Muay Thai boxing and island life: photos

The scenery of Ko Pha Ngan

The port in Surat Thani

Thai boxing in Chiang Mai

Traveling by tuk tuk through the city

Muay Thai boxing and the Full Moon Party

We're at the Muay Thai stadium in Chiang Mai, waiting for the fight to start. Our seats are in the front row, and we expect to be sprayed with blood, especially during the heavyweight match. For this main event, an American fighter is pitted against a Thai.

Muay Thai is a nightly happening here, so the small arena is filled mostly with foreign spectators. Most of the Thais are just there to gamble. They're clamoring and laughing in the corners while the westerners fidget in their seats. Music comes from the speakers, a non-stop needly meandering punctuated now and again by a honk.

Muay Thai kickboxing, if you don't know already, is one of the most powerful martial arts. Fists and feet are used from a distance, but the strongest blows are usually delivered with knees or elbows. Thai people have told me that every Thai male, since childhood, is well acquainted with Muay Thai technique. Like soccer is for the English or whoever, Muay Thai is just part of their motor memory.

The music in the arena has swelled to fill the room. Judges and spectators tap in time on hard surfaces, watching the empty ring. In flecks and pulses, violence slowly populates the air.

FIGHT 1: Baby-boy beat-down

Finally, the loudspeaker crackles on with some garbled but excited announcement. The first fighter enters the ring. He's a child of about seven, slight in build, wearing a green robe. He bows to the four sides of the ring and takes a seat in the red corner.

The next fighter is a full-sized brawler, about two hundred pounds of hard muscle. Grinning broadly, he rotates in the center of the ring and sweeps his upturned hands toward the crowd.

Just kidding. The next fighter is a child of the same size, maybe lankier. Unlike red, who is compact and expressionless, he is awkward-looking, with a long face, wet eyes, and a slack mouth. He wears the blue gloves.

The boys do this routine in the middle of the ring, a sequence of movements that appear half spiritual rite and half showmanship -- down on one knee, twiddling the fists, moving in lunges. This sequence is meant, in part, to honor the fighters' lineage of Muay Thai teachers and also to allow each fighter to gauge abnormalities in the floor of the ring.

The fight begins. Red dominates early on, driving blue around the ring with kicks to his midsection. Blue is able to parry some kicks, but then red wraps him up. He whirls blue around, lifting knees into his ribcage. Blue's face as it passes me seems to plead with the crowd.

The bell rings and the fighters go to their corners. Their coaches pour cold water over their legs, massaging and slapping the muscles. Here blue's abuse turns to a seed of strength which he nurses during the break.

In the second round, he makes use of his longer reach to keep red at bay while keeping his feet in red's face. He launches a foot thrust at him, and red tries to catch it but the foot goes right through to his diaphragm.

Blue keeps this up in the third round, and in the end the ref raises his glove into the air. He's dripping with sweat. He looks more than anything like a kid who just got out of the wading pool.


FIGHT 2: Bloody

The fighters are young adults now. Blue looks dangerous from the beginning. His posture is low-slung, and his deadly eyes watch red from under lazy lids.

Still, these two fight more tentatively than the children. A kick from one of those long, lean legs is not easily absorbed. They feint for a while before blue connects a swift kick to red's mouth. Red tries a midsection kick, which blue grabs, holds against his hip, and returns with a roundhouse to red's chest.

Blue follows red into the corner, and they wrap each other up. They strike with knees until the ref separates them. Immediately blue kicks red over sideways with his right leg, then knees him in the face with his left. Red totters, blood flowing from his nose and dripping off his upper lip, and falls to the floor.


FIGHT 3: Worth the admission

At the beginning of the fight, the fighters bob their fists and knees to the music, moving like some sort of killer dancers. The opponents are well matched this time.

Blue makes the first attacks because his kicks are longer and quicker. At first he connects quite a few, and seems to be dominating the fight. As his opponent retreats, he takes gazelle-like leaps across the ring, with lifted knee, moving midair into a flying kick.

Red dodges the next one and lands a coil-and-release kick into blue's gut. Blue puckers, then comes at him again. But red catches his momentum and slings him against the ropes. He wraps blue up, and the two exchange knee blows to the ribs, red hitting the lowered side of blue's bent ribcage. With each blow, opposing crowds of Thai bettors alternately cry "Oi!" from their respective corners.

