20 years ago...

On November 16, 1990 my father, Ludlow Fox Martin died after a short bout with cancer. It was two days before his 45th birthday. I've been thinking a lot about him this past week, especially in light of the fact that, as my Aunt Lisa (my dad's sister) pointed out to me via e-mail recently, in two days he would have been 65.

The year 1990 was not a pleasant time for me and my family. My grandmother (on my mom's side), with whom we lived, died in April of 1990, then in June my dad was diagnosed with sinus cancer. He went to the doctor complaining of sinus pressure and after a couple of exams and biopsies we found out he had cancer. After trying surgery and radiation, he tried alternative forms of treatment, including a special clinic in Mexico and a place in Wisconsin that specialized in ozone treatments to attack fast-growing cancer like his. Ultimately, however, he succumbed to the disease, dying at home (in the same house where he was married to my mom) on November 16.

It's amazing that it's now 20 years later. I think about my dad often and have many good memories: watching football on Sunday afternoons (including hot pastrami sandwiches), playing tennis, his love of games, including chess, checkers and backgammon, and his great sense of humor. We spent a lot of time laughing as a family, a tradition that I carry on to this day. I also remember numerous family vacations, including trips all around New England and Northeast Canada, as well as at least one trip to Florida where I got to ride "Space Mountain" at Disney World with him. I believe my younger sister was too short to ride it and my older sister had a broken leg and was in a wheel chair (a fact she doesn't let me forget to this day!), so it was just me and my dad for the mostly pitch-black ride. 

Part of what is strange about talking about someone who died in 1990 is that there are very few pictures of him. Now a days, everyone has pictures of themselves readily available. I haven't taken the time to scan in any of the few print photos I have. There are a few framed ones in our apartment, but sadly nothing to post for the blog. Also, many of my current friends never met my dad, and many might not even be aware that he died (it doesn't always come up right away). 

And since ostensibly this is a travel blog (although I acknowledge it's morphing into something slightly different since we've gotten back from our trip), I'll also mention that in late November of 1990 after we'd finished the funeral and burial, my sisters, mom and I took a short "vacation" to the Bahamas. We went to Harbor Island, a small secluded island recommended by one of our travel agent friends (remember travel agents?) We stayed at a resort that came with golf carts to travel around in, and my 13-year-old sister loved driving us all around. And I loved playing backgammon with the bartender while sipping my daiquiris and other yummy rum drinks (we joked that the drinking age was based on height; if you were tall enough to stand at the bar, they'd serve you a drink.) It was also during that trip that I read The Catcher in the Rye. Given my circumstances I could definitely relate to the protagonist Holden Caulfield, and I've often thought about re-reading it to see if my impressions would change. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like the memory of that trip is just perfect (given the circumstances) so I'm not sure if I want altered memories of it.

As readers of this blog know, visiting Vietnam was very special for me, because when my dad served in Vietnam he was exposed to Agent Orange, which more than likely contributed to his developing sinus cancer all those years later. It was closure on some level for me to visit the places he stayed while in Vietnam. Again, I wonder how different my life would be if he'd never served in Vietnam (or if he'd received a state-side assignment instead). Also, I mentioned my grandmother at the top of the post, and I explicitly remember being in Invercargill with our lovely WWOOFing hosts Colin and Ellen on January 17, on the day when my grandmother would have turned 100. I will never forget either my dad or my grandmother.

[Update: I received a correction from my mom that apparently my dad started having sinus issues in the Fall of 1989 and knew by early 1990 that he had cancer. In June he had his final surgery and learned the news that they weren't able to remove it all. Because of the form of cancer (schwanomma) he would have needed a craniotomy, which although the doctors were prepared to do they didn't follow through on for various reasons, partly because the tumors were too big and too close to his eye. I do remember discussions of whether they should remove one of his eyes in another surgery or if he should explore other options. Can you imagine facing this choice? Ultimately he looked at other treatments. My mom also reminded me of the generosity and kindness that many people showed us during that time. My mom, who has a memory even better than mine, knew exactly who did what when during that time. The list of people is too long to list here, but I thank everyone who helped our family during that difficult time. That immense outpouring of kindness will not be forgotten either.]

90 years

So, our weekend plans of visiting with my aunt and uncle from Vermont didn't pan out. Because we're sad to report, Jaimee's 90-year-old grandfather George E. Leroux, (whom she called Pepe), passed away last Wednesday. You can read his obituary in the Worcester newspaper. (Which incidentally marks the second time in the last two months that Jaimee and I have appeared in the Worcester Telegram. I never blogged about it, but Jaimee and I were interviewed at the Shrewsbury Public Library one Tuesday when we attended the bi-monthly Scrabble club. You can read about it, and see a terrible picture of me along with some ridiculous quotes.)

