clairejenna

This country is so incredibly HOT. Each morning in Koh Pah Ngan, the girls and I were woken up by our sweat. Seriously. I always wake up to the sound of myself gasping for air and wondering if a giant spider weaved a web all over my body because I am stuck to the sheets. (No spider, just sweat. Lovely.) I made a promise to myself and to Jenna that on the remainder of this SE Asia journey, I will only stay in rooms with air conditioning and/or more than one fan. Of course, we haven't stuck to that because rooms with air conditioning are significantly more expensive here. What a great idea to travel through SE Asia during the hot season. Even the locals hide in the shade. haha! (I guess all of you back home in Canada are green with envy, though, eh??)

Side note: We have barely met any Canadians. Definitely no Americans. Actually, of all the people we have met traveling through SE Asia, the majority of them are English, Swedish and Israeli.

Alright, back to the heat. To escape it, we've decided to come blog about the trip so far and upload photos in the air conditioned internet cafe outside our guest house. We are back in Bangkok after a fun-filled few weeks in the south of Thailand. We began on the party island of Koh Pha-Ngan. Thousands of people flock to this island for the infamous 'Full Moon Party.' We attended the pre-party the day before (where I brought my camera), which was one of the craziest parties I have ever been to. The Full Moon Party was even more nuts. I can't even begin to describe the night we had. Everything is fluorescent and on drugs. As soon as you step onto the beach, there are thousands of people dancing to rave music, people skipping rope that is ON FIRE, and everyone is painted up and holding 1 to 4 drinks in their hands. As a party-goer, you stop at one of the many little bars on the beach and pick up a bucket. Basically, for 120-300 Baht (depending on the drink, 4-10 dollars Canadian) you can drink an entire mickey of alcohol in one bucket with many straws. They open up the mickey of your choice, pour the whole thing in the bucket and fill it with ice and your mix. Camille and I got mojito buckets. My first night, I was drunk after one - but in my defense it is one entire mickey AND I hadn't been able to drink for a while, on account of my motorbike accident!! I won't discuss the Full Moon Party night, as our parents will be reading this. I am going to discuss another topic now...

I guess it is important to mention here what happened that fateful evening in Chiang Mai. Jenna, Camille, Mike, Bryce and I decided to rent motorbikes for the day and go visit the traditional long-neck village people located just outside the main city. We drove around all afternoon and had a really fun time. I sat on the back of Bryce's motorbike, and he seemed to know what he was doing (even though this was the first time he and Mike had driven a standard - that should have been my first clue). Everything was fine until we skid off the road on our way back into Chiang Mai and we slid across the pavement for a while. Dripping in blood, I stood up and started laughing at what just happened. Then I saw my skin on the pavement and all the blood and it wasn't so funny. Bryce told me to get back on the motorbike and he would drive me back into the town but there was NO WAY I was doing that again. Mike, Jenna and Camille were already long gone (as they were ahead of us) and there was nothing I could do but watch the blood drip off my right leg and pool on the pavement. Luckily, a nice Thai woman saw the accident, stopped her car and offered to drive me to Chiang Mai on her way to the market. I bled all over her car and felt so bad that I gave her 1000 Baht to say thank you and I'm sorry at the same time. Jenna took me to the hospital and I got a good cleaning of the several wounds that lined my leg from the toes to my knee,as well as 6 stitches in my foot! I was on crutches for about a week after that, and got my stitches taken out 7 days later in a sketchy hospital in Laos (this hospital in no way compared to the one in Chiang Mai, which was big and clean and well-equipped). My doctor in Laos didn't speak English and the hospital was covered in flies and dozens of nurses with nothing to do. When we first arrived, there were at least 20 nurses sitting in the lobby, watching TV (and some half asleep). I guess not too many people can afford health care in Laos. The antibiotics, which were meant to prevent my foot from getting infected, also prevented me from consuming any alcohol for a while and thus I was drunk after one bucket. OKAY?! Don't judge me.