As the fight goes on, the fighters gain respect for each other. Red dodges back, his body forming a crescent around the blur of blue's swinging foot. Blue responds by raising a glove in the air for red to tap. The crowd starts to get disappointed as more and more often the fighters high-five each other when they could be striking blows. At the end of the match, they throw an arm around each other's shoulder. All the fighters have done this, but these two are both grinning.

FIGHT 4: Is America ashamed or enraged?

The American steps into the ring. He's a big black brawler, covered with tattoos. A German man behind me reports, "He's from the Bronx, I know it."

His Thai opponent comes out, and no one can believe it. He's a big white marshmallow. Rolls hang from his belly and thighs. Either this is the only heavy Thai person they could find, or something is amiss.

A man comes to our section holding a fistful of bills and, for the first and only time that night, tries to take bets. I decline because it seems too easy to work.

The fight starts, and the American comes at him like a mad street fighter. He's winning, but the Thai marshmallow is certainly making him work. His kicks seem frightened but still more measured than the American's. When they entangle, the American throws a few knees up, almost formalistically, but he's mostly punches.

They're separated, and they exchange a few kicks. The American ducks and the Thai kicks him in the head with a strong one. He's bent over. The Thai drops two hard elbows onto his back and neck.

The ref steps in between them. He waves his hand in front of the American's face a few times, then brings the marshmallow to the middle of the ring and raises his fist. The crowd erupts with boos. The American looks confused, but in a lucid way, as though he expects to be fighting and can't understand why he's not. A tall, lean American, the fighter's coach, steps toward the ring shouting to the ref, "Get the fuck out!"

The announcer tries to calm the crowd, explaining why the fight was called -- something about the American's mouthpiece. The booing shrinks to a grumble, then to a hard leer across each of our hearts.

Imagine there's no countries, just one blasted day-glo hive

The bus from Chiang Mai brought us to Bangkok at 2 a.m. Three hours later, we took a bus to Surat Thani, a small town on the Malay peninsula in southern Thailand. At these latitudes, foliage covers every surface like the blob would have if it weren't for human intervention, and if the blob was dark green and leafy.

Our destination was the beach, though. From Surat Thani, we took a midnight freight boat to Ko Pha Ngan, the prime spot for Thailand's famous Full Moon Party. We arrived at 6 a.m. the day of the party and checked into a bungalow on the beach.

We hung around on the shore, kicked a soccerball, tried to make up for three sleepless nights by sleeping in hammocks, essentially killed time before what was to be the biggest party in the entire solar system that night, the biggest that December for that matter, and possibly all year because this month drew especially big crowds.

At around 10 p.m., I got separated from Mike and Jeremy. I wandered around our bungalow complex, wondering what to do. A Thai woman, middle-aged, dark, and meaty, with a shock of yellow hair over her scowly face, asked me where I was going. I said I guessed it was time to get ready for the party. Do you know where I can do that? She said, you come with me.

I got on a motorbike with her, and we rode deep into the dark, mountainous interior of the island. At the top of the highest hill, we pulled over by a side road in the jungle. Up the road were a few small huts and two large elephants, fidgeting in their shackles.

The woman woke a man from one of the huts. Groggy but pleasant, he sold us a bag of food which we used to accent our two bowls of noodle soup. The woman had prepared the soup -- packets of Ramen from the 7-Eleven -- with fresh lime juice and spices. It tasted like an expensive meal. When I return to America, I will prepare my Ramen noodles the same way.

It had been about an hour, and I urged the woman to bring me back to the bungalows so I could find my friends. But she insisted on another bowl of soup, for she was getting ready for the party tonight, too.

I paced back and forth, stepping over huge dollops of elephant dung. Elephant dung is similar to cow dung, with a lot of the same organic properties, except of course that it is greater in quantity and potency. It stinks, all right.

"Do you mind, lady?" I said. "Can we go now?"

She looked up at me with big round pupils.

"Let's get out of here!" I said.

We got back on the motorbike and set off down the hills. Down the third curve, the view opened up to the sea below, whose horizon was lined with lights and whose waves wore capes of moonlight. She wound around and brought me back to the bungalow, but not before she tried to fellate me in a dark meadow. I told her we should go directly to the bungalows instead.

