No gear in the world…

We had a discussion recently with some friends about the utility of outdoor gear. Does Gortex really make a difference? Do Vibram soles really help with hiking? Are bike socks different from snowboard socks? Like really different? And is it worth spending hundreds of dollars on individual pieces of gear?

I am a huge outdoor gear fan. Any excuse to get a new special backpack, a lighter Gortex jacket, a smaller but more powerful headlamp. The friend I was talking with about gear would call me a sucker, and a gear marketers dream. We had a healthy discussion, which continued in spurts throughout the weekend we spent snowshoeing, skiing and snowboarding. Who was drier, huh?

Well, our recent trekking experience in Laos leads me to believe I am a sucker. After just two days of slipping through rivers of mud in the jungle, I think I would have been better off with a pair of flip flops and a bathing suit. All the Gortex, sealed shoes with special hiking soles and light-frame fitted backpacks couldn’t protect us. The trek itself was with Green Discovery, an ecotourism company which is also great at marketing. I loved their posters and brochures. We were promised an exciting three-day trek through the Nam Ha protected area, with local guides, and overnight stays in forest camps.

We set out with our guide, a very affable guy called Mr Phet (pet, like the animal, he said). Phet was great. As we climbed up along a creek, he insisted on making us walking sticks. Using his trusty knife which could truly cut through anything, he cut two lengths of bamboo, one for each of us. He cut one end at a sharp angle, so we could use it to dig into the trail. These things were lifesavers. Througout the day, we used them to ferry down steep muddy banks. To balance on “bridges” consisting of one thin log. To test the water’s depth where there was no bridge. To flick leeches off of our shoes.

Along the way, Phet showed us the plants which the locals used for food and for medicine. There was wild galangal, cardomon, ginger and mint. Tender young ferns. There were leaves you could boil up to cure morning sickness. Or to rub on open wounds to stop the bleeding (he showed us, this really worked). Rattan, used for building housing, and furniture. People here also eat rattan in stew – the young shoots are delicious. There were massive “elephant ear” leaves, used to treat malaria. “When the elephant ear leaves taste sweet, you have malaria,” he explained. “And when it’s bitter, you don’t have it. So we drink it for many days until it tastes bitter.” ( I personally would like everyone to have access to artemesinin combination therapy- a proven treatment based on a traditional plant extract. Phet said that many children in the area still die of malaria, and that mosuitoes, not tigers, was the truly frightening animal.)

The trail itself would have been fine if it were dry. But it’s rainy season here. So we faced trails which were kid-fun muddy in parts – a little splashing around. And truly perilous in others. I had tried to ignore the woman at our hotel that morning, who was fresh off the trails with a badly sprained ankle. The closest villagers had to carry her out on a stretcher. My beige pants turned red with mud. And my new Patagonia shoes were sopping wet – the Vibram soles so caked they were useless.

Phet walked easily ahead of us, wearing simple Converse-style hightops he had stepped down at the ankles, so they were like slip-ons. Our other two guides, Mr Aunchan and Mr Long, who had gone ahead of us to prepare the camp, wore flip-flops, and carried all of their supplies in plastic bags. After about 6 hours, we were wet, very dirty, and looking forward to a rest.

The forest camp was, well, really in the deep of the forest. It consisted of narrow swathe in the jungle, with a small bamboo/rattan “kitchen”, where the boys had started building a fire, a largish elevated hut with one room and a few rattan mats on the floor, a clean toilet, and a table and chairs made of bamboo, which I swear Julia and I could have built ourselves. That’s to say, it was pretty rickety. The forest was thick all around us. Phet told us there was a stream down the hill. Ah yes, another muddy hill.

At the stream, I noticed my trousers were red with mud, but also red with blood at the knee. A leech had really filled up on my patella. Oh well. We washed up a bit , and went back to camp, and waited. We couldn’t really help with cooking, as Phet and the boys had it under control. I didn’t have a book. Julia did, and I tried to let her read. I am not really great when I have nothing to do. It was only about 430 pm. The mossies were bloodthirsty. The cicadas were singing. The frogs were bellowing. I thought the tigers might be circling. And we had hours to go before bedtime.

