Jarrod and Sara’s Site

Jarrod and I want to let you know that you are all in our thoughts and hearts during the holidays.  We are having a fun and relaxing Christmas together, but it is friends, family, cookies, special breakfast, and snow that really make the holidays complete.

Last night for Christmas Eve we went to a restaurant called Lao Lao Garden.  You sit at a table that has a hole in the middle filled with hot embers from the campfire sitting in the middle of the restaurant.  They bring this grill top thing that you fill with broth and cook glass noodles and vegetables to make soup, and cook strips of meat on the top dipped in a delicious sauce.  We had a great time at the traditional Lao style BBQ, and the 4 drinks plus the “Beer Bomb Bucket” helped ensure a good time too.  Yes, I was singing Christmas carols into my chopsticks.

Love you, Sara and Jarrod

Going to try and write this one now too, as I have a few cups of incredibly, incredibly strong coffee (think of a small glass that you fill with chocolate syrup half way to the top and then fill with water and mix, its honestly that thick) so sorry if I start rambling… but anyway after the Mekong trip and a day in Luang Prabang (more on this city later) we decided that we hadn’t taken enough public transportation lately so we boarded a public bus for a 9 hour ride to Luang Nam Ha, an extremely remote little “city” in northern Laos. The bus was similar to the boat in some ways: over-crowded - people sitting in the middle aisle on plastic deck chairs and sacks of rice, and stunningly beautiful again - 9 hours of non-stop mountains with a few rivers and villages to look at. This got old much faster as its not nearly as “romantic” or “exotic” and they don’t serve Beerlao, and they don’t have bathrooms (though we did go to the bathroom on the side of the road where the bus pulled over with much better views than the indoor bathrooms at home), and it just was in no way comfortable.

The reason we came here, however, was well, well worth it. We went on a three day trek through the mountain/jungle/farmland/village area of the Nam Ha NPA, which is similar to a national park except that village people live within it and they are allowed to farm some of the land.

The first day we met our two guides in the morning (Phet - main guide who spoke English well and Night - local guide who didn’t speak English but communicated well anyway) and found that we would only have two other people in our group (two middle-aged men from Switzerland who spoke a little English). This was a nice surprise after our 15 person convoy in Chiang Mai.

The trekking here was much more like the hiking we do at home, not as much stopping and a little more demanding terrain, and we really enjoyed being out in the woods in the middle of absolute nowhere. This trek was also much more authentic as far as food and shelter were concerned. The first day we stopped for lunch at a small waterfall, we knew it would be a little more “roughing it” than in Chiang Mai. When we arrived there they put down a few large bamboo leaves on the ground and arranged the meal that we would eat family style on top of it. The meal consisted of sticky rice (the staple of just about every single meal we’ve eaten here), fish that had been cut in half and grilled with herbs inside and then put back together so it just looked like a dead fish lying in front of us, a vegetable stir fry (the vegetables were recently hand picked and still had the flowers on some of them), and two dipping sauces - one unbelievably spicy chili paste and one salsa type sauce. Once we got used to eating with our hands and the flies and pulling apart the fish to get inside to the meat, it was really, really good. Totally different than anything we would normally eat and really tasty (the chili paste you basically dabbed a big chunk of rice with a tiny drop of it and you could feel the heat).

After another good stretch of hiking we arrived at our first camp pretty early (around 3:30). The camp consisted of one large bamboo hut that had one small room for storing food and things and one large room that had a bunch of small mattresses and mosquito nets that we set up our sleeping bags inside. It also had a smaller hut for cooking meals and two very small (especially if you are over about 5 foot 6) outhouses that had squat toilets in them (this could be a blog of its own, but basically a porcelain thing that you stand or squat on - depending on the task - with a hole in the middle), and a firepit and picnic type table.

That evening we had another great meal of similar foods, though no fish, while sitting at the table in front of the fire. This time we had the added benefit of sampling lao-lao, home-made rice whiskey, with our guide Night. Apparently is it a tradition to take a number of shots of whiskey from a bamboo shot glass throughout dinner, who was I to mess with tradition? It was actually pretty good stuff… especially the last few. After dinner, we learned a couple of interesting hill tribe game/puzzles that you play with a number of little sticks on the picnic table. It is pretty impossible to describe the games, but they were very fun after a few lao-lao’s and because the guide found it hilarious that we couldn’t figure out his puzzles. He spoke no English, but just sat back and laughed to himself that he continually stumped us. After that we sat by the fire for a while and were in bed by about 8:30, completely exhausted.

