Bike Rides and Bear Feet

Sept 20 10:01 AM
Luang Prabang, Laos        

                 If there is one thing I have to say about yesterday's bike trek its fuck hills. There aren't a lot of things I wouldn't have done in this world for a Gatorade yesterday. I consider myself a fairly athletic person but on my way home I may have been on the brink of death. We decided to take a bike ride to a place called the Pak Ou Caves. This cave is a popular tourist spot which is about 30-35km (19-21 miles) outside of the main city of Luang Prabang and across the Mekong River.  I figured on a the nice mountain bikes we rented that a 21 mile ride wouldn't be so bad. But fuck, was I wrong. It took us about three hours to get up to the caves after stopping for food once and at a small village on the way up.

                 The village seemed nice and quaint but creepily deserted aside from the few vendors and monks sitting around.. oh and the group of ten year old kids smoking cigarettes and drinking beer (wtf?). Their main export seemed to be what we like to refer to as "LaoLao" which is a traditional Lao alcohol made out of rice. It tastes bad, and makes you feel worse the next day, but damn is it a good time.This particular village specialized in LaoLao of the whiskey variety. We came upon one vendor who had bottles of god knows what so we stopped to take a look. It was something out of a bad science fiction movie with one of those crazy scientists with all sorts of vats and jars filled with body parts and dead things. Seriously. The main attraction was a row of four bottles up front. Coming in at about two feet tall, each these bottles each had some very disturbing things inside them, and are as follows (from left to right in the picture:

Jar #1 Bear Feet. Yes, I said bear feet. Someone took a bear, chopped its feet of and threw them in this oversized bottle.

Jar #2 This bad boy had about fifty or so bugs laying in the bottom of it. If I had to guess I would say they were oversized cockroaches. Gross.

Jar #3 Cobras. This one had a handful of full grown cobras in it.

Jar #4 Death Mush. The last jar had some rotted death mush of "your fucking guess is as good mine". So of course me and my buddy John smelled the stuff and holy shit, never again. We said thanks but no thanks and were on our way.

          Finally we got to the caves after some awesome off roading on the bikes and took a boat across the river. To be honest the Pak Ou Caves were more like one big cave and was less than spectacular. The ride was much more beautiful and worth seeing than the actual caves themselves. All in all it was a successful day filled with gorgeous views, odd things, and some good ol' biking trails. So to summarize the trip... Fuck hills.

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Teaching...wtf?

September 15, 2013
4:55PM


             Week one of teaching down. And to be honest the score is: Teaching: 1 Ben: 0. I have a new found respect for people who teach nowadays back home in the states, along with a new found guilt for everything I put my teachers through growing up over the years. Teaching is exhausting but very fulfilling work. Its an amazing feeling when your kids finally understand what "communication" is after thirty minutes of explaining it in twelve different ways and giving a hundred different examples of it.

            The kids I teach make my job easy, they are respectful, kind, hard working, and they truly want to be there. The difference between the view of education out here in Laos and how kids feel about education back home is worlds apart, literally and figuratively. I can only imagine trying to teach anything to the little shit kids back in the United States. But the novice monks I am teaching are extremely dedicated to learning as much as they possibly can in the short time we have together each day. Its motivating to see that amount of effort put into learning something on such a consistent basis. It makes the 3-4 hours of lesson planning a day worth the time.

       It sounds cliché, but I think I'm learning just as much about myself and the English language as these kids. I definitely need to brush up on my grammar and spelling, and its sobering to realize how hard it is to explain a simple concept like a topic sentence to a group of kids that have a 2nd grade speaking and reading level. For example, I didn't realize until today that I had spent a whole lesson explaining the word "necessary" but spelling it wrong the whole time. Whoops. Luckily the other people in my group are fucking up just as much as me and are having the same difficulties I am. But like anything, there is a learning curve, and I'm sure I will be a pro teacher by the end of this shit. As long as these kids are learning something each day then I've done my job.

       

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Laos, first impressions

Sept 11 11:19 PM
Luang Prabang, Laos

         I'll be honest, when I was flying into Laos the first thing I thought was "What the fuck is this place and what the fuck am I doing here". Coming to a country I know next to nothing about (prior to my trip I barely even knew Laos was a country) and spending two months here. Flying in was an amazing experience though, watching the Mekong River  weave back and forth as we descended, with the rolling hills covered with a light mist and small villages dotting the landscape. Exciting until you realize that where you are going is not a big city like you expected, but a town that is borderline third world and is more dirt, shacks and jungle then it is an actual civilization.

