Asia by the Numbers

Travel

Flight Segments: 10
Buses:  23
Trains: 3
Ferries: 9
Canoes: 2
Longtails: 10
Bicycle Days: 10
Motorbike Days: 13
Motorbike Kilometers: 1,000+
Motor Vehicle Crashes Witnessed: 3
Traffic Citations: 3
Police Bribes: 2
Time Zones: 6
Countries: 8
Islands: 12
Number of Different Accommodation: 55

Health and Hygiene

Hillary Legit Sick Days: 10 (7 gastrointestinal, 3 tonsillitis)
Jordan Legit Sick Days: 11 (all gastrointestinal)

Hillary Injuries: started trip with full arm cast from bike wreck in Seattle, 1 sprained ankle
Jordan Injuries: 1 sprained wrist  (motorbike scuffle), 1 abscess on ankle (lanced and drained in
                       guesthouse)

Hillary Weight in Seattle: 120lbs
Hillary Weight in Singapore: 104lbs

Jordan Weight in Seattle: 222lbs
Jordan Weight in Singapore: 192lbs

Anti-Malarial Pills Taken: Zero..

Haircuts: one haircut each, three face shaves for Jordan

Most Consecutive Days Showerless: 12 for Jordan, 6 for Hillary   (both during Everest trek)

Laundry*
Nepal: 2
Thailand: 1
Laos: 1
Cambodia: 1

*These numbers only reflect when we sent out our clothes to be cleaned by local services. We washed individual articles of clothing in the sink if they got too wretched. Its been 125 days.. Get over it. We are Gross.

Theft, Lost, Broken

US Dollars: 42 stolen
Smartphones: 1 stolen
Thai Baht: 50 stolen
Headlamp: 1 stolen
Earrings: 1 pair lost
Sunglasses: 1 lost in the Andaman Sea by Hillary, 1 lost on Singapore bus by Hillary
Sunglasses: 1 broken in half by Hillary, 1 broken by Jordan
Hill’s Underwear...: 1 pair came back from laundry with a square hole cut into them in Nepal
                              (thrown away), 1 pair lost in Thai laundry
Jordan’s FlippyFloppies: sewn back together twice, glued three times
Hillary’s FlippyFloppies: one pair left in Nepal, one pair worn out in SE Asia, one new pair in
                                    Indonesia

Reading

Jordan Books: 16
Hillary Books: 16
*Only 4 books read by both of us

Oreoconomics

I’m here to tell ya, if you didn’t figure it out in 7th grade, that math can be difficult, time consuming, and outright annoying. Know what else is great fun? Figuring out exchange rates during the first two hours in a new country, that’s what. Finances get weird at border crossings:   83.47 Nepali rupee to the US dollar, 30.6 Thai baht to the dollar, 7,956 Laotian kip to the dollar, 260 kip to a baht (which can be used in Laos), 4,000 Cambodian riel to the dollar, 130.7 riel to the baht (also used in Cambodia), 1.9 kip to the riel (used in Cambodia), 9, 876 Indonesian rupiah to the dollar.. You get the picture. Things get weird. It’s hard to sense how much food, lodging, transport should cost when you arrive in a new region. Alas, I have a system! It’d sure be nice to have an idea of the local economy when starting to pay for food, taxis, beer, and emergency snacks when we get to a new place. What’s an emergency snack, you ask? Emergency snacks get Hill and I through the long, steamy, Asian nights. The portions over here are relatively miniscule and  because of all the simple carbs we eat in the rice dishes, dinner burns out far before breakfast is ready, so in this metabolic emergency.. I wake absolutely Godzilla-style ravenous by 4AM and cannot go back to sleep.. “Eat dinner later”, you say. Simple right? Well no. We stayed in some pretty quiet areas of Thailand where stuff closed around 9pm, Laos had a nationwide curfew (Communists for ya), and stuff in Cambodia closed down early just for the fun of it.  Our solution is to buy snacks at the mini-marts. My go-to is the Oreo. You can count on the Oreo. The Oreo is omnipresent. The Oreo recipe doesn’t change dependent on region (Coke, Chips Ahoy, Sprite, Pringles.. These all get messed with in Asia). The Oreo single sleeve package is a standard 137g everywhere. It’s reliable. Therefore, not only will it save me from a hypoglycemic toddler-style meltdown in the wee hours of the morning, the Oreo will also give me insight into how far my dollar will go in a certain area.



I’ve dubbed them the great International Economic Equalizer: Oreos.  

 I can determine the strength of a local tourist economy by the price of the ever-present single-sleeve Oreo pack. Oreos have been the only standardized food item throughout our travels. The portion sizes have been uniform. You cannot really judge how much beer should cost because the quality changes much in different regions. Fruits costs vary based on transport efficiency in different regions. Oreos stay the same, always. They are a good predictor of how much things will cost in a given area. Oreo is my go-to emergency snack. Nepal: 30c  Thailand: $1  Laos: 50c  Cambodia: 50c  Indonesia: 75c…

Pretty sure we could just go ahead and fix this whole Fiscal Cliff thing with Oreoconomics.   Eurocrisis? Gimme a week, I’ll smooth it out with some Oreos. No Big.

“You Liii’ it Thai Schpishy?”

The beaches couldn’t come soon enough!  After spending two days sweating, complaining about sweating,  picking out our newly-required tank tops (‘grillin’ shirts’ for those of you familiar my summer cooking attire), stuffing myself with any and all foods that were grilled on the sidewalk and served on a stick, and peppering our conversations with “That smells like Bangkok!”, we boarded an overnight bus to the sleepy, fishy port city of Ranong.  From there we planned to ferry our way to Koh Phayam in the Andaman Sea. Ranong smelled like Bangkok. We arrived at the ferry dock during low tide, and the smell of uncovered delta mud and old fish reminded me of Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Turns out, parts of Alabama smell like Bangkok. Koh Phayam, situated two hours off  the West coast of Thailand and directly South of Myanmar, promised to be an island oasis boasting few inhabitants and fewer tourists, a lack of cars or real roads, limited electricity, questionable water sources, mile-long beaches, snakes, monkeys, hornbills, and teal water.      

