Going Guidebook-less

If I may be so bold, I would say that we have become exceptional travelers. We haven’t always been this good….it’s a skill that has developed in the last five months on the road.

When we began this journey in December, we carried with us a Lonely Planet India Guidebook. Let me note that we didn’t arrive in India until three months later, and additionally, let me specify that the LP India weighs about four pounds. It was a bone of contention between us, but once we left home with it, why would we dump it before arriving in India? I was delighted to pawn it off on our good friends in Jabalpur in our last few weeks in India. We learned a few lessons from having that guidebook: 1) it is way too heavy for backpackers; 2) that we oftentimes used the guidebook to determine where we DIDN‘T want to go, since every other foreigner was also there; and 3) that we oftentimes set ourselves up for disappointment when the prices listed for hotel and transportation were vastly incorrect. While great for some, and mandatory for many types of travelers, they just don’t seem to help us that much.

So, we bagged the whole guidebook thing. We use the space in our bags to tote a few, quickly devoured, pleasure books, some short pamphlet-style literature from Ghandi’s Ashram, and plenty of our own writings. This isn’t to say that we aren’t interested in browsing through a guidebook should it cross our path, but we don’t seek them out. When we are trying to determine a direction, we look at our National Geographic World Map, stop by a travel/tour office and ask some questions (the people who work in these offices are notoriously bored and are happy to chat), or talk to the people that we meet along the way. We also sometimes save regional maps to our computer and use them for reference.

Last week when we left Accra, intending to head down the coast to Cape Coast, we arrived at the bus station only to find that the CC bus had left a few hours earlier. So, we just hopped aboard the next bus, bound for a town called “Takoradi.” Now, without a map, or a guidebook, or very positive customer service at the bus station, we hadn’t the slightest idea where Takoradi was….but we knew that it was in Ghana and only four hours away. Quick deductions told us that it wasn’t east (for Togo was only three hours), so let’s go North….or West….or Northwest….or wherever Takoradi is! Tickets purchased and window seats scored, we were soon delighted to find ourselves traveling west, along the Atlantic Coast.

Strangely enough, our bus passed right through Cape Coast, but since we’d purchased tickets on to Takoradi, we stayed aboard. We ended up staying three days in Takoradi, quickly establishing ourselves as regulars at the local restaurant and enjoying countless bowls of spicy groundnut (“peanut” for all you foreigners) chowder, wandering through the industrial port, browsing through the market, and spending ridiculously hot afternoons watching Tela Novellas dubbed in English on our hotel television.

After a few lazy days in Takoradi, we backtracked to Cape Coast, our original destination. Debarking from the bus, we coyly evaded the merciless taxi drivers and walked half a mile, then catching a reasonably-priced taxi into town. We told the driver that we wanted a hotel room for around 10 cedis ($8 USD) and he deposited us in a modest hotel with a fantastic balcony that catches the most spectacular evening breezes from the ocean. At night we relaxed in the fresh air and watched fruit bats the size of owls swooping in the gigantic tree outside of the balcony.

However, let our readers not think that each and every part of our guidebook-less adventure is pleasant. I can recall a few that weren’t so easy or carefree. I can even remember a few where we would have been delighted to have the address of a hotel….ANY hotel! But my selective memory is a gift and I remember more vividly the times when we unexpectedly arrived at a perfect place, of our own accord, with nothing to thank but hope, perseverance, and luck.

There is certainly a wealth of information on the internet, but we don’t really do much in the way of internet research either; most of our internet time is spent posting blogs, dealing with business from home, and trying to stay in touch with friends and family. When I am out exploring the world, I don’t feel inclined to spend too much of my time reading about other people’s explorations. There just isn’t enough time in the day; better to spend the hours wandering and talking to people and figuring things out for ourselves.

Read more...

Land Travel in Ethiopia

Ethiopia isn't all that big, about twice the size of Texas. But most tourists take private landrovers or use Ethiopian Air. But if you know anything of us, you probably expect that we choose a different mode.

