downs. it's great being able to make your own plans without anyone else to consider. but it's a pain not having anyone to discuss your plans with. it's great being able to do whatever you want to do but it's a pain having to pay extra because you're alone or worse still, as i found out, being somewhere during low season where they won't accept just one person to do a trek. it's also fantastic meeting new people, it sucks when you can't shake them off too though, as i've learned just once so far! but then there's the whole "well at least it's someone to talk to thing..."
anyway, after saying a rather quick and unexpected goodbye to my now ill soundboard, i wandered the streets of Luang Prabang hoping the rest of the people i encountered wouldn't be quite so boring...oh to be lacking such basic comforts as a decent conversation!

i had planned to go to the jungle in the far north west of Laos in bokeo province to do the gibbon experience tour, a three day trekking and ziplining adventure where i was unlikely to actually see any gibbons but i'd heard about how much fun it was from quite a few other travellers. after booking it and paying for it, it turned out i'd booked the wrong month (travelling seems to have reduced me to being unable to tell time or date...) and the program is closed for september due to heavy rains. so defnilly defnilly no gibbons for ead.

so i took myself into the fair trek booking office to see if i could find me some elephant friends instead. and lo and behold, there at the counter was another solo lady interested in the same thing but being told she couldn't go unless at least one other person signed up. i piped in to let them know i was interested too and it all took off from there. sandi and i booked ourselves into a two day mahout and kayaking tour, a shared room and unknown adventure and then introduced ourselves! how etiquette and common practice disappear in strange countries!
turned out sandi wasn't nearly as boring as her predecessor and we had a great few days. we were joined on the trip by a new yorker called adam and we made a great team.

the tour started with a very brief introduction to the elephants and their lifestyles before we took off on a one hour ride on the elephant bench.

we then fed the elephants some bananas and took off for our own lunch. after a very tasty meal we headed back to our ellies and found them unsaddled with chains around their necks. it was time to take them off out to jungle for the night. what a fun ride. what a fun time trying to get up on the elephant in the first place!

it was scary at first, there's nothing to hold on to! but it was also just mesmerising. being elevated to that height in the jungle and plodding along with the elephant, feeling her shoulders move and the earth move beneath her. it took a little while to get used to it but i soon found myself moving in time with 'me ton khong' and feeling more and more comfortable on her back. her driver was sitting a little further up on her back and provided a beautiful Lao soundtrack to our 30minute journey.

then it was back to the lodge to get our gear and head to the Tad Se waterfall. i didn't take my camera with me but there was a lady with us who took a few excellent photos of us jumping off the waterfall, hopefully she'll mail them on soon. it's a beautiful waterfall with tumbling ledges that are great fun to climb. we went all the way up to the top, how very adventurous of us! adam had already jumped off the main waterfall a couple of times when he asked us if we wanted to. both sandi and i said no at first but then i thought, hey, why not, i'm only here once yada yada yada. so up we went. getting up there in the first place was difficult enough, the water cascades so fiercely that you can't keep your eyes open during the climb up.

so up to the top with us. and off the edge with adam. so now he and sandi are over by the far edge of the pool waiting for me to jump. waiting. waiting. waiting...
soon enough our guides have cottoned on to the fact that i've been standing up there for a good five minutes. then the rest of the, thankfully small, crowd do too. ah jaysis... now, if i'm fairly sure i'm going to be good at something i have no problems giving it a go. however, if i have any doubt in my mind, well that's just another thing altogether. i started thinking, didn't i... what if i don't jump far enough, i'm not very good at this sort of thing...

anyway, the power of the people, i couldn't disappoint the crowd so i eventually jumped! it was fantastic! adam did mention that i didn't look like i'd jumped very far so at least i was right about my doubts! but then i got the feel for it and all three of us headed up for one last jump before we went. this time i did a tandem with sandi so i wouldn't hold the whole show up again! (just in case!)

that took us to the end of day one and after a delicious meal and the last of my scotch that doreen had left me in june, we all headed to bed. up at 7 to go and pick the ellies up in the jungle to take them down for a wash. so we had another 30mins saunter back down to the river. when i say saunter, me ton khong must have been in fine form that morning because she was lamping it down the track. as i might have mentioned earlier, there's nothing to hold on to! but i felt safe and the guide said that no one has fallen off yet so...

little did i know what was yet to come though, the incline down into the river must have been about 45degrees. yikes. i felt so sure i was going to go toppling over my ellies head as she squelched down the mud trail. deep breaths, deep breaths. is everyone else still intact on their charges? yes, ok, lets keep going here. i concentrated on how the elephant's skin felt against my own bare feet, even though her head and face are very bristly and her skin is so thick, it felt soft and warm and safe.

and then into the water. it was all fine until she was told to sit down. no offence to me ton knong but she's a big girl, whump! down into the water, i felt as if she'd just left me sitting in mid air! but down i went too and we commenced the morning ritual of scrubbing. it was so much fun, both sandi and one of the real mahouts fell into the water. we all got thoroughly wet, the elephants got clean and we all emerged from the water dirtier than we had been going in!

after saying goodbye and goodluck to our elephants and their mahouts we went back for a well deserved breakfast before kayaking back up to Luang Prabang. it was a four hour trip, lackadaisical as it was, through beautiful landscape and the most timid of rapids with lunch enroute at the site of Henri Mohout's grave (french explorer, all round great guy apparently).

so there you have it, i'm not quite a mahout but it was fun learning to be one all the same!
i'll update you on the rest of my journey another day.