Rooftop Window

It's Sunday morning and I am on my roof reading the New York Times online. I could be in Seattle this morning - the sun rose about an hour ago and it has only reached a very chilly 50 degrees or so. I am wearing my treehouse sweatshirt (which I almost threw away to lighten my rat pack). Up until about a week ago, I could not imagine wearing a sweatshirt here.

I think of Jimmy Stewart in his "Jeff" role in Rear Window a lot from my castle views; we live so close to our neighbors that we live with them. We had people over for Pirated-Movie Night last night (Benjamin Button - slooooowwwweesssst movie ever) and we are four for four - the police came and asked us to turn the volume down. We are in each other's lives.

Like now. But instead of having my broken leg propped up in a cast, like Jeff, my legs are propped up in my hammock. He had a 180 degree view, mine is 360. And instead of looking into windows, I am looking onto rooftops or high decks; there is literally a whole new level to voyeurism when you live in a stack house (or a castle).

Remember the grandpa who lives next door to Candle Neighbor who loves to make his granddaughter laugh? Right now he is on his roof with her, rocking her in an enveloping black hammock with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other. He is rocking and cooing and singing. She is laughing and laughing and laughing. When I tune into their interaction and think about it, I wonder if she has a chance to grow up to be the happiest human being alive. This grandfather never tires of playing with her. I wonder if it's an issue in the family...Grandpa never lets us play with the baby!

In contrast to their beautiful roof garden, their neighbor's plain, blotchy grey concrete rooftop looks dreary. But dreary works fine when it serves as your exercise studio. There is a woman dressed in an orange and yellow flowered casual morning outfit running in circles, lifting her un-tennis-shoed feet and knees high. She runs around, around, around her dreary roof. I don't think sports bras are sold in Vietnam.

If I look to my right, there is another morning exercise routine happening. On this roof, the beautiful garden serves as the studio, and the older couple, probably in their seventies, are exercising together. The man is wearing a knit cap tied around his chin and is stretching with a long exercise bar, raising his head and arms to the sky while his wife (also wearing a morning flowered outfit) walks around and around their labrynth of plants and fountains. They are listening to English radio. It seems to be a combination of dance mix music and NPR, but I can't quite make out the discussion topics.

On another roof a woman hangs her laundry. On another, a man sits and smokes a cigarette. Church bells ring and birds sing, always with the constant background snore of the motorbikes.

Jimmy Stewart's Jeff witnessed a murder from his window because he sat and watched too long. And -since my battery is dying anyway - hopefully that will remain another contrast between our stories.

Wrapping it up with Monk Moments, Light and more Burgers

Back to loving my bed and Lyle Lovett more than ever: I'm sure you understand now. All I have done for the past week is come home from school and get into bed. I have been sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, waking only to post and eat insignificant little things. I really didn't even want my banana rice cake with tapioca sauce all week. I've been zapped.

I still have a few things to wrap up from the trip, and then I will get back to neighborhooding. I have stories from this week still waiting to be written.


MONK MOMENTS

First of all, look to the left. Don't the stairs to this temple remind you of those fair slides - the huge wide wavy ones? Don't they look so inviting (but not as much fun to slide down)?

From the top of this temple, you can look across the border to Thailand. It's in the little border town in Laos that acts as base camp for The Gibbon Experience.

Our first night there, we walk up this slide to explore the temple and monk's quarters under the stars. We meet five monks going up, and, this is something K and I are used to, they comment that we are "big" and they are "small." They are so friendly, and happy. When we get to the top, we find a teenaged monk walking around listening to Christina Aguilera on his cell phone speakers. His colleagues are circled up on the floor of one of the temples, discussing.

I decide to get up early the next morning to watch the sunrise from the temple. It's 6:30, and I hear beautiful bells and chanting as I head out to the street. On the main street of this small town, women with their children are kneeled on the side of the road with containers of food and a line of orange-robed, chanting monks are walking down the street, stopping to take food from each one. I am standing at the only intersection in town, and when they get to me, half of the line (the older half is in front, the younger half behind), turns down a side street where more women, children and food are waiting.

