Travelling

START OF THE TRIP TO SOUTH-EAST ASIA

Finally, half way through my sabbatical, I did move to South-East Asia (SEA). Encouraged by many people who were interested in knowing how my trip was going, I have decided to share my impressions and thoughts about this trip in this travel blog. 

As any big trip of mine, this one didn't start smoothly either. My initial plan was to start discovering the region from the ancient capital of Laos, Luang-Prabang. I booked a one-way flight from Paris to Luang-Prabang via Bangkok, but ten days prior to the trip the airline company cancelled the second flight and suggested another flight 26 hours later. I went through a lot of discussions with the intermediary agency via which I booked the tickets in vain, and finally I took my flight without any of the discussed changes being confirmed. My decision of not waiting for 26 hours in Bangkok was final, and I came up with a new plan consisted of arriving to Bangkok, continuing with a flight to Chiang Rai in the north-east of Tailand and then taking a slow boat to Luang-Prabang.  

That was it, on Feb 6, I took my flight from Paris to Bangkok... The whole trip from the start was surrounded by uncertainty and let-see-what-life-brings atmosphere. I am a person who likes to control pretty much everything, and here I was about to give it up. But this journey may also turn in just one of the most amazing experiences in my life … 

I arrived well to Bangkok and had no problem to buy a ticket to Chiang Rai.  Things were going well - next flight was just in two hours and I could buy a relatively cheap tickets (that would be even reimbursed by the airline company later). 

And here the true journey began, I arrived to Chiang Rai. I love Free telecom company that gives you 25GB of 3G in multiple countries around the world, and Thailand being on the list was a great news upon my arrival. I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel and was positively surprised that the taxi driver spoke good English. The first thing he said was that it was unimaginable for a thai woman to travel alone. I would hear it often since then, also from local women who would admire what I was doing. At the same time, I would meet many solo female travellers from all the world, and the first ones were already waiting for me on the border from Thailand to Laos :)

FIRST STOP: CHIANG RAI (THAILAND)

Chiang Rai turned out to be very nice, with a very warm and pleasant weather, a lot of Buddhist Temples, a street of thai massage salons and a night bazaar with lovely live guitar music. So see by yourself ;-)

 FROM THAILAND TO LAOS BY SLOW BOAT

So on day three of my stay in SEA, early morning I got into a van to get to the Thailand-Laos border just two hours drive from Chiang Rai. Border-crossing went smoothly, and shortly after, I arrived to Huai Xai to get on the boat for Luang Prabang by the Mekong river. When booking a ticket with an agency organising the whole trip from Chiang Rai to Luang Prabang, I asked if I would get an assigned seat on the boat. The answer was positive, but the reality was different. Seats with such numbers even didn't exist, and nobody could care less; so first come first served. That was a true mess. I ended up being in one boat while my backpack was in another. Nevertheless, this mess spoiled nothing. I very much enjoyed this little journey of about six hours on a slow boat. 

This was so peaceful. Beautiful landscapes of small mountains and plains covered by tropical forests. Swirling water. Passing by boats. You could see people living by the river who would wash their cloths or children playing in the water.

On some occasion you could see burning fields but the air was quite clean. The burning season was only starting. I learnt  before coming to Thailand that farmers in Nothern Thailand and Laos practice agricultural burning, practice of setting fire to cultivated fields to clear stubble, weeds and waste before sowing a new crop. During this season which should start in about a month the sky is covered by the smog and the air quality becomes so bad that it is hard to breathe and certainly bad for health. This practice common around the world is economical but very unsustainable as it produces large amounts of the particle pollutant black carbon and reduces the fertility of soil. For the moment I was observing this practice from far, asking questions to myself, judging a bit, but later on I would get very close to it, almost hands-in, and I would have to re-assess my thinking. 

Another very sad observation during travelling is the amount of plastic used and amount of waste produced and spread around. Plastic became so indispensable and ubiqutous - everything is wrapped and packed in plastic. Recycling is limited if any. Culture of collecting waste and bringing it to trash bins is often inexistent both from locals and from tourists. So you see trash all around flowing in the river, in the sea, in nature. While cities and towns are managed pretty well, you see much less or no trash there, nature remains defenceless. And this is something that I always found disturbing and behind my comprehension: how can people live in a place or come and enjoy it and just throw away whatever is not needed anymore? Is special education needed to understand that littering is bad and inappropriate?  Is it the absence of any consideration for nature? 

