Tsagaan Sar 2007

Last week was Tsagaan Sar, the Mongolian Lunar New Year celebration, and I got to go back to my host site in Hotol. Tasagaan Sar = (Thanksgiving + pub crawl) x 3. I spent the three days of the actual holiday in Arkhangai and visited Nasaa and her relatives. Compared to my friends who are English teachers, I had it pretty easy. I only visited a couple houses each day and didn't have to drink too much. As you can see from the pictures I had a deel made for Tsagaan Sar and got to where is to Hotol also. It's something nice I can take home. I may have another one made to bring to my brother's wedding in May.

In order to go to Hotol, I had to take the bus to UB and then a train. I made the whole trip in 20 hours and that's because the train trip itself took seven hours. I passed the time by reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's over 1,000 pages long, but was recommended by a friend. I can't really tell you what it's about except that by page 300 it involves tennis, French Canadian Separatism, and drug and alcohol rehab. I made it into town at 4:30 am and went right to bed. The next day two friends, Curtis and Danny, who also trained in Hotol drove in from Erdenet. We visited each other's houses and had some left over buuz. We also got to see our language teacher Undraa. A lot of people from the town remembered us and it was good to see the place again. It looked a lot different than in summer.

In other news, the business book is finished and will be distributed to the new volunteers at PDM next week. Based on their feedback, the book will be revised and handed out at the M18 training this summer. Hopefully we get to go in and help out. I am also starting work on a new version of the catalog. There are a lot of new businesses that want to take part, so we should have plenty of good stuff to choose from. That's all for now.

Indochine

Hey gang. I know its been a while since I rapped at ya, but I just got back from south Indochina. We were gone for three whole weeks and moved around a lot, so I might not mention every thing we did. Overall it was a great and relaxing trip. There was lots of beach time and sleeping in. That meant we didn't do a lot of tours and boat trips, but that was fine. We were on the same plane with a group of girls who got up before 8:00 most days and that doesn't sound like much of a vacation. I'll do a quick rundown of our activities and let the pictures speak for themselves. Go to my Flickr page for all the sets or click on links as they appear.

The trip started and ended in Ho Chi Minh City, which most locals still refer to as Saigon. We only had a night there before taking a night bus to Nha Trang. We really wanted to go SCUBA diving and that seems to be the best place. There are a bunch of dive companies and they all do refresher courses which is good, because I hadn't been in the water for two years. Nha Trang kind of reminded me of Miami beach with a string of hotel, shops, and bars right across from the beach. Apparently Summer is the high season so we got cheap rates. I'm sure its hotter and rainy then too.

From Nha Trang we booked a highland tour down to Dalat and then back to the coast at Mui Ne. Our driver/guide didn't have the English we expected, but he showed us some cool stuff including rubber and coffee plantations, silk worm growing, and a long house village. We actually stayed in a longhouse for a night and got to see the minority tribe that lives there. The government recently moved them out of the hills and is trying to settle them more. The highlight of staying in the village was probably crossing a river on an elephant. Check out the pictures. We also took a cable car across a valley near Dalat. That was good for some aerial shots. Dalat is a nice little city that was set up by the French as a kind of alpine retreat. I'd like to spend more time there, but after one night we went to Mui Ne. It is another beach town, but much more laid back. There are some cool looking boat tours and sand dunes you can go see.

Another cool thing we saw during the tour was the Crazy House built by a Vietnamese architect. It's not even finished yet and it's already pretty crazy. And I can't forget the waterfall on the way to the long house village. We actually went behind it and swam around, but I couldn't take any pictures there.

After another night in Saigon, we headed to Phnom Penh before heading straight for another beach town called Sihanoukville. You can tell where this is going. More sitting on the beach enjoying cocktails and not much else. One thing that amazed us was how well all of the people trying to sell you things spoke English. If you don't buy the little girl's painting she'll deliver a surprisingly effective insult and try to impress you by counting from 1 to 10 in five languages. While sitting on the beach we also ran into the Imans (the coolest married couple in Peace Corps history). They'd flown into Bangkok and just happened to be in Sihanoukville that day. Needless to a great time was had by all.

We managed to drag ourselves away from the beach after three days and headed back to Phnom Penh so we could make it to Angkor Wat the next day. We only got a one day pass, but the three day one would be worth it. We'd heard it was easy to rent bikes and see the main things in one day. That's good, because I was just about dead after that much biking. Plus, with me being slow and bad with directions, I lost the rest of my group for about four hours. Luckily, I could buy a map and figure out where the sites were. I was about half way through when I come out of a bathroom to find the others on the side of the road looking at their map. They'd gone left at the start when I thought they went right. We got to see the biggest two temples together and share our pictures of the rest of the park.

After yet another night in Phnom Penh, we went back to Saigon and booked a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. That was one of the tours we really wanted to do and it was only a half day. You have to watch a propaganda movie before you go on the tour, but I didn't see any anti-Americanism elsewhere on the trip. Our guide had actually served with the South during the war. The tour itself was interesting, because you saw how they adapted from fighting the French to the Americans and how they responded to the jungles being leveled by bombs. I just about squeezed through a few of the tunnels, but not the original door you can see in the pictures. Out of respect for Peace Corps rules, I did not go to the firing range.

That night at 12 am we flew back to Korea and then to UB. I'm here now finishing up the business book and starting the next version of the catalog. Tsaagan Tsar is also almost upon us, so I won't be getting much work done next week. I may come back to UB and go up to Selenge to see my host family. There's also a dual birthday party a bunch of people will be going to and I haven't been back there since swearing in. I'll have updates later.

UPDATE: Just so you don't think my trip was all drinks and pony rides, I thought I'd mention that I read three books while on vacation. There were some long flights and bus rides so I had plenty of times.

Those books were:

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson - 784 pages

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - 240 pages

The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens - 161 pages

Other volunteers brought some books and many hostels have exchange programs. Remember kids, Reading Is Fundamental.