Mongolia pt. 2: Kazakhs

So I boarded a flight to Hovd and was met at the airport by Tilek's younger brother Eljas. Eljas speaks nearly perfect English, and will probably be studying in America soon. From the airport it was 30km to Hovd Soum, his village. When I arrived Hovd Soum was over 99% Kazakh, the other fraction of a percent being made up of me and one peace corps volunteer. I was happy to learn that because the Soum wasn't even mentioned in Lonely Planet, it was likely to stay that way. The next day Tilek, who had quit his job in UB, returned to his home.
One of the first orders of business was visiting an eagle hunter. Traditional Kazakh nomads use golden eagles to hunt game such as rabbits, small dear, foxes and wolves. The eagles are flown only in winter however, and the one I held was too fat and lazy to hunt well. I was given a suit jacket to wear in case the eagle decided to climb off the glove and onto my arm. I later learned that if the eagle had gotten pissed at me, the jacket wouldn't have helped. The bird could have ripped the bicep right of my arm in a matter of seconds, and bad tempered eagles have actually killed human children. Though the eagle wasn't flying, it still needs to eat large quatities of meat to stay healthy. To keep natures cycle intact, we grabbed a shotgun and headed into the brush. After blasting a rabbit and removing the shot, we returned to the bird to watch (and listen) to it rip the bunny to pieces.
A couple days later, it was time for a peace corps picnic back in the main town. It was really like any other picnic, with a couple exceptions. The first was that instead of seagulls harassing us, we had falcons. Dozens of falcons and hawks circled our food, diving to the ground as I threw them pieces of leftover meat. Later in the afternoon, Tilek whistled over a fellow Kazakh, who let us take turns riding his camel, while he worked on a jar of pickles and a can beer we gave him.
On the evening of my second last night, Tilek and I headed into steppe to visit his sister and her husband at there summer campsite (they move their Gers and animals with the seasons). The next morning we jumped on a couple horses and started looking for a gun. This took some time however, because everywhere we stopped we were invited inside for traditional milk tea which would be rude to refuse. After pushing my lactose tolerance to the max, we were locked and loaded. We headed out to the mountains in search of game, but ended up just shooting at targets we set up.
Overall my experiences of Mongolia in general and the Kazakhs in particular have been some of the best in my life. There nomadic lifestyle, hospitality, food, and vodka culture is incredible. If I ever see Sasha Baron Cohen (Borat) in person, I am going to repay my Kazakh friends by shooting him. With all the practice I have had with firearms lately, its doubtful I would miss.

Mongolia pt 1: Mongols

I woke up on the train from Beijing at 11:30am. Suffering from a brutal rice wine/vodka hangover and opened the shade to find everything completely covered in snow! Luckily it was only a fluke occurrence, and it melted shortly afterwards. The train arrived in the capital Ulan-Bator (everyone who speaks English calls it UB), which is kind of a shithole. Of course I had know idea what I was going to do in Mongolia. That quickly changed when I stopped for a slice of cake and met Tilek, who was working at a bakery. We decided that I would go and stay with his family on the other side of the country.
Because I had a few days before my flight, I decided to do some kind of tour in between. The first day I went horse riding with another guy from the hostel. It was really fun, except the guide's sattle broke and he really hurt himself. Thankfully we had two bottles of vodka to drink that night, which also helped me sleep on the crowded floor of his Ger (round fabric tent). The next day was more horse riding, and I moved in with another family, who lived in the middle of nowhere (the scenery pic was taken from the top of a hill nearby). That night I helped them vaccinate sheep by tackling them and carrying over my shoulder to the 'veterinarian' (see video). Back at the Ger I learned some Mongolian kids games, all of which involved using a box full sheeps' ankle bones in some way. The next day I helped them build a new latrine and tried to help them in getting a satellite signal. Because the whole thing was running off a car battery, I convinced them (through charades of course) that we should take the whole operation up to the top of the hill. Assuming that I knew what I was talking about, they carried everything up, only to lose the signal completely. I was called over from trying to fix the satellite dish to watch the eldest son make a small cut in a sheeps belly, then reach inside and disconnect its heart from its lungs. After watching it suffocate to death and get skinned, I was called into the Ger for lunch. On the table, a big pot of sheep stew... that was the only meal I didn't take seconds. That evening I headed back to UB and prepared for my flight.

