February-May

We crossed into Vietnam proper on Feb. 19, a year and a day after our first brief visit ended. Our crossing was made more memorable by the fact that at the border Jan switched from using her British passport to using her American one; this caused some suspicion and consternation but with much delay we got across. 

We were delighted to find it warmer than anywhere we had been in a month but not with the “culture shock” of finding our hard-gained Chinese was now of little value.

In a few days we were in Hanoi, which was a home-coming of sorts as we knew and liked the city. While there we hooked up with Gerry’s Aunt Zelda, 85, who had been encouraged by us to take a tour. Later we again saw her in Saigon; she was the hit of her tour group. In the same visit to Hanoi — we stayed there on four different occasions on this trip — we were delighted to spend time with Middletown friends Phyllis and Sid who were on a combined trip to Thailand and Vietnam and via the magic of email had managed to keep us apprised of their whereabouts.

To our surprise, we ended up spending three months in Vietnam, first travelling north to south along the coast, down into the Mekong Delta, then back north through the Central Highlands, and finally up into the far northwest into hill tribe country for a final spectacular visit.

Throughout it all we felt sorry for the Vietnamese people who have had to suffer from misgovernment for so many years. 

During this time we both became the walking wounded. In Saigon, Jan on a bicycle challenged a big truck for the right of way and won a sprained finger. In Dalat, a hill resort with a wonderful climate, Gerry rented a motorbike for the first time and completed a successful day by tumbling off it and getting a few scrapes. He immediately went out riding again.

Northern LAOS

mid May- mid June

We left Hanoi on a Sunday evening for a 20-hour minibus ride to Vientiane, the capital of Laos situated on the Mekong. We spent the next ten days alternating between just sitting back and enjoying the wonderful Vansana Hotel with what amounted to a private swimming pool and doing low-key bicycle touring of the capital. It has dozens of interesting temples and we saw most of them. 

Vang Vieng - From Vientiane we took a half-day bus ride north to Vang Vieng, a backpacker’s paradise. It is a small village on the banks of the Song river and must have more guest houses and restaurants per square mile than any other place in Laos. Its airstrip is one of many American built LS’s (Landing Strips) that date from the pre-1975 civil war.

As befits our advanced age (at least on the backpacker trail), we checked into the best hotel in town (really, only; the other accommodations were guest houses two steps down in quality) and got the most spectacular view for our money. Just across the river was a panorama of green limestone hills that just took the breath away.

We spent four active days visiting villages and caves, temples, and swimming ponds and managed to end up every day at Jan’s favorite cafe where they served boxed red wine for $1 a glass. What a deal.

Luang Prabang - Then it was on to the old Royal capital city of Luang Prabang, a magical place wedged between the Mekong and a tributary. The peninsula is crammed with ancient Buddhist Temples and crowned with a lovely palace museum “given” by the ex-king to the communists. It was always a thrill to walk along the Mekong or view it from high on the hill in the center of town.

The heat of the early rainy season was more than compensated by the deliciously cooling iced fruit shakes that could be bought from little roadside stands for a measly 25 cents.

One of our final days, and an unexpected high point, was a pick-up truck ride for an hour out to a park whose main attraction was a multi-level waterfall with myriad swimming holes reached by climbing slick moss-covered rocks and tree-roots. The climb was well worth it. What a way to cool down!

Northern Roads and the Plain of Jars - From Luang Prabang we hired a station wagon and a driver to take us to the Plain of Jars. Named for huge stone jars probably used for burial, this area was a major battleground between the invading Vietnamese Communists and the U.S. air force. The jars were interesting, but the journey was even more so. We rode on a sometimes paved and sometimes mud-covered two-lane road over numerous mountain passes along high ridges that gave unparalleled views of the terrain. 

The trip by air is only 150 km; by road the winding, rough route is 500 km and takes 2-3 days. Going and coming we stayed in primitive guest house with tiny rooms and slats for walls. The toilets and showers were communal and operated by filling a bucket and pouring. When electricity was available it cut off at 10pm. In spite of poor quality accommodation it was a trip that was not to be missed.