Back at the beach, Mike and Jeremy were still nowhere to be found. The party was ten kilometers down the beach, and there was no finding each other once we were there. Did they go already without me? Did they pass out somewhere down the beach? I was feeling pretty low, as we had been talking about this party for the last few weeks. That's not to mention that Mike had my debit card.

I went into the room and tallied my assets. After the trip to the elephants, I had 170 baht. The taxi ride to Haat Rin, site of the Full Moon Party, was 100 baht each way. I didn't expect to return for at least ten hours. I set off walking.

A motorbike taxi pulled over and offered to bring me to the party for 200 baht. I told him my sad story. I think speaking Thai helped because eventually he accepted my price of 50 baht, which barely covered gas for the trip to Haat Rin. That left me with 100 baht for the return trip and 20 baht for water.

Once I arrived, I fought my way through the barstrip's throng of people, which is what I imagine the gates of Hell to be like if all the madmen and demons were fighting their way in instead of out, and I walked out to the marginally less crowded coastline.

Rolling up my pants, I waded out into the water to be alone and survey the strip. At ground level was the gradient of human bodies, condensing away from the coast and toward the line of bars, DJ booths, and whisky-bucket stands. Above each bar there was a light display bigger than the bar itself. The highest was an abstract form that looked like a peacock's plumage or a weird blue hand. The flames of a fiery sign on the beach spelled out "Amazing Thailand." The strip was about one kilometer long, flanked by two cliffs. Orange orbs floated up from the northern cliffside and disappeared into the air. This Internet cafe is closing soon, so please take these details as just an indication of the whole, as if I told you a pineapple had a couple of spines and maybe a leaf on top.

As I often do, I'd missed what was right in front of me by gazing into the distance. An endless line of drunk men and one black dog was pissing into the water from the shoreline. I darted back inland.

I tried dancing to the music -- mostly psychedelic trance beats -- but I wasn't in the mood, so I went wandering. On the beach right outside the bars, the crowd was as thick as it could get with Europeans, Africans, Indians, Arabs, Israelis, East Asians, Latinos, Australians, Canadians, and here and there maybe an American.

On the seaside fringe, there were people whose dancing was too frenzied, or too personal, to mesh with the crowd; there were people who walked around like zombies; and there were those who just sat in rapturous wonder, who were, say, sinking their hands into the moon-shone mud and watching them with mouths agape. (I had heard before that some tourists, probably those from mainland Europe, take hallucinogenic drugs before coming to the Full Moon Party.)

On the fringe of this fringe, there were the desperate ones, the flotsam of the Full Moon Party. They had lost their money, their friends, or in the case of those who were ill-suited to party drugs, their minds. These were the ones who interested me, for just hours ago I had found myself with no money (almost), no friends, and no comfort. I slipped into the persona of possessionless, wandering Samaritan, or smiling monk what have you. I couldn't offer them food, water, or money, though in my current state I would have given them half or more, but I could tell them my story and listen to theirs.

There was the Canadian who had gotten on a two-way boat from Ko Samui but blacked out before waking up here. His money and return ticket were with his absent friends, and the ticket woman wouldn't hear his pleas. I kept him company as the boats left one by one. There was the drunk Australian, sitting head in hands, whose pockets had been picked clean after he strayed from his group. It seemed that I heard the same stories again and again.

I went back inland and danced for a bit, but I couldn't help that I felt more lured by the dark sky and dark sea. I went looking for a quiet place where I could comfort the swollen night, and maybe vice-a-versa. I walked out along the rocks at the edge of the beach. Here there were more sad cases. And the music from a dozen DJs, which as I got further away overlapped into a mad clamor, ebbed and blared as I ducked behind and moved past broad boulders. A ways out there was a stony ascent and atop it, a rim of rocks by which some ladyboys lurked.

It can be exceedingly difficult to distinguish a ladyboy from a handsome or even a lovely woman, but on this jetty I figured out how. You can't tell by the body or the face, but from the way they look at you. Thai girls are shy, but ladyboys stare with an aggressive gaze that tries to hook you by the eyeballs.

I nodded to them as I passed, then stopped to rest on a rock. A young Thai man sitting close by spoke up to me in a mincing voice.

