Roadtrip Diptych.

Clean plate at a waffle house; National Forest style.

To Mae Hong Son and Back.

Despite it being the start of the rainy season, Bordeaux and I decided to rent a motorbike to take a circuit trip of Northwest Thailand. It would give us a chance to get away from the major towns and tourist centers, and to explore some small towns and parks on our own.

Weds June 27
We left Chiang Mai early in the morning, leaving most of our luggage at the guest house. Despite being a fairly small town, the suburbs of Chiang Mai seemed to stretch on for some distance, petering out in small wooden shophouses and quiet noodleshops. Eventually we were surrounded by rice paddies, where men plowed and lazy water buffaloes wallowed. About 40 kms out of Chiang Mai, we felt the first drops of drizzle. We pulled to the side of the road to prepare ourselves for the rain, and as we dressed ourselves in on our cheap plastic raincoats, the water began coming down in hard waves. We waited under the shelter of a grove of trees, hoping the rain would die down. Eventually we had no choice but to try our luck driving through the weaker patches of drizzle, hoping the hard rain wouldn't return.

Through cover of heavy mist we reached Doi Inthanon national park. Unlike Khao Yai, which is monsoon seasonal forest and thus spends half the year dry, Doi Inthanon is cloud-forest, and spends the entire year heavy with rain and mist, sheltered by dense clouds. Because of this, the forest is able to grow to incredible height, with curtains of elaborate creeping vines and crowds of oversized leaves. Plants grew leaves of ridiculous, cartoonish sizes. We admired them as we raced up the slick asphalt roads of the park, past columns of thick dripping forest and distant clouded mountains.

We spent the night in Mae Chaem, a quiet riverside town. After trying two closed guest houses, we finally found a room in a guestless resort. Our sterile bungalow felt of mildew, and the towels we eventually located in the cabinet were already damp. We searched for dinner at the quiet night market, but eventually opted instead for spicy sour soup from an open air restaurant in town.

Thurs June 28

From Mae Chaem, we traveled to Khun Yuam. The road was mostly uphill, and the bike guzzled the petrol to make it. At a high curve on a mountain road, we realized that we were going to run out of gas soon. Thankfully, we were able to make it to the next small town, but once there we found that they had no gas stations. Bordeaux tried approaching a couple, but the man went and busied himself below their stilted house as soon as he saw us approaching, and the wife just shook her head apologetically, indicating that she didn't understand us. Eventually we found a group of men who understood us, and they sold us a liter of gas from their truck.

We had few guesthouse options in Khun Yuam, so we took a room at a bland travelers hotel. After taking a shower, we realized that we were sharing our bathroom with another guest, a massive cockroach. To understand the size of this cockroach, you can't use any sort of domestic American cockroach as a reference. This wasn't a chubby, comfortable suburban cockroach. This was a creature of the jungle. It was about four inches long, with strong wings forming a battle shell over its angry musculature. It resisted all attempts at its life, finally escaping down a drain that we quickly shut behind it.

Thankfully, the town of Khun Yuam was rather more pleasant than our guesthouse. The main street in town was lined with old wooden shophouses, which sold fresh tropical fruit, wooden birdcages, and plastic toys and bikes. We ate a delicious afternoon snack of chicken amok served in a banana leaf package, and spent the afternoon watching a herd of lazy buffalo wallow and play in a field like dogs.

Fri June 29
We ran into another herd of water buffalo the next day on the road, as we curved through a forested pass on the way north. They studied us with suspicion, their heavy wooden bells clinking as they sniffed the air. The road to Mae Hong Son was rough, showing signs of the incredible rains it receives. The asphalt highway disappeared in places, giving way to muddy detours and rough patches under construction.

In Mae Hong Son, we found our first guesthouse with character, Pana Huts. The small bamboo rooms were perched on stilts over thick jungle growth, and the wild growing garden was filled with the sounds of birds and the drill of cicadas. Looking out the window, we saw the movement of leaves and grass outside. A strange creature passed by- we couldn't tell exactly what it was, but saw what looked like wasp wings and spider legs. Bordeaux went outside to look, and found that it was a fat brown spider, carrying the body of a giant dead wasp through the undergrowth. Inspecting our room, we found another brown spider, about the size of my palm, living in the drapes.