Now, I need to say something about Laos. Beautiful, incredible Laos. Although the country is FAR less developed than Thailand, and I only spent 8 days there, I fell in love with the country, despite its downfalls. The countryside, jungle, mountains and villages that line the roads leading to the bigger cities are among the most beautiful scenes I have ever witnessed. Rice fields being cultivated by women in traditional Asian straw hats, wild boars and goats crossing the roads so suddenly that the bus comes to a screeching halt, children running around the villages with sticks and no shoes while their mothers sit and weave on the porches: all of this I saw on my 13-hour, hot local bus ride to the city of Luang Prabang from the Thai/Laos border. I opted to take this bus because I thought it would be easier on my foot than taking the two day slow boat journey that Camille and Jenna decided on. They promised the bus was air conditioned. It wasn't. They promised the roads were new and clean and not bumpy. They weren't. They said the bus was spatious. It was anything but. My first understanding of the Laos people was that they were good liars. I sat in the front of the bus, with my leg up and my crutches falling all over the place. A quarter of the way there, our already-packed bus made a stop alongside a dirt road, filled the aisles with big bags of rice and allowed MORE Laos people to join the horrible journey - but only to sit on the rice bags in the aisles or stand near the front by the driver (where I was sitting, oh joy). Oh, and did YOU know that Laos people love to spit and puke?? Almost every minute of that bus ride was filled with the sound of someone horking and then opening a window and spitting out the contents of their mouths onto the winding roads. And they all puke. A lot. The person beside me was puking, the person behind me was puking, the people in the aisles were - you guessed it - PUKING! My British friends sitting in the back told me some guy filled up 4 bags of puke and left them on the bus when we stopped for a washroom break (finally) and it was so horrible that Brits had to move them off the bus themselves!!!

Jenna, Camille and I took another bus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, Laos. More puking. This time, a young girl about 16 years old was sick beside me. She sat in the aisle of our jammed bus and was so sick that she eventually just drifted over into my lap. This is where one of the most incredible things happened - one of those moments when you travel where you feel like you make a connection with someone who is a complete stranger, on the other side of the world. I felt so sorry for the girl, that I offered her my sweater to lay on my lap the entire way to Vang Vieng. Eventually, we both fell asleep; her, laying on my legs, and I laying on her back. She spoke no English and I didn't know her name. All I knew was that we were as close as two people could be for that 7 hour bus ride. When I got off, we smiled at each other, as she returned my sweater. That was that. But it is still one of those moments I will remember fondly - despite the puke.

More to come about our Southern beach adventures!!
xox
Claire

written by

clairejenna on March 24, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand

from the travel blog: Claire and Jenna Do The World

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Bula everyone - We are alive!

We are now back in Nadi, at Azeem's house. However, we stayed the night at a nice hotel down the road in order to clean up and get a good night's sleep.

Here's how it went down:

We arrived at Vusama Village, roughly 45 minutes south of Nadi, two weeks ago. Our arrival sparked the excitment of the village, with Jenna and I being part of the research team, and 4 Earth Watch volunteers joining the expedition. The minute we arrived, we had a Kava ceremony with the chief of the village. This was when it hit us - we are really in a textbook. When we joined the Kava ceremony, we had to lower our heads in front of the chief and sit cross-legged on the floor of the main house, which is how we spent all of our meals and meetings - on a mat on the floor. We drank the Kava reluctantly, but it actually wasn't that bad. The villagers are not allowed to drink alcohol, and Kava is as close to a religious experience to them as anything. It is a drink made from a Fijian root, a narcotic, which acts as almost a sedative and numbs your tongue and lips. We spent many a night drinking with the villagers. When you accept a bowl of Kava, you clap your hands once (in a cupped position), and the person who passes it to you claps three times while you are drinking it. Then, you pass the bowl back and clap three more times. You can either say "high tide" which means you want the kava bowl to be filled high, or "low tide". Jenna and I usually had low tide except for a few times when we had high tide.

