A journey that started exactly one year ago, has come full swing! After "being asked to leave China", I have now come back to Shanghai! Many have asked me, how did I do it? Easy: From Pakse, Laos I took a night bus to Bangkok and flew AirAsia to Kuala Lumpur. I applied for a visa on April 30th, the day before China's May holiday. I paid extra to get the visa that same day. I went back to the Chinese consulate that afternoon, and with weak knees and quivering stomach, I was handed a 6 month, double entry, gateway to the middle kingdom.
Cartwheels ensued.
I bought a cheap flight that night from Kuala Lumpur to Hangzhou, a popular tourist destination a few hours southwest of Shanghai. The only potential problem was at the health check - they really wanted to make sure I had not been to the US in the last few weeks due to the swine flu scare. I did this instead of flying directly to Pudong/Shanghai for two reasons: I wanted to make sure there wold be no record of me at immigration, and the flight was much cheaper to Hangzhou. I didn't want to falsely claim "I'm coming to Shanghai!" before I was 100% sure I could get my visa and get through immigration, So I only told one person - Oulin.
OuLin met me with a friend's car at the airport and we spent the next few hours trying to navigate back to downtown Shanghai. The street signs here really don't make much sense to either of us (she learned to drive in the US). The first thing I did when we arrived was to hunt down my favorite JioaZi (dumpling) restaurant - ShanDong JiaoZi Wang (Shandong dumpling king)!
The next several days were spent catching up with friends! I was able to surprise most everybody! Nobody at my old company knew I was coming, so it was particularly exciting to see everybody's reaction when I showed up on the scene. Dan, my old boss, had kept my old bicycle for me...and I would be lying if I said I wasn't wondering if I would be able to use it the next few weeks during my stay in Shangahi.
Right now, I'm couch surfing at friend's places around the city. My "plans" are constantly changing. OuLin recently quit her job and is moving to the US after 5 year in Shanghai. On her way out of Asia, she will spend the next 8 months backpacking. I will accompany her for her two month trek through western China:
In July, I will dip down into Hong Kong (as I am limited to 90 day stays in China), see some friends, and either continue traveling SE Asia for a few months (Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia) or go back to Shanghai to consider settling down for a bit.
After all of my travels, returning Shanghai has felt the most like "home". My friends here have been so warm and welcoming, and the daily excitement and energy of being in Shanghai is still here. As I look back at the last year, an epic journey of both personal discovery and enlightenment, I wonder if it is now the right time to stay put for a while. That one week in jail in China led to more changes than I could have imagined.
In the last year, I have spent a week in Chinese jail, was forced to leave my home, friends, and girlfriend and left my job to bicycle mostly alone across the United States. I spent a month cutting down trees with a chainsaw and split them into firewood with my Father in New York. I wrote down a list of things I wanted to do and see and I spent the next few months doing them and blogging about it. I bought a one way ticket to Hong Kong and trained capoeira and experienced what it is like do be a fashion model for a short time. I reunited with my sister and her fiance in Bali and learned to surf together. I trekked jungles, up volcanoes, swam with whale sharks, slept in remote villages, and ate all kinds of incredible food (water buffalo brain anyone?). I spent a week on a motorcycle in the remote mountains in Laos. I experienced fine dining and luxury hotels in Manila and Kuala Lumpur. I have been sick, exhausted, lonely, excited, in love, awkward, burned, bitten, scared, high, low, and everything in between. I also took a LOT of photos!
No matter what the choices are, I know one thing: I want to continue to live an experience oriented life. I will live with passion.
Laos (pronounced /ˈlɑː.oʊs/, /ˈlaʊs/, or /ˈleɪ.ɒs/), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma (Myanmar) and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west. Laos traces its history to the Kingdom of Lan Xang or Land of a Million Elephants, which existed from the 14th to the 18th century.
After a period as a French protectorate, it gained independence in 1949. A long civil war ended officially when the communist Pathet Lao movement came to power in 1975, but the protesting between factions continued for several years.
After exhausting my one month Lao visa, I can honestly say that Laos has fulfilled my first ideas of a romantic and exotic Asia. It's like time travel. Dusty streets, slash and burn farming, no advertising, no market to advertise to, chinese made motorbikes, bamboo huts - this is like the wild west of Asia.
My desire to come to Laos was sparked by a small video shown on a iPhone screen in a dark underground bar in Shanghai. In it, I saw dirt bikes racing through dusty villages, ornate Buddhist temples, people swinging into rivers, and beautiful untouched natural vistas. I wanna go! My friend currently in Shangahi, Tim Franco used to live and work in Vientiane, the small capital city. We became friends shortly before my departure from Shanghai last May. We've been keeping in touch fairly well the last year, and last fall while I was still in New York, he invited me to join him on a week long dirt bike expedition of northern Laos, starting at Vientiane. This is it! Tim had to take off work for the 1st week of April, and I would fly to Bangkok, then to Udon Thani in northwest Thailand, hop an hour long bus to the boarder town of Nong Kai, after visa-on-arival and customs, across the MeKong on the Friendship Bridge, then another bus/taxi to Vientiane and viola, I'm at Papaya spa – a mid/high end spa owned by Tim's friend – an adventurous Frenchman who has been “in country” for almost 20 years.