The town of Mae Hong Son was a busy provincial capital, with a few concrete hotels and stores erected among the mainly wooden houses. It had the feeling of a mountain town, with timber buildings set on the slope of hills. We bought snacks from the busy local market, including a small loaf of banana bread and an amok made with lemongrass and pork. The best restaurant we found in town was the Salween River, which sold freshly ground hilltribe coffee, home baked bread, and a menu including several regional Shan dishes. From inside their wooden shuttered doors, we could look up at the twin Burmese style chedis that graced the top of the hill.

Sat June 30

Halfway en route to our next town we stopped at Phang Ma Pa, aka Soppong. It was a rather small town, stretched into a thin strip along the riverside, that seemed mainly to cater to tourists interested in rafting and exploring the local caves. At the Soppong River Inn we were able to get french press coffee, which we hadn't had since leaving my Bodum in the states.

From Soppong, it was a relatively short journey to Pai. The town is a popular stop for backpackers, and has a rather unfortunate hippie feel. Thankfully it's the low season, so the town felt quiet and relaxed. The highlight of Pai was All About Coffee, a bakery and coffeeshop in a 140 year old wooden shophouse. Seating is up a short set of stairs, on pillows set at low wooden tables. The coffee was amazing- they offered both locally grown and international brews, and had the largest range of specialty drinks I'd seen in a private coffeeshop in Thailand.

Sun July 1

After spending so many days on the bike, we took the chance for a day of relaxation. Pai, despite its population of croc-wearing hippies, served that purpose well. Our room was in a wooden stilthouse, surrounded by a thick bamboo grove. We spent our day lazily enjoying the pleasures of the town. We drank yogurt smoothies in hammocks, looking looking out at rainy mountains, and took long walks past rice paddies and quiet houses.

New Mexico.

At the end of our long roadtrip was home for me, and a final American destination for Bordeaux. New Mexico.
Realizing this was a final chance for domesticity, Bordeaux and I spent much of our time hanging out at home; Bordeaux made dinner for my family, while I cleaned and organized my bedroom. We explored the city in small pieces, having dinner with my mom and sister downtown, and getting coffee among the various Satellite Coffees and Flying Stars. We tried nearly every coffee on menu at Satellite; I settled on the Turkish latte as my favorite, though with it's honey and cardamom flavor, it more closely resembles Bedouin Coffe. In the more than a week we spent there, our only real outing was to the Rio Grande Nature Center, where we were unable to find either beavers or toads at waters edge.
In our last weekend in the United States, we took a trip through Northern New Mexico with my family. We stopped for lunch in Santa Fe, where we waited in line for the amazing New Mexican food at Pascual's. After exploring the lobby at La Fonda, we looked through quirky shops around the Plaza, browsing among stationary and chocolates.
The main goal of our trip was Taos, where we stayed in a small house near the Plaza. We spent a day at Taos Pueblo, which is an odd attraction, seeing people in their homes.
I enjoyed my time in Taos and Santa Fe, and even began to question whether I would be able to live there. I realized that I wasn't drawn to a New Mexico that was familiar, but one that had been invented, built on romantic ideas of Catholic mysticism and Southwestern flavor. I wondered if they only way I could move back to New Mexico would be to reinvent it, to cast it as something exotic. And if so, if that was my connection to New Mexico, what does that say about myself?

Monuments of the Four-Corners.