Jenna and I were separated and we lived in two different houses with two different families. Our rooms were located in the living room of the houses, partitioned by a curtain. Our beds had mosquito nets (thank god) and sheets that we never used because it was too hot and sticky. It is customary for all villagers and guests to wear sulus (wrap-around skirts) in the village. Even the men wear these traditional skirts. Almost all villagers wear no shoes at all, even when doing work.

I lived in the headman's house. His name was Dedo and he was second-in-command to the chief. His wife, my mother (nay-nay in Fijian) was a lovely woman who took good care of me. They had two kids, Mila (8) and Sana (6), who just started school again. And Dedo's 16 year old brother also lived with us, although he got kicked by a horse early on in the week and broke his leg. Dedo wasn't especially affectionate toward me, although his father (who I was to call Vava, meaning "father") was very sweet. One night the village boys were joking with me and telling me to drink high tide at Kava, and Vava yelled at them "No! Low tide. She is MY daughter." That shut them up fast. Everyone in the village called me Kelera, not Claire. It was my Fijian name and somehow everyone who lived in Vusama knew me and called "Bula Kelera" every time I walked by. The chief's late wife was named Kelera, so I think it had special significance. Very cool.

We went to the washroom in an outhouse, with a pit toilet. We bathed in a three-walled bathing hut in the backyard of the house, using a bucket of water from the well. Every time I had a shower, a group of cows and horses and chickens were always surrounding me. I also had the most active bed in terms of animal visitors. A chicken loved my bed, leaving me presents in the form of eggs on my blanket. A large crab once escaped from the kitchen and made its way into my room and underneath my bed, where I saw him scurrying along, trying to escape death by boiling water. The kitchen was located in a separate hut, outside the main house, so it was a quite a distance for the little guy. We caught him and put him back in the bucket. I enjoyed him at dinner later. Rats made their way under my bed in the middle of the night -- which drove me nuts! To wake up to the sound of one or two of them was awful but luckily they never came under the mosquito net (at least I hope not). Jenna once had a cockroach escape from her bag and crawl up her arm. And ants covered everything. If you left a bag of cookies in your room, sealed in a ziploc bag, you would return in the evening to find ants inside the bag, covering the cookies entirely. And HUGE spiders. They jump, too.

The food was basically the same every day - rice, fish curry, roti, fish, rice, noodles, sausage, fish, rice, lentils, rice... did I mention rice?!!! And we had to drink the water in the village, which was collected rain water and did not make us feel so good all the time.
Also, we were covered in mosquito bites. They really got us. Hopefully we don't get sick. Jenna's legs look like she has leprosy.

The villagers are incredibly religious - they are Methodists and attend church every Sunday. They don't dance or do any work on their Sabbath. Most of the young adults in the village are married or planning on it. Dedo asked if I was married once and I said "No. Maybe before I am 30". To which he replied "No. 25." Oh my.

It is important to insert here a comment about the concept of "Fiji Time". Breakfast and dinner were "supposed" to be served at 7:30 am and 7:30 pm. We never actually ate breakfast until 8:30 and dinner could be served as late as 9 pm. No one wears a watch in Vusama.

One of the coolest things in this rural village were the wild horses. These horses would come running through the village or stop and eat grass some nights. One night, my friend and I were watching the stars and having a chat and the wild horses came in to eat. We were watching them, when all of a sudden some of the village dogs started barking at them and spooked them and they started running at full speed toward the mat we were on in the grass. I have never run so fast in my life!!! We laughed about it after but it was a really terrifying moment.