I got interested in the problem of waste in Laos and more generally in developing countries, and I invited a Lao Waste management expert, Souksaveuy Keotimchahn, to talk about this problem in my podcast. You can check the episode here. The problem of waste turned out to be complex, and it requires coordination and work of multiple agents - governments to provide legislation and necessary facilities, business to provide technical solutions and reduce packaging, and people to do their bit to use available facilites and sort waste if possible. For example, in Laos people burn or throw away waste because there are either no facilities for waste disposal or because they have to pay fees for waste collection and management, and people naturally prefer to save money.  Another problem is that companies use a lot of packaging, and people end up with all the platic and waste by using these products. One way of solving the waste problem in emerging (and developed) countries would be to regulate international corporations who produce this packaging - next turning to waste - in the first place. It has probably been a long digression from my main story, but the problem is so huge and ubiquitous, so it is actually a part of my journey. 

The boat was full with tourists, probably around thirty people. The majority was young (20+) European or American, but there was also a number of Asian tourists. Some old people, like 60, even 70+, and a couple of families with children completed the picture. 

FIRST DESTINATION: LUANG PRABANG 

Finally in Luang Prabang, the ancient capital of Laos with a large cite under UNESCO protection. 

I fell in love with Luang Prabang (LP hereafter) from the first sight, and spent here around 10 days. It is a pretty big city, though with only about 55 thousand inhabitants. The centre of the city is located on a peninsula at the confluence of the Nam Khan and Mekong River. What I liked about LP is its atmosphere: walking around and getting lost in the small streets, discovering multiple Buddhist temples, admiring fine houses of the French colonial style, and enjoying beauty and fragrancy of exotic plants. Combine it with multiple restaurants by Mekong river, variety of food on the night and morning markets and you get a perfect place :)

TEMPLES

THE CITY SPIRIT

FOOOOOD

Night markets are common in Asia. Food courts in big malls probably have their origins from Asian night markets. It is essentially a square with food stalls around and tables in the middle. You order your food and sit down at a table. The question not to ask is how it is all cooked, just pray that you don't get sick. Most of the time you don't :) but still stories about a couple of days of diarrhea or nausea every now and then are commun among backpackers. Actually, as funny as it is, this is one of the most popular topics that backpackers talk about: who was sick, when and how bad it was. Interestingly, people take it just as part of the travel package and keep eating all kind of food and beverages. Personally, to most of these things, I wouldn't even come close, like fried rats and dogs and blood of freshly cut chicken (this I heard from some travellers I met). 

Now back to the market, the variety of meat on the market was mind-blowing. True or not, by strolling around Asian night and day markets, I had an impression that Asian people ate all parts of animals, and almost all animals too. 

Overall, the food is really good. It has a lot of flavor. Lao people eat very spicy food, but you can also order non-spicy, and I almost never had a problem with dishes being too spicy hot. You almost never see bread except in some more international restaurants. Rice replaces bread here, and sticky rice is rolled up in small balls and eaten with hands, thus really resembling bread. Variety of vegetables and herbs is rich, and being vegetarian is really easy.  

My big food discovery was mango sticky rice. It is nothing fancy, simply rice cooked in coconut milk and served with fresh mango, but it is really tasty. And restaurants try to innovate, but the simpler the better. 

CULTURE AND TRADITIONS

Alm is a Buddhist tradition when monks pass every morning by the streets to get some food for the day, usually a bowl of sticky rice. For me, preservation of this tradition itself is questionable, but turning this tradition into tourists' attraction (for tourists mostly from other Asian countries) is even more questionable. Sits and food for tourists are prepared in advance. Tourists are brought in groups and instructed what to do.  They often give candies and buscuits that monks do not eat. According to the locals, that was not appreciated neither by local people nor by monks. Later on, in a small town, I would discover a true ceremony which was sincere and touching.

Thanks to a group of French that I met, I went to a Royal Opera. It was certainly worth seeing, but the tradition is very different from anything I have seen and used to :) The same was true for my French friends, with some having a good nap during the performance. To summarize, the performance is aligned with a slow and hasteless pace of life in the country, though I must admit not knowing the language impedes a proper appreciation of the show.

Something that I liked much more was a storytelling theatre. A storyteller tells you stories, local legends and myths, accompanied by the national instrument, khène. And a great advantage he tells them in English!

OUTSIDE OF LUANG PRABANG

Just 30 minutes tuk-tuk drive from LP is Kuang Si waterfall, one of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen. It consists of multiple pools with water of zian color. Together with my new French friends, we spent there three hours, and it was not enough. The way to the waterfall with rice fields of an amazing green color greatly contributes to the experience. 

