Post 9/11 Update: Hello All

Greetings from Wisconsin!



Well, I’I've been here the better part of two months now. That’s about a month and a half too long but inlight of recent events I don’t believe there’s much safer a place to be stranded. Can’t see any reason to bomb or poison a bunch of dairy cows. Still, people around here are scared and even I whittled my trip down to 4 countries (Israel, Jordan, & Egypt are definitely out of the itinerary, for obvious reasons) and pushed my departure date back to reassess my plans.

I must admit, my stay in Wisconsin hasn't’t been all bad. It is a wonderful and beautiful part of the world. When I first arrived I was greeted by wide-open, blue skies undercut by vivid, green fields. The air was fresh and sweet. The nights were pitch black except for the stars. Living in the city, I had almost forgotten just how numerous and active the constellations are in the countryside. While the weather was warm Topper & I camped out in the fieldand watched for shooting stars. Of course tonight the temperature is forecast to bottom out around 25*. Brrrrrr. I think we’ll be sleeping inside.
The animal encounters have been both shocking and wonderful: Tree frogs hunt mosquitoes on the sliding glass door by porch light. (The mosquitoes were a plague themselves this wet year.) Snakes startled from beneath an overturned rock startled me. There was the bald eagle that passed 20 feet in front of me while I jogged along a back-country road. Emerald green hummingbirds came each noon to drink sugar-water from the feeders. That ugly snapper that mom and I coaxed across the road with a plastic clothes hanger (see attachments-forgive the captions, they were written for a class of kindergartners). People around here love to hit turtles crossing the road. The three deer that nearly put my truck back in the shop one Saturday night. And the birds! The flocks of honking Canadian geese, mallards, red-winged blackbirds, & sand hill cranes never end.

This week’s newcomers are the miniscule deer ticks. Had to take Topper in to get vaccinated for Lymes disease. Oh yea, and speaking of Topper, he LOVES cows. He’s scared at them but he loves them.

So, with the weather turning gray and the temperatures heading south, it is time for me to go east. Tuesday I arrive in Bangkok, Thailand where I‘ll sort out my visa situation and visit a few reclining Buddhas. By the weekend I should be in Phnom Penh, Cambodia where I’ll catch up with old college friends who are working there. The plan from there is to fly into Hanoi, Vietnam, spend a couple days viewing old communist relics and war museums and then continue onto the coast to soak up some sun and shake sand from our shorts. From there, who knows…stay tuned.

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WOW!

What can I say that could convey all that I've experienced in the last
month? I don't have the words in my vocabulary.

On this trip, I've seen colors so bright they defy common description.
Cambodia alone, with its rust-red clay roads, vivid green rice patties,
graymountains, and baby-blue skies is a photographer's dream. As a friend once
noted, "EVERYWHERE you look is a picture waiting to happen." Five hundred
ducks being herded down the middle of the road. Markets filled to
overflowing with every food imaginable, and fresh, too. Bicycles
overloaded with anything and everything: dressers, butchered pigs, dogs in baskets,
people (the record sighting in our travels was six!), infants (sometimes I
wonder if kids aren't BORN on bikes). Did you know that fresh food and a
grill makes a restaurant on wheels in Asia?



Tastes that I could never reproduce in the kitchen (fish soup for
breakfast? YUM!) A hundred different ways to make spring rolls. Vietnamese Bier Hoi
(draft beer, unique to each neighborhood) served out of antifreeze bottles
(???). Grain fed DUCK EGGS with yolks so big and rich they are almost
pink!

The sounds! An hour of temple bells at 6am in Siem Reap. The screeching
of moto horns and the "tok-tok-tok" of the noodle vendor in Saigon beating
away, well into the night and on into my dreams. My friend Jon,
downstairs, learning to play a traditional, Cambodian, violin he bought at the
Russian Market for $20.

And the smellllllllssssssss! No…words. No adjectives could do justice.
Compared to Southeast Asia, America is a lunar wasteland in the realm
of smells, totally devoid of depth. Fish sauces mingling with dragon
fruit, fetal eggs, raw fish, beef, pork, chicken, vinegar, dust (everywhere
dust)...

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We rented bahas in PP and rode down highway 1, more a strip of pot-holes than a road to Bokor. Bokor is a former french resort high in the hills (rising some 1000 feet above the Gulf of Thailand. A very haunting place riddled with bullet holes and Khmer Rouge ghosts. Very creepy but well worth the trek.

http://www.travelindochina.com/City.asp?TourID=73&CityID=91



Here we are in Sihanoukville outside the former Independence Hotel. Again a derelict biproduct of the KR era. One big, creepy hotel with a couple and their chickens inhabiting a corner of the grand ballroom. scary shit.



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KOH TAO, Thailand Dec 2001


Wow!

After traveling the underbelly and not so underbelly of Southeast AQsia
I have finally arrived in PARADISE!

As luck would have it I arrived in Bangkok the same day as my fellow
travelers and friends from Boston, Jon and Alex. With similar plans in
mind, we hooked up with a 5 day scuba-diving package on the Island of
Ko
Tao. One overnight train, a shuttle bus, and a 3 hr ferry ride later
and
we were unpacking our things in our own personal bungalos and minutes
later splashing in the Gulf of Thailand surf.

Jon and I spent our first day snorkling around the shallow reefs that
begin 100 meters off shore while Alex relaxed in a hammock on the white
sandy beach. I was amazed at the variety of animal life there was to
see
just swimming around off shore. Can't wait to dive deeper. They say
there are whale sharks (massive!) in the general vacinity of the
island.
We swam for 5 hours checking out hundreds of varieties of coral (from
softball sized to the size of boulders), flourescent blue-green clams,
fish of EVERY size, shape, and color, sea slugs (ick!), sea urchins,
jellyfish, and anemones. The coolest creature I saw was a 4 foot
manta-ray that had beautiful, flourescent green markings!

It seems amazing that a place like this can exist after seeing so much
poverty and political repression in places like Cambodia, Vietnam, and
Laos. So free and easy here. I'm so glad to be able to end my trip here
as I think all that I have seen previous to this would have really sent
me home in a funk.

Well, I must be off. As of the 5th I have less than one month left
here.
So...I must be off to take a dip, burn some more of my white, falang
ass
(tune in next time for another exciting adventure of "Lobster-Man in SE
Asia" Dun-da-daaaaa!), and begin my scuba lessons! Weeeee-heeee!!!

I hope you all are well. Miss you. Wish you were here. (I'll bet you do
too!)

Jack

PS- How's the weather there?

Hahahahahhahahhahahahaha!!!!