The second day was basically one long hike for about 6 hours with a few breaks in scenic spots. The landscape was just amazing (I’m sure I’ve been saying this a lot but thats what we kept thinking), we walked along high ridges with views of the mountains which went as far as you could see in every direction, crossed streams on fallen trees and some man-made bamboo bridges, and walked through the most dense, lush jungle we’ve seen. We didn’t see much wildlife to speak of except for two things. The first was what Sara had been longing to see since we started thinking about this trip, along one stretch of trail in the low bushes was a procession of literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of daddy-long legs all crawling in the same direction over and under and around each other in a mass so think you could barely see what was underneath them. Not very exotic, but nothing we had ever imagined seeing either. The second was later in the day as our guide was walking in front, he all of a sudden shrieked and jumped about two feet in the air and said something really fast in Lao and he motioned us not to move forward and we saw a long, skinny, bright green snake climb up into a bush right from where he had almost stepped. He looked at us and said, “Very poisonous.” and the other guide came up from the back of the group and put his hand on Phet’s chest and started laughing and motioning that his heart was beating out of his chest. Ocassionally, Sara and I had been walking in front of the group, but that stopped after this experience…

That night we arrived at our second night’s camp, and I will finish this blog later tonight or tomorrow morning as the coffee is starting to wear off (I think I just blinked for the first time in two hours)…. to be continued soon… alright, I’m back (this blog is real long, sorry if I’m rambling), anyway the second night’s camp was in the coolest place. It was, until about a year ago, a functioning Akha village, but they were forced to move due to the amount of slash and burn farming they had been doing and moved to an area a few hours away that was in a more sustainable terrain. We walked in to see overgrown wooden houses and open pastures with some cows that they kept there to graze, all perched on the side of a hill, high in the mountains. In the evening and the morning it was such a surreal place with the old overgrown village kind of covered in clouds… tough to describe but really cool place.

We also got the full experience of the Lao shower. This is where you take a towel or sarong down to the closest stream and wash yourself in the stream while trying to wear the towel or sarong. While you are boating down the Mekong or driving down any river, you see people doing this everywhere and they make it look real easy. While it was refreshing and fun, depending on the stream you are in, it can be real difficult to balance on a rock, hold soap and your towel on, and splash water on yourself and actually get clean (especially since the way in and out of this particular stream was wet, slippery mud), but we got it done and fortunately we weren’t in a public place like most of the people bathing in this manner.

While the setting of the camp was perfect, the accommodation there was a little suspect. Probably partly due to the fact that people only stayed there about twice a week and they probably didn’t clean the food area that well, in the middle of the night when I woke up in our mosquito nets, it sounded as if we were sleeping outside… with a number of visitors. I heard lots of flapping wings overhead (outside the net fortunately), as well as a lot of scurrying and squeaking elsewhere in the hut, as well as plenty of strange sounds outside. I’m sure part of this was due to the lao whiskey I had consumed earlier and the fact that I was half asleep and it was pitch black, but all I could imagine was if the lights suddenly went on, there would be a hundred bats flying in the small raised ceiling above our sleeping net and a pack of rats running wild all around us eating tomorrows lunch. I didn’t wake Sara and tell her… and hoped that neither of us woke up and had to leave the security of the net and find out what all the other noises were outside on the way to the outhouse.

After a peaceful night’s sleep we woke to a campfire breakfast with coffee and headed to our final stop of the trek, the new Akha village. This was an unbelievable experience (sorry, I’m running out of adjectives). The village again was in a beautiful location, surrounded by farmland and streams, the buildings were fairly new (but not at all modern - bamboo huts, no doors, dirt floor, no electricity, fireplace inside on the ground for cooking, and about the size of two dorm rooms put together into one big room that housed 8 to 10 people…) as they had just moved there a year ago, and there were people and animals everywhere. We saw people farming, fishing, weaving baskets, cooking, watching small children, chopping wood, and building a new hut, as well as kids EVERYWHERE (most families have 7 or playing games or just running around looking like they were having a blast. The kids especially liked when they saw us as they would constantly say hello (sabadee) and laugh when we said it back. And Sara got into a good game of tag with some of the real young ones, that they all seemed to really enjoy. This village only gets small groups like us once a week so its not as familiar for them as it is in Chiang Mai where they have a small handicraft auction outside your hut every night. Along with the people were dogs, cats, chickens, cows, and pigs running around the village freely. It was an amazing sight and pretty overwhelming but we felt very lucky to get to see the place and interact with some of the people. The highlight came when our guide was invited by the chief to have us have lunch in his house, which was a great honor and experience. We sat around a small table on little seats and had a really good meal of pork, fish, vegetables, chili, and of course rice and were able to talk to the chief a lot about the village through our guide who acted as interpreter. The chief seemed to be a really honorable, intelligent man and was really interesting to hear him tell us about the village. It was a great, unique experience.