Koh Phayam rocked our world!   After six weeks of Nepal: Kathmandu-craziness, my bushy ginger-beard,  my 10-day shower strike (Hillary paid up to $5 to shower off with a warmish bucket-full of water in the mountain villages along our treks), boring food,  it felt otherworldly to be clean, clean-shaven, and relaxing in a beach-front hammock while sipping Chang beer and wearing my purple Khao San Road-purchased board shorts. Let me break down our days to you:   wake up all tangled in mosquito netting (realize I am not actually being mauled by some wild animal), walk up the path from our beach-front bungalow to the bamboo building that served as family home/massage parlor/coffee shop (get coffee, no massage), walk back down to beach and read (I tore through some Hemingway- the only man who can make Paris seem as if it exudes testosterone), enjoy all day happy hours from the gal who slung cocktails our way, swim in crazy clear water all afternoon, and then hit up possibly the best food spot we found in all of Thailand. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Mr. Ziggy Stardust, aka: Thai Spicy Lisp Guy.   What we found around the bend from our bungalow was the most affable, pudgy, smiling, stray/feral-puppy feeding, lispy, tasty-food-making local on the island.  As a whitey in Thailand, you have a hard time convincing folks to actually put some real kick into your meals. They will ask you “You want ‘pharang’ spicy or thai spicy?”- at which we reply “Thai spicy’’ (pharang=whitey).  Hey that’s racist!!  But, sadly, you hardly get a meal that makes you suffer. Ziggy asked on our first encounter, “You wan’ it Thai scphishy”?  “Yes! Thai Spicy! Kap kun krap” I told him. He tried to warn me that he would throw a “fishfull” of peppers into the soup I ordered.  But I told him to do his worst, treat me like a local. Having peppers in a stir fry or dry curry is one thing, but having 30 Thai chilies in your soup is like making a lava tea.   The first few spoonfuls weren’t so bad.. But the peppers started to brew as Ziggy wandered by to check on me every few minutes and walk away with a lispy giggle.  At the halfway point of my bowl, I had to abort the mission and pick out all the remaining peppers from the broth.. Much to Ziggy’s amusement. The stupid pharang had tapped out, beer was no good, time for ice cream.  Hillary had pointed out an upscale bungalow cluster almost a mile north of our patch earlier in the day that she insisted had a secret ice cream stash, and I shot the prospect down (citing the lack of reliable electricity on the island as a deal-killer for frozen treats). But now that my face was melting, we went running towards the healing powers of possible ice cream.    Alas, the home of the $200/nt bungalow (ours was $9) also had a deep freeze powered by solar.  Never have I been so happy to overpay for dessert.

We bailed off Phayam for the mainland once more, traveled for 14hrs via moped taxi (I promise you there is nothing weirder than riding down a bumpy dirt track trying not to press your thighs to the elderly Thai gentlemen who is whisking you across an island on a rickety moped), wooden boat, hitch hike truck, bus, van, and truck tuk to the beach town of Krabi to meet up with some of our trekking buddies from Nepal. The Brits, Mike and Allison, had lined us up a $7 room, two beers, and a pizza.. A bueno reunion!  Next stop: the island of Koh Lanta. Our first day on Lanta was Thanksgiving, and we spent our time explaining the holiday to the Muslim women who ran the BBQ at the spot we picked for our presumed feast.. After assuring me that she knew not of an edible bird larger than a chicken, one of the gals scootered off to the market to buy a chicken for us. We threw in some shrimp, too!  Reminded me of Thanksgiving back on the Gulf Coast: Dad would fry a turkey, but the real feast was in the shrimp, oysters, and crab bisque that became a staple of our family’s holiday shindigs.  Now if I only had some of my cousin Tracy’s cheese straws.. Thanksgiving would be complete.

I have a confession:    I enjoy riding scooters, mopeds, whatever you wanna call em.  I mean I REALLY love the feeling of zooming around beach roads and jungle corners at a top speed of 40km/hr while wearing a flimsy plastic helmet that only protects my noggin’ from sunburn (maybe) and listening to Hillary scream at me to not hit the chickens, pigs, puppies in the roadway.   We spent our time on Lanta “beach crawling”, as Mike coined it.  Wake up, pancake, moped, stop at beach numero uno, play in sand and water, moped, find beach numero dos, repeat playtime, moped, lunch, try and teach the girls how to moped, realize mopeds are too masculine for girls, beach numero tres, 7-11 for cheap whiskey and cola, moped, beach numero quatro, sunset and cocktails…   better than pub crawling.

A few days later, we ferried over to pretty little Ko Phi Phi.  Phi Phi is a bit of paradox  if you ask me. Smack dab in the middle of the archipelago where “The Beach” was filmed, it is a limestone juggernaut of beauty that embodies all things amazing and evil about island tourism. While I relished the opportunity to privately snorkel in spotlessly-clear bays underneath soaring limestone karsts, I sadly watched hoards of tourists aboard overloaded party boats throw cigarette butts, beer bottles, plastic bags, and food wrappers overboard surrounding the more touristy islands. Luckily, we had chartered a small long tail boat with the Brits, so we could kinda tell our driver where we wanted to spend our time. We cruised into a skinny, shallow bay that proved to be the highlight of our Phi Phi trip.   Sure, other boats came and went, but we spent the rest of the afternoon jumping from the bow, swinging of ropeswings, and getting pummeled by tiny fish that protected their nesting areas kamikaze-style by ramming into my ribs so hard that it left tiny bruises. I mean, these fish were finger sized..

Next up, the Railay-Tonsai-Pra Nang beach area.  Technically back on the mainland, but logisitically an island, this peninsular paradise boasted beaches routinely mentioned amongst the most dramatic in the whoooole World.    Previous statement: True. Gigantic pillars of limestone plunging into the sea.. Blue green water.. White beaches… obese eastern Europeans in banana hammocks.. Shockingly beautiful sights.   Also, one of the most fun places..   My favorite night in the area was spent in Tonsai beach: douchey-fratboy-esque buckets of local whiskey and/or rum, fire breathers/dancers, ROPESWINGS (I love ropeswing.. “Brick, do you really love ropeswing?”), and laughing my ass off with Allison as Hill and Mike did some funky hip-rolling-floppy-arm dancing to the local reggae band that refused to do a cover of Lady Gaga for Hillary.. Surprise, surprise.  Staying in the jungly ‘headlands’ area, we managed to avoid the vast majority of other westerners, but the skeeters found us for sure.   Thank God for OFF!  Confession #2:   I decided not to take anti-malarial pills.. Not really a problem in this area, but still.. I had doubted the reliability of OFF, but did not want to use cancer-causing, plastic melting DEET-laden products.. So I decided to use it in the non-malarial areas so we could see if it was trustworthy for the areas further north in Thailand and jungly Laos and Cambodia.   No symptoms yet, but I think I could take a round or two of Malaria and keep kicking. It would be a good souvenir!  