It was such a surprise. I head back up the slide stairs and the view is beautiful, surely such a peaceful place to be in the morning. I sit at the top of the steps until the monks return from a different back entrance. They all give a kind nod as they pass.



I don't know what I thought about monk life before this trip, but we see them everywhere, through all three countries ( I have seen hardly any in Vietnam). We see them buying cell phones at a Mobifone stand, riding bikes, buying candy at 7-11 (7-11's are all over Thailand). One was driving a bus. One was annoyed at the customs border crossing, just like me.

My hypothesis: monks are just people.

REUNITED WITH THE SPECTRUM OF LAYS POTATO CHIP FLAVORS

In China, there are approximately 500 flavors of potato chips. There is hardly any reason to ever buy real food because you can get roasted turkey with gravy chips, Peking Duck chips, and even Louisiana Fried Chicken chips. Vietnam has a terrible assortment of chips.



Lao has an OK selection. Pictured is one flavor I did not see in China, "Double Pork Cheeseburger." China does carry the other, "Mexican Barbecue." And you know what, they taste like their names. Lao also has Nori Seaweed chips.

Don't you think all of these flavors would be a huge hit in the states?

HOW DID I LIVE WITHOUT IT?

You may recall that I mentioned a little pen flashlight my brother sent to me last month. Little did I know how much I needed it.

Begin with the last day of school, the day before our trip. I come home and the electricity is off. This is not uncommon, but I flip and flip and flip the switch...nothing. There is a notice on the door. I take it across the alley to the man who lives next door to candle neighbor and he tells me that since we didn't pay our bill, they came and shut our power off. It's hard to pay bills on time when you can't read them. But anyway. I have a Christmas party to go to at Alice's house. I have to pack. The top of the castle is pitch black with no lights.

So I grab my make-up bag and head to my favorite place on earth, the Bum Bum Salon. I show them the notice, and tell them I must get ready there because I have no lights. They are so understanding and gentle, even about shameful things like this. I love every woman there. They wash my hair (have I written about how amazing hair washing is...oh, yes, about fifteen times)...they dry and straighten it (after an hour long head massage and cucumber facial, for $3 - oh, I have mentioned that, too). Then I do my make up there. I love them so much.

After the party, at midnight, I come home and negotiate my way around the dark castle and pack with the flashlight. It's quite difficult. It's only a little light. But it works.

I also use it to read the street sign heading to Angkor Wat. I use it to play euchre in the treehouse and to keep my eye on the tarantula. And every once in a while, I shine it out of the treehouse to investigate a noise. I use it to discover my nibbled bag and spread-out sandwich. I use it in the village of the Chiang Mai trek, and I use it to read when I don't want to disturb sick sick sick Katherine.

What a great gift, Brian.

MASSAGE COMPETITION

K and I hold a Southeast Asia Massage Competition. The research for this is so exhausting. Thailand loses again. The way they press your muscles is just so uncomfortable. But Lao and Cambodia placed little higher. With every massage, we would just talk about Tran, Tran, Tran at our Bum Bum. The second night back, I go to her for a hair wash. As I lay on the hair washing table, her sister gives me a pedicure. The head massaging time is doubled because of the toe work. That place is heaven. Tran of Vietnam wins the Southeast Asia competition.

TRAVEL COMPANION COMPETITION

Katherine wins that one (Karrie, it's just a competition for SE Asia). She is way off the charts of the scoring guide. She makes me laugh the entire trip, most significantly during our three days of vomitting. If I were to make a new scoring guide to rate travel companions, that would be one of the scoring criteria, for sure. Tim, you have raised a solid, good, laid back and fun person. Nice job.

Next: back to neighborhooding.

(I wanted to love) Thailand.

I've been struggling over how to write about Thailand. Perhaps I can do it best by describing the events surrounding three eating experiences: 1) a jar of emergency peanut butter 2) a hard-boiled egg (with a chaser of wheat grass a few days later) and 3) a Mike's cheeseburger and fries smothered in cheese sauce, sour cream and bacon.

