Marrakesh

After a brief stop in Bangkok, we made our way west for the home stretch of our around-the-world journey. Our travel day was a long one: 26 hours in transit on various planes and busses. Our destination was the Moroccan city of Marrakesh: a city made chic by the great rock band of the 60’s and 70’s. The weather here was quite refreshing after spending a few months in southeast Asia: Highs in the mid 70’s with clear skies… a far cry from the muggy weather in Bangkok. To be honest, we were ready for a change of scenery… someplace completely different from the places that we’ve already encountered. We’ve seen beaches. We’ve seen great Western cities and great Asian cities. We’ve seen mountains and valleys and canyons and fjords and ancient ruins of civilizations lost… really it takes a lot to wow us these days. What we haven’t seen is any sort of desert-type environment, so here we are in Morocco, the gateway to the Sahara Desert.

Marrakesh was our first stop in Morocco simply because it is the only place that discount air carrier easyJet flies to. It is a pretty compact city, with an old walled part of the city (called a Medina) that is very easy to explore on foot. Filled with tiny mazelike alleyways the Medina can be an adventure to navigate, and we found ourselves getting lost quite often… which was not so bad as around every corner was a new and different souq (street-side merchant stall), offering exotic spices, carpets, leather goods, and even entire bronze doors! In the middle of everything was an open air square called the Djemaa el-Fna, which at night turned into a chaotic expanse of impromptu food stalls hawking delicious delicacies like escargot, kabobs, shwarma, cous-cous, tajine (slow cooked meats), spiced tea, and date cakes. Picking a place to eat can be an invigorating experience as every vendor has their own hawker trying to get you to eat at their particular stall: “My friend! Sit, sit! come eat at stall 119… we have the juciest tajines! Remember, stall 119 is the best!”

Besides all the wandering around, the cool thing about Marrakesh is just appreciating the architecture. The Medina feels suspended in time, with people going about their daily business in the same manner as in centuries past (well… with the occasional motor bike thrown in). The feel of the place is quite Spanish (Andalusean really), not so surprising considering the Spanish Moorish influence originated from Morocco. In fact, the styles and forms of some of the greatest buildings and cathedrals in Spain were cribbed from the mosques and palaces here in Marrakesh. For example, on the left is a picture of the Giralda in Seville and on the right is a picture of its archetype, the Koutoubia Mosque:

…very similar. Anyway (as usual) my words do not do enough justice, so check out the picture linked below:
http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Marrakesh

Also, here is a map for your viewing pleasure: Map of Marrakesh

Tags: Morocco,Marrakesh,Medina,Spain

Vientiane

Not much to report on here, as we spent 2 days in Laos’ capital to see Ward off on his flight back home. Most people say to avoid Vientiane because it’s a hole, but I kind of liked it. The weather was nice and cool, and the feeling around town is a bit French: with great cafes and restaurants seemingly around every corner. Click below to check out some of our pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Vientiane

Tags: Laos,Vientiane

Vang Vieng

This place is truly beautiful: imagine rice paddies surrounded by towering limestone cliffs, all sitting on the banks of a gently flowing river. One could easily get holed up here for days on end, just reading a book and enjoying the beautiful surroundings. Such an outcome was not in the cards for us however, as we came to Vang Vieng for one thing and one thing only: Tubing! Ahh, glorious tubing. What’s tubing you ask? Well, let me tell you. Tubing is the year-round spring break party that would occur in a first world country if lawyers weren’t allowed to sue anyone. It’s one of those things where you look at it, tell yourself, “I dunno… that looks really sketchy”, and then say fuck-it, slam your free shot of moonshine and climb up a 40 foot rickety bamboo structure to jump back into the (shallow) waters below. That’s tubing, and it is a serious hoot. Sure, there were numerous warnings around town and in the guidebooks about people getting hurt and drowning over the years, and we saw a bit too many bruises / sprained ankles / stitched legs for our comfort… but we told ourselves we wouldn’t do anything too stupid (wink), and set off to get our river party on.