Beijing and the Great Walls of China

I arrived in Beijing having barely made it on my overbooked flight from Nepal (worst international airport I have ever encountered by the way). Beijing is actually quite a nice city, and if you were colour blind, you might actually think it is beautiful. I say this because it has clean wide streets, lots of trees, and some incredible sites. Unfortunately, the horrible air pollution means that everything beyond 500m in front of you appears to be in different shades of grey. The Chinese authorities have promised to remove millions of cars from the roads to improve the situation before the Olympics. I personally don't think that anything short of uninventing the wheel will make a difference by August.
Now everyone knows about the Great Wall of China, the one built over hundreds of years to keep invading Mongols out of China (see pic). Fewer people know about the much more successful wall that protects Chinese from a far great threat: free thought. Yes, when you turn on a computer there is an invisible wall that stops you going on certain dangerous websites (unfortunately for the Chinese people that includes my blog). I do certainly understand this methodology however. They could just trust their citizens not to look at these harmful sites, but in the event they didn't, cleaning Beijing's air would be impossible: imagine the pollution that sending a row of battle tanks back to Tienanmen Square would cause!

Paragliding and Whitewater Rafting

Paragliding sucks. There, I said it. Well it doesn't suck, but it sure wasn't worth $100. The idea of soaring like an eagle and catching thermals to rise higher in the sky sounds amazing. But when you are just a passenger, suck between the legs of an old French man who keeps asking you 'who is the boss' (yes that actually happened and yes it was traumatic), its not all that great. The upside was the amazing views, and the spiralling aerobatic decent. Overall though I'm glad I did it, if only to check it off the list.

White water rafting was great. It hadn't rained in 2 days so the river was low, very low. But although the rapids were not strong, the clown factor of our crew more than made up for it. Basically I was laughing the entire time. We actually had to get out on rocks in order to push the raft whenever it got stuck, having to quickly jump back on once the river started to take it away. Of course we all fell out of the raft at various times, in one case three of us went in domino style one after the other. Since none of us payed any attention to the 20min safety briefing (except how to straddle the safety kayak), we're lucky nobody actually got hurt.

The Motorcycle Diaries

Nepal is not a country in which civil litigation is a major concern. Case and point: renting a motorcycle. After clearly explaining to the shop owner that I did not know how to ride a motorcycle, writing my name and hotel on a piece of blank paper, and handing over my ATM card as collateral, I was off. Well not really 'off', first I stalled it a couple times in his driveway before lurching it suddenly onto the busy road. Possibly adding to the danger that first day was the shirt I was wearing (and not because it provided absolutely no protection in a fall). Though the shirt was purchased as a souvenir from a market in Lao, the hammer and sickle is the symbol of the Maoist movement in Nepal. While they are now a political party that just won majority in the latest election, only a couple years ago they were waging a civil war that killed over 20,000 people. Thankfully everyone seemed to either like it or at least find humour in me wearing it. I now have only one more day to survive before the motorcycle gets returned.

Kathmandu and Pokhara

Kathmandu and Pokhara are the only two cities I will visit in Nepal, so I feel I should write something about them. I arrived in Kathmandu on 4.20.08 from Bangkok. I had already fulfilled the day's duties by burning one pre-flight, but when I arrived in Thamel, the tourist area of Kathmandu, it wasn't long before a major currency error (wonder how that happened) resulted in my procuring a piece of hash the size of my fist (top pic). Overall Kathmandu has been the most hectic city I have been to so far, and the only place where I would absolutely never want to drive a car. This view was reinforced when my taxi hit a cyclist and the driver had to chase the victim down on foot to show him the scratch his bicycle had made, and to demand payment. Still Kathmandu has a certain charm to it, and I am looking forward to going back.
Pokhara is a smaller city located a 20min flight away from Kathmandu. The thrills started about halfway through the flight when I noticed a screw was coming loose on the wing of the plane. The pilots sounded concerned when I told them upon landing, but before I had entered the terminal they were both back in the cockpit and the engines were starting. Unlike Nepalese aviation safety standards, Pokhara is beautiful. The tourist area here is located right next to a lake with views of the Annapurna mountain range. The lake has large peddle boats that can be rented (see bottom pic). Unlike Kathmandu, there isn't anything to do at night and the town is asleep by midnight. But the hash is a little better and the power goes out a few hours less per day, so we'll call it a tie.