……“That smells like Bangkok”

Now, let’s see….where did I leave off? Ah, yes, that’s right.  I was recouping from 4 days of gastrointestinal hell just in time to make an all-day flight from Kathmandu to Bangkok.  It’s best to test a finicky stomach with questionable airport food and a solitary in-flight bathroom.  Ha!. But alas, I was actually feeling much better on the day of our flight to the Land of the Smiles, as Thailand is known.  The Kathmandu airport (as I’ve previously described in the Everest trek blog) did not fail us in providing a comical façade of “order” and “security”.  The short story is that I was groped in security checks no less that 3 or 4 separate times, could not find the gate (because the flights are not posted at specific gates), and then made a mad dash with a hundred other people when finally our flight was randomly called to proceed to the plane.  Following another grope sesh- literally on the tarmac- we finally boarded our Indigo flight to Delhi, for a short layover and then on the Bangkok.
Now, I had many expectations (actually, just preparing myself for a very uncomfortable experience) about the New Delhi airport.  But, you know what? That place was a friggin’ palace.  I had just come from Kathmandu, and really, that changes everything.  But, the airport was…CLEAN, and Air-conditioned.  It had REAL BATHROOMS.  And McDonalds!  Which Jordan and I decided to feast on, since A) its probably been about 1 year since that we’d last had Mackies D’s, and B) you can order a Chicken Maharaja Mac.  That’s the next best thing to a good ol’ Big Mac since Hindus do not eat beef.  Special sauce and all.  I had a Spicy McChicken, which in hindsight was a terrible choice considering my very delicate constitution.  But, as it turned out, I held it down (and up, hehe) just fine, and my very dehydrated self really relished the 5 million grams of sodium.
Anyways, we boarded our flight a short time later to Bangkok, which landed at a convenient time, midnight.  Walking through the BKK airport was yet again an exercise in appreciating things, that I , as very spoilt American, have always taken for granted.  “Oh its so clean and modern!” “The bathrooms aren’t squat!” It was heaven in a terminal.
After a quick and ridiculously hassle-free experience with Thai immigration, we stepped out into the hot, sticky, humid Thailand night to find a taxi.  Immediately, J and I both zeroed in on a guy hanging out near his scuffed-up Nissan Centra taxi, several hundred yards away from the airport exit, where yelling and screaming taxi drivers tried to drum up our business.  Having done our research, we knew to ask for the meter rate (instead of negotiating a price beforehand) , but our new taxi driver, simply said “Nope, no meter. No have”.  Ok.  So I guess, we negotiate.  Its was late. He was nice.  Neither of us felt like shopping around.  So we settled on a 300 Baht fare from the airport to our hotel, assuming our new taxi friend knew where that was, which was questionable.
This is when the scariest car ride of my life took place.  Our taxi driver decided to be as efficient as possible whisking us from the airport to our hotel, driving around 160km/hr on the relatively traffic-free Bangkok interstate.  “This is how I’m going to die”, I thought.  In a head-on collision at 1 o’clock in the morning in Bangkok.  To the soundtrack of “Gangam Style”.  It doesn’t seem like a noble death.  (Now as I remember that night, I have “Gangam Style” stuck in my head.  Perfect.)
By some divine Providence, we made it to our hotel, which happened to be down a quiet and pleasant soi (small street), close to the main tourist area.  Again by some karmic fluke (acquired in Hindu Nepal), we were upgraded for the night into a VERY nice room.  Keep in mind that this expensive room was valued at $50/per night.  A big soft bed!  Complimentary bottled water! A TV (haven’t seen one of those in 6 weeks)! AIR CONDITIONED!  Compliementary breakfast!  Truly the high life.
The next morning, after a delightfully clean hot shower, breakfast, and a room-switch (you can’t live in a castle forever, I suppose), we set off to explore the strange, strong, revolting, and delightful city of Bangkok.  The first thing I noticed about Bangkok, apart from the oppressive heat and humidity that my mountain body was not at all used to, was the smell.  Or, smells, rather. First, the delicious, smoky scent of barbeque pork-on-a-stick, such a staple of Bangkok street foods. Its place in the culinary hierarchy is akin to Snickers or Pringles in the States.  Just a tasty little treat to grab and eat on the run.  Then, I noticed the coalescing fragrances of  motor oil and mud that emanated from the nearby river.  It reminded me of the Gulf Coast, and my childhood days spent bent over looking for hermit crabs on the lagoon of Gulf Shores.  But it was the next smell that I will, for as long as I live, always associate with Bangkok, and really with all of Southeast Asia.  The stuff that weird sayings are made of.  The “that smells like Bangkok” smell.  It’s sweet, deceptively, but also rancid.  It smells likes sewage and pastries mixed together.  Like day-old fried chicken and rotten candy.  Ubiquitously, Bangkok.  It hits me like a ton of rotten eggs.  One minute, I’m walking down the street, the air fresh and clean or maybe faintly sweetened by bougainvilleas or papaya trees.  I step cautiously over an open grate in the sidewalk and BAM! “That smells like Bangkok!” My nose crinkles and my stomach rolls over, a gag rises to my throat.  And then it passes. To be replaced once again by barbequed pork or river mud or beauganvilleas.  That’s Bangkok for you.
But I smell it everywhere.  In Bangkok, of course, but also on the southern Thai islands, and in the more rural northern Thailand.  And even now, here, in Laos.  I say it at least five times a day, as I stroll through new places….”blek, that smells like Bangkok..”  But its already so ingrained in my mind, so entrenched in my olfactory memory, this simultaneously pleasant and disgusting aroma conjurs up vivid recollections.  Khao San Road, the Bourbon street of Bangkok--all douche-y frat t-shirts and bucket drinks.  20 Baht Phad Thai.  Finding the perfectly nasty street stall with broken plastic stools and sticky tabletops,  and putting WAY too much red chili flakes in my Tom Yum soup.  And then having to drink 2 big Chang beers to douse the inferno in my mouth.
That’s what I remember when I come by a place that smells like Bangkok.  And I hope it will always be like that.