Jaimee's pepe struggled the last few months with a bout of shingles which had him bouncing between his apartment, the hospital, including a couple of stays in intensive care, and a few different rehabilitation centers. We were happy to be local and see him on several occasions during this time. I've only know pepe for about five or six years, but I've always know him to be smart, funny and a joy to be around. He took a great interest in our trip around the world and followed along by reading our blog. He was quite computer savvy for a 90 year old; he even had a facebook account and knew how to skype. A few times on our trip when there were family gatherings at his apartment, we'd skype with him and Jaimee's meme.

All of Saturday was taken up with funeral and visiting hours. There was a lovely service at the funeral home in Shrewsbury, then a touching mausoleum-side service in Worcester, including a flag-folding ceremony and the playing of taps to commemorate his service in the Army Air Corps (now Air Force) during World War II. He served in North Africa, where he told me when I asked him about it one time, "I played a lot of cards." He was extremely well-loved by his family and friends, and he will be missed dearly.

Interestingly, many of Jaimee's relatives are entombed at the mausoleum where Pepe rests now, including her grandmother and grandfather on her mother's side. After the service we took a short stroll to look at the gravesides of some of Jaimee's other relatives. It's a beautiful spot on top of a hill, and walking amongst the different sites, we remarked at how many people were well into their 80s and 90s when they died. It's a hearty bunch, those in and around Worcester!

Ninety years is a long time, and for 62 of those years he was married to Jaimee's grandmother. That is an incredible accomplishment and I am proud to have know him. Jaimee and I will miss him very much.

Temples, Palaces and more

There's a temple around every corner in India. But similar to how we felt in Thailand after seeing our first few dozen temples, after a while they all tend to blend together. It's not to say they lose their luster or beauty, it's just that after 237 days on the road, we're starting to get a little burned out of all the sights.

We also miss our routine of Valkara. Other than possibly Pondicherry, we haven't found a place in India yet where we feel comfortable and relaxed. We went from Valkara to the town of Alleppey, the center of the famed backwaters of Kerala. The town is built around the houseboat cruise industry, we couldn't go five feet without someone offering us a "houseboat" tour. Partly because everyone was doing such a hard sell, and partly because the canal system looked like it was full of sewage, we decided against a cruise. (To see what everyone told us we were missing, see these pictures from a google search.)

From Not Backwaters

From Not Backwaters

We continued up the coast to Fort Cochin, a city described by our guide book as "an unlikely blend of medieval Portugal, Holland and an English country village grafted onto the tropical Malabar Coast." They forgot to mention the myriad tourist restaurants and trinket shops, but otherwise it was a pretty cute town, but we happened to hit it during a couple of days of intense rain storms which somewhat limited what we could do and see. We did have our best meal in India to date though, and one of the simplest: called Kati rolls, they're essentially fried filo dough wrapped around roasted vegetables and spices. That and some fresh lime sodas (lime juice squeezed into a glass and topped with cold sparkling water) made for a scrumptious dinner.

From Fort Cochin we braved an overnight bus to Mysore, up in the mountains of South India. It was a Super Deluxe bus, but we were aware that they slap the word Delux on all sorts of things that are no such thing. This bus wasn't too bad, except that when we got to the state boundary between Kerala and Karnataka (at 3AM) we had to wait until light to keep going. Karnataka has a law against driving at night because of accident danger. Which begs the question, why didn't the bus just leave Fort Cochin three hours later to avoid having to wait? Not sure, except it did allow us to catch a few hours of sleep while not going up and down and around on the windy, rough roads.

Mysore has been somewhat of a disappointment. It contains Maharaja's Palace, supposedly one of the grandest palaces in India. The orginal palace was damaged by fire in 1897 so they rebuilt/renovated in 1912. It is beautiful from the outside, but we didn't pay the 200 rupees (nearly $5) each to go in. Why? We didn't feel like it (plus 200 rupees is more than two meals for both of us). Plus Jaimee has spent the past couple of days suffering from a head cold/sore throat and hasn't really felt like doing too many touristy things.