Now on to the dig. The excavation was located on the South West coast of Fiji, which was a 5 minute bumpy drive from Vusama (in the back of pick-up trucks) at a site called Bourewa. We worked with the University of the South Pacific and Jenna and I were part of the research team. The dig was run by the Professor of Geography at USP, Prof. Patrick Nunn, or Paddy as we called him. Most of the excavators were students from USP, including students from Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Guam. We learned so much about the South Pacific. The students were so nice and had such a culture. The girls from the Solomon Islands had dark skin and natural blond hair - they were beautiful! We learned about the terms Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian and all the cultural differences and similarities. They were really hard workers but they weren't archaeologists, or even archaeology students. Mainly, they were geography or geoscience students. The excavation methods were different than what we are used to. The site was 3000 years old and was based on the Lapita people, who traveled from the West Pacific islands and colonised Fiji around 2900-2850 BP. The site was mainly characterized by decorated, dentate-stamped pottery sherds, stone tool implements of different types, and shell ornaments and jewelery. It was a VERY rich site - we found stuff almost every time we screened dirt or moved our trowels. One obsidian core was found during Phase 3 excavations a few years ago, but it hasn't been found since. There were lots of layers of shells, which is known archaeologically as a shell midden, for the people here were eating lots of shell fish and discarding them all over the place. We found a skeleton too, but it wasn't Lapita age, as it was discovered in the upper layers and is probably 700-800 years old as per the earlier radio-carbon dates from previously found skeletons at Bourewa. Jenna and I had an awesome time excavating him/her.

Jenna and I were also invited to be part of the excavation team that traveled 45 minutes north of the site to a really cool cave site. We had to climb half an hour up this very steep, rocky hillside and just when we thought we were going to die, we reached a cave opening. Probably the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life. Bats were flying in and out of it and we had to wear masks while we excavated because of the bat guano (poo). There was literally a 20 metre bat guano pile at the back of the cave. There was an opening in the roof the cave, which poured light into one area of the cave that also happened to have a stone-lined fire hearth area. This prompted the archaeologists to investigate here. We found pottery and lots of shells (which is very interesting because we are so far away from the sea). We dug with headlamps attached to our foreheads and masks on our faces. The ammonia from the bat guano was really strong. Also, the entire time you are digging, there are hundreds of bats flying above you. I was nervous at first but got used to it quickly. For me, the cave excavation was the highlight of the two weeks.

We worked 6 days a week and on the 7th day (sunday) we went to church (which was in Fijian) and then ate a big lunch. Then we spent the day at Natadola Beach, which is known as one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world (those of us who didn't have Sabbath went swimming).

The last two days we were there, the village celebrated our departure by having a big dinner feast (with lots of rice, haha) and lots of Kava drinking. The best part about the Friday night festivities was the village young men, who entertained us with a traditional Fijian dance of short sulus and no shirts and grass ankle-skirts. I have never seen something so masculine and sexy in my whole life!! Jenna and I were giggling like little school girls. Fijian boys can dance - unlike Canadian boys ;)

Our group presented Kava roots to the chief on the last night and they had a ceremony for us. It ended at 12 am, because Sunday is the Sabbath. However, the men still stayed up and drank Kava until 4 in the morning, cross-legged on the floor - in silence, as per usual.
The morning we left, my nay-nay (mother) made me a beautiful lei (lay, necklace) from some of the flowers in the village. She also gave me a new sulu and presented me with it before breakfast. We then had a family portrait in the living room of their house.

We had a wonderful and very different experience in Vusama and we have very fond memories of our Fijian family and friends. We will post the link to our pictures as soon as we upload them.

Vinaka (thank you) for reading our blog!!

Moce!! (pronounced 'mo-thay' - Goodbye!!)

written by

clairejenna on February 1, 2009 from Vusama, Fiji

from the travel blog: Claire and Jenna Do The World

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Trips:

Shorthand link:

Why Do I Always Have To Sit Beside the Puker??

Bangkok, Thailand

Chiang Mai Memories...

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Things I Have Learned About Myself

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Bangkok Bound...

Bangkok, Thailand

arrived in the land down under...

Sydney, Australia

Nothing like the Robinson Crusoe novel...

Vusama, Fiji

The experience of a life time!

Vusama, Fiji

Straight out of a Textbook...Cultural Anthropology 101

Vusama, Fiji

Excited and Scared at the same time...

Nandi, Fiji

"Most Devastating Storm Ever"

Nandi, Fiji

Heading South?