The food came, and it was really excellent. Laos food is extremely fresh. Phet had in fact been picking a lot of our meal along the way. And on one little fire he and his colleagues had managed a true feast. Fresh fern stir fry, the traditional chili jeow, a tomato sauce which would put many Italians to shame, a mushroom stew flavoured with fresh herbs, and mounds of sticky rice. You basically take a bit of sticky rice, roll it into a little ball, and dip it into shared dishes. It was fun, and tasted fantastic.

After dinner we had Lao Lao – the Laos homemade rice wine. The basic ingredients are rice, rice husks, yeast, and water. A few shots of that and we were ready for bed. It was about 730 pm. It was going to be a long night. Phet, Anchaun and Long had prepared the beds. They were surprisingly fine – mattresses on the floor, draped with big mosuito nets. Still, I was not looking forward to trying to sleep for 12 hours, and especially, to going to the bathroom outside at night – something I’ve always hated, since my childhood cottage outhouse days.

That night, I understood how the jungle could drive a person mad. The cacaphony of cicadas, birds, frogs, flies, and I didn’t really want to know what else, penetrated through my eardrums into the depths of my skull. Sounds started to stop making sense – the bullfrog croaking which initially sounded innocent, turned menacing, swinging through my ears like evil horror film whispers in Dolby stereo. Trying to focus on just one sound was impossible – a rustle in the jungle was drowned out by the chorus of beasts. My imagination ran far too wild at times. The night was unending.

I probably slept more than I thought I had. We were both relieved when Phet and the boys rose to start breakfast. Light, morning. And like dinner had been the night before, breakfast was amazingly good. We put on our wet, muddy “gear” in relatively good spirits. We set off walking, on what was to be a light day.

It started well, and we made good time up and down and across the hills of the Nam Ha Forest. But then the rains began again. A twenty minute downhill walk was interminable. Picking my way down the muddy slopes, trying not to fall. And falling. I really really didn’t want to be carried out on a stretcher. Julia is more lithe of foot, and made a valiant effort to help my ungainly frame down.

Phet continued to be a champion. He made us “umbrellas” out of big palm fronds. Our gortex jackets were simply too hot to wear in the jungle heat. He produced another devine lunch when the rain let up, and we ate it on a palm frond table. Then it started to rain again, and we had hours more walking to the next camp.

I should say I am not a complainer. I love hiking. I’ve trekked for 25 days in a row in Nepal. Happily hiked in Ladakh, in the Canadian Rockies, in the Swiss and French Alps with Julia. But these steep muddy downhills were the most difficult walking I’ve ever done. And the only time I thought “I really don’t want to be out here anymore.”

Julia and I made a pact. If the next camp was comfortable enough, we would stay. If it was not, we would ask to trek out that same day. As we approached the camp (after I’d fallen through a rotten “bridge”) – it all looked promising enough. Instead of being in the jungle, it was on a higher open grassy plateau. Cows were grazing nearby. From a distance, the hut we would sleep in looked somewhat inviting. But as we neared things weren’t so promising. Let’s just say the cows had been allowed a little too close to the hut. Flies were feasting on the significant offerings they had left behind. Flies and wasps were also enjoying the dinner leftovers from the night before. The toilets were filthy. I think Julia and I were secretly glad, as we didn’t want to spend another night in the forest. And all of our clothes kept in our great backpacks were sopping wet.

We told Phet we wanted to hike out. He didn’t bat an eye, and said “no problem.”

We spent 3.5 more hours hiking out to the road – over every imaginable terrain. Slash and burn forest, trail so overgrown, Phet had to spend several minutes cutting a path, down more muddy slopes, through thigh-deep water, and down, finally, to beautifully green rice paddies, which glowed in the dusky light.

We passed some local people who had been gathering something in the forest. They wore flip flops, and the women were hauling huge loads, strapped across their foreheads in light cotton bags. I had to let them pass me, as they were so much faster.

We arrived at the road as the last light faded to dark. The air smelled of cooking fires. People still walked up the road, going home after a long day in the rice paddies. “Sabai dee,” they greeted us.

It is now three days later. My Patagonia shoes just dried today. Our gortex jackets are still flecked with mud. Our backpacks need a really good wash. My leech bites are still itchy. I left my pants behind at the hotel.