On an another day, we ventured to cross the Mekong river and found ourselves in a completely different surrounding. It was not anymore a city but a deep village with goats crossing the road and bamboo and brick houses alternating. We went to an organic farm BanSuanAiAoun Organic founded by a 30-year old man, and the contrast of the green farm next to completely yellow and dry landscape was stunning.

This is a burning season, and burning fields were all around. Most of the days you could smell some smog, but on certain days the air pollution was so bad that I wore a mask, and a usually beautiful sunset on Mekong looked more like an apocalypse. 

CONTRASTS OF A COUNTRY IN DEVELOPMENT

If there is one thing that attracts your attention in a developping country, it is its contrasts: two-stores "mansions" with two cars stand next to bamboo houses; children from very poor families playing on smartphones; trash dumped on sideroads or burned on the streets; or solar panels used to light the bamboo bridge that itself is built every 6 months after the end of the rainy season. Crossing the bridge is not free,  the passage fee is paid to the family who builds and maintains it. And, of course, the contrast between cities and remote villages. 

What this contrast reminds me about is that development is a process. It reminds me that not long time ago other countries went the same path. It reminds me that that the reality is not black and white, all good or all bad. Things change, and we can make change happen. Sometimes things change too slowly for one's taste, but it is important to keep moving and if needed correcting our direction on the way. And certain things are key and help open other doors. 

I thought it was amazing that kids even in poorest communities have smartphones. I thought with everything that internet offers they can have access to the best educational sources from over the world, like Coursera, and get out of poverty without going to a university that their families cannot afford. What I realised is that to be able to use it, one actually has to know English. Some people with whom I talked seemed knowing English, but … they didn't know how to read and write in English. All they knew was how to speak English, essentially learning it from tourists. And bingo! literacy! something that I, and probably many of us, take for granted is really key for getting out of poverty and having an opportunity for a decent life. Now education of kids is mandatory in most countries, and English is part of the curriculum, however, I would say (without any expert judgement) that correlation between the quality of education and country development is very strong, and mutually reinforcing. 

One nice initiative in Luang Prabang which I found inspiring is Big Brother Mouse. Their main mission is to publish books for Lao children, make books available even in remote areas and promote reading, but they also organise a place where local kids can meet foreigners and practice their English. The place is open every day for two hours in the morning and for two hours in the afternoon, and any foreigner can drop by and just talk to one or two kids and help them improve their English. I thought that this is a sample initiative that can be easily replicated in other places. What I noticed is that most western tourists, at least backpackers that I met, had very good intentions, were respectful and interested in the countries they were visiting, and were eager to help too.

What I am saying here is not a revelation in any general sense, and a reader may say it is all obvious. Probably so, but it was a revelation for me. After living for years in a certain bubble, and only reading about various problems around the world, this time I was on the way to discover the world as it is and see the process of development in progress. Facing all the hardship, I was asking myself questions what should be done, where do you start, and many other that I will share later in this blog.

SECOND DESTINATION: ELEPHANT CONSERVATION CENTER IN SAYABOURY

Elephant conservation center (ECC)

I stayed as a volunteer in the ECC for one week. I ended up not doing much for the Center as it was still just recovering from the COVID and didn’t yet have fully-fledged work program for volunteers. But I enjoyed a lot staying in the nature, observing elephants and learning about these amazing animals.

There are more or less three types of elephant centers in Thailand and Laos. The first type is to be avoided as it exploits animals for tourism purposes. There you are offered to ride animals, to feed them and to do other type of “fun” activities. Second type is a bit better but has to be carefully checked for their values and animal care. They save animals from captivity, who worked in logging or tourism, and take care of animals. However, tourists are still allowed quite close contact with elephants such as bathing, feeding and touching them. The third type is conservation centers, like the ECC. Their objective is to save elephants from the capture, re-wild them and run breeding programs to increase the population. You can learn a lot about animals, observe them, but no close contact is allowed to prevent elephants building relationships with humans which will later impede their capacity to live in nature.

The situation with elephants in the South-East Asia and, particularly, in Laos is very bad. Laos was known as a country of million elephants, now only about 800 animals remain with half of them still being in captivity. For decades, if not centuries, elephants have been used for hard work as tree logging, for example, that progressively led to the reduction of elephant population. The immediate association is with horses in Europe. So why then elephants are at the brink of extinction while horses are not? The main reason is in the reproduction system. Elephants remain pregnant for twenty-two months. Baby elephants need their mothers until 6-8 years old. This means that for 8-10 years, elephants are out of work. Elephant owners prevent elephants from having children and use them as labor force for a very long period, up to 70 years. In more recent period, they would also use chemicals to limit elephant sexuality as animals, and particularly, males become more aggressive during mating periods.