        The airport is no larger than a supermarket and there are only maybe two or three smaller planes docked at the terminals. The one main road going by the entrance is dirt and some old buildings and run down structures and shacks line the street. If you've ever been to Mexico, this is like Mexico with Asians. If you haven't been to Mexico though, your first impression of this place (at least for me coming from a big city) might be like "What a shit hole". But looks can be deceiving, once you get into town about twenty minutes away things start to look up, and you realize that no, you will not be sleeping in a hammock in the middle of the jungle or spending your days under a pile of leaves and sticks somewhere deep in the mountains eating plants and bugs for the rest of your life.

          The town is actually quite charming once you learn to ignore the random trash everywhere and the many abandoned and obviously never up kept buildings. There are temples everywhere, in Luang Prabang alone, which is maybe ten square miles, there are 49 temples. These temples range from the very simple to the extremely extravagant. I still have yet to go in one and check it out but even from the outside they look quite magnificent.

       At first everything is a little overwhelming, the difference in architecture, the abundance of plant life everywhere, the Mekong always flowing around you wherever you go, and the motorbikes. Everyone out here rides motorbikes. There are cars here and there but for the most part everyone has their bike and no one has any idea about any road rules that the government may or may not have in place which leads to an interesting system on the streets of Luang Prabang. It will be an interesting two months out here, and between teaching and exploring, should be a fulfilling experience.

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LA to Taipei

Sept 6 7:54 AM
Taipei, Taiwan

              Just got into Taipei. Flight was long and boring, it's nice though, they served two meals (booze included) and I was able to watch some new movies and sleep a little. Of course the first time I'm flying to Asia and I get stuck sitting next to the only Southern fat black lady for probably 1000 miles around. But she was nice, a little weird, but nice. So many odd/cool things I've seen already in my short time here. Stepping off the plane after my 13 hour flight to Taipei was a pretty awesome experience. I played a lot of Pokemon as a kid, and just walking through the airport I felt like it was real life Pokemon and Ash Ketchum was going to run up and smack me in the face with a Pokeball at any moment. The colors, writing, architechture and style of everything around me is pretty crazy, a little overwhelming at first, but in a god way. I wish I could experience more of Taipei but I had to rush to my terminal in order to make my flight to Vietnam.
Now that I have arrived here it is apparent that there is much less money in this country than in Taipei. My first impression here was an interesting one, as I was washing my hands in the restroom a man after finishing up his business proceeded to wash his hands in the urnial I had just used. Naturally I was confused, but he just walked by me, happy as a clam that he had just washed his hands in my piss water. The airport is much less kept than the Taipei airport and seems much older, I'm not sure if this is just a smaller airport or if they are all like this. There is no wi-fi here so I am just browsing the many odd shops they have in their terminal until my flight in about an hour. Can't wait to get into Laos and have a shower and a bed to sleep in. Its been a rough past 20 hours.

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Sacramento

Sept 2, 2013 11:21 AM
Today is the first real leg of my trip. And so far it has been as unenjoyable as I had guessed. My body is burned to a slight crisp from the recent Mexico trip, which in itself was a fantastic blur of booze, ocean breezes, and shitty street tacos. Although it was a fucking awesome trip and as good as a send off as I could have asked for. I am pretty sore and tired, really not getting too much sleep last night. This morning around 5AM I stumbled into Sky Harbor airport after saying my last goodbyes to Sarah at the departure terminal. It was a sobering reminder of the journey I am about to partake in.
I then board my flight and immediately pass out, I can only imagine the obnoxious snoring that I forced my poor seat buddy to suffer through, but I got a good nap, so that's all that really matters. As I arrived at LAX I wandered around, having three hours to kill before my flight to Sacramento. I decide to have my last Micky D's meal in America here in Los Angeles, and it is just as shitty as I remember it being.
Now as I write I am currently listening to some very annoying children whine about god knows what in the seat in front of me. I am also eating the most bland "Gourmet Center Biscoff" ever, which tastes like if a Teddy Graham had a bad night of drinking, this is what would come out the next morning. It is essentially Delta's way of saying "Hey we're too cheap to give you peanuts so here's a shitty processed piece of dry, tasteless cracker, thank you for flying with Delta today"
But its not all bad, I knew the first part of the trip was gonna be a rough few days, but I am consumed and distracted by mixed emotions of being excited, nervous, sad and happy all at once. This is going to be one hell of a journey and hopefully I survive it, and hopefully you can follow me around the world and listen to my travels in whatever morose, sarcastic, and eye-opening way I choose to convey it in.
Ben Cohen

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