And next time, we’re wearing flip flops.

Hey, lady!

We have just one day left in Cambodia. The visit here has been wonderful, and confronting. There is so much to say, and not enough words to explain the way this country has weighed on my little brain. Some little vignettes:

The history: Historians would not call it history, but really, just the recent past. Most of the population here is too young to have known the Khmer Rouge period, as the vast majority of people are under 30. We saw a documentary about Phnom Penh just after Pol Pot’s regime was kicked out by the Vietnamese. It’s called “Death and Rebirth, ” and was directed by (then) East German filmmakers. I struggled with its wholesale support for the Vietnamese. But the images of a completely abandoned city are extremely powerful. Aerials of Phnom Penh show overgrown streets with not a single pedestrian or moving vehicle. A city frozen in time. When the Khmer Rouge took over on 17 April 1975, they sent everyone, everyone, out of the city. A man who happened to be in the north side of the city at that time was sent north. His wife and children, living in the south, sent south. Almost all of the educated people were executed – doctors, teachers, engineers. Pol Pot drew his base from the countryside, and made the city-dwellers his enemies.

The “genocide museum”, Tuol Sleng is harrowing. The set of buildings were a high school, but converted into a prison and torture chamber. About 17,000 people were held and tortured there. They were taken to the “killing fields” to be executed. The museum is simple. It displays the original iron shackles, the airless cells, the barbed wire and instruments of torture used just 30 years ago here. It also displays the photographs of hundreds of the prisoners. Women with infants on their knee. Young men. Old men. Children. Adolescent boys and girls. Each of them staring straight at you from their prison photograph. I tried to pass my eye over every single picture. But the monstrous number of photographs overwhelms even the best intentions.

The food crisis: Here, the food crisis is playing out in front of our eyes. The price of rice in the markets has tripled or quadrupled – and is now about 55 cents a kilogram. Many people here make 20-30 dollars a month. They eat rice every single day. Because of rising prices, the World Food Programme had to cut a very successful school breakfast programme about two weeks ago. The Cambodia Daily newspaper is already reporting a drop in students attending school in the rural areas. The paper has also started a fundraising drive, asking its readership to pitch in. This food crisis seems to truly be putting some hard-won gains in education and development at risk here.

The kids: It’s been years since I’ve been confronted with really, really poor kids.  The most difficult time was at the Angkor temples. The little postcard sellers. “Hey, lady!!”  Three of them pounce on the tuk tuk before it’s come to a halt. One is no more than five years old.

“You wanna buy  postcahhh? Ten for one dollah.” And they count them out and show you each picture. “See: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One dollah!! O.k. lady?”

I’ve heard many times not to support children working this way. That they are likely lorded over by some jerk who takes all of the money they earn. That the jerk knows that these cute kids are the perfect little selling machines, because it’s hard to resist the pleas of poor kids.

And it is. The kids speak some English. They joke with you. “Ok, ten postcards, just a million dollahs! Ok lady?”  Followed by a little giggle fit.  If you hesitate, or say “maybe later,” they’ve got you. “Ok, I see you lay-tah. I remember you lady. Ok!”

One girl, no more than 10 years old, wearing a tatty little green dress decorated with Winnie the Poohs, amazed me at the Angkor temples.
“Where you from?” she asks me.
“Canada.”
“Canada. You have two official languages. Capital, Ottawa. Thirty-two million people.”
“How did you know that?”
Giggle fit.
“Ok, how about France?”
“PAY-reese,” without missing a beat.
“Switzerland?”
“Berne.”
“Germ..?” “Berlin,” back at me.
“Unit..” “Washington D.C., population, 330 millions!”
“Zimbabwe?”  “Um….” “Ha, gotcha!”  We both have giggle fits.

One five year old was helping with her mother’s fruit stand.  The girl brought me the options – one bag of pineapple in each little fist. When I said I’d like to buy one, she put down the two bags, and smiling crazily at the potential sale, said  “O.k., lady. I get you cold one, ok?” , and she raced to a little cooler where more pineapples were keeping chilled.

Most of these kids seem to be in school. At least, they tell you they are, maybe because it’s what you want to hear.  But maybe they really are. School starts at 6 am, and finishes about noon. You see dozens of kids on the road then riding their bikes home. Big brothers, stoic and determined, doubling a little sibling, eyes half clamped against the dusty road.

Phnom Penh has its share of street kids. I was very impressed by one organization called Friends,  which has all kinds of programming for them. Truly inspired, the programme offers “remedial” schooling to bring kids up to speed so they can enter school at the appropriate grade for their age. It gives direct training in different trades. For mothers, Friends purchases specific handicrafts they have made, but only if they have sent their children to school all week. It runs a shop and exports the products internationally.

It also runs restaurants. Here, student servers train under experienced teachers, who themselves are graduates of the Friends training. At the café, very nervous trainees will take your order, carefully set the places, and teeter over with a drinks tray, and really delicious food. They are serious, and visibly proud of their work. Many of these trainees have gone onto work in some of Phnom Penh’s best restaurants.

After just 11 days in Cambodia, I have everything to learn about the country, the people and development.  But based on the excellent recommendations of many people who have lived in Phnom Penh for years, I would not hesitate to donate to Friends. The model has been so successful, it is running programmes in six countries.

The driving: is truly, the worst I have ever seen. There are “rules” of the road which are evident in many countries. Like, the largest, most expensive vehicle has the right of way. Not fair, but just the way it is in many places.  If you’ve got a big vehicle, just pull out into traffic and everyone else must slow down and make way for you. But Phnom Penh is the only place I’ve seen these vehicles actually pull out into the opposite traffic leading up to traffic lights and pass 10 vehicles, just to get to the front of the line. People also do uturns everywhere. Across six lanes of traffic. Without signalling. At all.  Or, motorcycles and tuk tuks will just drive down the wrong side of the road for several blocks, because… because?  Of course, entire families do share one motor scooter. Two adults, with three kids sandwiched in between. Mother holding an infant in her arms. Three year-old sitting in front of dad, hands on the handlebars. Not so many helmets.

Last Tuesday, the Cambodia Daily reported that six people were killed in separate car accidents in Phnom Penh alone, in one day.

Random things: One kind of funny last thought about driving. Lexus SUVs are all the rage in Phnom Penh. They look brand new. There are different models of them – with smaller and bigger engines, but all very powerful compared to the tuk tuks, motorcycles and Toyota Camrys. Hard to know where these come from, or how people pay for them. But one source said he had seen a “new” one from a lot with a Virginia number plate…

As I write these last few paragraphs, I’m sitting in a café in Vientiane, Laos.  I was here about 12 years ago. In that time, the city has completely transformed and except for the Mekong river which still passes by, I don’t recognize it. Then, I think just a few main roads were paved. There was one European-style “bakery” tucked on a dusty back lane. The whole city felt like a sleepy backwater, all dust and badly built concrete buildings.  The areas by the Mekong smelled malarial.

Now, the place outside the old bakery has been transformed by a fountain and park, complete with manicured palm trees and hedges. There are public spaces along the Mekong, with lawns where school kids eat fruit from vendors and sip sugary drinks. There are guest houses everywhere, including transformed French colonial buildings with high ceilings, polished wood floors and lovely old fans. There are interlocking brick sidewalks along the major roads (new in the past three years apparently).

On the downside, a friend who has been coming here for some years reported that when he’s walking alone, tuk tuk drivers now ask him if he wants a “lady”.  And this café I’m sitting in, while perfectly charming and employing about 15 people, could be anywhere in North America.  Wifi, excellent lattes, clean surfaces.  The local market, which really does sell just about anything you can think of including thousands of Lacoste knock-offs, has a new neighbour – a boxy shiny air conditioned mall selling the real thing.

Twelve years ago, I took local transport and bumped along for hours in the back of trucks. The drivers would stop from time to time to cut through trees which had fallen across the road. I’ll never forget the joys of riding a bicycle around one of the islands in the Mekong in the far south. People were fishing, weaving baskets, preparing meals. And many were just lounging in their hammocks, under the shade of the trees in their gardens. Everyone waved hello. I know, falsely idyllic, but it was nice.

This morning, we are about to board a plane to Luang Nam Tha, in the northwest. That region now has a brand new road running from China, through Laos to Thailand.  We will go trekking for three days – well off that road of course. I think there is still much to see.