Before I get to that, though, I will give away what you have already surmised: Thailand gets the "Step Above a Tent with a Broken Ladder Leading Down to a Squat Toilet with a Beautiful View" rating. That's right. High expectations can kill you. Here we go:

1) The emergency jar o peanut butter

Leaving the treehouse, you all know how excited I am to get to northern Thailand to eat. When we land there at 10 pm (I skipped dinner so that I could eat at an outdoor pad thai or curry stand upon arrival to waste no time beginning the Best Week of Eating of my Life in My Soul Eating Destiny Country), we experience culture shock right away: the roads (they drive on the left side) are perfect. No potholes, no construction barriers. There are cars and SUV's and hardly any motorbikes. The signage is clear, and people stop at stoplights. We hire a cab to take us to a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet and when the driver pulls into a dark, deserted parking lot that looks more like a sand/garbage pit, I say to K, "Is this the part where he shoots us?"

The hotel is far from any night activity. There aren't even any street lights. We are so tired by the time we check into our "Hot Shower" room (that is not a rating...this is the hotel of the scoring guide) that I pull out my emergency jar of peanut butter and K and I scoop it out with our index fingers. First meal in Thailand. Things can only get better, right?

2) The Hard-Boiled Egg

Northern Thailand is beautiful, no one is lying about that. It is stunningly gorgeous. Chiang Mai is a pleasant town, with an older walled in city surrounded by water and sprinklers and lights at night. Chiang Mai is known for two things - night markets and trekking adventures. We hit a night market on our second night and it is pretty cool. We accomplish some good market eating - dumplings, fish cakes, meat on skewers, noodles and fruit shakes- and the stroll down the endless row of stalls selling arts and crafts and souvenirs takes hours. So it is getting a little better, but still, something feels off.

Things are bound to get better the next day, when we go trekking with an organization we feel good about: The Libra House - a little family-run hotel with good online reviews. We have read and heard negative stories about some of these companies, how they exploit Karen tribes such as the Long Necked Tribe (women elongate their necks by adding more and more rings to stretch them out), and we are careful to avoid the ones with a bad reputation. The Libra House seems OK...and it is.

Again, Northern Thailand is stunningly beautiful. Our trekking group of eight, led by our tour guide, Toto (of a Karen Tribe, he has two wives) rides in the back of a truck for about two hours out of town and we begin our adventure by soaking in a hot spring. Then we hike over 9 km through four Karen tribal villages. It doesn't seem too touristy- at least, we can convince ourselves that it isn't as bad as the others...the village people hardly seem to take note of us. And, again, it's truly amazing scenery.

We stop to camp out in one of the villages for the night, one that sits right on the banks of the Mae Tang River; an easy little river that heads east toward Myanmar. Myanmar -at that time, Burma- is where the Karen Tribes emigrated from over the last 200 years: they escaped oppression from the government and civil war among the tribes and found peace in Thailand, where they pay no taxes. I learn all of this during day two of the trek, from Toto himself, while we are on the raft. "The Christians and Buddhists were always fighting," he tells me. "Which is your tribe, Christian or Buddhist?" I ask him. "We are Animists," he answers.

When we arrive, I cannot stay out of the river; it is a perfect river for floating. I love love love rivers - being in them, sleeping next to them, riding down them on innertubes. It's cold, but K and I float down, get out, run up the bank and do it again and again while Toto and his friend Poco from the village make us a great chicken curry with potatoes (masaman curry) over an open fire stove. Then Poco plays his guitar and we sing songs around a fire under bright stars("American Pie" and "Wonderwall" among the songs) and sleep in a kind of long house, under a few blankets with mosquito nets over us. "Are there any rats around?" I ask Toto. He assures me that no, there are not, and there are not. None of those stories in this particular paragraph.

The next morning's breakfast is toast, jam, and hard boiled eggs. These eggs are probably the most free-range eggs I have ever eaten. They have been laid by very happy looking, free village chickens. Five of us eat one hard boiled egg; one of us eats two hard boiled egg, and the other two eat no hard boiled eggs. (Take note.)