Mighty Mekong to Thailand - The final leg of our first month in Laos was a two-day boat ride up the Mekong river from Luang Prabang to Huay Xai, facing Chiang Kong, Thailand. Our first- day boat carried about 40 people seated two abreast, looking forward; the second day we sat on parallel benches, facing in. Either way, there was no opportunity to roam the boat.

The scenery was good, if not spectacular — being low on the water there were few views to be had. But one can only take so much scenery before turning one’s attention elsewhere, such as reading, playing cards, and talking, which is what all our younger co-passengers soon did and we, by the second day, also did. The ride was enlivened the time one of our fellow passengers fell off the boat as she descended from the roof and we had to go back to pick her up. The other major excitement was provided by the very fast long-tail boats that zoomed by every so often in a crescendo of noise. Would they crash as we had heard happened with a frequency so high that we disdained the idea of getting on them?

We were on the river because we had to either leave Laos and get another visa or try the difficult process of extending our visa. We took option one. Upon arrival in Huay Xai, and with just two minutes to spare to catch the last boat of the day we hopped in a ferry — really, a large canoe — and crossed from Laos into Thailand and from old world to new, from undeveloped to modern nation. Or so it seemed to us.

Northern THAILAND with Family

mid June - early July

When we stepped out of the ferry and ashore in Thailand we found the border closed. No problem! The sign on immigration said to come back tomorrow. So we did and had our passports stamped. In Thailand tourist visas are free for the first 30 days, so we felt we had come to our sort of place.

After two nights on our own we were picked up by Pi Dom and Pi Bol and toured some with them deepening our acquaintance with Northern Thailand, which we had visited with Jan’s brother Dave and his wife Jhap six months earlier. Pi Bol is the sister of Jan’s sister-in-law and Pi Dom is her husband.

Here it really sank in how much the cultures and histories of Laos and Thailand are inextricably linked. Their common history goes back to when predecessor tribes migrated from what today is southern China, and continued as empires were created and disolved. It is still much in evidence by similarity in language, dress, and religious architecture. Ties were renewed by the enormous number of Laotians that fled to Thailand when the communists took over in 1975. Since the economic opening up of Laos there is an additional Thai presence, with its Baht widely accepted.

 Jan found to her surprise that much that she had bought in Laos was actually made in Thailand.

We stayed a week in Ban Sang, on the outskirts of Phayao. Not famous at all now, it has a history longer than Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai and has numerous temples and other sites that make it a very attractive tourist destination — or at least to the tourists writing this. While there we were invited several times to the local high school and on the spur of the moment had to improvise English lessons  and on anti-drug usage. It probably was not justified but we were given some very nice souvenirs for our efforts.

Having visited hill tribes in northern Vietnam and northeastern Laos, Gerry was anxious to see what, if anything, was left of tribal culture in the much more economically developed Thailand. The answer was quite a lot as we discovered in a four day stay in the Wawi valley and the surrounding hills. While only 70 kilometers from Chiang Rai it was decades and decades behind it (and Phayao) in development. We visited a middle school that was the poor coursin of their city brethern. We saw Akha and Chinese villages where roads are still unpaved and houses simple, thanks, largely to the hospitality the school principal, Mr. Jesda, who invited us into his home and introduced us to his friends in nearby villages. On one very long hike we visited villages reachable only on foot and saw tribes people making their way to town carrying goods on their heads and on tiny horses.

LAOS REVISITED - LUANG NAM THA AND MUANG SING

Early July

Our first Laotian visa ran out before we could see the most northern reaches. With a new 15 day visa in hand we interrupted our stay in Thailand and crossed back across the Mekong. We headed in-country and north, taking an 8-hour pick-up bus (two benches carry 10-12 people) along an unpaved road through more beautiful country and passing by a few dozen remote villages of homes on stilts to Luang Nam Tha (LNT), one of the most remote of Laotian provincial capitals.