"I'm scared of there. I see people going in. It's so dark. I don't know what's inside."

"What happens in there?" I asked.

"I don't know. I think bad things."

He wore a striped T-shirt, two earrings and had a high pomp of bristly hair. His name was Nai. He too had lost his friends. He said he was scared, and he wanted to tag along with me until his boat arrived at 8:30 a.m. We returned to the beach, danced at a few of the bars, then walked by some food stalls. It was about 5 a.m., and I was starving. Nai offered to buy me something, and I could refuse only half-heartedly.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to some sort of big egg rolls.

"This Chinese food," he said, worried. "I don't know what's inside."

I ate one anyway, and we sat against a fence watching fights break out. Then Nai picked up a shell and drew intricate, precisely carved images in the sand -- a dragon, a bird, and some naked lady parts that he tranformed into a cat.

We walked to the middle of the beach and observed the sky. The moon and its party were making a pretty impressive showing in the western sky. But in the east, the sun had had enough of sleeping, and waiting. It was preparing a quieter but admittedly more glorious celebration of its own.

We climbed across the rocks at the edge of the beach, rounded the corner of the island, and took rest on the eastern face of a boulder. I beheld in the sky all the colors of the spectrum, with the saturation turned up as high as human rapture can handle. In the rusty shadow on the horizon, I could make out the craggy forms of distant islands. Then the sun rose like a fireball from the sea.

"Do you like the sea?" Nai asked.

"Yes, I do."

"I don't like the sea."

"Really?"

"Yes, I think Thai people, about fifty percent don't like the sea."

"Why don't you like it?"

He seemed to taste something disagreeable. "It's salty," he said, "and so dark. I don't know what's inside."

After that, Nai left the rock to catch his boat. I took some journalistic-style notes on the sun's presentation, then returned to the strip. I don't know what it was, but I felt much more like partying. I mixed in in front of Zoom Bar and danced like crazy. With my sandals off, I danced a circular pit into the beach. I wondered whether Ko Pha Ngan has any problems with dance erosion.

After an hour, I took to walking laps across the strip. In the light I could see that the bordering cliffs were covered with jungle and punctuated by stone outcroppings. I met Tom, the Australian who was stranded earlier. He was dance-walking around, having had a nice sleep, and we went together to one of the hillside bars. From that height I could see that the water encircling beach boulders was perfectly clear and turquoise.

I bought a bottle of water and went back to the beach for one last stroll. It was late morning now. The drunks were waking up in the sand under the powerful sun. Still without full use of their bodies, they flailed about in discomfort and confusion. Others were leaping about to the music, taking strangers by the hand.

At 11 a.m., I finally got on a song-thaew and headed back to my bungalow. My wallet was empty, which seemed so mathematically perfect. I rode among punch-bloody Englishmen and two lovely Swedish girls, and I couldn't help smiling because it had been a most beautiful Christmas morning.

Or are we? photos

This is how you get back into Thailand from Laos, Bhoteo to Chiang Kong.

In Luang Namtha we were surrounded by these ganja women who sell cheap jewelry as a cover for their illegal trade.


Some construction seen at dusk during a bicycle outting in Luang Namtha, Laos.

A cart flipped over and stopped Chinese traffic for miles. Hundreds gathered at the scene and our brave bus driver drove us around the wreck, coming dangerously close to falling off a cliff. Justin and Jeremie tried to organize the crowd to lift the cart but that would make far too much sense.

A baby evacuates itself in the streets of Jinghong, China.

Guess what I'm doing...

If you guessed peeing on a bus, you win!

Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. It is clean, modern, and home to over 4 million people.

Kunming again.

Obligatory photo of Chinese people riding bikes and scooters.

Incredibly, a man who is almost certainly an outcast in China shows affection for a dog.

Or are we?

We left Dali for Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, then returned to Jinghong for our departure. Here are some final notes on China, our mumbled dreams as we slept through the last few days in the country.

Our effect on the children

A baby boy in Kunming, walking hand-in-hand with his father, stretched his parent's arm as he veered toward me to stare. I held his gaze as he walked by, slowly rolling out my lower lip as I did so. Eventually he began to cry, and his father picked him up.