Just one more post about the joys of being sick overseas (hopefully).

Hello again.  Yes its me, your friendly neighborhood travel buddy.  Back so soon to write another blog post!  I am desperately trying to get caught up so that I don't give up and abandon the blog altogether.  I thought about skipping this blog post since we just detailed the highs and lows of being sick during the Everest trek, but Jordan said it was too funny not to post.  So, here we go.

Two days after returning from Everest, we were back in Kathmandu, basking in the glory of being kinda clean and eating something other than fried noodles.  We went out on the town with our new New Yorker friends. We moved up our Thailand flight to a mere 5 days away. Yes, things were looking good.  Jordan talked me into moving from a guesthouse to a hostel.  Now up until this point, we had stayed in guesthouse or hotel rooms with attached bathrooms while we were in the city.  But as a social experiment and as a money saver, we decided to give the whole dorm room thing a try.  Our hostel had a very cool vibe and seemed to have interesting and social travelers.  Yes, this would be a  good experience.

Our first night in the dorm was pretty uneventful, apart from the fact that sharing a room with 6 other people is a little annoying when said people come in at all hours of the night, at all stages of drunken-ness.  Not to mention the door to our room had a very persnickety lock, which made for a 5 minute long, knob rattling, key cranking, expletive-slurring process to get the door open.  Now imagine 6 drunk people trying to get in the room at any hour between 1 and 3 am.  Like I said, a little annoying.  

Anyways, the next day Jordan and I ran some errands in Thamel (tourist neighborhood) and found a delicious Israeli restaurant, serving the freshest looking salads we had seen since Seattle.  Now it had been 5 weeks since I'd eaten a fresh fruit or vegetable, and these salads were too delicious to pass up.  Plus, they were more expensive than any other meal we'd had, so they had to be safe.  Right?  And it said right there on the menu, "Our produce is soaked in iodine water and then washed in filtered water".  It has to be safe!  Whether or not the salad made me sick, I'll never know.  But we ate there twice that day, salads for lunch and dinner.  I went to bed early that night and woke up around 11pm a little queasy.  That's funny, I sleepily thought.  Its probably just because I ate a basketball-size amount of salad.  It will pass, I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.  But it didn't go away.  The nausea persistently got worse until I was fully awake and fully uncomfortable.  Still I wasn't sure I would have to puke yet, but better to make a plan now, just in case.  If I do have to puke, I'm  not going to be able to make it to the bathroom, because of the pesky broken doorknob.  It will take me 5 minutes to get the door open and I'm sure I will just have to puke on the floor by then.  The window, I decided, was my best option.  It was right next to my bed and in an emergency I could get it open quickly and hurl there.  

Meanwhile, two of my drunk dorm mates were drunkenly trying to "get it on", shall we say.  I don't know much about these two lovebirds, but I'll let you know what I gleaned.  The guy, who had some stupid name like Marty, had the most Americany American accent I've ever heard.  But he told everyone at the hostel, when asked "where ya from", "well my parent's are Australian and Swedish.  But I live in Bangladesh."  Interesting.  When pressed by other Aussies as to what part of Australia he was from, he said reluctantly "uhhh...MelBORNe"  Pronounced just that way.  Now, I've never been to Oz but I know enough.  And Aussies pronounce Melbourne as "MelBUN".  Right, Marty, I'm sure you're from Melbourne.  Or Indiana.  Anyways, Marty was trying to seduce a cute New Zealand girl, who was trying her best to act like she wasn't a complete floozy.  But Marty was persistent and they started to drunkenly talk about love and the meaning of life, and that was the ticket to the Kiwi girl's heart, or her pants.

Good God, I'm gonna puke from having to listen to this crap, I thought.  Well, there is no way I'm going to get up and interrupt this romance unless I absolutely have to.  But eventually I just couldn't lay there anymore.  I was going to puke.  I kicked off my covers, jumped out of the bottom bunk of the bunk beds, slammed open the window and proceeded to puke down two stories to the sidewalk.  Thank God Jordan woke up, even though he was wearing earplugs.  The lovebirds fumbled to put pants on and and then fumbled to get the door open.  I guess nothing kills the mood like a girl puking right next to you.  Finally the door was open and I ran out to the bathroom, just in time for another round of puking to start.  Then, wouldn't you know it, my large intestine couldn't let my stomach have all the fun, so it started coming out both ends.

It went on like that all night.  I timed it.  I needed to puke every 45 minutes.  For 7 hours.  Did I mention yet, that the shared bathroom didn't have a door but a shower curtain for privacy?  I finally stopped closing the door to the dorm room.  It just took to long to get it open again.  It was without question the most miserable I've even been in my entire life.  The next morning I absolutely demanded that I move to a private room WITH a private bathroom attached! There was no way in hell I was spending one more minute in the dorm room with hungover people shuffling about while my head was spinning and my stomach was churning.

I couldn't eat for 3 days.  Finally, the first day I felt well enough to walk around town again, I went with Jordan to get pizza.  I took one step inside the restaurant and ran straight to the bathroom, dry heaving from the mere smell of cheese and tomato sauce.  When I finally pulled myself together, I ordered plain steamed rice while Jordan chowed down on a Hawaiian pizza.  But when my rice came, I couldn't stand the smell of that either.  Jordan's favorite quote from the whole ordeal was me saying "I can't eat it.  It smells too...rice-y".  I spent our lunch hunched in the corner with my head turned to the window and my back turned to Jordan.  It was very rude but I couldn't sit there and watch Jordan French kiss his pizza.  

Three days later we flew to Thailand, where I've been trying to eat like its my job.  Oh the joys of traveling.