We stayed in LNT only long enough to find a bus heading further inland to Muang Sing, a village just 8 km from the Chinese border where we had heard of a nice guest house called Adima. We found the bus and the guest house and settled there in a rustic two-person cabin for a four-day stay.

Once again, Gerry was fascinated to find numerous tribes people, living this time in an even more primitive state than those we had seen in Vietnam and Thailand. Here Yeo tribes women criss-crossed the nearby border with China carrying their goods in baskets supported by thump lines (straps that fit on the forehead) and wearing traditional skirts and head-dresses and bare-breasted shirts. Gerry tried one on and nearly fell over backwards.

We were in the middle of the rainy season at this time and had our share of downpours. Gerry hiked in spite of the rain and in spite of the inevitable leeches. Even Jan was surprised on returning from one hike to find a tell-tale patch of red blood on her ankle sock. The offending leech was long gone, however.

After visiting the Muang Sing market for some locally made fabrics, we got back on the bus and headed back to LNT and another, more upscale guest house, called the Boat Landing (BLGH). Here we stayed for four days of comparative luxury, enjoying some delicious dishes on the open-air veranda overlooking the Nam Tha. Being off-season, we got our two-person cabin for a very reasonable $10 a night. We got in lots of reading, particularly enjoying “The Crossman Diaries” punctuated by walks to the nearby villages where we learned all about silk worms and silk weaving.

In LNT we encountered the problems not only of intermittent electricity supply but also of varying voltage. The voltage was so unreliable that Gerry’s laptop refused to run. At Adima we had no electricity and showered by candlelight. Then we leaned that the main switch was off and voila — there was light. And enough electricity for diary writing and processing of digital photos. In BLGH we still didn’t have 24-hour electricity, but the guest house’s generator provided a much steadier voltage than the other hotel. 

THAILAND - Again

Late July - mid August

Northern Thailand - Our return to Thailand was a bit more dramatic than we planned. Jan caught a virus that she was afraid at first might be malaria. As a result we left BLGH suddenly and made a mad dash for the border — if, that is, you can call an 11-hour pickup bus drive a mad dash. We took the same route back that we came on but rains had deteriorated the road. While Gerry, in good health, enjoyed the ride, Jan just hung on and hoped for survival. Fortunately, on arrival in Thailand the doctor confirmed that the problem was not malaria - oof! Recovery was made easier with the TLC offered at the Punkeaw-Sonphao-Bates compound in Ban Sang. 

The rest of the month was spent making a third trip to Chiang Mai where we stayed for the first time (excepting 1978) by ourselves and had a chance to get to know the city in a relaxed fashion. Twice we rented a car to take us to the top of the highest mountain in Thailand and twice we got thoroughly lost as all the signs were in Thai script and all the helpful people spoke only Thai. We had a great time and saw more wonderful countryside and temples.

Phimai and Phanom Rong - After a brief trip to Bangkok to fix Gerry’s ailing computer and buy Jan a birthday present, we set our sights on Cambodia. En route, though, we decided we had to see the two sights that the Michelin Guide gave three stars to — the Phimai and Phanom Rong Khmer style (circa 1100 AD) temples near the Cambodian border. We got to them via a brief stop at the Kao Yai national park where we did not see a tiger or elephant but did see a monitor lizard, great hornbill, and literally millions of bats — and a cobra, that we unfortunately took for a stick.

The temples were amazing. We wondered at first if we had perhaps spoiled the effect of Angkor Wat when we saw how wonderfully well these two Khmer temples had been restored. They were quite a revelation to us as we were completely ignorant of Khmer art and architecture, although we did recognize similarities with the Cham indianized culture of central Vietnam. The only sour note was the fact that Gerry managed to twist his ankle while stumbling in the dark inside Phanom Rong. His injury was fortunately hardly slowed him down.

ANGKOR WAT, PHNOM PENH, SIHANOUKVILLE, CAMBODIA

mid August - mid September

We crossed the Thai border into Cambodia at Aranyaprathat and had another memorarable bus trip where for hours on end we drove through shimmering green rice fields that stretched to the horizon, only occasionally marked by a small hill (by Rockies and Alps standards).