From Not Backwaters

From Not Backwaters

We did take a ride up to Chamundi Hill, where there is a beautiful Hindu Temple. The day we went was some sort of holy day and the temple was swarming with people; the line to get in snaked all the way around the temple. So again, we contented ourselves with pictures from the outside. Then on the way down, our rickshaw driver wanted to take us to all sorts of silk and natural oil shops. The rickshaw drivers are all in cahoots with the stores around here. Same with the hotels. When we got off the bus in Mysore, we were accosted by rickshaw drivers all wanting to show us business cards of local hotels. It's a bit much, especiallay after being on a bus for 12 hours (almost four of which it was stopped, because in addition to the mentioned "wait for daylight" break we also stopped at a restaurant around 11PM).

We topped off our stay in Mysore by visiting the quirky Rail Musuem, which our guide book called "A must see." Not sure about that, but we did snap some pictures of random ancient machinery to keep my Uncle Neil happy. Take a look at all our pictures from Varkala through Mysore.

Tomorrow we head to Bangalore, the "Silicon Valley" of India, where most of the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) takes place. We've arranged through couchsurfing to stay with a 30-something Indian couple. We're looking forward to getting off the tourist trail for a bit and meeting some locals.

Vientiane, briefly

Sometimes when we visit a place we understand right away why it's popular. When we were in Luang Prabang or Chiang Mai, for example, we could tell why people visit there. Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the other hand, is somewhat of a mystery. Maybe we're missing something, but we don't really see the appeal of this city. It's sort of like a tourist destination trying to become a tourist destination.

We survived our overnight bus from Luang Prabang, even coming in an hour early, but after taking a tuk tuk downtown we immediately found out that all the guest houses and hostels were full. This is the first place we've been where everything has been booked. And we're not the only ones who searched for a room. It's the opposite problem of Luang Prabang; there you couldn't walk 10 feet without encountering a guest house offering a room whereas here you can't walk 10 feet without encountering a tourist couple carrying their bags around looking for a place to stay.

We got lucky, sort of. The morning we arrived, we walked up and down the main street where most of the guest houses are, and although they were all full, we decided to wait at one of them for someone to check out and then grab their room. We only had to wait about two hours before we were able to check in. The price sheet said 45,000 kip (about $5 US) and I thought that was per person, but it turned out to be the total price! However, the room was about what you'd expect for $5...two very narrow metal beds with cigarette burned sheets, a plank floor covered with shoddy linoleum and a view out the window of a brick wall. Oh, and there were bugs. But being that we'd hardly slept on the bus and were both suffering from slight sickness (nothing a bit of Imodium couldn't fix) and every other place was full, we took the room.

Today we changed to a nicer place down the street (getting the last room in the place), which at 85,000 kip (about $9) is worth every penny. It's no Fairmont, but it's clean, there are no bugs and the wall does not have a drawing of a penis on it. And, there's running water! The first place didn't have any running water in the morning, which the people working there didn't seem too concerned about. By the way, here's a business idea for an aspiring entrepreneur: come to Laos and open a plumbing school. They need plumbers here. Everywhere we go the plumbing is shoddy: entire faucets turn when you turn them on, there are constant backwashes of toilets, drains don't drain, pipes drip, showers have no pressure and shoot in all directions but on your body, etc.

As for things to do here, we did take a walk down Lane Xang Avenue, which supposedly is modeled after Champs Elysees in Paris. There's even a Laotian version of the Arc de Triomphe, called Patouxai:

We climbed the stairs to the top of it and although there wasn't much of a view on account of the smog/haze, it was fun enough.

Tomorrow we're going to continue south to the town of Savannakhet in Southern Laos, which supposedly has lots of French colonial architecture with a Vietnamese influence as well. Although there is an overnight bus, we figured we'd take the day time local bus. Not only is it cheaper, but the overnight bus lands you in Savannakhet at 3AM which we thought would be an inconvenient time to arrive.

We didn't take too many photos here, on account of there not being too much to take photos of, but here are the few that we did take.

Six Months

Today marks six months of traveling since we left Seattle on August 15th of last year. Our first adventure in the Enchantments of central Washington seems far away in both distance and time from our current adventure in Bangkok Thailand.

From Langkawki, Malaysia we took a ferry to Satun, Thailand, where after a fairly painless border crossing (didn't speak a word to the customs agent), we bused it to the town of Hat Yai where were caught an overnight train to Bangkok. Pulling into the dock at Satun, this is our first view of Thailand:

From Bangkok

Public transport in Thailand is interesting to say the least. If it has a motor, people use it as public transportation - motorcycle taxis, "tuk tuks" - small vans or converted three wheel motorcycles, boats of all kinds, vans, taxis, etc. For example, they packed 12 adults into the back of a two-wheel drive Toyota pickup (not an extended bed truck either) to get to the bus station in Satun. (Why they don't just put the bus station near the ferry, I don't know...) We took this picture, pitying the poor people who had to ride in it before we realized we were taking one as well:

From Bangkok

The train ride was not very comfortable, but what 17 hour train ride is? We bought a 2nd class "sleeper" car, but that's a misnomer; someone comes through around 9PM and converts all the seats into "beds", essentially five foot, 10 inch sofas (I'm six feet tall). Plus, the only seats available were upper bunks, right next to the air-conditioning vents. It was like sleeping outside in the winter it was so cold. I actually pulled out my 25 degree sleeping bag, which had been pretty useless since we got to SE Asia and crawled inside it to try and sleep, although with the florescent light on right above my head, there wasn't much sleeping.