So, that was the trek… hope I didn’t ramble too much, it was just a really unique, rewarding trip, hopefully we were able to give you an idea of what it was like.

We miss you all a ton, its hard to miss the holidays, but we wish you all a great Christmas and hope you are all doing well. Keep in touch.

Jarrod and Sara

  Hey everybody, we’ve re-entered civilization in Luang Prabang, Laos after a lot of travel and hiking days. Going to try and catch up on the blog right now…. hope everyone is doing well at home in the snow.

So after a long bus ride and a quick night in Chang Khong (Thailand), we crossed the Mekong River via a huge canoe type boat that I am amazed didn’t sink on the journey across… and landed in Huay Xai, an official border crossing city, and went through customs (very simple, pay them, and you get in).

Once across, we boarded a “slow boat” that would take us to Luang Prabang via the Mekong River. The boat was shaped sort of like a really long, skinny oversized row boat (pointed in front, flat in back) and it had wooden seats in rows of two along each side of the boat that would comfortably fit about 70 people (all in seats). When we boarded there were about 90 people on board and we (actually luckily) were told to sit in the very front on the floor with the bags. This actually wasn’t bad since you could move around a little and occasionally stretch out your legs or even lie down if the ten or so people in that section were positioned correctly… It was an interesting experience that would never ever have flown in the U.S.. There ended up being about 120 people scattered around every possible spot on the boat and if more people had turned up, I’m sure that they would have fit more people on.

This was a little aggravating at first as we had specifically heard, “the trip down the Mekong is gorgeous and really fun, as long as they don’t over crowd the boat, which they often do…” but as we got used to the seats and got underway, it wasn’t quite as uncomfortable as is sounds. What made the trip so worth it though was the view. It was just incredible. Basically for 8 straight hours we traveled through non-stop bright green lush mountain ranges on a beautiful river. It wasn’t mountains here or there, it was the entire time. The only time we weren’t seeing a beautiful mountain range was when we were seeing an amazing village propped on stilts on the edge of the river bank, or impossibly maintained farm lands on steep hills and river banks, or small fishing boats, or kids running up and down the banks and playing in the river.  Needless to say, by the end of they day while we were enjoying cold Beerlao (22 oz bottle - $1) coming into the first night stop on our two day trip, we really didn’t mind too much that we were cramped together and uncomfortable (Beerlao’s helped this) and had thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

Our night in Pak Beng was fairly uneventful as we were pretty exhausted and sore from the trip. We took a quick walk through town (very, very small) that had a wild west feel to it for some reason (one long road with restaurants, bars, general stores and people milling about looking like they were up to no good) which was pretty cool. We had a really good dinner on this cool porch overlooking the river (I am convinced that there is not a single restaurant in Southeast Asia that is not mostly outside, its awesome) and went to bed hoping that many of the people on our boat had gotten lost and wouldn’t be joining us the next day.

No such luck. This time we got seats, which we decided were a little better since your space stayed the same and you didn’t have the constant mind game of how can I take over that person’s leg room and how can I go to the bathroom without losing my leg room. Today was more of the same (another 8 hours of stunning landscapes, villlages, etc. that our pictures cannot do justice but will hopefully give you an idea), but by the end of this one we were really, really happy to be done. Even with the most beautiful scenery and very good beer and weather, sitting on a wooden bench, crowded like cattle, for eight or nine hours…. it gets old. So we were really happy to pull into port at Luang Prabang and the end of the journey and check out the coolest city that we have been to so far (more of the city later).

Again, hope everyone’s doing great and please keep in touch. Sorry about not getting back to a lot of you in a while as we haven’t been around the internet in a while, but we’re going to try to catch up in the next couple of days. Hope everyone’s enjoying the holidays… very weird missing it, although some restaurants seemed to have adopt Christmas and are forcing their Laotian staff to dress in Santa hats (will try to get a picture of this as it is quite amusing).

May start writing now or later tonight about the trek we just got back from… talk to everyone soon.