Then we get on our elephants for an hour and a half ride next to and through the Mae Tang. Watching these beasts walk down the mountain and stop right in front of us was thrilling; I have always loved elephants most out of all the zoo animals. I rode on one when I was really really little, and her name was "Margie." This elephant's name is "Jan" - or "Moon." Jan is so gentle, like the rest of them, but I keep picturing falling off of her and getting trampled (much like I kept picturing the zipline cables breaking and me plunging to my death hundreds of meters below). K and I take turns slipping off of the wooden "saddle" onto Jan's neck.

A few observations about elephants: their skin is so dry and wrinkly that I want to apply about ten bottles of leather moisturizer to her (and that would have only taken care of the top of her head). And their hair is so prickly. And when they urinate, the water pressure is about ten times that of my Rapunzel shower at the castle (no wait, that is assuming that I have a water pressure of 1. I don't).

After saying goodbye to the elephants, we get on long bamboo rafts for a two -hour cruise. This is K's fantasy. She has been talking about these bamboo rafts for months. It's a very enjoyable cruise...for us. However, the first one-egg eater has fallen ill. She is the tiniest member of our group, Yasmine from the UK. She is sitting low on the raft for the last hour, and when we stop to eat pad thai at another village, she gets sick.

The second one-egg eater, her boyfriend, Ben, starts to feel sick on the last leg of our journey, the hour and a half river rafting part. Poor guy. When this leg ends, we have a two -hour ride back to Chiang Mai. I don't know how this couple made it. And, well, the ride, in back of the truck along a very bumpy road, is where I start to feel it. But I am able to control it by lots of self-talk until we get to the hotel.

Now the details of what happens next are quite ugly, but K and I, also one-egg eaters, both get violently sick back in our room. Perhaps we don't like Thailand, but I don't suppose they are very eager to invite us back, either. A few reasons: four masked men must clean up after me in the room, very humiliating. And two days later - we were sick for three days total - we are pretending to feel better and go out for a little stroll. I keep going, but K, who was hit much harder than I - says she needs to head back to the room. Here is the story I get when I return (shared with permission):

"I was feeling that watery feeling in my throat, you know, the kind where you know something is about to happen...and I was frantically looking for a bathroom when I saw a transvestite (in Thailand, they are called "Lady Boys") standing in a doorway to a home. I asked him if I could use his toilet. A child was playing on a blanket in the living room. I went into the toilet and vomited about five times. I sprayed the toilet down (SE Asia has sprays to clean yourself, hardly ever any toilet paper), walked out of the bathroom, past the child, and said, "I'm really sorry" and "thank you" and went on my merry way."

Funny, just days before vacation, a co-worker was out for a few days with food poisoning. I told him I wasn't sure if I had ever had it. "You know when you have it, trust me," he says. I can now confirm that. You know.

You don't need any more details about this horror, but on day three we finally decide to get on a bus to Pai, heading east toward Myanmar (we had intended to make it to Mae Hong Song and stop at Pai along the way), only because we had to get out of Chiang Mai. It was New Year's Day. That's right, we brought 2009 in in a way I had never dreamed of. We get on a local bus and learn quickly that the road to Pai involves 777 hairpin turns over a high mountain pass. We are sitting in the back of the bus, and have no choice but to witness people taking turns hanging out the open door right in front of us, and yes, that's right, they are vomiting. Which makes Thailand the country where I have experienced the most vomiting ever. But oh what a beautiful view over that mountain pass!

After a four hour bus ride, we come upon Pai to see tent after tent along the riverbank. It seems that all of Thailand is celebrating New Year's weekend at Pai. We had been told by a very drunk guy that Pai would be busy, but he was drunk and we didn't really listen. We get off the bus in a panic - K covers the right side of a hotel- lined road and I cover the left. We are turned down and laughed at - there is no room at the inn, anywhere. Finally, K hits a "jackpot." It is a step up from a tent, a bamboo structure built over a bed, with a broken ladder leading to a squat toilet with a beautiful view(pictured to the right, below: the toilet, above: the beautiful view over the concrete wall). That's the thing about Thailand.