Everest

Shortly after arriving in Nepal, I left for a trek to Mt. Everest. The first leg of the trip was a flight to Lukla airport, which is a tiny strip that literally runs down (20% gradient) the side of a mountain. A two day hike and my guide and I reached Namche Bazar, a mountain village that is great for acclimatizing, using the internet, and getting drunk off moonshine. After Namche the we reached 4000 meters and I got a headache. The human body is not really designed to go to high altitude, and when we do fucked up things start to happen. Some people are fine, some people get headaches and cannot sleep, and other people die. I was in the middle category, I had a headache for over a week. There were two main destinations on my trek: Gokyo Ri (5350m) and Kalapathar (5550m). In between them was a hike over the Cho La pass, which is a giant glacier at 5300m. Gokyo Ri is a 'hill' surrounded by lakes. You can see in the bottom pic, 2 of the lakes and the tiny village of Gokyo, where we stayed two nights. The top pic shows the Khumbu Glacier, and surrounding mountains, Ama Dablam being the most bad ass. The middle pic shows Mt. Everest in the center, the taller looking mountain in the front is Nuptse and is not actually taller (if your not an a complete idiot you probably know that in fact, no mountain is actually taller). Both these pics were taken from the summit of Kalapatar. I also went to basecamp, which was basically a bunch of tents filled with pissed off climbers who paid $50,000 a piece to summit the mountain, but who were barred from doing so because of Chinese paranoia about pro-Tibet protests. On the last days the weather turned to shit and I couldn't see anything, but that wasn't so bad because I had seen it on the way up. Overall a great experience, and one of the highlights of my trip so far.

The Gibbon Experience

Ever experienced a gibbon (species of monkey)? Me neither, didn't see a single one the whole time. How you ask could something that's named after an animal you are supposed to see still be absolutely amazing even if you don't. The answer is quite simple really: treehouses and ziplines. Now I've done ziplining before and I've seen treehouses before too, but nothing like this. There are six treehouses connected by many more ziplines, some almost a kilometer long. Something like this in a developed country would require constant supervision from experienced and mature guides. Hooray for Lao! Our guide was 19 and we only saw him on the hikes and to bring us food, once we arrived at our treehouse we were able to uses the ziplines as much as we wanted by ourselves. A few of us even went ziplining at night (fun, dangerous, and against the rules) when our treehouses' water supply suddenly went dry. Overall definitely one of the highlights of my trip so far. The only drawback was that one of the treehouses had hundreds of bees in it. I don't like bees. If they didn't make honey and sustain our ecosystem through pollination, I would advocate that they be exterminated. Luckily though, the best cure for a bee sting is to zipline half a kilometer over a jungle river valley. Four people on my trip, myself included, can testify to that.

The Siam Paragon

For all you people who think that capitalism is an unfair economic system that disenfranchises the vast majority of the world's population to the benefit of an elite few... you are right. But there is a counter point to all that negative shit: The Siam Paragon mall in Bangkok. Need to buy a set of fitted Hermes luggage for your new Lamborghini? Just drive through the mall from the dealership to the boutique, you could even stop and pick up a Cartier collar for your wife's dog while you are on the way. There is also a massive grocery store that makes Whole Foods look like No Frills, South East Asia's biggest aquarium, and a movie theater with VIP screening rooms (see pic). If happiness could be purchased it would have a boutique at the Paragon, and like everything else that is sold there, the vast majority of the world would not be able to afford it.

Koh Tao

Koh Tao is the greatest place in Thailand. If you disagree with me, you are wrong, deal with it. SCUBA diving is also very fun.

Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor

Now for the happy part of Khmer history (and one which the book I bought on Cambodia did not cover and I therefore know virtually nothing about), the ancient part. The Khmer empire used to cover much of mainland South East Asia. The God Kings of Cambodia dominated over the Thais and Vietnamese, bitter enemies who later overshadowed them in military and economic power. To honor how bad ass they were, the Khmer kings ordered the construction of what are among the most beautiful and well preserved historical buildings I have ever seen: the Temples of Angkor. While the temple complex is sprawling, the highlight for me was Angkor Wat itself (sunrise pic above); the famous three tower building any Kingston resident will recognize from the walls of the many Cambodian restaurants in town. Anybody else, people who perhaps spend their time learning about the world instead of getting shitfaced and eating hangover food, may have noticed that it is also front and center on the Cambodian flag. Tomb Raider was filmed at another temple in the Angkor complex, so fans of Angelina Jolie's tits (is there any other reason to watch that piece of shit?) may also recognize some of the buildings.

Besides Angkor, and the hundreds of hotels that bear its name, the town of Siem Reap is an enjoyable place to be. The food is great and affordable, there is a giant club that has $.75 vodka shots and plays Christmas carols (as you may have guessed I needed to be informed of the music the following afternoon), or if your feel like relaxing, you can retard yourself with a happy pizza from a myriad of establishments. I decided to give back to the community by volunteering for several days teaching. Above you can see a picture of me teaching a group of students how to look like a hobo.... in English! Finally for the broke or cheap traveller (I'm quickly becoming the former), it would be foolish not to mention the abundance of fake books. Need a lonely planet for Nepal, but are only gonna read one chapter? No problem when an almost perfect counterfeit is available for $4.50 at the grocery store (it complemented the fake Nokia cellphone I bought in Lao quite well). So once again, go to Cambodia. If not, take the time to learn more about its history, ancient preferably, so maybe you can fill me in when I get home.