We rented a bunch of tubes and headed upstream a few km to begin our aquatic pub crawl at about 11am in the morning. The party was already in full swing (literally), with ad-hoc bars lining both river banks offering free shots of this-and-that to entice floater bys in to spend more money. The scene had a bit of a circus feel to it with swings and zip-lines crisscrossing the water and drunk hooligans flying in the air attempting to perform back flips. It was still early in the morning, so we decided to pace ourselves for a bit and float downstream to just enjoy the show. After about 40 minutes I was getting a bit thirsty, so we stopped off at our first bar to get our free shot of lao-lao (some sort of distilled rice wine) and a few beer laos to warm up. For our viewing pleasure, a group of local tubers were chasing beers with swings across the water from some questionable platform. Ward and I gave each other the “I’ll go if you go” look and proceeded to climb the ladder for our completely safe (right?) swing over and into the river. Jumping off the platform, I couldn’t help but hoot and holler with the biggest shit-eating grin on my face: Holy crap this was fun! I must have been at least 30 feet in the air! Repressing the urge to let go at the zenith, I waited for the swinging to die down closer to the water’s surface before dropping into the water… and immediately hit the rocky bottom about 6-8 feet below. Ouch! Nothing too stupid, Right? Climbing back out of the water, my left foot was aching and my heel was already bleeding. I’d have to be more careful next time and check out the depth of the water.

Next stop, slide bar… just like it sounds, its a bar with a big-ass slide on it. This one was insanely fun as the slide was so high that you would get launched about 30 feet out into the river (at one point they poured some soapy water down to make things even faster!). Think Olympic long jump skiing but only on water! That was the slide. If you go over the the picasaweb page to view the pictures, keep an eye out for the stop-frame sequence of Ward going down the slide. It’s totally awesome! We spent a serious portion of our day just sitting here, drinking beers, and sliding down uncontrollably.

Stopped at many many other bars along the way… each with something a little bit dangerous, but fun to try. Way too many bars apparently, as we somehow turned a 2 hour drift down the river into a 7 hour drinking expedition… making us late for our tube drop return and costing us a few extra bucks in the process. Oh well, it was worth it for the day’s entertainment.

What else? We did a bit of hiking out here which was pretty spectacular, but at this point I’m too brain dead to write about it. It’s hard to be eloquent when writing two blogs in a row in a condensed time frame. Maybe check out the photos online and let the pictures tell the story… Good Times.

Map of Vang Vieng (Click Here)

…and the photos, Check them out :o): http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/VangVieng

Tags: Laos,Vang Vieng,tubing,hiking

Luang Prabang

Man, I am falling way behind on this blogging thing… I’ll try to make things brief here so that I can get back up to date. Let’s begin, shall we?

Laos: an obscure and fabulous little place to hide away in Indochina while the rest of southeast Asia goes insane during lunar new year. Sure, there are more direct ways to get here: across from Hanoi in Vietnam, by Mekong river boat from Chiang Mai in Thailand, up from the Khmer ruins in Cambodia… we chose to get here circuitously through Malaysia simply to avoid the madness in the rest of the countries that observe Chinese New Year. We heard stories of borders closing down for a week (Vietnam), overcrowded accommodations (Thai beaches), and jacked up prices for everything (Malaysia, Borneo), and as such decided to avoid said countries like the plague. Besides, Chinese New Year was the one time that my vacationally challenged friend Ward Miller could get any time off and he hadn’t been to Laos before. Our timing seemed to be predetermined by fate: So let it be written, so let it be done.

We started off in the northern town of Luang Prabang, which is a river town standing guard at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. It’s a small town that’s really laid back and quaint, set amongst a myriad of Buddhist temples… a perfect place to quietly unwind and enjoy the scenery. Well, kind of. We showed up in town a day ahead of Ward, and as we inquired about an extra room for the following night, the lady at the front desk simply responded, “check tomorrow morning, no problem. Big explosion party tomorrow 9am… Everybody awake, check out early!” Which made absolutely no sense to us but we decided to roll with it anyway. Sure enough, at 9 o’clock the next morning there was an explosion party of sorts. You see, someone had managed to find an UXO (UneXploded Ordinance) possibly a leftover from the Secret War, and it was sitting directly across the river from our guesthouse! Yikes. The lead-up to 9am consisted of much shouting in Laotian over a megaphone followed by a countdown, “three, two, one…” BOOM! It was probably the largest explosion that I have ever heard, and we were close enough for Ana’s hair to blow from the blast wave. Welcome to Laos people!

Ward arrived shortly thereafter and the three of us proceeded to catch up on lost time. I hadn’t seen my best friend from high school in about two years, so it was nice to just hang out, shoot the shit, and joke about old times together. Ana has a funny theory about guy relationships and why they differ from how the ladydeez relate to each other: Guys can be separated by time and space for years, not really keeping in touch… but give them a couple of beers and crass jokes to tell and its like they were never apart. I don’t know if that’s just me, but she may have something there. Ward has been living in China for a few years now, but it felt like we had just talked yesterday.