Jarrod and Sara

We are so happy to hear about your engagement and hope that you enjoy every second of this very special time.  Sorry we are not there to celebrate, but promise to make up for it when we come home.  Love you both, Sara and Jarrod

 Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing well. We just got back to Chiang Mai after a three day forest trek in the surrounding mountains, which was fantastic.

We were with a great group of about 12 people and two great Thai guides for our trip. The first day, the bus dropped us off at a trailhead and we had about a two hour hike through these incredibly beautiful farm lands, rice paddies, and forest. The landscape is so different than home and it was such a surreal experience to be hiking through a rice paddy in the woods in Thailand as the sun was coming down…. just amazing.

The first night we arrived at a Karen Hilltribe village where we would have dinner and spend the night. It seemed everyone had mixed emotions about the experience of being in the village and I don’t have time to go over it here, but it was an interesting experience. The people were extremely friendly, tons of kids running around and playing just like kids at home (only some of them had machetes as toys), and adults sitting around campfires talking. It was humbling to see how little they have and it was a very peaceful, relaxing place.

The next day was the biggest hiking day. We hiked for a total of about 4 or 5 hours, but there were many breaks and the hiking was not too difficult. We got to see a lot of nice waterfalls and a few more remote villages. The landscape itself though was really just incredible. There was no way to make the pictures do it any justice, but the best way to imagine it is like you were walking through Disney World’s version of a jungle. Everything seemed oversized and bright green, and when you emerged from the forest it was usually to enter some sort of orchard with huge banana trees or something similar. It was a great place to hike.

The last day we did a little more hiking and emerged in civilization for the more touristy part of this particular trip… bamboo rafting and elephant riding. The bamboo rafting was fun, three of us stood on a long raft consisting of about ten bamboo poles tied together and balanced like on a surf board as we floated down stream (mostly slowly with a couple of quick water parts). We only fell once as we smashed into a rock, but other than that it was pretty smooth. Next we headed to the elephant farm. This was really fun although it wasn’t great seeing the elephants all tied up… but Sara and I rode on a saddle type thing on the back while our mahout rode on the elephants head. It was pretty funny because the elephant in the line behind us was constantly sticking his trunk up and poking us in the back and putting it in between us to try to get a banana. Needless to say we got covered in elephant snot and went through a lot of bananas. At the end we went to a huge bucket for the elephant to drink from and got soaked as they all splashed water on each other and us. It was a lot of fun and the elephants seemed quite relaxed as they had no problem passing wind (more like a hurricane coming from an elephant) and going to the bathroom freely and liberally throughout the trip…

We are heading to Laos today for the next leg of the journey. Keep in touch and we hope you are all having a great December.

Jarrod and Sara

Wow, we have had quite a busy week! We arrived in Chiang Mai last Wednesday which was the King’s 80th Birthday. This was quite a celebration here in Thailand and the plans have been in the works since we arrived at the end of November. He has been king since age 18 and is really loved by the Thai people so the celebrations were huge. We headed out of our guesthouse around 7pm to find out where the party was and walked by a local Wat (temple) that was lit my many small candles that beckoned us to go in and look around a little. We were delighted when a small gathering of novice monks and Thai people invited us in to help light lanterns and lift them into the night sky. It was great to be involved in a small group of local people taking and laughing and having a great time. Lighting the lanterns was no easy task though, as you had to wait for it to fill with heat and smoke and gently coax it into the sky, mine landed in a tree and I was horrified that it would burn down! They just laughed at me a little and all enjoyed throwing stones to coax it down.

We then had a day of Thai food cooking lessons at a farm that was about 20 minutes out of town. We headed there after first going to a local market to get some supplies and learn more about Thai food ingredients. They use many different seasonings here and each dish has a little spicy, salty, sour, and sweet. I never imagined some of the ingredients that they used to make those four flavors. When we got to the farm, we had a tour of some of their crops and saw the natural ingredients that they use like lemon grass, ginger, beans, eggplant, lime leaves, cilantro, and garlic. It was great to get out of the city for a day and enjoy the fresh air and peace and quiet. Our group was about 7 people and we each had our own cooking station. Our teacher, Sue, went through how to make a number of different Thai dishes with us after demonstrating first. The best part was eating the fruits of our labor at the end. We promise to have a Thai food dinner party when we get home, there is no excuse not to as we received a great cookbook at the end of the day.