However, we understood the benefits of private and air travel on our very first bus ride. After missing the 5AM bus to our original destination of Bahir Dar, we hopped the next bus north: destination, Debre Marcos, about 250 kilometers away. Our bus was the local one, big and lurching and stifling unless you score a seat crammed against a window. As we have recently learned, Ethiopians have a superstition against bird: the draft that attacks the back of your neck. So, the window is a mute point, aside from the view.

So, the bus was fine. For the first three hours. Then we descended into the Nile Gorge: airless both inside and out. By this time, windows were being cracked. A smidgen. Barren, dry, not a speck of water, with occasional cacti breaking the stark terrain.

This first bus trip, covering 250 kilometers, took a total of eight hours. That's an average of about 30 kilometers an hour. Metal roof of the bus sending radioactive currents into my sweaty head. Children crying with discomfort. But we made it, and Debre Marcos was wonderfully real and far from the tourist path. And there is a sense of comradery among people that share uncomfortable situations. There wasn't the communal clapping that sometimes follows a disconcerting plane landing, but the sighs of relief upon arriving in Debre Marcos were in unison.

Road conditions are difficult in Ethiopia, and the quality of your bus seems to be luck of the draw. The double-price minibuses don't seem to be worth the price. From Gonder we did join a group of six foreign teachers on vacation from their school in Kenya, all hell-bent on making the two day (local bus itinerary) trip to Lalibela in one day. A flight, though incredibly overpriced, takes 45 minutes. An initial estimate of seven hours on the bus turned to nine, then ten, then twelve as the scalding pressure of the interior bus radiator continued to seep steam, occasionally blowing off the cap and nearly scalding passengers. 

We met many villagers that day. Our bus was a traveling circus troupe, the locals just didn't know what to make of us. During one of the many pauses, our traveling comrades all climbed atop the minibus for a A-Team photo-op; the locals were hysterical with laughter. We are grateful for the kindness of the Ethiopian villages, and the opportunities to provide unfathomable entertainment.

Winding roads, section of loose gravel, ancient buses (until yesterday, I hadn't heard the sound of a tape deck eating the tape in a looong time), poor pedestrian etiquette, and a menagerie of large and small, horned and hoofed, furry and fast, humped and ornery beasts wandering back and forth and along the road. A long break occurred on our bus yesterday when a troupe of CAMELS casually blocked the entire width, chewing meditatively and paying no heed to the blaring horns.

With only one month here, sometimes we feel that we are destined to see most of Ethiopia through the windows of a bus. But that's better than seeing it from thousands of miles up in the air. But I say that because today we are only six (or nine or twelve) hours from Addis.

Read more...

'Step-by-Step' the story of a giving tree

This is the story of a Giving Tree. It lives on a beach and everyday at high tide the tides come up and give it a bath. When the tide is high, its low trunk is a step to keep you dry. When the tides are low but the high sun burns the skin and the hot sand burn feet on the sand the tree provides shade and keeps you cool. Birds sit in the tree in the cool evening breezes and sing to lovers who watch sunsets beneath the branches. The tree has held many swings. Tire swings. Swings made of drift wood and washed up rope.

One day the tree was surrounded by trash that swept up onto the beach in a storm. There were many nets which had stuck together in the terrible surf. There were also toothbrushes, empty bags, and plenty of empty cans of soda (lots of straws too which lost their bottles in the surf). Most of all there were shoes. Lots of shoes. Mostly flip-flops and sandals people may have lost on the beach in the waves. There were also fishing lures, Styrofoam, and fishing floats which must have come a long, long way because they said 'Made in Japan' on their sides.

One day a nice couple arrived from the other side of the world. They had been best friends in high school. When they grew older they they married and separated. Sadly, they had recently lost the husband and wife. Luckily they met again, fell in love, and decided to get married. They were very happy people and treated each other like each day was their honeymoon. They had come to the island before the trash came back and spent every evening watching sunsets beneath this giving tree.

They picked up shoes for two days and other trash. They kept the shoes in one pile and the interesting trash they thought people could reuse in another. With empty bags collected off the beach they separated all the bottles and cans to be recycled. They put the other trash in all the left over bags.

That night, as the sunset, they counted the number of shoes they had found between Monkee and Big Easy beach. They had collected over 250 and not one matched. What would they possibly do with all these shoes without their pairs?