Things I've learned about myself from this experience thus far:

I'm not a hostel person, much to Jordan's dismay.  I want my own room. And preferably my own gosh darned bathroom.

Being at some level of sick is kind of an all-the-time thing when you are traveling in developing countries.  Especially if you eat sketchy street food.  And have delicious fruit shakes with questionable ice.  You just get used to it.

I don't care about eating healthy at all. I eat the most greasy, oily, fattiest food I can find.  Keeping weight on is more important than heart disease.

A Tale of Two Everests. A Tale of Two Sickies. Hmm

Hillary=normal
Jordan=BOLD

H:
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.  Ain‘t that the truth.  This is the story of our adventure to Everest, and if it seems like a bipolar tale, its because it is.  Jordan and I have decided to co-write this post, so that we can let you in on how different our experiences were at different times.  So bare with us, it may be lengthy and a bit redundant.

Let me start out by saying the my expectations were quite high for this trek, 8848 meters high to be exact.  Everest was my Mecca of sorts, the whole reason for coming to Nepal in the first place.  Yes, Annapurna was great, but the REAL reason I were here is to see Everest with my own eyes.  I’ve come to view the Everest  region as somewhat of a celebrity.  Actually traveling to the little villages along the trek that I’ve read about so many times in “Into Thin Air” was both surreal and somewhat disconcerting, like I was meeting the lead singer of a band that I listened to thousands of times.  Or something like that.

I also felt like Everest was my baby.  I’d done the research (but I do most of it anyways) and I’d chosen a difficult route for Jordan and I.  The Three Passes Route.  It would take us to all three valleys in the region, cross over three mountain pass higher than 5200 meters and give us some the best and most varied views of the big hills.  It would take us around 20 days to trek, about twice as long as the Annapurna trek and longer than I’ve ever continuously hiked in my life…..My, how things change.

To back up a little bit, the week before we left for Everest, still in Pokhara, Jordan came down with what we initially thought was good ole bacterial travelers diarrhea.  So we loaded him up with antibiotics and called it good.  But he kept getting sick.  Finally after 4 days, he seemed to be back to his healthy six-meal-a-day-eating self again.  So we high-tailed it back to Kathmandu, taking a weekend pit stop in Bhaktapur for the Dashain festival, and then before we knew it we were sitting in the front seat of a tiny airplane bound for Lukla, where we would touch down at  the deadliest airport in the world and start our trek.  I’m gonna paint a little picture of how airports work in Nepal for you.  We walked with our backpacks into a giant, hot, squished-with-people room, and looked for our ticket counter.  Of course nobody who works for the airline is standing behind said ticket counter, so we plopped our bags down and waited in line (because we got there 2 hrs early).  Finally after an hour and a half of waiting with no signs of  “hey, lets check you guys in, now”,  Jordan approached someone at a different ticket counter to see what the deal was, and wouldn’t you know, our flight was delayed.  You see in Nepal, you aren’t on the 8am or 9am flight, you are on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc flight of the day, and whatever time that leaves is when you leave.  So our flight was delayed, and because all the other flights before our flight were delayed too, it was starting to look like we were not going to get a ride to Lukla that day.  But Jordan was very sweet ,Southern, and flirtatious with the only female employee in sight and got us on the flight that was “leaving right now”.  So after a little groping/security check we were checked in and only had to two wait 2 more hours until our flight left.  The flight was uneventful, I think.  I honestly can’t recall specifics because I was too busy freaking out in my head. Since we were in the front two seats, Jordan was busy memorizing the fuel shutoff steps displayed in the cockpit.. In case we crashed into a fiery ball in the mountains. Most of my flight was spent chanting the Hail Mary in my head (the parts I could remember anyway) and then freaking out more that I couldn’t even remember the whole freaking Hail Mary.  Anyways, we landed.  So thank you 7 years of Catholic school.

Anyways, Lukla, from here we had a nice short walk, mostly downhill to Phakding, where we spent the night.  The next day was our biggest hike in terms of elevation gain, over 1000m to get to Namche Bazaar.  From here, I’m handing to laptop to Jordan:

J:   Oh Namche, the loveliest village on the mountianside. Resting at appx. 3500meters and 26 hiking miles Southwest of Mt. Everest, Namche Bazar is a common spot to spend an acclimatization day and do some last-minute shopping of quality locally-made down goods. I spent the first day successfully convincing Hillary that she did NOT need a full-body goose down expedition suit for the Three Passes hike. If you are familiar with Hillary and her opinion of cold-weather camping, hiking, surviving, etc.. then you know that this is not the first time I’ve had to coax her back off that ledge. The only difference was that in the US, these bad boys cost $1500.. And in the copy shop capital of Namche, you could bring home your very own goose down Michelin Man suit for about $200.  We finally decided on scooping up a black “Millet” down jacket for Hillary and a school-bus-yellow “Mammut” down vest for myself. All for 5000R.. Or about $60!

We had found a little lodge called Holiday Namche, which was nestled high on the Western flank of the amphitheater-shaped village and offered astounding views of the craggy spires surrounding the river valley from our room‘s window… all for about $3/night. I spent the evening  eating water buffalo curry, swapping stories  with a professional trail runner from Chamonix, France, and making fun of a rather pompous guided-n-portered British group all wearing hats, shirts, and sweatshirts emblazoned with “Everest Base Camp” who loudly professed over satellite phones to have just gotten off … ‘expedition’.. to the hardest hike in the world. 

Now it is quite hard to pinpoint a sickness on a single dish or cup of liquid when you’re enjoying such suspect culinary treats. Did I get the bug from the delicious roadside, hand-served 60rupee slop in Pokhara.. Was it the buffalo curry whose protein was sourced from a farm 8-days walking downhill from Namche.. Celebratory cocktails with questionable ice in Pokhara with the Anglo-Franco-Yanko team after the Annapurna Circuit?   Well we just don’t know.   But I can tell you for certain, that the last thing you wanna do is get sick at 11,500 feet, while using a shared bathroom, and after eating spicy veggie momos!   The next days are kinda a bathroom-bed-bathroom-bed blur, and luckily our room was up two flights of tunnel vision-inducing stairs. After three days of this nonsense, I was so weak and dehydrated that simply  walking the 100yds across the village left me confused, stumbly, and rather demoralized. We decided I needed to see a doctor, and the land donated for the newly built medical clinic was in the best spot possible.. 600 vertical feet uphill from the village. I decided that I would rather succumb to an unflattering dehydration-induced death in an unmarked toilet stall than walk uphill ANYWHERE.  Luckily,  on our walk back the lodge, I blearily stumbled into the front door of a previously unnoticed pharmacy. Hillary asked for some IV fluids, and the nurse who ran the shop cheerily handed her a 0.5Liter glass bottle of Lactate Ringers while saying, “Look, it doesn’t even expire until next week!” We decided against this option. After a quick chat, we concluded that I was suffering from a protozoal infection of Giardia. We picked up a few doses of Tinidazole, and I stumbled triumphantly towards the lodge and my bed.  I felt a bit better the next day, so we took a stroll up a ridgeline to 12,600ft to a vantage of Everest and my BFF, Ama Dablam (my favorite mountain of all time).


So instead of just one acclimatization day in Namche Bazaar, we spent a whopping 4 days there.  Jordan was real trooper through it all.  I, on the other hand, got itchy feet on day 2.  “What do you mean you can’t just go for a walk through town?” I would whine.  Its my own fault I suppose, I brought quite possibly the most boring book on this trek and I tried to find any excuse not to read it.  So after 4 days at 3500m, I figured we would be “super acclimatized” but it became clear that we were simply not going to be able to do our planned trek.  The fact of the matter was that Jordan was too weak and we didn’t want to risk being in more isolated valleys and him getting sick again.  Change of plans.  Instead of taking a clockwise, west to east trek over the Three Passes, we decided to continue the trek up the classic Everest Base Camp route, where, if Jordan was feeling better we could rejoin the Three Passes trail and do it in reverse, counter-clockwise from east to west.  The next day we set off for Tingboche, a little village in the saddle between two mountains with an active Tibetan Buddhist monestary and one kick-ass bakery.  It was a tough hike for the both of us.  I was carrying a little more weight in my pack and Jordan was still dehydrated and calorie-depleted.  But after the long uphill slog, we both had the most overpriced and delicious croissants and chocolate cake.  The next day Jordan was feeling much better and we had an easy jaunt to the next little town of Dingboche.  Per the guidebook, we were supposed to spend another night here to acclimatize, but Jordan and I figured we would be fine, what with all the extra time in Namche.  Plus we wanted to get up to Chukkung, a little outpost that serves at the starting point for climbing the nearby Island Peak.  Now, even after 4 days of Giardia-induced fluid deprivation, Jordan still had a bit of peak-bagging fervor.  Unfortunately, that night in Dingboche, I got the first symptoms of altitude sickness.  I’d had trouble sleeping the night before in Tengboche but I figured it was just the cold weather and lack of insulation in our tool shed excuse of a guesthouse room.  But the next night, in Dingboche, I didn’t sleep at all.  Well, actually I would sleep for 30 minutes or so and then I would stop breathing, which would of course wake me up with the terrifying feeling of suffocation.  You see when you climb to high altitude with less oxygen in the air, your body compensates by breathing faster and deeper, to get your lungs and muscles and brain the oxygen it needs.  But you also “blow off” a lot of carbon dioxide when you exhale.  So when you go to sleep, because your CO2 levels are low and that’s the primary drive for your brain to say “hey you idiot breathe!” your brain is all like “nah its cool the carbon dioxide levels are fine” and you stop breathing for long pauses, letting your CO2 levels to rise back to normal levels.  But because you aren’t breathing,  your oxygen levels drop low enough for you brain to get a little stressed out, at which point you wake up gasping for air.  So that was my night in Dingboche.  And after a few waking-up-by-suffocation episodes, I started to have a lot of anxiety.  That’s another symptom of altitude sickness.  Anyways, I decided it was time to give up the goose and start taking Diamox, a medicine to help the body acclimitize more quickly.  Its an annoying drug.  It makes your face, hands and feet numb and tingly, and it makes you pee all the damn time.  We also decided it was necessary to spend a rest day in Dingboche.

Dingboche turned out to be one of our favorite villages in all of Nepal. We spent two nights here, and spent the time gazing up at the Northern side of Ama Dablam, attending an education clinic concerning AMS, and drinking tea while being entertained by the young man breaking a coal-black stallion at our lodge. We spent a great deal of time getting to know our fellow trekkers and the village locals while watching the young horse buck and gallop his way down the stone path outside the lodge. We were fascinated by the stories from a Brazilian fellow who had climbed Everest, Cho Oyu, and was on high on Manasulu during the late September avalanche that killed several climbers. He was celebrating his 50th hike up to Kalapathar while guiding trekkers that night. Much dancing and beer ensued!

Our next destination was the village of Chukung: a contender for the top spot on our trek. Walking steadily through the remnants of a receding glacier, we boulder-hopped, stream-jumped, and yak-dodged our way to this tiny outpost near the bottom of  8,000meter (and seldom climed) Lhotse. I had a two-day struggle with my desire to climb a Himalayan peak.. And after much debate with the frostbitten angel and ice-tool-wielding devil on my shoulders, I decided it was not worth forking over $900 for a guided trip up the 20,000ft+ Island Peak.. Mostly because I had no clue how I would perform that high up after being quite sick earlier in the week. Nothing says “Wha Whah” like turning around and spending almost a month’s-worth of trip fund on a failed climb..  Instead, and for FREE, we spent our days hiking up Chukung Ri to a vantage around 17,500ft and simply looking in awe at the surround giants of ice and stone.      This was how I spent November 3, my 28th birthday: with my girl, an ear-to-ear grin, and an overwhelming amount of gorgeous alpine scenery before my eyes. (I declared that I had two birthday.. Since Nepal is 12hrs ahead of Seattle time, I had a Nepal birthday and an American birthday.. And I squeezed every minute out of it!)  On this day I captured my favorite picture from our trip so far: a panorama from Island Peak over to Ama Dablam.. Stunning (I should mention here that I started getting a gnarly headache and nauseous on the day hike up to Chukkung Ri.  I was a whiny, bitchy, slow-moving mess.  Jordan kinda got jipped in the happy-smiley girlfriend department for his birthday.  At this point, it was clear, I wasn‘t going to be able to do the first pass.  I was having acute mountain sickness symptoms starting at 4400 meters and was dragging ass.  A 5500+ pass was just out of the picture.   We would have to just go to Everest Base Camp on the standard, filled with European tourists, route.  Wha-wha.)