Afterward, I replayed this scene from the boy's perspective. There squatting on the sidewalk was a man like none I'd ever seen before, with a pale face, big round eyes, and a long proboscis. Among the throng of people on the street, he's staring at me and me alone. I watch in fear-torn curiosity as his already fat lips enlarge further and further. What this is leading to, I do not want to know.

In the next post, we'll really try not to include anything about prostitutes

We were eating at a noodle shop when a Chinese man sat at our table and told us that he'd seen us before, crossing the street. He was a skinny man with close-cropped hair, furtive eyes, and a mucus problem. His name was Gao San, but his self-styled English name was Mike. He invited us to visit a tea bar with him when we were finished eating. This was our first meeting with an English speaker in Kunming, so we took him up on it.

We left the noodle shop, rounded a corner and crossed a dark parking lot to get to the tea bar, which was small, shabby, and empty of customers. Some baby supplies were piled on the floor. The first thing Gao San did when we entered was take the bar owner aside and speak with him. Then he returned to us.

"The boss is my friend," he said. "I speak with him not about you. Just business."

We took a table in the next room and ordered a pot of tea, and Gao San filled our three teacups every minute or so. He was still finishing a paper cup of Japanese wine that he had been carrying when he first approached us. He tried to gauge our interest in some prostitutes he knew, and we asked how they looked.

"Some ugly and some beautiful also," he said. "Ugly lady, pay ugly price. Beautiful lady, pay beautiful price."

What price?

"Make love one time, one hundred yuan. Two hundred, make love two times. Three hundred, make love three times. Four, five hundred, maybe more, can have all night."

We were only in China for a few more days, but we had a question for cultural learnings to make benefit glorious blog.

"A Chinese lady who is not a prostitute," I asked, "does she make love with a man?"

"Oh, you want --" he leaned to the side and dragged a great load of mucus over the ridges of his trachea. "You want first blood. This is three thousand, four thousand, maybe five thousand Chinese money. Too expensive for you. Too expensive for me."

"First blood for very rich man," Mike said.

"Yes. But I can get for you," he said.

"No thank you," I said. "That's not really what I was asking about."

"The mamasan...mamasan, what is English word?"

"Pimp?" Mike offered.

"The mamasan, he give me commission --" he leaned over and sloughed out another load -- "commission one, two pecks--"

"What's a peck?" Mike asked, for the man spoke very slowly.

"Maybe three packs Chinese cigarettes," he continued. "Oh. Excuse me. I go wash hands."

He was gone for about five minutes when we heared him speaking excitedly with the bar owner in the next room, which was divided from ours by a curtain. After this, he returned to our table and refilled our teacups.

"What were you guys talking about?" I asked him.

"Drink tea," he said. He swallowed his cupful and implored us. "I tell you honestly. From my heart. You must believe me."

"Okay," Mike said.

"If you believe me, I happy." He leaned over, coughed like a floundering swimmer, then faced us again. "I smoke Chinese cigarettes. I have a little bit cough," he said, pinching a little bit between his thumb and forefinger. "I sorry."

"It's okay," I said.

"If you believe me, I happy. If you don't believe me, I happy also. Drink tea." He poured and swallowed again, then began his story. "I was drunk. I was drunk. I walk straight. I see Chinese lady. I say, 'How much for fuck?.' She say, 'One hundred yuan.' I say, 'OK, that is good price for me,'" he said.

"That's pretty cheap," Mike said. One hundred yuan is about thirteen dollars.

"I follow her away," the man continued. "Then, someone say, 'Come into the office.'" A grinding cough, then he moistened his throat with another cupful of tea. "Come in the office. I go in the office. The man tell me, 'I am policeman. You pay me one thousand two hundred Chinese money."

"Oh no," I said.

"That's a corrupt policeman," Mike said.

"I am not a rich man. I have paid the policeman one thousand two hundred yuan. I tell you from my heart. I have no fuck. I have no make love." He did a sort of dry, one-note gargle. "I smoke Chinese cigarettes," he said again. "I have little bit cough. I sorry."

"That's okay," I said.

"I have paid that policeman. But tonight I drink tea. I happy. I do not make I die. I can pay money. I have Chinese salary."

"From the bus station office," I said.

"Yes. I can pay. But I am very angry that policeman."

I recommended he report the incident to a newspaper or TV station. I told him that in America, sometimes a corrupt policeman can get in trouble if you tell a higher authority.