Roadtrip, Part 3
From the quiet, unusual beauty of the desert, Bordeaux and I traveled to the monumental wonders of the Four Corners.
The sky became dark as we approached Sedona, and it was raining by the time we found a place to have lunch. Outside, the red cliffs and pinnacles were alternately drowned in shade and caught in pools of light as the storm moved overhead. When the rain cleared we walked around town, which, as it turns out, is extremely tacky. Bordeaux and I wandered around town, and wondered what the correlation is between New Age culture and a lack of taste.
Bordeaux and I arrived at the Grand Canyon that evening, escaping a second storm. We set up camp, made dinner, and went to sleep without seeing the canyon. The next morning, we took the shuttle to the ridge. The Grand Canyon is always an odd sight to visit, since it's image is so common in books and magazines. It's still an incredible sight, but it's hard for it to be really outstanding, since it always has an element of familiarity. Still, I like the Grand Canyon- especially since the place has kind of a '50s family vacation feel.
I'd seen the Grand Canyon from the rim several times, but on this visit Bordeaux and I decided to hike down into it. We had hoped to sleep in the canyon for one night, setting up camp at Indian Garden, but found that they had given out all the backcountry camping passes already. We settled instead on simply taking a morning hike down Bright Angel Trail- about 3 miles down and back. On the way to Bright Angel Trail we passed the mule pen. I hadn't realized how many people came to the Grand Canyon to ride mules- the appeal of which is lost on me. I was fairly fascinated by the crowds of middle-aged men and women, dressed in cowboy hats and bandanas, that waited for their turn for a mule ride. We passed the mules throughout our hike. Aside from the mess they made of the trail, the mule trains were fun to watch- giant obese men in cowboy hats, and dozing off old ladies propped up on the sadly plodding animals.
Bordeaux and I camped, but we still found time to check out the Grand Canyon Lodges. I think my favorite is the Bright Angel Lodge- it's not as dramatic and grandiose as the El Tovar (which was modeled on European hunting lodges), but it has a funny 1930s Western theming that makes it much more charming. It has a soda fountain, a log-cabin giftshop, and a dark bar with smoke-stained murals of a Native American Pueblo. On our last night Bordeaux and I had drinks on the patio at El Tovar, and watched the sun set over the canyon.
Just outside of the park, we stopped at Chief Yellow Horse, an over the top souvenir stand. The exterior, with massive signs, and a giant boat-car (painted in the same yellow house paint as the signs), was far more interesting than the interior, which was filled with dusty turquoise and postcards. Leaving Chief Yellow Horse without purchase (which would have been hard if we ahd wanted anything, since the place seemed deserted), we continued on our way to Utah. As Bordeaux and I had noticed throughout our trip, if you drive for 30 minutes in the Southwest, the landscape will change dramatically. From the dry woody Grand Canyon, we passed into scrubby grassland, punctuated by strange mesas and multi-colored rock formations.
Just past the Utah border, Bordeaux and I entered Monument Valley. Compared to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley has a strange sense of remoteness. It's not an unfamiliar place, as its dramatic buttes are featured in all sorts of adverts and movies. However, despite its use in the media as an icon for the West, not many people think to visit Monument Valley. There are no hotels nearby, and not many restaurants, making it seem like a distant outpost, even with the Dutch and French tourists milling around.
When I last visited Monument Valley, the scene was of a rugged desert landscape. Red buttes rising out of dusty red earth. But due to the recent rains, Monument Valley was in bloom this time. Green shrubs, purple flowers, and white yucca blossoms sprouted from the soil, giving the area the softer, less barren look of a grassland. Bordeaux and I made the driving circuit of the park- through a herd of skittish goats, under massive red clay walls, and to a windswept stand selling dream catchers. Completing the circuit, Bordeaux and I decided not to camp at Monument Valley- we'd seen the park, and the constant film of red dust was getting annoying. Instead, we continued to Southern Colorardo.
I have been to Southern Colorado many times, but I never realized how beautiful it is. There was still a fair amount of snow on the mountains, which contrasted with the lush green fields that skirted the highway around us. With the rolling forested hills, dramatic snowy purple peaks, and rushing frosty rivers, the scene looked perfectly American, like an ad for a pickup truck or a domestic beer.In the morning we backtracked a little to Mesa Verde, which sits almost right on the four corners. The park offices were designed in a pueblo-modern style, and contained such novelties as a taxidermy cougar and a practice-tunnel to prepare visitors for exploring the ruins. Bordeaux and I bought tickets to tour Cliff Palace, which is the biggest ruin site, and does not contain any tunnels. We drove out through burned forest to the site, and waited for the tour to start. Our tour guide was a scholar on Native American history, who seemed somewhat resigned to the jokey tour he recited.
We spent two nights at a cabin in Pagosa, Co, though we spent more time out in Durango, where New-Age devotees mixed with drunken college students. We passed through Pagosa proper as we left town, and decided to stop at the Malt Shoppe. The place was crowded, the orange formica booths full, so we got our malts to go and continued on the road.
Once again the landscape changed, flattening out into grassland. We had our second large wildlife setting an hour outside of Pagosa- a herd of bison. They were farmed bison, but beautiful none the less. As we approached Great Sand Dunes, we realized that we were heading into a storm. Caught in a sliver of light from between the dark clouds, the sand dunes themselves looked particularly strange: peaked golden hills, glowing in front of the dark, distant mountains.
I had expected the Great Sand Dunes to look something more like Namibia, but the setting was far stranger. The sand dunes were high but fairly sloping, rising from beyond a shallow stream. Just beyond them were a crest of snowy mountains, preventing any sense of being in a Saharan desert. We walked along the stream, our shoes making shallow grooves in the wet earth that filled up with water as soon as we raised our feet.