We rented some bikes and explored the outskirts of town without a map… which was great as there were dozens of temples scattered around town: an unexplored Wat around every corner. We saw big Wats, little Wats, Wats on hills, and Wats along the river… it was great, but after a while we were pretty Wated out and in dire need of a drink. There’s actually a fairly decent selection of watering holes in Luang Prabang, all serving the local national drink of Beer Lao: which can be ordered one liter at a time. It’s a good thing that there is a 12am curfew in town (sarcasm), as we were getting rip-roaring drunk pretty early every night. The bar scene was pretty cool though, as a lot of the places were perched on the banks of the river with bamboo mats and lounge pads to laze away the evening. Now this was living!

While out here we ran into a bunch of cool people who were volunteering to teach the novice monks in town some English through a UK program called GVI (www.gvi.co.uk). We met Ron and Amy from Canada, who volunteer on a regular basis. Ron is one of those interesting cats who seems to have done every hard-core thing you wish you had the guts to do. Besides being a park ranger, he was at one point a skydive instructor (even owning his own plane which he bought for one dollar)… which he has since given up to become a dive-master instructing disabled (paraplegic, etc.) persons how to scuba dive. Way cool. We also met a kid from the States named Henry who was a blast to hang out with and share some beers with. With any luck we’ll be able to meet back up with him in Bangkok and party like rock stars. Can’t wait.

Some pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/LuangPrabang

…and as usual a map to illustrate exactly where the hell we are: Map (Click Here)

Tags: Laos,Luang Prabang,Beer Lao,gvi

Penang

Making our way back over to Kuala Lumpur we passed through the city of Georgetown on the island of Penang. There’s not much to see or do in Georgetown itself, but it does repute to have the best food in Malaysia… and it didn’t disappoint in that regard. The food here is a mixture of Indian and Chinese flavors with a bit of local Malay style thrown in. One of the things to try and get here is roti, which is kind of a thinly fried naan bread. The stuff is absolutely delicious, usually accompanied by a light coconut curry sauce for dipping. If any of you have eaten at Banana Leaf in San Jose, you know what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, ordering roti at a restaurant was maddeningly difficult. Apparently roti is only a breakfast dish here, and every place we went to only served it in the morning. Dude… As you can imagine, this presented a bit of a dilemma for us as we were now forced to choose between sleeping in late and eating roti. Not a easy choice to make! Lucky for me, Ana went all “outside the box” on me and made it her personal mission to find a place that served roti after breakfast: a Malaysian Dennys (or iHop) if you will. It took her a couple of days, but she eventually found a place called Jaya which was a kind of 24 hour cafe for Indian food. We ordered two kinds of roti: a thin desert-like roti which was a bit too sweet, and a savory roti that had slices of onions cooked in… super duper delicious. In my opinion, the Malaysians are selling themselves short by only eating the stuff for breakfast.

What else? We had a bunch of good Chinese and Indian food… mostly of the street stall variety. Rooms here are cheap but still have lots of character, as most guest houses are converted colonial houses. Our time here was (successfully) non-eventful as we’re trying to store up some energy for our upcoming rendezvous with Ward Miller in Laos. I haven’t seen my childhood friend from Hawaii in almost 3 years, so I await the coming storm which is the drinking blitz sure to follow :o) Wish my liver luck!

Pictures, pictures…

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Penang

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/KualaLumpur

Tags: Malaysia,Georgetown,roti

Koh Lipe

Following the lead of our new friends Sarah and Ruben, we decided to shake up our planned itinerary and head north into Thailand. Our destination? Koh Lipe: a small island about 50km away from Langkawi. The Dutchmen had a friend who had previously been to the island on holiday, and had spoken glowingly of its riches: nicer beaches, cooler temperatures, and no mosquitoes! Sounded like a winner to us. So the four of us caught an early morning cab to the ferry terminal for our trip en route to Thailand. As usual, we had chosen the absolute cheapest route to get there: a ferry ride + speed boat combination that took us 6 hours to arrive at our destination. Ughh. We should have ponied up the extra $10 bucks for the non-stop speed boat (50 minutes). Next time I guess. But even with all the extra delays, we were still able to arrive early enough with lots of time left in the day. After finding a nice spot to stay (Mountain Resort), we immediately headed down to the beach to soak up some rays and perhaps get a swim in or three. The first thing I can say about Koh Lipe is, “Wow”. What in the world were we doing in Langkawi? This place was waaay better… Just as advertised. The temperature was cooler, with a gentle sea breeze blowing on-shore. The water was noticeably cleaner, with no questionable items flowing in from rivers or streams. There were no jellyfish (Sweet!) in the water, which meant that I could swim to my heart’s content. And really, there weren’t many mosquitoes to speak of…. Probably a result of the aforementioned on-shore breeze. This place was absolutely perfect. At one point during the day, Ana and I looked at each other and said (pretty much simultaneously), “This is just like Belize, but with a nice beach!” Pretty high praise from us considering Belize was one of our favorite stops on this trip!