Once in Bangkok, we worked our way over to the area of town where our couchsurfing host lived. We took the subway (yes, Bangkok has a subway), the sky train (ditto) and finally a taxi. We later realized taking a taxi the whole way would have been both cheaper and faster, but what did we know?

Our host, Nuch, met our taxi (the taxi driver had to call her on the cell since he couldn't understand our instructions or read the English script version of the address), gave us the keys to the apartment and said she was "busy" and had to go. We let ourselves in to discover one room with a double bed, a small empty wardrobe, and a bathroom. We didn't understand what was going on. Did she live here? Were all three of us going to sleep here? Only when she came back three hours later did she tell us this is an extra "apartment" that she has for family and friends. So, we had the place to ourselves.

The neighborhood reminded me of the Puerto Rican/Dominican neighborhoods of New York City (do these even still exist?) because of all the mid-rise apartment buildings, lots of little convenience stores and tons people on the street. Nuch says she likes having couchsurfers stay here because they get to see how real Thais live, as opposed to the touristy (or sex business) areas. There certainly were no tourists in this area, and we've enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere of having our own apartment. Our first evening we caught a beautiful sunset off the roof of her building (we're staying on the 12th floor):

From Bangkok

I was still feeling kind of sick our first full day in Bangkok so we took it easy just wandering around and not doing too much. I started feeling better toward the evening and we went to the Khao San district and had an amazing organic vegetarian Thai buffet at May Kaidee. I think after a few days of not feeling well and not eating very much, I was ready for scrumptious healthy food. I shoveled in loads of curries, spring rolls with peanut sauce, tempura vegetables, noodles, rice and salads. It was super tasty, amazingly fresh, and lucky for us since they only do the buffet once a week on Saturday. And the best part? It was only $3 a piece, including fruit shakes!

Yesterday, we took the canal boat by the apartment out to a floating market, a meeting place along the river where every weekend hundreds of boats meet up along a dock and form an impromptu market to sell various products and food. We had a scrumptious lunch of rice, noodles and spring rolls (we could live off these things!) before taking a three hour canal tour. Our boat was a low slung affair packed full of holidaying Thais. It was Chinese New Year, after all. We got squeezed into a bench built for much shorter people, right next to a young man who was "on the spectrum." Jaimee believes she is a magnet for people like this. You know the ones; personal space issues (either you are in their space or they are in yours), always facing the wrong way, and that nice mumbling and singing. While sitting beside this fellow he spread way out in the seat causing us to have less than half the row for the two of us. Then when we piled back into the boat after a stop he was RIGHT behind Jaimee, exhibiting his personal space issues again... The best part was when there was a big splash (the canal was full of fish) and his family wiped the water off his face for him. Jaimee felt nervous because a family that jumps to at a time like that only does it for one reason - to avoid a meltdown.

From Bangkok

The tour was pretty lame - there was a guy who would talk about all the sights (including at least 10 temples), but he only spoke Thai (maybe that's why we were the only white people on the boat?) and one of the stops included a visit to a zoo where there was a snake show.

Before ever complaining about conditions in American zoos again, I'll realize the animals could have it much, much worse. This zoo was depressing, and although it was kind of amazing how close the snake handlers got to the snakes, we also felt kind of bad for the snakes. Here's one performer with three cobras:

From Bangkok

We're staying one more night in Bangkok before heading North to Chiang Mai tomorrow night. We plan on heading up there to see the forests and mountains of Thailand, as well as take some cooking classes at a farm we read about on the Internet. To be able to make anything close to the amazing green curry we've been devouring here would be awesome.

Last stop before Thailand

We've had a pretty relaxing three nights on Langkawi. It's been really hot and humid, and the guest house we stayed at didn't have air-conditioning which was kind of a bummer. But, we were lucky to actually find a room along the beach strip. The days leading up to Chinese New Year (Feb 14) are a huge travel time for people in the region, and although Langkawi has a lot of foreign tourists, there are also quite a few local tourists too.