In the Living Desert.

Roadtrip, Part 2
One of my goals in this trip was to catch a glimpse of some American wildlife. However, since Yellowstone and the Everglades were too far out of the way, I had to research some places in the Southwest where it would be possible to see some animals.
Our first night camping in the desert was spent in Joshua Tree. We got to the park offices after closing, put grabbed one of the maps of campsites left beside the locked door. Outside of the park offices a family of quails was running around the parking lot, terrified of us. The father bravely tried to lead us away, leaving his wife and a small flock of tiny quail chicks chirping fearfully. The mother managed to jump into a planter, but the chicks were too small- they hopped and leaped, but only managed to knock their bodies against the planter's concrete side. After terrorizing them with our cameras, we headed into the park. We got to the campsite just as the sun was setting, the mountainous boulder landscape fading to blue. We set up our tent in a hidden spot between rocks, and gathered kindling for a fire before the sun set. While heating the coals, Bordeaux looked over my shoulder, and saw a silhouette on the rock behind me. A kitfox was watching us, its thin body arched as it looked down at us.
The next morning, after walking through a carefully mapped out cholla garden, we drove south out of the park. We took minor roads, through rocky valleys and quiet desert passes. Somewhat abruptly, scrub desert was replaced with manicured green fields as we approached the town of Mecca. Beyond the fields of green, seeming a mirage, spread the Salton Sea. As we approached it, we found quiet seafront towns, where mobile homes far outnumbered permanent structures. The shoreline was littered with crumbling yacht clubs and boarded up motels, the perfect setting for enacting a post-apocalyptic fantasy. Bordeaux and I parked outside of a desolate motel, home now to abandoned appliances and a commune of pigeons.
The situation was not much different in Gila Bend, AZ, where we found the deserted Desert Gem Motel. A mod '60s motel, fenced up and emptied out (aside from a few squatter residents).
From Gila Bend we curved south, on the lonely highway to Organ Pipe. We passed through quiet towns, whose main source of income seemed to be selling insurance for travelers going to Mexico. We drove far south, nearly to the border of Mexico. Border Patrol trucks lumbered past us, in search of illegal crossings. Bordeaux spotted a coyote (not the kind the Border Patrol was looking for), standing at the side of the road. After a lonely drive through bizarre cactus forest, we finally reached quiet Organ Pipe, sanctuary for peccary Sonoran Pronghorn.
In contrast to the abandoned motels and past-primes towns that Bordeaux and I had seen, every inch of the desert seemed to be alive. Cacti and scrub brush grew from every inch of soil, in strange shapes and surprising colors. While we didn't see any larger mammals (no pronghorn of peccary, sadly), I was amazed by the amount of life we saw in the desert. I've never seen Disney's documentary The Living Desert, but it reminded me of that. While looking at a massive organ pipe cactus, we saw a mouse slipping into his nest, a woodpecker searching for a meal, and bees and wrens feeding at the blossoms. At night we were visited by a skittish kangaroo rat, and a fat surly toad.
From Organ Pipe we drove north, through the town of Why (along a highway sponsored by the group 'Why Senior Citizens'). The side of the highway was dotted by altars and crosses, colorful graves marked with portraits and memorabilia from the life of the dead. Skirting the southern border of Arizona, we eventually arrived in Tucson, where our car radio picked up an NPR affiliate, begging for donations in terms that its listeners would understand ("Just give up that one chai latte a week!"). Turning south, we entered the San Xavier reservation. Though the mission church at San Xavier was under restoration, it was still an impressive sight- a cool white adobe structure, decorate with terra cotta saints and carved wooden trim. Outside the garden was filled with strange purple prickly pear, and beautifully manicured cholla. Inside the chapel, we found an elaborate altar, populated by a town of Catholic kitsch: ceramic Jesuses and luridly painted Marys, lit by dozens of tiny candles.
Finally, the next day, I got my large mammal sighting. Under dark clouds and shuddering thunder, we drove north to the Grand Canyon. Just past Flagstaff, where pine forests gave way to flat grassland, Bordeaux spotted two animals galloping across a distant ridge. Realizing what they were, I hastily pulled the civic to the side of the road. A thin pronghorn antelope, the fastest North American mammal, was posing at some distance from us. It's silhouette, svelte form and stubby horns, stood out against the blue mountains beyond. Of course, as I got out my camera, the pronghorn went in front of some bushes and laid down to rest, and I was able in the end to produce only this sad, blurry photo of it tucked between wildflowers and pinon shrubs.

