(Roy) Malone Hodges, Author at Our Traveling Life

Five days in Bangkok Makes a Family Humble*

We went from the jungles of Laos and northern Thailand to the big city experience of Bangkok. From one lane dirt tracks to eight or ten lanes of traffic with hundreds, if not thousands, of scooters. We also went from small guest houses where we were often bunking in the same room to a two-bedroom apartment—with air conditioning—on the 25th floor of an apartment building. Yes, it was quite a shock.

However, that didn’t stop us from jumping straight into city life. Our exploration of Bangkok included riding on the water buses, a fun/fast/and exhilarating way of getting around via the canals and avoiding the oppressive traffic on Bangkok’s roads. As well as learning how to cross the street – not an easy feat in Bangkok – figuring out the subway and daring each other to try the scooter taxies. (No, none of us rode a scooter taxi, but we did spend a lot of time with our jaws open watching other people hop on, often sideways, texting on their phones or holding their purchases while zooming off without a moment’s hesitation.)

We were in town for Loh Krathang festival during which nearly everyone launches little boats with candles onto the bays, rivers, and even swimming pools of the city. The tradition is that if the candle is still lit as your boat sails out of sight than your wish will be granted. We decided to join the mass of humanity headed down towards the Chao Phraya River following the adage “Sī fuerīs Rōmae, Rōmānō vīvitō mōre…(When in Rome, live as the Romans do.)”

As you can see in the photos, this meant joining a sea of humanity on the Bangkok subway. Although not as tightly packed as a Tokyo subway at rush hour, we were so tightly packed if you forgot to get your arms above your head, before the doors closed you were pretty much stuck that way until the next stop.

We spent the cooler mornings and evenings exploring, and the heat of the day in the apartment doing algebraic equations!

* There is a song entitled “One night in Bangkok” from the musical Chess from the mid 1980s with the line, “one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble” which we sung throughout our time in Bangkok with some changes to the lyrics.

The Pak Ou Caves

The Pak Ou Caves are about 25 kilometers north of Luan Prabang on the Mekong. They have housed Buddhist icons for hundreds of years and continue to be an important place of pilgrimage. I was told that during the late 60s and 70s the royal family, whose capital was Luang Prabang, sought shelter in the caves from the ravages of the war.

Up the Mekong from Luang Prabang and into Thailand

In the early morning light, the long, dark wooden boat sat low in the Mekong River on the edge of Luang Prabang, Laos waiting for us as we worked our way down to board it. We had booked a two day passage going north up the Mekong to Huay Xai to cross Friendship Bridge Four and make our way into Thailand and down to Chaing Rai. There were about a dozen travelers in total on the boat. It was nothing but deck with tables and built in lounges, no walls, but with a roof overhead-necessary during the rainy season but now important for shade. The captain, and owner of the boat, drove from a small wheel house at the bow while the toilets, kitchen, and the owner’s residence were at the stern.

We settled into our seats and were pleasantly surprised to be served coffee and croissants as we pushed away from the shore and into the river.

The trip takes two full days with an overnight stop, as navigating the river at night is unwise. One can make the trip on a speedboat in six to eight hours, however we witnessed several of these boats and everyone, driver and passengers, were wearing motorcycle helmets and from what we could see holding on for dear life. The speed boats looked to hold six to eight passengers. While infrequent, death and injury are common place enough that only those in a real hurry opt for the speedboats.

Over the course of the first day we made a stop at the Pak Ou caves (a separate blog post) and were served an exceptional buffet style Lao lunch of fried fish, curry vegetables, rice, and chicken.

Often on this trip, and in life, it feels like we are moving through the world whether running to catch a train, figure out our next place to sleep, or what to see or do. Being on the Mekong was the opposite. It felt like we were sitting calmly watching the world go by. Aside from reading and talking, there was nothing else to do but sit and watch the herds of water buffalo, the passing boats, children playing on the river’s edge, a family carrying water up to their crops a few meters above the river’s edge, the occasional saffron colored robes of monks and the river itself. Long train rides have the same feeling. But on a train one is looking out the window while on the boat, with no walls, we could feel the breeze, hear the sounds and smell the jungle.

Diving in the Bahamas

One of our goals on this trip was getting the boys PADI open water certified, which we accomplished in the Bahamas. Since then, we have gone diving in Thailand and on the Great Barrier Reef. This is a video compilation of our first few dives in the Bahamas.

Luang Prabang, Northern Laos

After a few days of recovery at “Mike’s house” in Vientiane our family of four was off to our next stop on our around the world adventure. North, to the city of Luang Prabang. We had planned for the city to become our base for four days, we ended up staying eight. So far, we tend to slow down rather than speed up.

The city and the surrounding area is home to about 50,000 people and until the communist takeover of the country in 1975 it was the seat of government and royal capital of the Kingdom of Laos.

The city is also home to a number of temples and monasteries so encountering groups of monks is a common occurrence. The old city sits on a peninsula between the Nam Khan and Mekong Rivers. Over the last eight to ten years it has become a more frequent stop for travelers who previously would skip northern Laos in their travels through Vietnam and northern Thailand. It seems as if nearly every resident has either opened a guest house, small shop, or restaurant. The ambiance is relaxed and the people are as friendly as anywhere we have been.

The city also has a few characters as well.

One of whom is Ruth Borthwick an Australian who runs a book exchange and one of the nicer restaurants in Luang Prabang along with a cooking school which we attended. Ruth’s uncle was the Australian Ambassador to Laos in the 1970s when Ruth’s parents were assassinated in a bus between Luang Prabang and Vientiane. One twist in the story is that her father was the twin brother of the ambassador. Of the 35 passengers on the ambushed bus only four were killed. It seems quite likely that the real target was the ambassador.

Ruth is a woman of strong opinion, many of which we agreed with while others we did not. It was an excellent experience for the boys to encounter someone who was of strong opinion and willing to engage in a discussion on the state of the world.

The book exchange is set up as a one-to-one trade with a small fee that goes towards putting books in Lao schools. Or, if one doesn’t have a book to exchange the books can be purchased for a reasonable price with the proceeds going towards school books. We left Ruth with all of the hard copy books we had devoured in China and tried to minimize the number of new ones we added to our packs.

The cooking class was excellent, as you can see from the photos. We met some great folks including a fun couple from Vermont. Colin was gung-ho from the start while Bryce was a bit hesitant at first and then stepped it up on the second dish. By the end of the second round of meals both boys were clearly in charge of our respective teams with Colin directing me as his “sous chef” and Bryce giving Aleix directions on what to do next.

Before we got to the cooking, we of course had to source ingredients. This involved a short ride to the market and a detailed tour of the market. As many of you know, Aleix and I have been vegan for the last few years but have abandoned that constraint (please don’t tell my cardiologist) for this trip.

A walk through the meat section of the market did push Aleix back towards the vegetarian end of the spectrum for several days. The photos don’t sufficiently reflect the variety of ingredients to be had and the sheer number of individual vendors.

Also in the photos above is a bamboo bridge across the Nam Khan river bridge, lit with a long white ribbon of lights at night. There is also a shot of it from the shore during the day. The bridge is put up at the end of the rainy season and replaces the 5 people at a time ferry boat that crosses the river during the rainy season. In the neighborhood across the river down a dark residential road past a temple is a wood fired pizza restaurant. You know you have arrived when you see the “pizza” sign in the front yard. The restaurant is around back in the rear of the house that doubles as an English language school. The owner is Canadian. He teaches school during the day and five nights a week cooks pizza and serves beer to customers who eat at tables in his garden. And, such is the reality of Southeast Asia.

Vientiane Laos

We arrived in Vientiane after 16 days in China. A few days before our departure from Beijing we decided that our time in Vientiane needed to be more recovery and less exploring. That decision led us to Mike and Xoukiet and their lovely home on the outskirts of Vientiane. I emailed Mike with short (24 hour) notice and he fired off a quick email indicating that he was accepting our AirBnB request. We would figure it out, that I should send the flight info and he would meet us at the airport and not to worry all would be well.

In fact, it was more than we could have expected. Mike met us at the airport, even though our flight was over two hours late. On the way back to his home he gave us a quick rundown on Lao history. Our original plan was to spend two nights, but if you elect to stay with Mike and Xoukiet, you will be sorely tempted to extend your stay. We stayed four days. We are a family of four (two boys age 16 and 13) traveling for a year and it was as if we had come to see an uncle that we hadn’t seen in a few years.

During those four days we went shopping for furniture and supplies with Mike, helped him set up an out building for an incoming intern from China, attended the “Wig Bizarre” (a fund raiser put on by the diplomatic community that included performances and food stalls,) and weathered an incredible monsoonal downpour while in their pool.

The boys spent part of each day catching up on homework, Mike’s house includes an upstairs area with a large table and white board. Colin has decided that math on a white board is definitely the way to go!

Mike engaged our sons in discussions about Lao history, our travels, and the challenges facing the world. Dinner each night was wonderful as new guests came and went. Mike’s famous gin and tonics (in my case I opted for vodka and tonic—a bad college experience is to blame) started the evening and Xuciet’s Lao meals were wonderful. She works for the United Nations and has her own powerful insights on a number of topics. Conversation flowed often late into the evening.

An incredible four days.

Mike and the boys continue to correspond about the state of the world, and how their generation might make a better go of it.

A Few Days out of the Cities in the Relative Quiet of Guilin and Yangshuo China

As we move around the world with our kids we have tried to intersperse times in big cities with time in the rural areas of the countries we visit. In the case of China we went from the intensity of Beijing, to the less frenetic city of X’ian and finally after a 19 hour train ride arrived in Guilin. From there we boarded a boat on the Li river to Yangshuo. This is a beautiful area of China. In fact, the back of one of the bills features an ink drawing of some of the karst mountains, formed when limestone and dolomite is eroded.

The Guilin area is known for its ‘better air quality’ but in our experience this was only in contrast to how bad it was elsewhere. The photos all benefited from the “dehaze” filter in the photo processing software (Adobe Lightroom.) It was certainly better than in Beijing and even Xian especially during a late afternoon hike in a light rain.

We spent several days at the Giggling Tree Guest House, an old farmhouse converted into a guest house by a Dutch couple. Last August I was standing in the dusty bar at Distrikt during Burning Man talking to a French TV producer who worked for National Geographic and had been a traveling producer for the TV show The Amazing Race. I mentioned that we were headed to China and she said one of her favorite places in Asia was the Giggling Tree Guest House, so we added it to our list. It was, indeed, a special place.

Amongst other unique things, they had put together a series of “flip” picture books for a number of hikes and bike rides in the area. We spent several hours wandering in the nearby hills armed only with our camera and a spiral bound collection of pictures indicating where to turn. Above is a picture of Bryce holding one of the pages indicating a left turn up a steep stone path marked by an angled tree!
We wandered through several small villages at a pace that was much slower than our experiences elsewhere in China.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We headed out from our apartment in Bangkok in search of dinner earlier tonight. I had identified a nice vegetarian/vegan restaurant and based on the map it looked like a 20 minute walk. As is often the case with TripAdvisor, the maps are just plain wrong. We ended up at a cement transfer station with two friendly stray dogs and a night watchmen.

We turned around and headed the other direction and came upon a restaurant that seemed inviting. It is a restaurant based on Japanese barbecue called Shibuya Shabu. One orders plates of sliced meat (raw), raw seafood, etc. and then grills it over charcoal in a BBQ embedded in the center of the table. From time to time the staff changes out the charcoal and adjusts the height of the grill.

Instead of a vegetarian Thanksgiving we ended up with salmon, thin sliced pork, bacon, chicken, mushrooms and miso soup! Yet another lesson in being willing to adjust on the fly and enjoy where we are.

We had a long list of things to be thankful for. One that rang especially true was all of the great support and enthusiasm from all of you as we experience this adventure. No one has told us we are crazy (in our presence) and it feels great to have folks cheering us on. Thanks from all of us, we toasted you as we grilled our Thanksgiving feast.

Traveling by Train Through China on Our Trip Around the World

We decided to save money and travel through China by train on our around the world trip. In addition to costing less than internal flights, we replaced the hassle of airports with the adventure of train stations! In the extreme, this decision meant a transit time of 26 hours from X’ian to Gualin instead of three hours had we traveled by air (a one-and-a-half-hour flight plus one and a half hours at the Xian airport.)

There are several classes of service on overnight trains in China. The highest class of service is a “soft sleeper” which is the way to go. Each compartment has four bunks (the two lower bunks serving as seats during the day.) As a family of four this was ideal. [This is a fairly good guide and description of the options. http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/soft-sleeper.htm] The train code (K,T,Z,D reveals whether a train has a soft sleeper option.

The compartment has an insulated coffee pot and at the end of each carriage is a hot water boiler the size of an upright coffin bolted to the wall. Whenever a passenger needs hot water for tea, coffee, or noodles, they walk to the boiler at the end of the carriage with the thermos. The water coming out of these contraptions is often 50 percent steam! Any concerns about the water harboring stomach ache inducing bacteria evaporates in the billowing steam and seeing the scald marks on the floor of the train.
Every Chinese person we talked to about our train trips told us, even if we only had two or three words in common between their English and our Chinese, that the food on the trains was “not good” and “price high.” So, like every other Chinese passenger we boarded the train with bags of food. In our case, oreo cookies (easy to find in China) and popcorn tub sized containers of instant noodle soup. We survived on this combination for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Just before we left China we donated several tubs of noodles to fellow travelers at a youth hostel in Beijing. It will be awhile before instant noodles are appealing again.

With only a few exceptions, every town we traveled through was surrounded by a ring of under construction apartment blocks. Mile after mile of multistory cinder and brick buildings, some complete but most between 25 and 80% finished. We would awaken in the morning, open the curtains and there they would be. The hollow dark holes that would (maybe) someday be apartments looking down on the passing train.
Operation “Opera No No”

As I was hauling our suitcases up to the overhead rack and the boys and Aleix were discussing bunk assignments, we were hit with a blast of militaristic Chinese music from a scratchy speaker above the window. As we settled in and waited for the train to get underway the music continued. We couldn’t understand it but the tone certainly sounded like the singer was encouraging us to be energetic and strong in pursuit of something. The sound was so scratchy that honestly I think even a fluent Chinese speaker would have had a tough time understanding the words.

This was about 7:00pm and you could see on everyone’s faces the growing concern that the music would be with us for the entirety of the 26-hour trip. Colin found the volume control and with a smile quickly turned it down to “zero.” Sadly, the knob just kept turning, after six or eight revolutions even Colin, often our optimist in these situations, had to admit it was having no effect.

Another five minutes passed and our hope that the train getting underway would stop the music hadn’t come to pass.

“Ok,” I said, “remember that cool leatherman tool we bought with the screwdriver that is TSA approved? And, that I debated buying because we probably wouldn’t use it. This is its moment. Colin, close the door, all of you face the door and get ready to stall if the conductor tries to open it.”

I dug around in the backpack and emerged with the tool.

As I climbed up onto the upper bunk and positioned myself to unscrew the offending speaker, Colin coined a phrase that has become our touchstone when we are somewhere loud. He cheered, “Operation Opera No No is underway!”

It took a fair bit of effort to unscrew the speaker cover with dust and grim falling on the lower bunks and across the table. At one point we heard the conductor moving down the corridor. I scrambled to put the partially unscrewed cover back in place. For those of you who are old enough, the whole scene had its comedic qualities reminded me of the frequent scenes in the TV show “Hogan’s Heroes” where Hogan and his crew would move quickly to block Sergeant Shultz from seeing the hidden trap door.

The conductor passed by and I went back to work. Inside was a half dozen wires but I was able to locate the poorly taped connection that was causing the static, and with a gentle tug, silenced the speaker. I screwed the cover back on and we enjoyed silence for the remaining 25 hours. Well, actually that isn’t quite true as every 20 or 30 minutes until late in the evening and starting again at 6:00 am the next morning a vendor would come down the aisle offering snacks, drinks, or trinkets at high enough volume to penetrate the compartment walls and doors.

Some of the People We Met On Our Travels With Our Kids Through China

As we hoped when we set off around the world with our kids, this trip is about the people we meet as much or more than the places we go. Traveling with two sons through China provides ample opportunity for conversations and interaction. Also, we elected to travel by train through China (rather than flying) and took the subway over taxis in Beijing, Shainghai, and Xian. These are photos of a few of the folks we met along the way.