Right, sounds simple enough....flight arrives at 8am in Udon, so if everything goes smoothly, I could be sipping tea to the tune of a de-kinking foot massage by 2pm. Perfect! Only one sliiiiight problem: I bought a one way ticket to Ubon Ratchathani, not Udon Thani. ****. I flew to the wrong freaking city!! Not only is this situation quite embarrassing, it's more than mildly inconvenient. After a humiliating phone call to Tim, I was on an 8 hour bus to Udon Thani. I was one of the last ones through the boarder that night, close call! Tim welcomed me on a 250cc Honda dirt bike and we dined at a slick French restaurant.
The next seven days were spent motorcycling on mostly dirt, and sometimes barely possible roads. We drove just fast enough not to kill ourselves. Zipping along tangled mountain terrain, missing roaring trucks by feet. We were greeted seemingly as liberators by the children of small mountain top villages, cut off from the developing world. I was in awe, and brought to tears by what I learned about the Secret War that the US waged upon the country just a few decades ago. A war still being fought today by the Hmong minority group, ex-CIA mercenaries. As I was driving through the mountaintop villages of Xieng Khouang province, I saw children with missing limbs as a result of the unexploded bombs dropped by American pilots. I thought, “hasn't every country had their dark times? Germany and Japan during WW2 for example.... But why hadn't I heard about the war crimes that the US commuted during the war? Why did I not know that this was the most bombed country on the planet per capita? And why isn't my country doing more to remove the bombs still in the land – live explosives that are keeping the Lao people in poverty and killing hundreds every year? Where is the restitution? And why hasn't learned from such horrid mistakes? Once again, maybe wikipeida says it best:
“The country of Laos has the dubious distinction of being the world's most heavily bombed nation. During the period of the American Vietnam War, over half-a-million bombing missions dropped more than 5 million tons of ordnance on Laos, most of it anti-personnel cluster bombs. Each cluster bomb shell contained hundreds of individual bomblets, "bombies", about the size of a tennis ball. An estimated 30% of these munitions did not detonate. Ten of the 18 Laotian provinces have been described as "severely contaminated" with artillery and mortar shells, mines, rockets, grenades, and other devices from various countries of origin. These munitions pose a continuing obstacle to agriculture and a special threat to children, who are attracted by the toy-like devices.”
I felt quite ashamed, and even a little bit guilty to be from the country that did this. (to be fair, it was my grandparents who funded the bombing of Laos...but wait, what war is my tax dollars funding?) The war has ended, but the death hasn't stopped. A little late to protest a war that has already ended. Good thing there is not a shortage of wars to protest.
I had a lot of time to think about the images and information of such tragedy. After such a sobering experience, it was a bit hard to unwind at beautiful VangVien. We didn't quite get our “tubing experience”, the quintessential SE Asia backpacker experience, as Tim's camera was stolen and we spent the afternoon chasing down the criminal. (got the camera back, check out the video of our 7 day trip: http://www.vimeo.com/4234036)
After the trip, Tim returned to Shanghai. I continued down south to a village on the Mekong close to the 4000 islands with Jean-Louis, the owner of the Papaya spa. He invited me to join him and his Lao-French family to the village where is wife grew up for the Lao new year. I spent one week with little electricity and no running water, completely cut off from the outside (and English speaking) world. I couldn't leave even if I wanted to (and at times I did!). There was one bus that pases by the village before 7am, and if you miss it, you're staying! I was ready to go after 5 days, but a rain had destroyed the road. I woke up every morning before 6am and was in bed by 9. There's not much to do after the sun sets when there's no electricity.
If I were to choose one word to describe the Lao people, it would be “chill”. Life moves slowly here when you're not speeding on a dirt bike. I enjoyed my stay here immensely. This was an experience unlike any other. When traveling, one often wants to get “off the beaten path”, to mingle with the locals...well, this was certainly just that! Lao food every meal, no English, and plenty of Lao Lao (cheap rice moonshine made from rice). The food was mostly all good - laap, the national dish, minced meat and herbs was one of my favorites. Other noteable dishes were grilled carabao brain and freshwater giant stingray form the Mekong...the latter being MUCH better than the former. During their new year celebrations, they love to drink and sing karaoke – loudly! They also went around and smeared baby powder in each other's faces after getting drunk. The drinking would start around sunrise. I hope I am never forced to drink shots of Lao Lao before breakfast ever, EVER again.
To see photos from my first week in Laos with Tim, click here. More photos of the next several weeks coming soon! Stay tuned!
Abram Hodgens is an American designer/animator who specializes in motion graphic broadcast design and computer animation. After working in Shanghai, China for 2 years as creative director for Keyframe, he is now taking time to travel and focus on new experiences and opportunities.
New to the blog? Check out how this whole journey started here.