We decided to walk the long way around to the village of Luboche, which took us back down to Dingboche, and past Taboche and Cholatse.. Two Westward-listing peaks with strangely shaped chutes of alpine ice that we dubbed the Death Slides. Instead of following a lower trail that followed the river, we opted to gain a higher ridge to the North and wander Westward through seasonal yak “karkas” (pastures) in the direction of Lobuche. This turned out to be a great decision, as we were alone for hours on end, save the random yaks grazing. We pulled into Lobuche late that night, after an eerie stroll through boulder fields littered with chortens erected in honor of climbers who did not return from the surrounding mountains. We were treated to a blazing sunset set reflected upon the icy summit of Nuptse while chatting with an entertaining couple from Buffalo, NY. It was refreshing to talk with folks about dark beers, food covered with cheese, more food, buffalo wings, NFL, more beer, and cheesebuuuuurgers!

The next day from Lobuche we hiked a short 3 miles up to the last tiny outpost of a village, Gorak Shep, just a hop, skip and a jump from Kala Pattar and Everest Base Camp.  The start of the day was an easy flat walk through the terminal moraine of the Khumbu Glacier.  It was supposed to be a small vertical gain day, lucky for me.  I was feeling much better after descending down from Chukkung and then staying overnight in Lobuche, which was an almost net-even altitude gain.  That being said, any kind of physical activity apart from walking very slow on flat ground left me gasping for air and having to stop every 10 minutes or so.  About an hour into the walk up to Gorak Shep, we came to a pretty tall little hill.  Surely, I thought, this will be the only height we will gain and then it will be relatively flat from here.  Wrong.  After struggling up a dusty, chossy, steep hill, I realized we would only have to go down the other side and then back up another hill, and another hill after that.  Somewhere along the way I started to get a bit of a headache.  And then we saw it, the Khumbu freaking Glacier.  And then we saw the very start of the Icefall.  And then! And then! Everest poked its big black pyramid head out from around Nuptse! It was exhilarating. Here I am, close to something so huge and famous! We dragged ourselves into Gorak Shep, and then I started to feel like absolute shit.  Pounding headache.  Sensitive to light.  Every part of my body ached.  I choked down garlic soup.  Apparently, that’s supposed to help with altitude sickness.  Our plan for the day had been to rest for awhile at the guesthouse then take a walk up to Everest base camp.  But all I could think about doing was laying down in a dark room and moving as little as possible.  “I’ll just lay down for an hour” I told myself, then I’ll get up and we’ll take a walk up there.  I started to feel very fuzzy.  Sort of drunk and very very tired. But my head hurt so bad I couldn’t sleep.  I had an internal debate for about thirty minutes of “is it worth it to get up and go pee?”  At this point, Jordan came to check on me, saw that I was in pretty bad shape, and started to realize that we would probably have to go back down.  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.  I belligerently argued with him for awhile that I was fine, I would be fine tomorrow to hike up to 5500m to Kala Pattar, even though at present I was quivering in the fetal position at 5200 meters.  But, in the end, I realized we had to go back down.  It was either that or risk getting worse and having to max out my credit card with a helicopter evacuation.  So Jordan took all the weight out of my backpack except for the sleeping bags and down jackets, and I ataxically stumbled my way down back to Lobuche.  Jordan took a video of me trying to figure out which way to walk around a boulder in the middle of the trail.  First I went left, then right, then back left.  Looking back, it was scary, and we made the right decision.  But at the time, I was so disappointed in myself.  How could I get altitude sickness now? I’ve already done the AC, and felt great at 5400 meters.  What was wrong with me now, when it mattered to me more?  Plus I felt  like I ruined Jordan’s Nepali birthday.

Walking back down to Lobuche was the strangest experience.  Like, I actually noticed my head feeling clearer and clearer. Like my brain was working that much better with the tad bit more oxygen.  Once we reached town, I was coherent and even intellectual.  We had birthday grilled cheeses and went to sleep in the coldest bed I’ve ever slept in.  At this point, after having admitted to myself that it just wasn’t meant to be (or that I was just a big baby), I felt like I couldn’t spend one more minute than I had to in the mountains. I was just….done.   We left Lobuche bright and early and decided to go as far as we could.  Typically people stop in Dingboche or Tengboche for the night.  But I figured, why stop hiking at 3 in the afternoon and spend another cold night eating crappy noodles, when we can walk all the way  back  to Namche and eat slightly less crappy noodles and sleep in a much warmer bed.  So that’s what we did.  Twenty-three miles of downhill-uphill-downhill for 9 hrs, the last hour of which was walked in the dark with headlamps.

Returning to Namche was like returning to modern civilization.  Hot water showers!  Expensive crappy beer! No more headache!  After a completely gluttonous rest day (like eating 2 large yak cheese pizzas for breakfast) we knee-banged it back down to Lukla to try to get a flight outta there.  Back to the craziness of Kathmandu.

Side note:  We started this blog entry right after returning to Kathmandu but as you know, we didn’t finish it and now, I’m sitting here in Chiang Mai, Thailand trying to recall events and thoughts that are already starting to blur in my memory.  Re-reading the earlier portion of the blog, I realize now that my side of the story  is almost solely describing  my various ailments and bodily discomforts, which is a large part of what I remember from that particular trip.  But of course, I also remember the scenery. Its just harder to describe.  Its there in the background of my head.  It almost silly to try and talk about  it. It would sound stupid. The mountains were ….Big is all I can say.  Making me feel small.  Making me wonder how in the hell people can carve a life out in a very inhospitable place.  Its also weird how my mind’s eye was sort desensitized to beautiful, huge mountains.  The first couple dozen you see, its like “whoa, oh my god, awesome” and all that.  And then when its all you see for 6 weeks, its just….what’s there.  Funny huh?