We hate Pai so much that we get most of our Thailand enjoyment out of hating it. Like Chiang Mai, you can find wheat grass and a shot of bee pollen in your pancake at every corner (K is especially indignant about the bee pollen in the pancakes, for some reason). We are told wheat grass is good for stomach issues, and we aren't craving food, so we get some. It is not the miracle worker the guy claims, and it is so bad tasting. The Doors seem to be playing at every cafe, everyone is wearing baggy pants and dreadlocks... northern Thailand is a gorgeous hippieville.

We try to make the best of it. We decide to rent motorbikes the next day, but guess what. The town is out of gas. We ride around for two hours-the traffic jammed streets are heavy with exhaust- and every gas station we find is closing right when we pull up to it, and I am not exaggerating. We finally return to the rental place for the third time (they keep giving us maps to smaller gas stations) and when we say, "we would like our money back" - all of a sudden gas appears out of nowhere. But guess what, we are so tired we don't feel like riding anymore, and we turn the bikes in within an hour. The town also runs out of bananas. We were told to drink banana shakes to help with our food poisoning recovery. And at one restaurant, they ran out of cooks. "No food today. We have no cook."

Oh, and I tried not to look too closely at the hut where we stayed for $4 a night, but the morning we left, I used my flashlight to look under the bed and saw a bunch of rat droppings. When I was making the bed, I found two rat droppings in the bed. I wasn't going to tell K, but then I knew I would tell you, and I knew she would read this, so I told her. I think it was mean of me to tell her. But it's hard to keep something like that to yourself, don't you agree? (Kathy Clift, I warned you not to read the last rat story and you didn't listen. So I didn't warn you this time. I suppose you won't be able to finish your work day today, either.)

3) Mike's Cheeseburger with Fries Smothered in Cheese Sauce, Sour Cream and Bacon

When we finally get our appetites back, we are back in Chiang Mai. It is the night before we catch our flight back to HCMC. We are at a night market, a really cool one, and there is Thai food everywhere. Our choice, anything we want. The only thing I want is a cheeseburger. So at this market, surrounded by the food of my (former, dead) dreams, I eat a cheeseburger and fries smothered in cheese sauce and bacon, served by a very husky-voiced, wonderful Thai woman who is obsessed with Shania Twain at a place called "Mike's." Hamburger, fries and country music in Thailand= my best meal.

You may claim that it isn't fair of me to judge Thailand so harshly after experiencing three days of food poisoning there, during a busy new year celebration. But we didn't like it pre-food poisoning, either. It's a well-oiled tourist machine, using K's well-chosen words, and it lacks the graciousness and humility of Vietnam. They have been there, done that. It's all beautiful, but it feels false. Besides, I can get great Thai food in HCMC, or in Seattle, if I am ever to want it again. I think I am more sad about the egg, though, because I have lost all feeling for it, and I have had a good relationship with eggs my whole life. Oh, and by the way, the guy who ate two hard-boiled eggs...well, he didn't get sick. Please ponder that riddle.

SO, all of you THAILAND lovers...speak up and defend the country that you love. Even travelers we ran into said the southern beaches were unenjoyable and crowded. SO WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT IT? I really want to know, even though nothing can make me change my mind about ever returning there!

Introducing Blog Contest Thursdays...

Count on Thursdays for Sweet Sour Salty Spicy Crunchy Contests. Many times they will be "What is it?" contests, like the mashed brain one from a few weeks ago, and this one here. What is it?

Now, for next week I am hatching a completely different kind of Thursday contest, one that will involve prizes, even. So stay tuned.

Meanwhile...go ahead. This picture was taken in Thailand.

Sandstone and Lok Lak Amok Magic in Cambodia

Siem Riep, Day One, 4:35 am:

Alarm goes off. It is black outside, and our one-dollar-a-day rental bikes are locked up next to our hotel. We've been told that we must see the temple of Angkor Wat at sunrise, and it's a 40 minute ride to the temple.

We (Paula, the other 6th grade English teacher and former model whose daughter had a significant role in Almost Famous, Katherine and I) have just finished a long stretch of school on Friday and boarded a bus at 7 am Saturday morning to ride for 12 hours, through Phnom Penh and straight up to see these temples that everyone has told us are "magical."

