We Wander — Mark & Meghan’s World Travels

After successfully reuniting with Mike and Sarah in Bangkok, we headed east by bus. Our destination: Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor in Cambodia. It was a long day of bus travel, with a slow border crossing in the middle of it, but we arrived in Siem Reap in one piece and early enough to plan our expedition to the temples for the following day. The idea was to leave at 5:00am by tuk-tuk in order to be at the temples for sunrise. We were in for a day of heat, sweat, and ancient ruins. This was a destination that we’d been looking forward to for some time, and we’d finally arrived. We went to sleep with excited minds.

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Our last destination in Laos was the capital, Vientiane, where we were meeting our friend Rachel for a short visit. We took the bus from Vang Vieng (which left on Laos time, meaning about an hour late) and arrived in the city at dusk. Vientiane is a small capital, with a population of just over 200,000 people. Still, it felt pretty big after some of the smaller places we’d been recently.

We hopped in a tuk-tuk from the bus station and went in search of Rachel’s guesthouse. When we found it, she was waiting for us with refreshingly cold Beer Lao at the ready. It was so great to see a friendly face from back home! We only had one day to hang out before Rachel had to carry on to Bangladesh, so we made the most of it.

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One of the things that makes Vang Vieng a destination for so many travelers (besides tubing — more on that later) is the landscape that surrounds it. In nearly every direction, huge limestone karsts, or cliffs, soar upwards in sheer masses. And as it that weren’t enough on its own, the karsts are full of caves and clear, cool springs. We had to get up close, so we rented a motorbike in Vang Vieng and headed west on a bumpy gravel road that stretched towards the karsts through the rural countryside.

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Luang Prabang is a city tucked in between the Mekong River and the Nam Khan river, surrounded by forested mountains and full of temples. Our first morning there, we woke up feeling fresh and recovered from our two day boat journey, and eased ourselves out into the city. This was our first true destination in Laos, and we were excited.

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Our second stop en route to Laos was the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. Although the city is riddled with noisy traffic and is ridiculously westernized, it is still very charming. The central part of the city, where most of the tourists are concentrated, is islanded off by a moat/canal keeping most of the traffic to the perimeter. We spent just two nights in Chiang Mai allowing our well-trodden travel bodies to recover just slightly. We spent our time meandering along the narrow streets of the centre, visiting wats, markets and tasting the local street treats. We got our first Thai massages at the affordable price of around $3.50 Canadian. Mark had masseuse envy because mine was doing all sorts of great things, climbing up and down my back and legs, stretching and pulling me in all sorts of directions. I think Mark was envious not because of my masseuses fine skills but because she was young and cute whereas his was old and haggard. He will admit to this partially.

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We are making a couple stops on our way north. Our first stop was Sukhothai, a 700 year old ancient kingdom. Admittedly, I was partly drawn to Sukhothai because it shares the same name as my 2nd favourite Thai restaurant in Ottawa.

[unrelated discussion]
Back home I take my Thai food seriously, and Ottawa has a disproportionally high number of excellent Thai restaurants. Of all world cuisines, Thai reigns supreme in my books. In order to make just and accurate rankings, I will order the same few dishes at each restaurant. These include the staple Pad Thai (Mark’s fave), chicken or beef panang plus a wildcard dish such as beef with lemongrass, yellow curry, green curry, papaya salad or some kind of meat with cashew nuts. Incidentally, in my mind there is no such thing as bad Pad Thai, it’s all satisfyingly good especially compared to Indonesian msg-laden mie goreng (fried noodles) bleh. My number one in Ottawa, fyi, is Siam Bistro based on quality, quantity, price point and ambiance (Sukhothai is #2, Nokum Thai is #3…). The food in Sukhothai did not quite live up to it’s Ottawa namesake, but the ancient city did not disappoint. I’ve gotten carried away with food again, back to the city…
[/end unrelated discussion]

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Three nights ago we left the peace and quiet of Lake Toba to head for Medan, a large city on the northeast coast of Sumatra. The plan: to spend one night in Medan recovering from the 5 hour bus ride (this one had absolutely no leg room, a nightmare for me especially) and then to catch the fast ferry to Penang, Malaysia on Sunday morning. Our time in Indonesia was nearly up, and we were feeling ready to leave.

As it turns out, Indonesia wasn’t quite finished with us. We discovered upon arrival in Medan that the ferry only left on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. A warning to other travelers — the Lonely Planet guide is wrong on this one, at least the 2008 copy we have is. They were also wrong about the price. When we did buy our tickets they ended up costing nearly twice what the book said. I guess it’s important to learn early on not to trust the guidebooks implicitly. We’re usually much better at avoiding things like that, but we missed this one. As a result, we suddenly had three days to spend in Medan.

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Much like the roads twisting throughout this dramatic jungle landscape, our experience in Indonesia has been a rollercoaster. We were starting to think that r ’n r was impossible to come by in Sumatra. Until we arrived Lake Toba. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh (sigh).

At a mere $5 canadian per night we have our own little waterfront hut with a hot shower and western toilet! It’s the perfect place to recover. And to swim. And to listen to the waves and the rains. And Mark has been able to eat bacon again since Toba is a mostly Christian community.

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After nearly two weeks of working in Sungai Geringging, the time has come for us to carry on with our travels. As I wrote before, it was an incredibly inspiring two weeks for both of us. The work that HODR is doing is fantastic, and we are especially appreciative of their approach to volunteer work. Unlike so many other organizations, HODR doesn’t ask for money when you volunteer. Although this creates some operational difficulties, it makes the organization much more accessible to people who might otherwise not get involved. Being on a tight budget as we travel, it’s quite likely that we wouldn’t have shown up at all had it cost us anything. I believe it’s a wonderful approach to take, and I hope that they are able to continue on this way indefinitely. It is a wonderful cornerstone to the approach HODR takes to volunteering.

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There are many different facets to the work being done by Hands On Disaster Response in Sungai Geringging, but three areas in particular were being focussed on while we were there: deconstruction of damaged homes, salvage of building materials, and construction of temporary shelters for families in need. After the earthquakes hit, assessments were done on all of the homes in the area by local authorities to determine their structural condition. They were rated as either “green” for ok, “yellow” for repairable, or “red” for condemned. Houses rated “red” were required to be demolished and reconstructed from scratch. Often these homes were left in a dangerously precarious condition by the quakes, and many families were too afraid to enter them even to recover personal effects. It was the job of the deconstruction teams from HODR to safely demolish or disassemble these homes so that the salvage teams could sort through the rubble and recover reusable materials. I got involved in the deconstruction teams on the third day we were there, and stayed involved in that aspect for the rest of our stay in Sungai Geringging. Meghan pointed out the irony that I’d spent nearly ten years studying and practicing to become a designer of buildings, only to come to Indonesia to take buildings apart, and for no pay. Funny how things work out sometimes.

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