"Yes. I go to the police station. I tell to the boss, 'I pay one thousand two hundred yuan.' He tell me, 'Come back three days, I will give you paper,'" he said.

"Paper?" Mike said. "A receipt?"

"Yes."

"What will you do with that?" Mike asked.

The waitress came, and Gao San had what appeared to be an argument with her in Chinese. She left the dining room, and Mike repeated his question.


"I don't know," he said. "I think maybe I go take paper, then go show newspaper." He turned to cough, but there was a hard mess of stuff in there that he couldn't get past. He refilled our tea and drank his down. "Drink tea," he said, then coughed. "I am very angry that policeman. Just put one thousand two hundred yuan for his pocket."

"Yes," said Mike, "not for build roads or hire more police. Only for his pocket."

"For he go buy nice Chinese cigarettes," Gao San said. He poured more tea and said in a reassuring tone, "I am a good boy. I am a funny boy. I drink tea. I happy. Or else maybe I drink medical, I go die."

"No no, don't do that," I said.

"I am happy boy," he said to us. "I believe, life is like a poem --" a coughing fit -- "Life is like a beautiful song. Life is like a dream. It is too fast. I like life. But some things I hate. There is so many fail. Like I pay Chinese policeman one thousand two hundred yuan."

The waitress brought the check. Gao San looked at it and told us that we could split the check three ways. He added nobly that if we didn't have money, he could cover the whole thing.

"We can pay, no problem," I said.

"How much is it?" Mike asked.

He handed us the paper, on which was written, "100 yuan." The average meal in Yunnan province costs about eight yuan; for a well-rounded dinner with several dishes we might pay sixteen each. It had been obvious from the start that some scam was amiss, but we had waited curiously to find out what.

"I don't think this is right," I said. "A pot of tea does not cost one hundred yuan."

"This tea," Gao San said, "one hundred yuan. You pay thirty, I pay thirty, he pay thirty."

"I think they are trying to trick you," Mike said diplomatically.

For whatever reason, Gao San had let us see the menu before we ordered the tea. The prices listed under a character that resembled a teapot ranged from fifteen to thirty yuan. I told him I could read Chinese, and this tea was no more expensive than thirty yuan. The argument raged on for a while. Again and again we cited the prices on the menu.

"This tea green tea," he attempted.

"Green tea is very cheap," Mike said.

At this rather pathetic point he tried to say that the sunflower seeds at the table, free everywhere else, amounted to the other seventy yuan. We got up from the table and approached the bar owner. We told him that we would pay ten yuan each. Appearing rather bored with things, he had the waitress show us the paper again. We told Gao San that we were not going to be swindled.

"The boss is your friend," I pointed out to him.

He smiled sheepishly and bowed his head. "No. I know him, but he is not my friend."

Mike and I paid the barman ten yuan each, and he sent us away disinterestedly. As we walked out, we heard Gao San protesting to the owner in Chinese that we each needed to pay thirty yuan.

We continued away through the dark parking lot. Mike and I had fought the scam less so for money's sake than for pride. I wondered whether we should have gone ahead and paid the one hundred. Gao San was sickly, he was stolen from when he sought love, and he was doomed as a scam artist.

I sent a prayer for him into the night: Don't go drink medical. Stay here among us. China's nights are alive with prostitutes, and the freedom that you've gathered here, hustling and drinking tea, can survive a few blows to the gut.

Cultural observations/racism

I recently learned that, in contrast to the genius of the colony, one ant is nearly helpless. He may attempt to pick up a morsel, drop it after an instant because it is too heavy for him, then continue to try indefinitely without progress. I was reminded of this at the post office in Jinghong during our first stay there. The worker brought a box out of the back room, found that my rolled posters did not fit inside, then continued to bring out one box after another of the same size. Needless to say, he failed every time.

Whenever I handed a Chinese person a map and asked where we were, he would trace his finger all over the map, corner to corner, before giving me a non-answer such as pointing to the sky. When we pulled the motorbike over and showed a woman our empty gas guage, she turned up her wristwatch and began to compare the two. Yet similar to the colony whose anthill can withstand rainstorms or be resurrected in only hours, the Chinese as a group have managed to build the largest economy in the world. Ants, in kind, are the most succesful species in the animal kingdom.