By late afternoon we were in Siem Reap, the dusty gateway to the Angkor temples and getting ourselves organized for a week of visiting them - they lie scatter over many square kilometers, as near as 6 kilometers and as far as 50 km from Siem Reap.

A highlight of our trip to Angkor Wat was the fact that we got to share it with Jan’s brother Dave and his wife Jhap. We spent a delightful three days with them exploring the city of Angkor and other outposts of Khmer architecture and then when they went off to Phnom Penh we spent another two days revisiting our favorite sites and letting them get truly embedded in our memories. It is hard to describe the number and variety of sites in Angkor city and its environs. There are temples big and small, carvings both gigantic and delicate, pyramids and bas reliefs galore. Truly an unforgettable experience.

Phnom Penh by contrast was easily forgettable. We stayed only four days and except for the wonderful Russian market we found little of interest.

Our next stop was Sihanoukville, a beach resort on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. We liked it so much we stayed ten days doing not very much of anything - there wasn’t much of anything to do - except for eating, sleeping, and lazing on the beach. A typical day started with  breakfast on the balcony, a look at CNN, a morning running into afternoon of studying Cambodian history and using the computer, followed by our beach stay. Our only real outing was by rented motorbike (now mastered by Gerry) to Ream National Park, 20 km away. It was hard to leave.

We did so on a morning where a violent storm preceded our boarding the “torpedo” boat that would take us to the Thai  border. Jan was pretty sorry we had left when our boat ended up nearly on its side in seas tossed up by the thunderstorm. But we survived and arrived at the border post late afternoon on September 9 just before it was due to close. We were in line with our passports when Gerry spotted taped to the wall a flyer from a — the — nearby resort hotel. On the spur of the moment we opted for two more days in Cambodia taking advantage of a wonderful pool. 

BANKGKOK and ANCIENT CAPITALS in THAILAND

late September

At noon on Sept. 11 we finally crossed over the border and headed for Bangkok. We arrived in our hotel there at 8 p.m. Bangkok time, 9 a.m. New York time, to learn of the terrorist attacks. Needless to say we spent the next hours and days glued to the TV.

Our final Thai excursion was to discover the ancient capitals of Ayuttaya and Lopburi. The heat and humidity of the rainy season made being a tourist somewhat sweaty, but riding our rented bikes helped us stay cool and the monkeys of Lopburi helped us maintain a sense of humor! Lopburi was a coda to our growing sense of Khmer architecture and history. It was a joy to discover that we recongized the similarities between this once Khmer outpost and the works we had seen in Angkor.

Returning by train from Lopburi to Ayuttaya we had the longest and most beautiful sunset. Maybe our interest in it is why we missed our stop and had to make our way back from the station beyond Ayuttaya.

Back in Bangkok, a rendezvous with Jan’s brother Dave and his wife Jhap fed Jan’s homesickness. It was finally time to shop around for that great deal and after 18 months leave southeast asia and head for England. We found the air ticket we wanted, bought it September 26, and spent our few remaining days in the pool and returning to some of our better liked sites in Bangkok.

DARLINGTON & ENGLAND

October - mid November

The return to Albion was on Sri Lanka airlines via Colombo and the Maldives. The first flight was at night but the second segment gave magnificent views of coral atolls that make up the Maldives — so magnificent that we even dreamed of paying the exorbitant price to vacation there — and much of the Arabian peninsula, where we flew over places where, as it turned out, just a few weeks later British troops would be conducting exercises and Americans doing warm ups for going to Afghanistan

Jan worried about coming to England after the summer, expecting cold, damp weather. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Engand and we had the warmest, driest October on record! We sometimes pinched ourselves in disbelief. We took full advantage of the weather and spent many days walking or cycling in the nearby countryside.

We also enjoyed playing host to the family and simultaneously renewing our culinary skills. For 18 months we had rarely been able to cook, and then only the simplest things. Now we became serial chefs, inviting relatives by twos and fours to be our guinea pigs. Fortunately, the good weather meant that we could work off all of those Sunday dinners with Yorkshire puddings.