We arrive in Siem Riep under a black starry sky, with only enough time to hire a tuk tuk driver into town from the bus station, eat dinner and rent our bikes, It is an understatement to tell you that I didn't feel like getting up and going, even after all of that effort. Or maybe I should say especially after all of that effort.

But of course we did. We had been pointed in the right direction the previous night, but no street lights helped us in the morning, so we just followed the random tuk tuks or other bicyclists and hoped they were going where we wanted to go. It was so dark we couldn't even see the road signs, and we marvelled on the way home how we managed to miss that pothole and that ditch of mud.

We got there for the sunrise, and everyone is right: the temple is magical in the morning.

The temples of Angkor, more than 100 stone temples built by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD, are the surviving remains of a religious and social metropolis. Our one dollar bikes are great (everything in Angkor seems to be one dollar: the bikes - rented with no forms- a pack of postcards, a banana shake...) The temple in the morning is the only time we feel the crunch of people. For the rest of the day, we leisurely ride the "smaller" 17 km loop, exploring sandstone temple after sandstone temple. At times we are the only ones at a site, and we get a little lost in a forest behind one temple looking for another. It is a air-con deluxe hot shower experience, not triple hot, only because even though ruins are cool, I can only see so much of them. Now ziplines into treehouses, well, I could live there (given the proper rat protection).

Timing is funny, too. I didn't study much about Angkor before going, so I was very surprised to learn that the temples were mostly dedicated to Hindu gods...for example, Angkor Wat itself is dedicated to the god Vishnu, and the temple layout is a representation of the Hindu religion. Well, I told you that in Ancient History we were leaving Egypt, but I didn't tell you that we were heading to India. On Friday, in preparation for the hard Monday return to school, I had read The Ramayana and prepared to assign new gods and goddesses (which we did today, and I wish I had a video of my kids learning their new names during internet research and the murmur that reached crescendo when they learned who they were connected to. And Terry's (Vishnu's) indignant tone when he comes and tells me "I am father to Anna (his arch enemy) and Khan, and I am married to Mia!" And here, just two days later, I am seeing relief after relief of dancing Apsaras and elephant-headed Ganeshas.

Cambodia surprises me in many ways. Perhaps the best surprise is the Triple Hot Shower with English TV food. We loved it. Our favorite dish was the national dish, called "Amok." It is baked fish with coconut, lemon grass and chili, served in a banana leaf. It's similar to Thai curry, but much more mild and moist -not soupy. The best thing we ate on the trip. Yep, the best food was in Cambodia, not Thailand. Your guess, #1 Fan, was wrong. But we will get to that.

Another dish I loved is called Lok Lak. It's grilled meat, fresh onions and tomatoes with a fried egg on top (that's when I was still friends with the egg-more on that later, too, in Thailand) covered with what is referred to as "Khmer sauce." Really tasty. And everything is prepared from scratch. We would stop in one of several kitchens outside of certain temple areas - kitchens that looked like no big deal touristy places- and the woman behind the counter would chop and prepare and take over a half an hour to bring us our food.

Another surprise: the kids. They are beautiful, very smart, and very, very pushy. They would meet us outside of temples selling their one dollar post cards and work and work and work us over. When they learned K was Canadian, they listed off an amazing list of facts: "Canadians speak two languages, it is a big country with a small population, prime minister Steven Harper..." When I asked what they knew about America, well, they would pause and say something like, "Capital, Washington DC." They knew practically nothing. Really, we ran across very few Americans. There were two on our bus from HCMC, and guess where home was: Phinney Ridge, about ten blocks from my condo. But many more Canadians traveling in Asia, for sure.

One boy, a smiley and not at all pushy kid named "Spiderman" - had Spiderman gloves to go with his name - well, I would have adopted him on the spot if someone had the paperwork ready. I thought he might have been ten or so, but he was 14. Sweetest spirited kid. I felt so sad walking away from him, and all of them, in general. You hear so many terrible things about kids in Cambodia (including Kristoff's article in Sunday's New York Times about child prostitution in Phnom Penh).