The precision of this analogy continued to impress me as we left China. Traffic was stopped for miles on a cliffside road because a tractor had overturned in the street. There was a crowd of about one hundred around the blockage. Instead of trying to move the small vehicle, though, they were watching cars and buses drive around it, often clipping a side mirror on one of the cliffside trees. Here I was reminded of the line of ants which, when you block it with a bottlecap or something, will scatter in confusion until the ants finally reorganize in a new line that bulges around the object but makes its way to its destination nonetheless.

Chinese people and Asperger's Syndrome

My ex-girlfriend Kendall once told me she thought she had a disease called Asperger's Syndrome, whose checklist includes looking around the room and responding, "No," when someone calls and asks "Is John there?" even if John is home but in another room.

All Chinese people appear to have this syndrome. If you go to the dining room of an inn and ask, "Can we sleep here?" they will shake their heads only to tell you later that there are rooms available upstairs. When the bus stops in Jinghong and you point to the floor to ask, "Is this Jinghong?" the other riders will laugh and tell you that no, this bus is not Jinghong. In Dali I visited the small office of an English-speaking travel agency and indicated that I needed to withdraw money from an ATM. "No," they scoffed. "You can't do that here."

Travel note: We left China by bus, traveled through Laos, and now we're in Chiang Rai of northern Thailand. Next is Chiang Mai, Thailand's second biggest city, and then we work our way south along the Burmese border. We met a young French artist named Jeremie on the bus from Kunming to Jinghong, and now we're travelling as three.

We're not dead: photos

I had to poop, but the restroom (two holes in a concrete floor) was occupied, and there were no dividers. I waited for the men to leave, entered, and assumed the position. Soon after I began my business, a man in a nice suit joined me and urinated only inches away. I quickly handed my camera to Justin, who snapped this photo of the cultural experience. He is only a novice photographer.

We were reduced to a crawl, stuck behind irate dump trucks and elderly shoppers at a crowded bazaar, so I took advantage of the slowed pace to snap this photo.

One of the smoothest sections of our route. There was no stopping to take pictures when the roads got bad.



Even the oldest villagers carry huge loads on their backs.

The one western gesture that everyone uses with us.

This old woman needed a rest from the fast pace of the market, so she sat on the curb between some fruit vendors.

A herder marches with his diverse troupe of livestock. Cattle, pigs and a goat.

The dentist sets up shop streetside, where he gives a woman a new tooth. A gaggle of curious observers quickly forms.

Villagers beat sun-dried corn with sticks to seperate the kernels from the cobs.

A cow licks its lips, hungry for Justin's fried-dough snack. He eventually got to try a bit.

Tibetan stupa and prayer flags.

On the southbound leg, snow-topped peaks gave way to desert valleys reminiscient of the American southwest.

A kind woman prepares our noodles.

Sunburned, dusty, and seven days without shower, I greedily savor my yak meat.

Rather than making a sign, the restuarant proudly displays their collection of yak spines, entrails, and furs.

Socializing with the villagers after helping load the last bags of beans onto the truck.

The children of the village we stayed at. They loved having their pictures taken.

Young men gather at a small town where we refueled the bike.

Our bike in all its glory, having navigated Tiger Leaping Gorge and forded the base of a waterfall. The rear basket was destroyed in this stunt, but that only lowered the center of gravity and made us more aerodynamic.

A herder urges his goats down the vertical face of Tiger Leaping Gorge to munch plants off of the cliffside.

Tiger Leaping Gorge Town

A farmer, and our first glimpse of arctic mountains.

Fields we passed after leaving Jianshuang, the distant mountains obscured by cold morning haze.

Oh how our bottoms would come to long for such smooth and straight roads.

"Land Exploitation" is so beautiful from far away.

Every city we visit has numerous replicas of this fellow.

The trucks are piled dangerously high, and everyone rides on top.

Workers fare the thick clouds of white dust as a truck delivers rocks; these they will break and pour into a fiery pit.

We aren't sure if these mysterious buildings were being built or demolished.

The lights of "Old Town" Dali.

The choose-your-own-adventure style restaurant. You point to the ingredients you want and they are quickly stir-fried over an open flame.

An old man waits on the side of a Dali street.

The quintessential Chinese tree.