In Barren Lands.

Roadtrip, Part 1

Roy's Motel & Cafe, Amboy, CA

After picking up breakfast and coffee at Larchmont Farmer's Market, Bordeaux and I headed out of Los Angeles. Packed with all of our belongings into my Civic, we drove out of town on the 10, through exotic areas of LA that Bordeaux had never gotten to see. Eventually the urban thicket thinned out, giving way to the dusty suburbs and characterless shopping malls of the Inland Empire. We passed through towns where mid-level chain restaurants clustered against the highway; watching as Benihana and The Elephant Bar were replaced by obscure steakhouses with names like Beef and Beer and Cask and Cleaver. Eventually the city fell away completely, flickering out in sudden outlet shopping malls and fastfood drive-thrus as groves of joshua trees replaced houses. After stopping briefly in the town of Baker to pick water (and to stare up at the World's Tallest Thermometer), we continued on our way. We crossed over a sandy ridge, and exited from the desert wasteland of interior California...

...into the neon wasteland of Las Vegas, Nevada. I had tried to prepare Bordeaux for Las Vegas, but how could I? The lights were far brighter, the casinos much nosier, the cocktail waitresses far more haggard, and the people far more obese than I possibly could have put into words. We traveled to downtown Las Vegas, where we met up with friends who were enjoying cheap drinks and mingling with tattooed showgirls. Despite the alleged "revival" of Downtown Las Vegas, Fremont Street still had a sad pall of desperation. The casinos looked rundown, the showgirls even more so; a large screen flashed images of naked women, concealed with cartoon explosions featuring incongruous interjections, like "yikes!" and "gabzooks!" After losing three dollars playing blackjack at the Golden Nugget, we checked into our room at the Flamingo. The first hotel opened on the strip, and formerly the most expensive hotel in the world, the Flamingo is one of the last symbols of old-Vegas glitz still in operation. With its Miami-deco styling, palm-leafed tropical theming, and elderly clientele, the hotel has the feel of a retirement home loaded with slot machines. We passed our 24-hours in Vegas by trekking between casinos, playing nickel slots (through which I lost another three dollars, and Bordeaux won five), and searching out free drinks.

After stealing souvenirs from the Luxor's Pharoah's Pheast buffet, we refilled the gas tank and got out of town. Driving away from the noise of Las Vegas, we turned south from the 15, and entered the painfully quiet Mojave reserve. The Mojave was a stark landscape of sand, rock and joshua trees, interrupted by the occasional splintering ruin. As cotton-tails darted away from us, we walked around an abandoned corral, wondering why the ground was strewn with dirtied ladies' summer-wear.

Just out of the Mojave, we pulled into a service station in Amboy. Less a town than a series of abandoned businesses, Amboy offered a diner (non-functional), a motel (abandonded), a school (in ruins), a church (in disrepair) and a post-office (closed). We walked into the service station, and picked two bottles of water (Amboy Water, with self-printed labels) out of the fridge. Unsure of whether to just leave the money on the counter, we waited until the owner, a scrawny man with an untamed beard, arrived in his golf cart. He came with two small dogs; one of them immediately hopped up on the lunch counter, and reclined, panting, on the cool formica.

Auto-bingo.

Over the past week, Bordeaux and I have been trying to gather all of the supplies needed for our trip. This has been made somewhat complicated by the contrasting segments of the trip- first a roadtrip where we'll be camping around the desert Southwest, then a backpacking trip through Southeast Asia. We found the cheapest tent possible, bought the least offensive hiking shoes available, and have stockpiled enough marshmallows for a full week of smores. But of all the supplies that are currently stacked up in paper bags next to my closet, I think my favorite is the Auto Bingo game we found at the Farmer's Market.I actually played with the same game when I was a child. My grandmother had a set of Auto Bingo and Interstate Highway Bingo cards in the small wooden cupboard that she kept stocked with toys and games. I don't think that I ever took them with me on the road- I wasn't likely to see barns or horses in the Northwest Heights anyway- but I enjoyed sliding the little red doors closed.
If only they made a set of Southeast Asia Backpacking Bingo cards, I'd be totally prepared for this trip.