Day Two of Temple Visiting, we hired this tuk tuk driver, named Sok Phea. Sok Phea, like many Cambodian men, had studied to be a monk for three years before becoming a driver. He was really cool, and he drove us to a far away temple we had read about, as well as to a waterfall hike with a bunch of Hindu god river carvings. Honestly, I enjoyed this day even more (add the English TV). The three of us just sat in the tuk tuk, enjoying the beautiful view of the rice fields and the simple towns we passed. As you can see, Sok Phea has our bags in the tuk tuk, because he took us straight to the airport after our waterfall hike.

And at the tiny little airport of Siem Riep, you know what tasted really really good? The five bites I got of Katherine's Oreo Cookie Blizzard at the airport Dairy Queen. Triple Hot.

Welcome to My Treehouse in Laos

On the continent of Asia, in the little country of Laos, in a 123,000 hectare mixed-deciduous forest that lies just across the northern border of Thailand, there is a treehouse (referred to as "Treehouse Number One") where I spent Christmas 2008.

Treehouse Number One (one of seven treehouses in The Bokeo Nature Preserve) is reached by 1) a three-hour ride from the border town of Huy Xia in an all-terrain vehicle (second time in my life that four wheel drive has been necessary - first time in Venezuela - Karrie can confirm the necessity) 2) an hour-long hike through a bamboo forest led by local Lao guides who are mostly invisible (they keep disappearing along the trail) but when visible they never talk - they just kind of point the way if there is any question about where to go (along with their supply-carrying mules)- and 3) a short zipline (the video I was able to load is the last leg of the journey into the t.house- keep in mind that this is the shortest line and therefore the only video I could load, but I finally loaded a video!!).

The guides give a short demonstration of how to harness yourself in-how to clip your safety lines to the green taped cables - and then they say "goodbye." Then the forest, thirty zipline cables, and the network of treehouses is ours to explore for three days. No helmet necessary. No guide at the end or beginnings of the lines. It's just you and the forest, and one morning guided hike to look for gibbons.

As you can imagine, we spent the three days saying, "I can't believe this." It is such a completely cool concept, it is a definite Triple Hot Shower with English TV (see scoring guide on previous post). Treehouse Number One has three levels and sleeps six: our group consists of three AIS teachers - Katherine, Shannon and me. Shannon's friend Roberto is with us, too - he is teaching in Beijing. And we hook up with an Aussie couple from Melbourne, Hayden and Thea, who are also Triple Hot Shower People. They define a new lithmus test: Are they the kind of people you would want to live with in a treehouse for three days? That's a really good test.

Yeah, so, at mealtimes, guides zip into the treehouse with a bucket of sticky rice and multiple round steel containers of food - all stacked together for easy transport. The cooler on the main floor is also stocked with snacks, and the kitchen comes with a sink and a stove and a kettle for coffee or hot Milo (hot chocolate). Of course, there is no electricity, and the bathroom has a squat toilet, a sink and a very cold shower. When we first emerged out of the forest and used a ground toilet again, Katherine mentioned that "it would never ever be fun to use a toilet ever again." There is something quite thrilling about hearing waste drop over thirty meters.

After a whole day of zipping above the mountainous, cloudy forest - sometimes on lines that are more than 500 meters long- the food - which, in any other setting, would be rated "Bedroom with a Hot Shower" food- becomes "Triple Hot Shower" food. Everything about this experience is Triple Hot Shower. The grant for this project was awarded to end slash and burn farming (for rice), to build a sustainable local income and to protect the endangered black gibbon. The conservation group (called Animo) has been up for a Changemaker Award for their concept...and I think that perhaps when it is completely run by Laotians they will be strong contenders to win it.
We didn't see any gibbons, but we did hear them singing in the mornings. I hear that they are very, very shy.

Now for a story:
The first night, the six of us in Treehouse Number One light candles in the lantern and play euchre and tell riddles and stories and read comments left by other TNO guests. Many of them mention the Treehouse Rat. "Name him," they say, "feed him," and "play with him." We all agree that people are perpetuating the rat myth. Rats don't climb trees...do they? So we play and we laugh and we tell more stories and it's time for bed.