We contemplated doing a lot of things while staying out here: scuba diving, island hopping, snorkeling trips… but ended up doing a whole lot of nothing. Which was great. Just sitting on the beach, going for a few swims, taking a few naps: I felt right at home. We played cards a bunch, and learned a new game, 7 of diamonds, which is great because you can play it with 3 or 4 players (etc.). We even taught Sarah and Ruben to play Euchre, which was a hoot. My favorite quote (as heard in Ruben’s Dutch accent), “It’s called Euchre, but it’s played without any yokers (jokers)!” Good Times… :o) Ana even learned some Dutch, though for some reason she could only remember the word for clothespin: Kniper! I think maybe she’s watched too many Dora the Explora episodes… 

Some photos of Koh Lipe: http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/KohLipe

And here is where it is on a map.

Tags: Koh Lipe,Thailand,Ferry,beach

Pulau Langkawi

Man, we had some really great things scheduled for Malaysia: world class scuba diving in Sipadan, visiting orangutans in Borneo, hiking to the top of Mt. Kinabalu… We were all fired up to start. Unfortunately, some terrorists/pirates/hooligans/whatever from a nearby Philippine island decided to get all rowdy and shit, so the US state department issued a travel warning for the exact island and port that we had already booked our flights and dives for. Normally we would see this as an opportunity to follow the Rod Shultz school of travel planning and negotiate a better rate. But this particular warning was pretty specific for exactly what we had planned on doing, by an Al-Qaida separatist movement (Abu-Sayyaf) who’s home state was recently under martial law, and who had already kidnapped some foreign tourist a few years ago… It was probably a good idea to make some other plans. We decided to eat the cost of our non-refundable plane tickets and visit a more “relaxed” corner of Malaysia: The island of Langkawi.

We arrived at the Kuala Lumpur airport and were immediately greeted by the easiest immigration line ever. No hassle… No lines… No fuss. They say that Malaysia has some of the nicest people in Southeast Asia, and so far they were making a great impression! Our connecting flight on to Langkawi (Click for Map) was equally trouble-free and before exiting the baggage claim the tourist info booth gave us maps, advice, and exact prices that should be paid for taxis to our hotel. Nice! I couldn’t help but think to myself, “This Malaysia place is all-right!” While waiting for a cab to the airport we met a Dutch couple named Ruben and Sarah, who ironically had just arrived from Sipadan. We agreed to split the cab and save some cash. Neither of us had a room booked yet, so we conducted our search together eventually settling on a place called Tropical Resort. This place was run by a very strange German woman… the kind of person who every now and then is terribly rude to people, but has not the slightest notion that she is rude. Very odd, and quite unlike the local Malays in town. At least the rooms were clean.

We spent a day hanging out on the beach, and it was ok… The water was not that clear and there were many small jellyfish ready and willing to lay a stinger on you. The temperature outside was brutally hot. You basically had to hide away the afternoon in the comfort of some air conditioning until the sun went down. The sunsets were particularly spectacular however, and our west facing beach bungalow was the perfect venue to enjoy viewing the sky aflame.

While out here we rented car, driving around the island to check out its sights. One particularly memorable spot was a place called seven wells, which was the base for some troops of monkeys and a smallish (by our standards anyway) waterfall. The real action was at the top of the waterfall, where a gently descending series of pools were connected by shallow rapids rolling over moss slicked rock. Sweet! Natural water slides! The water was so cool and refreshing (with the heat surpassing triple digits F) that Ana and I spent hours going up and down the same hill with stupid grins on our faces. I went feet first, head first, belly first… yea. I sessioned it. Gasp in awe at my sliding prowess.

You can check out our pictures by heading over to picasaweb: http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/PulauLangkawi

Tags: Langkawi,Malaysia,Borneo,Beach