Some other interesting facts about elephants include that they are very intelligent, very emotional and social animals. Most of elephant behavior is taught by their mothers and peers. For example, animals saved from captivity where they were alone do not know how to reproduce, do not know how to socialize, do not know how to take care of their babies even if they get one.

The socialization sessions in the Center are rather a sad picture to see. Instead of close connections and touching, elephants simply spread around the area, minding their own business. One can also notice stress experienced by some elephants that is reflected in stereotypical behavior, like swinging or “dancing”, body movement from one side to the other. After participating in an elephant festival, some elephants came back and did this swinging all the time. Even if elephants live in the Conservation Center, some of them belong to the Lao Government and are obliged to participate in annual elephant festival.

Some tips for travelers:

-          Do not ride elephants. From physiological point of view, only riding on elephants’ neck is ok. Riding on elephants’ back is not good for elephants. Most of the time, a sit for tourists is put on elephants’ back. What is worse is that riding elephants means that these intelligent and social animals are kept in captivity and separated from their herd; they are not allowed to reproduce and their natural reproduction processes are impeded, sometimes by using chemical injections.

-          Choose well elephant centers that you visit. Some of them may not have high standards and values for animal treatment. Information is available in Internet. 

-          Good elephant centers may be a bit expensive but it is for a good cause. Keeping elephants (feeding, medical treatment), paying staff, buying from captivity is expensive.

People

One of the advantages of staying in the Center for one week was to meet people. Every day new visitors arrived and stayed for 1-3 nights. In one week, I met from 50 to 70 people, and it was an interesting experience. People were from all over the world, had different professions (producer of documentary movies for Netflix, photographer, accountants, teachers, IT specialists, architect, specialists in sustainable development, even a music director of the Opera Garnier) but at the same time quite similar in values. Three most common elements were, of course, love for nature, love for travelling and concern for environment.

Thousands ways of travelling.

This theme started already at the big table in Peter’s guesthouse in Luang Prabang. For more than a week, I met guests at that welcoming table who told their stories. And here, in the Elephant Center, we also had a big table, where people shared their passion for travelling and their approaches to do it.

I would assume that for most people in my surrounding believe that travelling requires several things: money, free time or free work schedule, being young, knowing languages, potentially freedom from family duties. No doubt being young, having money, being free of duties and easy work schedule help, but what I realized is that the only thing you really need is the passion to travel, the passion to discover new things and new ways of living.

Please note that I make no judgement of which way of living is better. I was just surprised to discover how differently people thought and organized their lives, and how they valued different things. Initially, either while talking to other people or just thinking about it by myself, I was somewhat coming to the same notions: objectives, achievements, efficiency, etc. all office jargon. I was looking at (and probably judging) everything via this paradigm. It took me some time to embrace that people can live for pleasure of living and they do not need to achieve anything at all if they wish so and if they are happy as they are. It is my mindset always requires to be faster, higher and stronger, but this is not the only (and maybe even far from the best) way of living.

As many people around me, including me, are often focused on building careers, being promoted, earning money, etc. (again, I am not saying it in any negative sense; building careers can be for a very good cause, and earning money is important to give best to the loved ones or to pursue one’s passion), travelers organize their lives around travelling. Some people choose a profession that allows them to travel, like a ship cook. Others negotiate to work hard nine months and then have three-months’ leave every year. One couple travelled this way all their life even with young kids. Another couple accumulated vacations to take three months off and travelled with 6- and 8-years old kids. Many young people take a gap year, they do some work here and there which allow them to finance travelling. And this is without talking about freelancers who now can work from anywhere and retired people who can travel or live in other countries. 

It was an interesting break in perspective of what people value in their lives. Most of the time we are surrounded by like-minded people and we see only one way of living, it may even seem the only way of living. Travelling and meeting so different people makes quite a shift.

In one of the discussions with life-long travelers, I discovered the spirit of travelling, which can be equal to the spirit of life. In fact, travelling is really like a small condensed life. Early in my travelling, I was quite concerned where to go, what to do, what not to miss, to see everything, and there was a lot of thinking about what’s next. I was essentially applying my way of living to my journey. But the journey had no final objective, it was going to end in some months anyway, so there was certainly no rush to get through all the steps ASAP.  And of course, there was no way I could see everything, so no need to do box-ticking. The only objective of the journey was to be present in the moment, experience it and enjoy it. I must say it took me many weeks to start feeling it. To choose a place, to stay there if I like or to move on. And now I want to bring this philosophy to my life. We all know how the life ends. The goal is to be here and enjoy it. Enjoy every moment and every experience, because in any case, that’s what it is all about.