Anyways, we left Lukla on a similarly tiny airplane, in a similarly organized and orderly process as how we came.  Haha.  But as I sat in my front row seat and peered out the window, chanting my abridged version of the Hail Mary, I became sort of sad to think that I would never come back to the Himalayas.  It just didn’t seem right, that this experience would be my first and last.  No, I was already starting to miss it, just a little bit.  I was mesmerized to look out and see the huge looming mountains of pure, hard white give way to the scrunched up blanket of green, earthy hills, terraced into concentric shapes in such a way that it looked like a topographical map.  To see huge rivers, diverge into various smaller ones and then disappear between mountainsides.  Then those thoughts of piqued curiosity and maybe even adventure crept back in.  “I wonder how far that river goes”….”I wonder what’s beyond those last hills”…”I wonder what those  people down there are doing right now”.  Yes, I’ll definitely come back again.

Geez.. I just read through this blog entry again now that it is finally done.. Thanks for getting through it guys! Long one..

Nepal, meet Left Arm. Left Arm, meet Nepal.

  After 11 days of hiking on the Annapurna circuit, it was finally Friday, October 13th.  The day I've been waiting for for 6 weeks.  The day my left arm gets to be a part of the world again.  No more Left Arm solitary confinement in blue cast prison. No, from here on out, left arm would get all the good things again: sunshine, fresh air, a long-overdue shower.  Just a few pesky things to get out of the way before Left Arm's Emancipation.  It turns out the Friday the 13th-bad luck thing, also true in Hindu-Buddhist countries.  First, we took a flight from Jomsom, "big" village on the Circuit, back to Pokhara.  Now normally I wouldn't think twice about flying, but just a few weeks ago, the exact same type of plane crashed taking trekkers to the Everest region.  And the airport doesn't exactly make you feel secure.  Not when the airline ticket officers are wearing knock-off North Face fleeces no name tag in sight and the security officers give your backpack an outside squeeze then slap a "security checked" sticker on your bag.  Never showed my passport to anyone.   So then we get on the plane, a Twin Otter, and take off climbing steeply into the blue sky to avoid a lesser Annapurna foothill.  For all my anxiety though, the plane ride was smooth as can be.  25 minutes later we landed back in Pokhara to the heat and humidity I'd forgotten about.  Left arm didn't forget.  She started to sweat immediately.  I was so excited.  The cast will be off in a mere hour or two I thought!  Off by lunch time to enjoy a celebratory beer.  But then I couldn't find my backpack in "baggage claim".  And then I was trying to keep Jordan from going ape shit on a tiny middle-aged Nepali man, screaming for some reason in a Southern accent "Find that f*cking bag!  You better find that bag!"  Crap was all I thought, I don't give a hoot about this backpack, but now it looks like Left Arm will be staying locked up for the rest of the morning.  We were led to an office where some airline lady explained that my bag was removed from the plane because the plane was over weight limits. Hmm, curious because all our bags were weighed before we got on the plane.  So after an hour of sitting in this office, Jordan giving a kill-stare to the poor ladies, my bag was miraculously returned to me!  After cabbing back to our hotel, ditching our bags, and me scolding Jordan about not being a hothead and thinking he can go "Big American" when there's a problem, we finally were off to get my cast cut off!  Now before we left the States, we researched a travelers clinic in Nepal that seemed pretty legit, recommended by the State Department and everything.  But since Kathmandu is kind of a nightmare and it would mean even more days with the cast, I decided to just get the cast cut off in Pokhara.  Surely, as the gateway to the Annapurnas, they would have a real-deal hospital.  But after talking to several people in town, I decided to go to a private-pay clinic that claimed to treat orthopedic and traumatic injuries.  Jordan and I both figured, if it claimed to be an ortho practice, then surely they will have a cast saw and an x-ray machine.  So Celestial Healthcare would be Left Arm's savior.  I had a short consultation where I was told Dr. Gupta could cut my cast off and get my x-rays, no problem, just $50.  What a deal! But they didn't have a cast saw, so blue cast would have to be removed by hand, with what appeared to be a short hack-saw blade.  So that's how I spent about 2.5 hours on Friday the 13th, laying on a dirty exam table, while two Nepali men, one with the blade, another with a pair of scissors, sawed and hacked and stabbed away at blue cast.  Neither of them were doctors, and neither of them knew to put the blunt end of the scissors towards my skin.  To be honest, I really thought, I was going to have my brachial artery severed.  Contingency plans were running though my mind:  Is there a tourniquet close by?  Hopefully they have semi-sterile gauze to cover what will surely be a squirting puncture wound.  And then my planning was interrupted because I could feel the blade sawing close to my skin, having gone all the way through the plaster.  It was actually Jordan who finally muscled the cast off, prying it open where they'd been sawing for two hours.  Needless to say, it was an experience I'll never forget. But once it was finally off, I've never been more relieved.  And then Dr. Gupta, my "orthopedic surgeon" told me we would drive in his car to the nearest hospital to get x-rays done of my wrist.  Because, they don't have an x-ray machine.  So off we went, but at the hospital, the x-ray tech was at lunch.  Apparently, if you have a life-threatening emergency in Nepal, it will have to wait until after lunch.  No one could do my x-ray.  So to 2 more hospitals we went before we finally found one that had a x-ray tech willing to do my films.  As for describing the hospitals, well, lets just say it makes Harborview's ER look like a royal palace of cleanliness and medicine.  But finally, after 4+ hours of hand sawing my cast off and an impromptu tour of Pokhara's hospitals, Left Arm was now free.  But feeling like it won't ever work the same way again.  I know I'm exaggerating.  Its getting better slowly everyday.  But I still can't flip my wrist over to face palm-down.  Permanent low-five is still in action.  But Left Arm is now clean and fresh smelling, and I'm working on the awful reverse farmer's tan I got on the trek.

Since then, Jordan got the first tummy bug of the trip, we came back to Kathmandu from Pokhara, and went to a Bhaktapur for a couple days.  Its also Dashain festival right now in Nepal, a national Hindu festival that involves a lot of partying and animal sacrifices.  I've had my fill of passing herds of goats, ducks, and water buffalo on their death march to the temples. Tomorrow we are heading out to go trek around Everest for about 3 weeks.  Wish us luck!

Your Scrawny Left Arm friend,

Hillary