TV and the Fitbit life

The New Yorker's got my number right now with a little Miranda July and David Sedaris.

Geeking out on Gussow

For anyone who loves to read about the interweaving of nutrition education, gardening, ecology, and culture. Check out this great lecture by the beautiful and amazing Joan Dye Gussow that (the equally amazing) Raj Patel posted on his blog.

It's from 1988 but it's themes and messages still resonate. It's a long one, but hang in there, you'll find some gems.  

And Joan's writings and lectures are all very worth reading--she's poetic with spunk, she's a true visionary and an accomplished farmer-cook. Definitely an inspiration for me in so many ways.

Back in the US of A!

YES! After about a week of travel--from Kota Kinabalu >> Columbia Missouri via plane and car, through the saguaros outside of Phoenix, the mesas of new mexico, the big plains of the midwest, I have officially landed. Ben and I will be tending a veggie garden and chickens and dogs for 6 weeks or so before making the journey back west. I'm looking forward to editing photos and writing in the meantime :)

Getting some culture in Luang Prabang

The Traditional Arts and Ethnology Center in Luang Prabang is one of the best museums I've been to. Just the right size and covers so much of the diverse cultures in Laos--from the Akha, the Hmong and the Katu--love the amazing dyes and the weaving of thread and bamboo. 

The things they do with sliver too! This goes over a traditional black skirt... 

...bad photo, yes. badass leggings? oh yes, and I want a pair. After I pick up a wintry themed pair from the tibetan ladies in Nepal. 

Luang Prabang is on, via the Mekong

Travel has been busy, on the go! And much of my good internet connection time has been focused on travel planning--so there's lots to catch up on...

Floating the Mekong:

From Chiang Mai we headed north and east to Laos' most beautiful town, Luang Prabang, via the mighty Mekong River. 

Day one: road trip via minivan to a tiny border town. For some unknown reason I was expecting a minivan all to ourselves. But instead we had a party van full of folks and one pair of the stinkiest boots I've smelled to date. There was the fresh faced Canadian couple, a few geezer British folks, and a couple of kiwis that partied a little too hard at Thailand's full moon beach party (one was so completely spaced out he had no idea where we were going in Laos, the other, well, we called him stinkwi). Our van was the first sign that it was to be an unusual trip. Luckily, Thailand's freeways are a dream. There's still undoubtably the ubiquitous "extra" or invisible lane in the middle, but it was a not a death defying drive. 

This was the decal on our van. Only in Thailand. 

First stop: the White Temple. We couldn't go inside because it was damaged in the earthquake that hit Chiang Rai about two weeks before our visit. 

This is not one of Thailands many ancient temples. It is the vision of Thai artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat. A very interesting modern take, I loved the darkness of it all, within the blinding white. 

Then we stayed in possibly the worst hotel of our entire trip...

I should perhaps take a step back here and say that the slow boat to Laos is primarily organized by tour groups--you get the package deal at any number of small travel agencies in Chaing Mai and Chaing Pai. On old laminated pages in a three ring binder, you see the vague outline of a trip typed out, blurry photos of hotels you might stay in, and vauge descriptions of border crossings and buses you'll take. 

But once on the road, it became evident that our faded iteneraries equalled confusion, no one really knew what was going on. "I don't know" was the mantra. We didn't have one guide who took us through the whole process from bus to bus to border crossing, etc. and once we got to a place, we were usually were told several different things about what we needed to do. It's all part of the adventure, and very much describes getting outdoors anywhere on this trip to date.

the hotel vying for worst of the tip: like the paint job, hate the rock hard beds and non-working fans in the cement heat boxes called rooms. oh yeah, and there's the "food" that was most likely the trigger for B and I to get sick at exactly the same time. 

Luckily, we were able to find a nice pool to cool off in and talked to some interesting young Dutch kids. As van after van dropped folks off at the hotel, we discovered we had joined the 20 year old euro party curcuit that goes from Thailand to Vietnam. An interesting scene to accompany our trip.

Day two: we made it through the border crossing and found ourselves on the banks of the Mekong in one of these Lao long boats.

Capt Ben as we pulled out of the dock...safety briefing, and life jackets? 

a few short minutes later, we got a little close to another boat.

The boat was packed to the max. Not one seat left. 

The scenes of Lao as we cruised the river--lush, dense forest, dotted with small communities.

There was also a lot of burning of the dense forest as well. For grazing? Agriculture? 

We made a stop at Pakbeng the first night--we found a great place to stay with airconditioning! And delicious indian food. We also saw the first indications of a place once under french dominion: baguettes!! Croissants! 

The slow boat trip ended on an unfortunate, strange note. We pulled up to a dock 10km from town, with rickshaws ready and waiting for us, when many passengers expected to land just a short walk from their hotel. What followed was an attempted mutiny: they are just trying to scam us into paying for a rickshaw! refuse to get off the boat until they bring us to the center of town! Tourists shook thick outdated lonely planet guides open to the maps of the ferry stop in LP at the captain, who claimed to know no english all of a sudden. Built up frustration from the kids travelling for months feeling as if they were getting scammed out of money at every stop was unleashed. In reality, no one actually knew where we were supposed to get dropped off, and none of us could communicate effectively with locals to figure it out. Ben tried to calm folks down and figure out the facts...but the facts were as vague as our faded iteneraries. In the end, as the 2 or 3 local passengers got off, we followed them...as did most of the passengers. A tense start to our stay in Luang Prabang but it didn't last. More photos of LP to come! 