The "beds" are mattresses with thick, white "mosquito nets" that you tuck under the mats. K and I lift up our "net" to get ready for bed and what I see on my pillow is horrifying: it's my REI backpack, nibbled through, ripped apart, and the half of the sandwich that I didn't finish during the hike is scattered all over my pillow. Either we interrupted the treehouse rat midmeal, or he thought the sandwich had too much onion in it, too. Or maybe the high quality material of my backpack filled him up. In any case, the rat of TNO is no myth.

The story continues. K and I tuck and tuck and tuck our mosquito net so very tightly under our mats, and I leave my Rat Pack outside of the tent - you can't really get rid of crumbs, you know, and we finally fall asleep. You know how when you're dreaming and something is happening in the real world...how your dream incorporates that reality right into it in some wacky fashion?

Well, I am dreaming that I am in an Easter play and that someone is putting a crown on my head. Someone is Pat-Pat Patting my head, putting the crown on really, really well. (Kathy Clift, read no further).

Yeah, so (everyone but Kathy) pat pat pat pat...pat pat pat - tighten that Easter crown - and then I cross the threshold from the dream. There is no Easter play. There is no crown on my head. Rather, the TNO Rat is pat pat patting my head, through the thick white mosquito net.

I leap up and into Katherine's corner.

"Katherine! A rat was just patting my head!"

Woken out of a deep sleep, K says, "OK."

That's all I get, "OK."

I can assure you that if she or you or anyone else endured this horror and woke me up to tell me about it, I would give you more than "OK." I guarantee you.

Somehow, in my world of horror, I manage to fall back to sleep. Upon waking again and venturing out of the Rat Net, I find that TNO Rat did not get his fill of my REI Rat Pack during Round #1. He has nibbled through another section, and he has nibbled through the strap that attaches the whole pack together. Which was completely unnecessary.

So even if I tried to forget about the rat pat pat patting my head in the night, the crazy way I had to string the Rat Pack together for the rest of the trip reminded me of him every day.

Still, I must give the whole Gibbon Experience a Triple Hot Shower with English TV rating. After all, I was staying in the rat's tree. And the tarantula's tree (which we kept our flashlights on all night - hanging out on the thatched roof, because, what do you do if all of the sudden the tarantula disappears?)

On day three, we descend from our forest into the small village at the base of the preserve. We have come upon the beginning of a five day long New Year's celebration, and the village girls are dressed in their colorful dresses and hats adorned with pom pom balls. They are standing in two opposing lines, playing underhand catch with balls made out of soft material. They invite us to join in as the boys play soccer next to us. We don't take pictures, because "we are not from National Geographic." The handsome Frenchman who overseas the conservation project lounges in his baggy wrap around pants, cooly smoking a cigarette and interacting with the men in Laotian while we all wait for our all-terrain vehicle to take us back to town.

What is not Triple Hot Shower with English TV about that scene?

Laos/Cambodia/Thailand Scoring Guide

Happy New Year!

It's good to be home.

I am lying in my cozy bed listening to Lyle Lovett, wondering why I ever do anything else but lay in my bed and listen to Lyle Lovett.

But of course that is just the Rat Droppings talking.

The last two weeks have been so diverse as far as the best and worst of times that I am going to use this "room menu" we found at our first Thailand hotel to score our trifecta Christmas break survey of Southeast Asia: Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, over the next few days of posts.

So the highest score will be "Triple Hot Shower" (which, by the way, you should always choose, if ever given a choice). The lowest, however, needs one more category, and it is this:

"One Step Up From a Tent with Rat Droppings and a Broken Ladder down to a Squat Toilet with a Beautiful View." But we won't get to that category for a few days. Would anyone like to guess which country hosted the experience for that score?

And, of course, that was the most recent experience, so that is why I am wondering why I ever leave my bed.

I will give one thing away right now: Vietnam is the best country in Southeast Asia. Vietnam, as a country, is a Triple Hot Shower, and we are all SO glad to be back in it. Stay tuned for travel stories throughout this week, as I get back into the mode of life and teaching in this Triple Hot Shower Country.

Tonight I will go to bed dreaming of my morning banana rice cake with tapioca sauce. I think it's what I missed the most, but I will have to think about it and confirm that with you tomorrow.

Again, happy new year! And it's really good to be back.