The ferry from Penang was pretty straight-forward, about a three hour ride. It was on a Victoria Clipper type fast ferry that was completely full. We got a kick out of the fact that they screened the movie A Perfect Storm during the trip, especially since the ride was a little rocky.

One of the days here we did an "Island Hopping Tour" where we got to visit the Island of the Pregnant Lady and swim in a fresh-water lake on the island, which supposedly helps with fertility...

From Langkawi

Also in the lake are hundreds of catfish that will rub against your feet if you stick them in the water. This is a popular spa treatment around Malaysia; we've seen "fish soaks" advertised all over the place here.

After the lake, we went to an "eagle feeding" where the boats dump food into the water and lots of eagles come out to grab the food out of the water.

From Langkawi

And lastly we went to a third island where there was a beautiful beach for swimming and beer drinking!

From Langkawi

Other than the tour, it's been pretty low-key here. And today was a recovery day (unrelated to the beer drinking). Last night I went to bed with a pretty high fever and didn't sleep all that well. I also had to take Imodium...which thankfully worked quite well. I'm feeling a lot better, the fever has subsided and I'm hoping that's the worst of it. It may have been caused by something I ate or drank, but Jaimee didn't get sick and we pretty much ate/drank the same stuff. Anyway, there are few people who come to SE Asia and don't get sick, so I guess it was only a matter of time.

Tomorrow we take the ferry on to Thailand, where we hope to catch an overnight train to Bangkok. We've arranged couchsurfing in Bangkok for the weekend. We'll see how that works out...

Here are all the photos from Langkawi (including monkey pictures!)

Climbing Mt. Whitney

We left Devils Postpile and turned south on 395 and were amazed by the beauty all around us. On the west of us were the Sierras and on the east of us were the "Alabama Hills" (filming location of the Transformer movies). The drive was through this valley and it's very hot and dry through here; the clouds get caught by each mountain range and don't dump rain in the middle. We went up to the Mt. Whitney portal. It was swarming with hikers. Even though the hike is 22 miles round-trip with 6,000 feet of elevation gain, topping out on Whitney at 14,497, it seems that most people opt to do it in one day! We, however, took two days to do it (I'll leave the one-day hike for another time).

Even with two days, one of the days has to be a long day as there isn't camping along the entire route. Here's what we did: we hiked from Whitney Portal (8,300 ft.) to Trail Camp (12,000 ft.) covering 6 miles and set up camp (picture of our little tent with our built out campsite). We actually hiked this in only four hours! This is when I started to feel beginning symptoms of altitude sickness. Jaimee felt fine, but I had the classic symptoms: headache, nausea and lack of appetite. It feels like a caffeine-withdrawal headache combined with a dose too many of NyQuil. And, since we'd hiked the first part so quickly, I had nothing to do but lie in the tent and rest and all Jaimee did was worry! Eventually, we cooked dinner, I ate some and went to bed hoping I'd feel better in the morning.

We set the alarm for 5:30AM so that we could get an early start. I was feeling a lot better. I didn't sleep super well, but my headache was mostly gone, although I still wasn't feeling very hungry. We were treated to the most incredible colors as the sun came up:

We drank some Coca tea that someone who'd visited Peru gave us (it's supposed to help with altitude sickness). We left camp with our packs only loaded with water, some food and extra layers. We started hiking around 6:15am and actually summited at 9:15am! So, for those keeping track, that's only 7 hours of hiking so far. Although tired, we both felt pretty good.


We snapped a few photos at the top, signed the trail register and headed down around 10am. Lucky that we left when we did; the clouds were ominously building up around the summit and lightning can be a real danger up there. We got back to our camp and made a quick hot meal as on the way up neither of us had been that hungry so we didn't eat much on the way up. Then we packed up our camp and proceeded back down to the portal area. Never have 6 miles seemed so long, but eventually we made it. We ended up hiking 16 miles that day, and as Jaimee likes to say, she thinks her shoes have a "12, maybe 13 mile limit" for comfort.

The thought of camping again, and especially eating camp food made both our stomachs churn so we went back to the town of Lone Pine, CA (elevation 3,700 ft.) and found a hotel and ate in a restaurant, neither of which we'd done much on this trip so far. We capped the adventure off with two frosty beers and a game of Scrabble.


Now, we're contemplating where to go next. We're going to LA next week, but we have the weekend without any firm plans. We're going to head over to Death Valley for one night at least since it's only 100 miles away, but after that we don't know. So, the adventure continues...

Here's the full slideshow of our climb: