Mekong.

Tropical waterways have always held a mysterious fascination for me. So though I was excited to be visiting Laos for the first time, I was even more excited by being able to travel by down the Mekong, the largest river in Southeast Asia.
My first sighting of the river was in darkness, as Bordeaux and I sat down for dinner on our last night in Thailand. It appeared as solid darkness, a non-form breaking up the edge of Thailand and the distant twinkling lights of Laos. We drank our last Chang over it, sipping away our beer as the river silently slipped past.

I saw the Mekong properly as we came down for breakfast the next morning- a thick, muddy river being scratched by the early morning activities of ferries and canoes. After taking a small wooden ferry across the Thai-Laos border, we got our passports stamped and bought our tickets for the two-day slowboat down to Louang Phabang. We waited for the slowboat outside a convenience store, where we were joined by several English students on their gap year, a young French couple, and a loud, obnoxious Australian, who wore green crocs and a loose tank-top that showed off his grey back-hair.
After clearing our passports again, we were allowed to board ship. The slowboat is a strange vessel, appearing almost like the first floor of a wooden shophouse, painted brightly and set to float on the water. In the front of the boat was a short curving deck, on which sat a pile of cargo, a small dog, and a garden of potted plants. Once onboard, we found that most of the space had already been taken, and we were forced to sit uncomfortably on one of the few wooden benches left. The English gap students sat in front of us, joined now by an awkward Scandinavian. As the boat continued to fill up, passengers were forced to squeeze in, sit on the floor, or pile in with the luggage. Despite the fact that we were already packed full, more tourists kept appearing on the dock, and the transport officials kept insisted that there was only going to be one boat. Somehow the seating arrangement around us shifted, and suddenly the obnoxious Australian was sitting two rows ahead of us, doing his best to charm the group of eighteen-year-old British girls. It was too much to have to share the company of the Mekong with such an annoying person, and I numbly accepted that this was going to be a miserable seven hours. Another slowboat drifted up next to us, and it became clear that another boat was going to be making the trip. I shoved my backpack to Bordeaux. "Go get us space on that boat- I'll get our luggage."
He managed to reserve a nice stretch of the floor for us- once lined with cushions it became a comfortable place to stretch out and relax. We spent our first day relaxing, reading or leaning back against the side of the boat to nap. We drank warm beer Lao, a toast to our trip on the mekong. Occasionally I stood to enjoy the view- the farmed green hills around Houayxai gave way to a massive wall of jungle, which rose above us on either side of the smooth brown river. Occasionally a white sand beach or an island of craggy rocks would interrupt the green and brown monotony.

We spent that night in Pakbeng, a small river town whose main function is sheltering travels in between legs of the journey. The first hotel we checked into, recommended by the increasingly failing Rough Guide to Laos, was a pile of concrete and bamboo boxes that seemed likely to slip into the river. The room was tatty, with ragged bedsheets over a twisted mattress. The hotel was noisy and crowded, mainly filled up with gap-year students who likely had the same Rough Guide as us. Taking the guidebook's word that this was one of the best places in town we consigned ourselves to the room, and went to take a shower. Once the florescent light flicked on, we realized that our bathroom was connected to the next hotel room, the two being divided by a low cinderblock wall. When we realized that the shower didn't work, we asked to switch rooms. The manager showed me another room- I checked the shower, and found that it worked, but to the effect that the shower-head flew off any time we turned on the water. I asked to see another room, but they insisted they were full- though as Bordeaux and I got our bags and left, they suddenly seemed to have another room to show us. We found a much nicer hotel across the street for the same price. The room was cleaner, with new tile floors, white walls, and clean crisp sheets and towels- and incredibly, the shower worked perfectly.
The next day we woke early to secure two of the slowboat's very limited comfortable seats, which seemed to have been lifted out of minivans and screwed into the wooden floor. The journey on the second day was even more incredible, as we were now able to enjoy the view. In the early part of the day the river was thin- a slim channel of coffee-colored water passing between the forest, which rose 200 feet on either side of us. The jungle was lush and green, with huge leafy vines swallowing up entire trees. Where there was a break in the greenery it appeared as a wound in the forest, with bleached white tree trunk skeleton showing through. From within the thicket came the whining siren-buzz of insects, the labored breathing of the forest itself. The immensity of the jungle was overwhelming, and any canoes or boats that passed near the shore looked ridiculously out of proportion, appearing tiny before the immensely overgrown jungle. Occasionally the forest would relent, breaking open to show a small village of bamboo houses and sheet-metal roofs. Sometimes we would stop at these villages to pick up cargo or passengers. Most other times we drifted by without acknowledging the town at all, and the fishermen and water buffalo that we passed appeared to us simply as silent vignettes of rural Lao life.

To Mae Hong Son and Back.

Despite it being the start of the rainy season, Bordeaux and I decided to rent a motorbike to take a circuit trip of Northwest Thailand. It would give us a chance to get away from the major towns and tourist centers, and to explore some small towns and parks on our own.

Weds June 27
We left Chiang Mai early in the morning, leaving most of our luggage at the guest house. Despite being a fairly small town, the suburbs of Chiang Mai seemed to stretch on for some distance, petering out in small wooden shophouses and quiet noodleshops. Eventually we were surrounded by rice paddies, where men plowed and lazy water buffaloes wallowed. About 40 kms out of Chiang Mai, we felt the first drops of drizzle. We pulled to the side of the road to prepare ourselves for the rain, and as we dressed ourselves in on our cheap plastic raincoats, the water began coming down in hard waves. We waited under the shelter of a grove of trees, hoping the rain would die down. Eventually we had no choice but to try our luck driving through the weaker patches of drizzle, hoping the hard rain wouldn't return.

Through cover of heavy mist we reached Doi Inthanon national park. Unlike Khao Yai, which is monsoon seasonal forest and thus spends half the year dry, Doi Inthanon is cloud-forest, and spends the entire year heavy with rain and mist, sheltered by dense clouds. Because of this, the forest is able to grow to incredible height, with curtains of elaborate creeping vines and crowds of oversized leaves. Plants grew leaves of ridiculous, cartoonish sizes. We admired them as we raced up the slick asphalt roads of the park, past columns of thick dripping forest and distant clouded mountains.

We spent the night in Mae Chaem, a quiet riverside town. After trying two closed guest houses, we finally found a room in a guestless resort. Our sterile bungalow felt of mildew, and the towels we eventually located in the cabinet were already damp. We searched for dinner at the quiet night market, but eventually opted instead for spicy sour soup from an open air restaurant in town.

Thurs June 28

From Mae Chaem, we traveled to Khun Yuam. The road was mostly uphill, and the bike guzzled the petrol to make it. At a high curve on a mountain road, we realized that we were going to run out of gas soon. Thankfully, we were able to make it to the next small town, but once there we found that they had no gas stations. Bordeaux tried approaching a couple, but the man went and busied himself below their stilted house as soon as he saw us approaching, and the wife just shook her head apologetically, indicating that she didn't understand us. Eventually we found a group of men who understood us, and they sold us a liter of gas from their truck.

We had few guesthouse options in Khun Yuam, so we took a room at a bland travelers hotel. After taking a shower, we realized that we were sharing our bathroom with another guest, a massive cockroach. To understand the size of this cockroach, you can't use any sort of domestic American cockroach as a reference. This wasn't a chubby, comfortable suburban cockroach. This was a creature of the jungle. It was about four inches long, with strong wings forming a battle shell over its angry musculature. It resisted all attempts at its life, finally escaping down a drain that we quickly shut behind it.

Thankfully, the town of Khun Yuam was rather more pleasant than our guesthouse. The main street in town was lined with old wooden shophouses, which sold fresh tropical fruit, wooden birdcages, and plastic toys and bikes. We ate a delicious afternoon snack of chicken amok served in a banana leaf package, and spent the afternoon watching a herd of lazy buffalo wallow and play in a field like dogs.

Fri June 29
We ran into another herd of water buffalo the next day on the road, as we curved through a forested pass on the way north. They studied us with suspicion, their heavy wooden bells clinking as they sniffed the air. The road to Mae Hong Son was rough, showing signs of the incredible rains it receives. The asphalt highway disappeared in places, giving way to muddy detours and rough patches under construction.

In Mae Hong Son, we found our first guesthouse with character, Pana Huts. The small bamboo rooms were perched on stilts over thick jungle growth, and the wild growing garden was filled with the sounds of birds and the drill of cicadas. Looking out the window, we saw the movement of leaves and grass outside. A strange creature passed by- we couldn't tell exactly what it was, but saw what looked like wasp wings and spider legs. Bordeaux went outside to look, and found that it was a fat brown spider, carrying the body of a giant dead wasp through the undergrowth. Inspecting our room, we found another brown spider, about the size of my palm, living in the drapes.

The town of Mae Hong Son was a busy provincial capital, with a few concrete hotels and stores erected among the mainly wooden houses. It had the feeling of a mountain town, with timber buildings set on the slope of hills. We bought snacks from the busy local market, including a small loaf of banana bread and an amok made with lemongrass and pork. The best restaurant we found in town was the Salween River, which sold freshly ground hilltribe coffee, home baked bread, and a menu including several regional Shan dishes. From inside their wooden shuttered doors, we could look up at the twin Burmese style chedis that graced the top of the hill.

Sat June 30

Halfway en route to our next town we stopped at Phang Ma Pa, aka Soppong. It was a rather small town, stretched into a thin strip along the riverside, that seemed mainly to cater to tourists interested in rafting and exploring the local caves. At the Soppong River Inn we were able to get french press coffee, which we hadn't had since leaving my Bodum in the states.

From Soppong, it was a relatively short journey to Pai. The town is a popular stop for backpackers, and has a rather unfortunate hippie feel. Thankfully it's the low season, so the town felt quiet and relaxed. The highlight of Pai was All About Coffee, a bakery and coffeeshop in a 140 year old wooden shophouse. Seating is up a short set of stairs, on pillows set at low wooden tables. The coffee was amazing- they offered both locally grown and international brews, and had the largest range of specialty drinks I'd seen in a private coffeeshop in Thailand.

Sun July 1

After spending so many days on the bike, we took the chance for a day of relaxation. Pai, despite its population of croc-wearing hippies, served that purpose well. Our room was in a wooden stilthouse, surrounded by a thick bamboo grove. We spent our day lazily enjoying the pleasures of the town. We drank yogurt smoothies in hammocks, looking looking out at rainy mountains, and took long walks past rice paddies and quiet houses.

Photographing Khao Yai.

Leaving Bangkok last Sunday, Bordeaux and I headed north by train to Pak Chong, frontier town to Khao Yai National Park. After spending a night just of outside town, we took a public songthew to the Khao Yai park gate. There, we sat among our backpacks, and waited for a car to give us a lift in. The ranger at the gate kindly asked the driver of a pick-up for us; he nodded, so we hopped into the back of his truck. The journey into Khao Yai gave us a sense of what we'd see inside the park- unimaginably lush green towering forest, rising sharply from the edge of the asphalt road. The forest was beautiful and darkly mysterious, vines and stranglers swallowing tree-trunks and tangling into knots as they pushed up vertically. I had wanted to see the jungles of Southeast Asia for years, and this first taste didn't satisfy, but rather only managed to make me more intrigued and curious. Even the sudden downpour of steamy tropical rain couldn't distract me from studying the forest- I just pulled my cap lower, and held onto the truck tighter as I watched the green tangles enveloping me.
I've always been fascinated with jungles. They were not only the home of my favorite beasts, but in some way they represented all the darkness and danger and strangeness of the exotic world. So I was rather disappointed when I first traveled in Central America, and found that my photographs of jungles came out so poorly. As I found out, jungles aren't easy places to photograph. There are of course technical reasons for this, mainly the lack of light. There are also practical aspects that make it difficult for a photographer- the heat and sweat, and, on this trop, the constant battle against ground leeches climbing up my shoe. But there are other reasons, as well. To begin with, the forest is often just a mess of green, with few other colors standing out, so framing an interesting composition can be difficult. One option is to search for focal points- animals or flowers or landmarks- around which to structure a picture. But this rarely makes for an interesting photograph- the images come out like scientific stills of singular objects against a background of green. It's perhaps exactly because jungle have an aura of mystery that they're very difficult places to photograph. How do you capture the unknown forest though a medium that was developed to illuminate and illustrate? In the end, my decision was simply to stop trying to order my compositions. Instead, I tried to capture the disorder of the jungle through less planned out and framed shots. In the end, any order that resulted would be the forest's own, emerging in the lines of bamboo or the patterns of leaves.
Photographing wildlife was just as difficult. We had come to Khao Yai expecting not to see much wildlife, but ended up being very lucky. Despite the number of incredible, strange creatures we saw, few sightings resulted in good photographs. The barking deer would dart into the forest if approached, flycatchers rarely waited in appropriate light, and macaques refused to sit still. While searching for our campsite on our first day at Khao Yai, Bordeaux and I were surrounded by the slow deep song of the gibbon. We stopped to listen, and noticed the movement of leaves in the trees nearby. Searching in the shadowy gaps between trees, we saw the silhouette of several gibbons swinging among branches. They were too quick and in too dark of forest to photograph, but the sight was beautiful- their strange, long arms swinging their bodies from one branch to another. Just as beautiful and difficult to photograph were the park's hornbills. They're not shy birds- they chatter and fight noisily, jump around clumsily on branches, and flap loudly from one tree to another. But they roost so high that even with a zoom lens it's hard to get a very careful shot of them. We saw several pairs of Oriental Pied Hornbills, large black and white birds that fight incessantly in pairs. We watched them follow eachother around, flying from the height of one tree to the next. While crossing a bog one afternoon, we heard the loud flapping of wings overhead, and watched as a Great Hornbill passed over us, golden feathers flashing. It perched briefly on a distant tree, it's huge yellow casque shining brilliant, before taking off again.
The greatest opportunity for seeing wildlife, the night lighting, was also the worst for photography. For 40 baht (about one dollar), you sit with five or ten other people in the back of a moving truck, watching as a guide flashes a spotlight around the jungle. It was awesome. The jungle is beautiful at night, even more obscure and elusive than in the day, with just the nearest leaves and tree-trunks emerging from darkness as we passed through. We saw an incredible number of animals on the first night drive- sambar and barking deer out grazing, civets enjoying a late meal, and a dhole (Asian wild dog) hiding among the grasses. When we returned to our camp from the first night drive, their was a Malayan porcupine waiting for us. As we moved toward our tent it walked past us, foot-long quills swaying. We were also lucky enough to have two elephant sightings, neither of which produced a good photograph. On the second night we saw a young bull elephant that was apparently angered by the light from our truck- it charged at us, so we quickly sped off without taking any photos. The other elephant was peacefully browsing, but as we stopped behind it, it put down its trunk and slipped into the forest, disappearing between vines and branches more effectively than one would think any elephant could.