Dhanybhad Nepal

Thank you, or dhanybhad, Nepal seems to be the best place to start. There are just so many words and sounds and smells and so very many photos and and and, just too much to even know how to begin. So thank you is a good place to start. Thank you nepal and Ben, amazing co adventurer. And a few photos....

Glaciers!! Avalanches!

Not a bad way to celebrate a birthday--Larkye pass 15500 feet. Our guide, kuman gave Ben this Tibetan scarf as a good luck gift for the special occasion. 

Now for Thailand to laos by boat! 

hello from Chiang Mai and check out this month's Urbanist

I'm fresh off of over two weeks of trekking in Nepal! It was nice to come back to find this article I helped put together this spring.

I'm so thankful for the opportunity to work with the Marin Carbon Project and share it with SF through this article in the Urbanist. Follow the link to learn more about Compost, Cows and Carbon Markets.

Thanks to both Eli and John Wick for always being so encouraging and proactive--with these guys around, one begins to believe that together, we will make change happen.

scenes of yogyakarta

Besides being a great homebase to explore Borobudur, Yogyakarta was a great place to explore food, batik and its beautiful windy streets (that so reminded me of southern spain). 

Via Via Cafe was amazing, our home away from home for a few days. It was our first fresh, delicious veggie food of the trip. 

Rumor has it that Indonesia is the mastermind behind Tempeh--I've definitely loved eating a lot of it on this trip! Interestingly it is often served along side tofu (called tahu here). 

And everytime I have tempe here, I have the added bonus of good memories of Zoe cooking her delicious tempeh at 1695 Dolores. 

scenes from the beautiful streets 

Our alleyway/street in Yogya

the hotel courtyard, we had a little balcony/seating area over it where we could check out the baby birds in the treetops. 

our hotel room -- this artist also had a lot of work up at one of our favorite local restaurnants Bedhot that had amazing fresh juices (I think I'm learning the real meaning of fresh juice on this trip) and some great veggie Indo food. 

there was so much interesting grafitti in yogya...I really missed out in taking photos but grabbed this shot in our alleyway.

sounds of our street were the songs of caged birds, kids playing soccer, and the prayer songs of the small mosque on our street. 

Bali Road Trippin: Mt Batur and Beyond

Ben braved the streets of Bali in style with a little Suzuki Stilo. As he figured out how to drive a manual with his left hand, and zigged and zagged along the windy-windy very narrow roads, navigating motos and big rice trucks, I tried to figure out how to navigate using a very general map--towns in Bali have signs sometimes, but not alltimes. We didn't know what many of the street signs meant...but we made it. 

the stilo in style at our digs in Toya Bungka

There was a downpour just outside of Ubud. We took refuge from the storm in what we thought was just an empty parking lot, but in less than 30 seconds, three guys were around the car with colorful umbrellas. We had stumbled unknowingly on one of the many agro-tourism spots along the road. Our guide brought us past drying spices like star anise and clove, then to a whole set up of coffee beans at different times of harvest/roasting. Then we went by the Luwak cages...this area of Bali is all about there special Luwat or Civat coffee, the coffee that is best because it has first been through the digestive system of the small Luwat. It really feels impossible that all that coffee comes from the Luwat, but what can you do. We sipped a long line of coffee, cocoa and tea samples as we looked out on the pourig rain. Before we headed to Toya Bungka, the base for exploring the volcano, Mt. Batur. 

Toya is an interesting town. It's main activities being tourism and volcanic soil harvesting. Yes, that would be the constant noise of 18 hours of trucks on the one road to Toya, collecting and delivering volcanic soil and rock. There was a wierd vibe in the town to be sure. Here's where we stayed, I wish I could've photographed the interesting wood tree and mushroom diorama that deocorated the bathroom....

But as we climbed Mt Batur in the dark early morning hours under a quarter moon, through the shadows of farms and forests, with our trusty, tiny local guide Yamin it was all worth it. 

magical cloudscapes

while we had trekked closely to some French tourists (who amazingly smoked cigarettes the entire way up) we didn't expect the party we found at the summit. About 40 or so folks with thier guides, all of us waited for our guides to cook our breakfast of eggs and bananas in the steam of the volcano. 

The fancy guide making delicious banana pancakes while all of us drooled...and other guides making offering at the summit's temple

Once we summited, we walked along the crater's lip which was just about a foot wide with lots of steam along the way, we could feel the heat!

great view of Bali's most revered and holy volcano, Aguung 

View of the last eruption in 2000ish (every Balinese you ask will tell you a different date of the last eruption). Note the small green patch amidst the black lava, it is the Lucky Temple that survived the blast. 

we found a monkey along our route

we hiked out along the most amazing farms, salsa farms as Fred would call them--tomatoes, peppers and shallots. 

these farms had several small shack homes that were beyond decay but they all had satellite dishes. Whole families, three generations, stooped over shallots, skinning them for market, not too amused to see us trekking by. It was an amazing experience to be sure. 

Next up: hope to get photos from the rest of our Balinese road trip up before we begin our Nepal trek.