Miss you all tons! Sara (and Jarrod)

 What’s up everyone? We just heard it snowed back home, sorry about that. It is weird to be here in December, this weather definitely doesn’t make you think about Christmas (although some stores play the music), but I think we will try to enjoy the nice weather anyway…

A few days ago, we finally got away from the city and went to Erawan National Park. This place was beautiful. The main attraction was a two mile hike up this well established trail that passed seven different waterfalls on the same stream. The falls were amazing and a few of them had good swimming holes. Hopefully the pictures will do them some justice. Aside from the falls themselves, the highlight for us was walking up to a bridge about half way up the trail to see a group of tourists gawking at the trees hanging over the stream. As we got closer, we saw that there was a huge group of monkeys playing in the trees, some of which were within arms reach of the bridge we were on. These monkeys were definitely not afraid of humans (as its a pretty popular spot for thai tourists) and a couple jumped on to the railing of the bridge and were running around staring at the tourists. For some reason, a young (20’s) European girl thought that it might be fun to try and pet one of the very small monkeys sitting on the railing in front of us. We looked on in disbelief as she slowly reached out her hand to pet the monkey (who looked back at her as if to say, “Are you kidding me?”). All of a sudden a bigger monkey jumped to a branch directly over her head and reached out and grabbed her by the hair and shook her around a bit as she shrieked. It only lasted a second or two and after it let go and she ran away, the rest of the on lookers slowly looked around and started to laugh hysterically. It seemed the monkeys were laughing too.

The following day we took a 4 hour bus trip to Ayuthaya, the former capital city of Thailand. We only really stayed there for one afternoon, which we spent by renting a bike (about $1 for 5 hours) and cruising around the city checking out the really interesting ruins of the former city. The biking was an experience; trying not to get in an accident with either a car, truck, tuk-tuk, motorcycle, bicycle, elephant, or pedestrian, all of whom compete for the road and path ways with reckless abandon.

Yesterday, was a bit rough as we spent the entire day in transit. 2 hours at the train station waiting for a delayed train, followed by 11 hours on a train to Chiang Mai. The trains actually aren’t too bad as you have a good amount of leg room and they fed us a few snacks and one meal. But they are incredibly bumpy/shaky which makes reading, writing, and playing cards difficult to impossible. By the end of the ride we were extremely anxious to get off.

We are in Chiang Mai now and at first glance, it looks really nice. Tonight is the King’s birthday and is a HUGE national celebration as he is a highly revered leader. It should be really interesting to see all the festivities and to party with the locals and other tourists. We’ll keep you posted.

Please keep in touch, its great to see posts or emails when we get to the internet. Hope everyone is doing real well at home.

Jarrod and Sara

What’s up everyone? Hope everything is going well back home, thanks for all the emails and posts, please keep them coming.

Sorry we haven’t posted in a little while, but haven’t had much internet time. Things are going great and we got to see a ton of Bangkok in the last few days. We’re trying to upload a few photos now but having a little trouble. They need an Owl Watch IT department over here. Anyway, we spent a week in Bangkok and loved exploring the city. It seemed that everywhere we went there was something interesting to see and do. The last couple of days the big activities were attending a Muay-Thai boxing match. The matches themselves were fun to watch, but also sitting in the “third class” seats behind a fence, we got to watch all the gambling that took place. We have absolutely no idea how it worked. In between each round people shouted frantically and put up various fingers at each other, but no money changed hands and there seemed to be no one in charge. It was hilarious to watch, but we wish we knew what the hell was going on. Also, there were young kids who sold refreshments and beer and they loved coming up and talking to us (as we were the only “westerners” in the third class section). As they got more comfortable they started coming up more often and asking us to pronounce words that they had written down and then laughing hysterically when we said them. It was great. We also got our first thai massages at the Wat Pho massage school. These were intense. When we finished Sara said, “Was it me or was that really painful?”, which it was, but still felt great somehow and afterwards we felt so loose and relaxed.

We are currently in Kanchanaburi, which is about a three hour train ride out near Myanmar border (don’t worry, not too close), the home of the Bridge over the River Kwai. We went to the Thailand-Burma Railway Center today which was a great museum detailing the story of the “Death Railway” which was built to connect Thailand to Burma for the Japanese troops. It was built by thousands of Allied POWs in absolutely horrifying conditions. After the museum we walked down to the actual “Bridge Over River Kwai” made famous by the movie. It was an extremely interesting afternoon and it was great to be able to walk over and explore around the bridge.

Tomorrow we’re going to visit the Erawan National Park an hour outside Kanchanaburi… we’ll keep you posted.

Please keep in touch. Hope everyone’s doing well.

Jarrod and Sara