The next day they made jokes with the people who passed as they separated the best shoes from the most broken and torn up shoes. "Are you missing a shoe?" they asked.

But they remembered an old man they had met on an Island near Iryan Jaya, too far from anywhere in between Australia and Indonesia in the far, far Pacific. The old man collected trash and hung it on the beach as art. They had been very moved to see such amazing uses of washed up trash. The old man had told them he hung bottles and shoes in tree to keep away bad spirits and carry his message of the need to clean the oceans all over the world. He told the happy couple that the shoes had found them and brought them to his island to learn what they could do to save the oceans. They could not be here, he said, if they were not wanting to work on his special mission, because the bottles in the trees would keep any bad spirits away.

When this couple remembered the old man, they knew what they could do with their collections of trash. Over the next two days they spent half their time collecting more shoes and the rest of their time using the piles of fishing lines and pieces of of net to tie their shoes to the trunk of their giving tree.

The next day they returned and found that the waves of high tide had undone much of their work and a string of maybe 80 shoes was drifting off from the tree back into the sea. Quickly they regathered the the shoes and tied them more firmly to the tree. The tied up floats to test how high the tides came up. When the water came up the next morning the floats got seaweed on them and they were able to test where the needed to tie the shoes with more knots.

People stopped by as the couple worked on their tree. In the evening, the trunk and the main branches were completely covered in sandals and flip-flops. There were floats attached that bobbed like mobiles in the wind. They looked up and down the beach, Not a piece of trash could be seen in either direction.

"Step-by-Step", the woman said to her loving partner who held her as they watched the sunset under their giving tree, "Step-by step, together we can clean all the oceans in the world and make the beaches all beautiful again!"

"That's it." Her husband responded. They had a name for their giving tree.

The next day they found a piece of driftwood that must have washed up years before in the mangroves behind the giving tree. The wrote "Step-by-Step" on it and tied it with some rope and hung it on the giving tree.

This is a picture of the happy couple who traveled around the world to sit under a tree they loved and watch beautiful sunsets. But they found a storm had thrown trash on there beach including lots of shoes, especially sandals and flip-flops.

Read more...

The Best Kept Travel Secret in Thailand

As a tourist destination, Thailand has changed much since it passed its first travel development legislation in 1979. We know from first hand expats here how much change they have seen. Most of it, has meant tat an area once pristine, gentle, safe, and preserved has changed to benefit and grow in the ways Thais and investors believe western tourists want. This has only begun in the last 5-10 years on the eastern frontier border of Cambodia, near Trat, the capital of Pran province.

We have spent a little more than two weeks exploring the town of Trat, its temples, markets, festivals (Chinese New Year), and surrounds. Most of this time was spent in an archipelago of almost 70 tropical, mountainous, and coral reef ringed islands. While we gawked and wondered as we passed so many of these, our time was spent on Ko Mak and Ko Koot. These islands are the two largest after already fully developed Ko Chang and lie on Thailands furthest southeast border.

We were encouraged by our host to visit Ko Mak and see how development was changing these islands. We stayed at Island Hut on the furthest eastern side of the island. While nearby resorts had beach huts which started at 3,000 baht ($100 U.S) per night. Our lovely waterfront cabin cost 450 baht and there were huts just behind us for 200-300. Nearby, up the hill, was a town center, schools, and a cooking school where we had some of our best meals in Thailand (Pad Mee w/ seafood 40 baht!).

After four days, we caught a speed boat to Ko Koot and arrived in Au Bang Nau (Au means bay in Thai). While this lovely white sand beach also sports even more expensive resorts, our host is developing in collaboration with a Thai partner (whose family owns the last islander property with water access left on this island roughly the same size as my own home island back in the USA Martha's Vineyard). Eco Bandin is run by Mr. Moo and his family. It is also under a planned ecoresort development that aims to provide high quality green homes that are built from sustainable locally produced natural materials, that preserve most of the nature 'park' atmosphere so dutifully maintained and nurtured by Mr. Moo.

Building on islands is not an easy or inexpensive task. Materials are brought by boat. Soils are rough and sandy or silty in the tropics. Energy is produced by generators. Water is scarce and untreated. Part of the reason I wanted to see the eco development was it is a friend I have known and admired a long time as the western 'lead.' But we are very interested in service opportunities and sought to be effective proponents of not only sustainable, zero emission construction techniques, but also we are interested in community engagement and participation, local control, positive cultural exchange. We are blogging, and have recently linked to Lonely Planet blogsherpa which connects travel encounters, ideas, and community dialog. [Any proceeds received from the blog will be reinvested into our service efforts.] As we have noted, our aspiration is not to shape and change the lives of people we are visiting, this is a nice happenstance, but more to shape the lives of other travelers and those from our communities and peer groups at home.

Moo's place Eco Bandin is already one of the best kept secrets in Thailand. [Bandin Eco, Moo, Bangbao, Koh Kood, Tel. (066) 086-0522929, Bandinkokood@gmail.com ]. He is the kindest host, chef, gardener, and thinker. He can wax eloquently, though a soft-spoken guy, on the history of the islands, the impacts of development, stewardship of the oceans and island nature, trees, birds, and island animals, flowers, children, family, international travel, photography, Thai food, and so much more. Every day Moo spends his time baby sitting (he has three beautiful children 5, 2, and 8 months) and maintaining the properties gardens, forest, rubber plantation, and building and repairing the structures that make up Eco Bandin. The place is rustic. Some of his bridges are a little disorientating and thus awkward to cross the first time. But between Moo's kindness, the amazing Thai cooking of his wife, his sister-in-law, and himself, his knowledge and connections on the island, and his beautiful location and lush tropical gardens - it was a fantastic find for us to have so many interests interwoven by the best kept secret in Thailand. Of course, in writing this blog, I am actively trying to encourage more people to find out about this best kept secret and to keep it going. When we chose to not support places like Moo's Eco Bandin we support an opposite course of events and poor environmental planning. Everywhere else we visited, forests were bulldozed, burned, heaped up in piles, lands entirely cleared, houses built unsoundly and without proper environmental, structural, or green engineering. Ancient trees were replaced with new species imported at great cost from the mainland.

Moo told me stories of the property that surrounded Eco Bandin. It is especially sad because it speaks about what an even better best kept secret in Thailand these islands could have been and used to be (very recently). The small monkeys which are indigenous to the island have been nearly completely wiped out. Also, the tiny indigenous island pig, numerous rare birds and snakes, giant brackish river fish, hugely diverse and prolific lobster, crab, and shrimp populations, and many indigenous trees and plants are disappeared, going extinct, and being eaten up. And this has happened to Ko Koot for the most part in the last five years!

Here are Ko Koot's nearly extinct wild pigs being fattened up for holiday feast

What can we do as tourists, naturalists, and volunteers, to assure that properties we visit are environmentally 'greener', locals are treated fairly and respectfully, and governments enforce laws of stewardship?

Staying at Eco Bandin was such a pleasure. Visiting and learning about the production of rubber from the rubber plantation and micro-factory, studying the birds, plants, trees, and natural environs, swimming and exploring the adjacent white sand beaches (totally empty of people), hiking the forest, eating and visiting and pondering our human fate, star gazing into skies not ruined by electric lights, fishing, snorklling, squidding, rowing the boat out for sunset/moonrise on Chinese New Year. And endless volunteer and educational opportunities to help maintain the forest, rivers, waterfalls,, beaches, and ecosystems on the precious natural outpost, guarding and stewarding and investing in its unique and critical future.

It was for us the best kept secret in Thailand, but, it is a secret worth sharing. If we support good stewardship and sustainable, respectful forms of tourism in Thailand we can all put out money where out mouths are and heal the planet as we heal ourselves.

Moo's place is not expensive - about $15 U.S. per day for a private beautiful rustic cabin with private bath and all meals included. Moo also saves you money by getting you the best prices for scuba, bike or moped rental, boats and ferries etc without a commission.

Bandin Eco, Moo, Bangbao, Koh Kood, Thailand
Tel. (066) 086-0522929, Bandinkokood@gmail.com

Read more...