Phnom Penh and Cambodia

Cambodia is an incredible country to visit, but while travelling there, it is impossible to ignore the effects of its violent history. Cambodia began the 20th Century as a French colony along with the rest of 'Indochina' (Lao, Cambodia and Vietnam), and did not gain independence until 1953. Of course it was not long after one arrogant and shortsighted foreign power left than another one, you guessed it the good ol' US of A, began to interfere with its sovereignty. Essentially Cambodia was forced to abandon its neutrality in the commy vs. capitalism battle that was raging in South East Asia. Choosing America, help quickly came in the form of large scale B-52 strikes on rural villages. This combined with the complete ineptitude of the Cambodian government of the time, drove more and more people into supporting the communist Khmer Rouges. When the US backed government was defeated, the Khmer Rouges promptly evacuated all the cities and began one of the most fucked up social experiments in recorded history. Attempting to create a 'peasants paradise', anyone who was educated or possessed professional skills associated with modernity were executed or worked to death. As many as 3 million people may have been killed during Khmer Rouge rule, and it was not until an invasion by Communist Vietnam that the genocide finally stopped. Since then, the Khmer (Cambodian) people have been on the short end of the political stick. Free and fair elections in 1993 were quickly overturn in a coup which produced the present dictatorship. Corruption is rife and evident even to the most casual observer. I noticed that some of the nicest cars in country: Lexus', Benzs, Ranges, ect. had the telltale blue and red RCAF (Royal Cambodian Armed Forces) license plates; you tell me how the hell that happens.

However besides spending a depressing day visiting the Killing Fields (see picture) and S-21 torture center, there is much fun to be had in Phnom Penh. The backpackers area on the lake is beautiful (see picture), weed is accessible and actually good, and there is a vibrant night life. There is also some beautiful colonial French architecture (the frogs didn't suck at everything), including the stunning Raffles Le Royal Hotel (see picture), which of course, I stayed a night in. There is also a shooting range and go-karts, both of which are fun; though I admit the former funnels money (a lot of it believe me) to the corrupt government. All of this is surrounded by the smiling friendly Khmer people who appear, at least on the surface, not to have lost their optimism despite all that has happened to them. So, go to Cambodia, and if not, at least take some time to learn more about its history

The Great Lao Road Trip

After returning to Vang Vieng I was quickly recruited by the staff of Sunset Bar to form a group to rent a minibus. The destination was a festival at Wat Phu on the otherside of the country. Our ragtag group consisted of 4 Canadians, 4 Lao, one Aussie, and one American. The festival was amazing, but the journey was the most fun. The ferries to reach the island where the festival took place looked like they had been assembled the day before from scrap (apparently one sank shortly after we arrived). After the festival we were taken to various sites in Lao (caves, waterfalls, ect). One the way back we picked up some Lao Lao (read rubbing alcohol), and everyone in the van including to a lesser extent the driver indulged. After returning in one piece 5 days later and spending a few more days in Vang Vieng, it was off to Cambodia.

The Lao adventure continues. I left the capital and headed to a small backpacker called Vang Vieng, where I met a bunch of Canadians and got completely wasted. The highlight of this town is tubing down the river (something I did not end up doing). I am now in a city called Luang Prabang, which is a UNESCO heritage city and is quite beautiful. The highlight here is the large waterfall just outside of town (something I did do), which was amazing. I have met some cool people but have also spent some quality time by myself: reading a book, chillin with some monks (who are like 15 years old, have cellphones and smoke cigarettes), or drinking $1 beers watching the sunset. Tomorrow I leave on a 2 day trekking/kayaking trip, which I will explain in my next post.

Leaving Paradise

Yes, I have left the paradise known as Thailand. Why might you ask have I only now begun my blog? The answer is quiet simple: I had someone other than a computer to interact with (Mike Balint), and something better to do than sit in front of a computer (getting shitfaced on beautiful beaches). I am now in Laos. I have heard good things, but since I just got here several hours ago, I cannot speak from personal experience. So as my Laotian adventure unfolds, there will be more posting, and with my fancy new camera (and cheapest in the store tripod), hopefully some cool pictures too.