It wasn’t only family that we saw, as we renewed our links with friends in Darlington, Scotland, and places farther south. We also renewed our acquaintance with the British press. For most of our absence we had been news starved. It’s true that several times we returned from HK to Shenzhen with a pile of international papers collected and held for us by our friend Virginia. But these were like rare berries on tumbleweed. Now we could indulge all we wanted in sweet berries (the right wing press) and sour berries (the left wing press). Fortunately, our digestion was up to our appetite (but just, given the craven views of some).

THANKSGIVING in USA

mid November - mid December

As November loomed, the bargain basement airfares started to grab our attention. We had not been to the US for over two years and both felt it was time to go back rather than to continue to rely solely on emails. So mid-November saw us head for the airport. We spent a great four weeks in the States visiting our friends (Moshe, Cathy, Sue, Jemma, Roberta) in NYC, our former neighbors and friends in and around Middletown (the Daggetts, Ryders, Lius, Huangs, Jan’s bridge buddies, and more) and even visiting former colleagues and friends in Scottsville, VA (Caroline), Atlanta, GA (Merrill & Paula, the Sonphaos), and Charleston, SC (Mike & Beth).

We started with New York City and walked the streets from north Manhattan to the remains of the World Trade Center. Compared to the great damage that was once evident, all was now cleaned up. We saw nothing of the vast layer of ash and talcum and building dust that initially covered the area. What we saw was absence, absence of an immense presence that used to fill the sky. We had seen it many times from the Hudson river, as one part, as the central part, of a magnificent skyline. We had seen it as an immense height for which we had to crane our necks backward to see its fullness. And now we saw from behind a tall fence covered by blue tarp, fragments of the very recognizable wall, hardly taller than the cranes working to clean the place. In a few weeks after our visit they too would be gone.

Thanksgiving brought us back to our former suburban lives. We ate and stayed with one set of former neighbors, the Daggetts, and they had as guests another, the Ryders. We saw our old house, fundamentally unchanged, but still renewed — or, at least renewed in the eyes of its new owners. They had taken two of Gerry’s precious trees (we hear a hurrah from Jan, ever seeking more light), washed the cedar shakes so that they had the golden yellow of their youth, and, we hear, made other changes inside. 

Many of our friends have an association with AT&T and/or its telecom offspring such as Lucent, Telcordia, and Tellium. All have fallen on hard times in the last two years as telecoms (and dot coms) have gone from boom to very bust. Happily for us and for them, none were out of a job, or at least had taken a golden handshake before the tidal wave of collapse had hit them. But they had many tales of their colleagues who were now on the beach.

Like all suburbanites we had been owners of a car and daily users thereof. But in 2001 we had only driven ourselves twice, and that was in Thailand when we got thoroughly lost. So now  renting a car and driving south for two weeks felt like such an adventure. How we enjoyed being behind the wheel on the open road. We did about 2400 miles (4000 km) and were very impressed that we spent less than $75 on gasoline (petrol).

Besides seeing friends and driving, our big use of time was visiting Civil War battlefields. We visited seven new ones, including Fort Moultrie, the site of the real beginning of the civil war, and Petersburg, the denoument.

After our pendulum reached the extreme of is motion at Savannah (very much associated with antebellum South and the civil war; we liked it a lot) we paused, as pendulums do, and then began our northward return. In a week we were back in NJ for our last taste of our former lives and then in ten days were in Manhattan where we again walked the streets, enjoying Central Park, Times Square, and Fifth Avenue again. And then it was over.

CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND

end of December

The end of the year found us back in Darlington to spend the holidays with Jan’s family. We set up our first Christmas tree  in three years and engaged in a round of Christmas visits and gift exchanges. 

The next stage in our mega-journey will be a 7-day holiday in Egypt followed by 2 months or so in Israel. Come visit!

Now as the new year is about to commence we hope that those of you who are still awake will have a wonderful holiday season and a terrific year in 2002.

Jan and Gerry