City of Ruins

I say goodbye to the friends I've made at Jira amidst some tears: Adi, a relatively new climber from Singapore who's going to be a serious crusher with a bit more experience, and Christie, who I bonded with through conversations mixing climbing, careers and shameless girl talk. Damien, always ready with a smile or a hug and encouragement, simply enjoys life. And Jaakko, who climbs with humble determination and belayed me with patience as I sent my project (finally!), with whom I shared some quality conversations about communication and trust, and who in turn trusted me to catch him time and time again on a tricky route with falls close to the ground (yielding some pretty hilarious out-of-context photos).

I'm saying goodbye to good people, and it's tough to move on from the friendships I've built over the last month. This time, however, I'm doing it of my own accord-- looking forward to new places, new people, new experiences. That, in itself, is unbelievably refreshing.

I leave that evening on an overnight bus south, spending a day in Bangkok to get a tattoo from one of the coolest guys I've ever met. Mr. Tung, working out of a tiny two-"room" shop behind the city's main backpacker drag, invites me in and serves tea while I look through his work and we chat. He takes an hour to draw on my shoulder in ball point pen, we talk about what I like and what I don't like, and then he simply goes to work.
__________

Cambodia is dusty, and Cambodia is really, really flat. As my bus trundles toward Siem Reap, white cows graze on dusty brown fields studded with low trees stretching into the distance out of sight, air turned dusky from burning season.

The city itself is somewhat of a paradox, a brazen collision of poverty, tradition, backpacker parties and high-end tourism. It’s epicenter to the kingdom’s famed ancient temples, in one of Southeast Asia’s most traditional and least developed countries (sex in my hostel is subject to a $100 fine). Despite taking pride in its deep heritage, Siem Reap has developed to take advantage of the simple fact that there is literally nothing for tourists to do after dark. The city’s main drag brims with expensive restaurants and bars (“Angkor What?” sells t-shirts proclaiming decades’ promotion of irresponsible drinking). Street beggars weave by the hundreds through tourists. A shabby clinic squeezes onto an avenue brimming with five-star hotels, posters pleading for blood donations to aid a pediatric hemmoragic Dengue epidemic. The contrast is astounding.

So are the temples. Once our tuk tuk leaves the city, we find them scattered in every direction. Some are in remarkably good condition, some under conservation efforts by international teams. Centuries have caused others to fall into ruin, blocks piled high and haphazard under the searing Cambodian sun.

I visit Angkor Wat at sunrise, walking the broad, sweeping causeway and watching the sun light the sky afire behind the temple’s intricate, imposing towers. At Bayon I wander amongst wall upon wall depicting daily life and towering heads, looking out to four directions in the likeness of the megalomaniac king at whose order they were constructed. I lose myself in the jungle ruins of Ta Phrom, ducking through narrow, underground corridors and skirting walls reclaimed by snaking tree roots hundreds of years old. I climb the steep, treacherous steps of Baphom, worn into dips and curves with age, and find the partially collapsed stone buddha spanning the entire rear of the temple (apparently the masons building it didn’t exactly understand the concept of structural loading). I walk the elephant terrace from which ancient kings made proclomations, passing carving after life-size carving of the gentle giants etched into the walls. I skirt giant chaotic mounds of moss-covered rubble at Preah Khan, products of collapsed walls and towers. Everywhere I look, timber frames support tilting walls and collapsing arches. At an entrance gate to Ta Som a tree has grown to its full height and breadth, roots extending in a web to engulf and reclaim the archway from the colossal head watching over it.

And, at the end, I ride out to Banteay Srei. The 1,100 year-old miniature temple is a wonder, blanketed in flawlessly preserved intricate carvings. Green, yellow and black streak red sandstone gates and towers, blending into the forest until afternoon sun breaks to light them in a brilliant glow. Dragons and twisting vines line archways, gods and elephants dance over doors, monkeys guard temples and five-headed cobras leap from tower corners.

The next morning I take my last Southeast Asian tuk tuk ride under the Cambodian sunrise through the dusty countryside. I board a flight to Kuala Lumpur, and then another, to touch down in Melbourne late that night. I’m leaving behind one dollar fruit shakes and fried noodles and fast friends. I’m leaving behind temples and cheap massages and limestone walls and waterfalls. I’m leaving behind Chinese girls with SLRs, selfie sticks and sun dresses. I’m leaving behind bartering and hard beds and mosquitoes and pushy vendors and taxi drivers. I’m arriving to waiting family, twanging accents, organized mass transit and strange sports. I'm arriving to climbing gyms and sandstone cliffs and secondhand shops and really, really expensive supermarkets. I have no idea where this year is going to take me, and right now I'm totally ok with that.

New Friends of the Not-So-Furry Sort

For Valentine's day this year, I made new friends. Of the gargantuan, four-legged, flappy-eared type. 

Elephant Nature Park, a project started in the 90s, is first and foremost an elephant sanctuary and rehabilitation center. ENP rescues injured and mistreated elephants, buying them from hard labor and abuse, and teaches them that humans can be kind. Since the elephants are unreleasable they're brought to a park to heal, where they spend days roaming and bathing at will, eating watermelon and bananas and corn through the day to their heart's desire. 

The park runs other programs, as well: herds of buffalo saved from the slaughterhouse mingle amongst the elephants, and dogs roam as they will-- some of them, anyway. The park is home to over 450 canines; originally opened as a refuge for dogs left behind in the 2011 Bangkok floods, the shelter now acts as a home for the permanently disabled and an adoption facility for the rest. 

ENP as a whole is actually incredibly well-run: they've developed an ecotourism niche based on the principle of experiencing elephants through love– "with no riding" is a key phrase in their marketing materials– generating the exorbinate income needed to simply keep the place running through drawing hundreds of tourists per day and dozens of volunteers per week. They've brought in Mahouts to work with individual elephants, teaching them to earn trust and results through positive reinforcement rather than with weapons and fear. 

Elephants like watermelons almost as much as I do!

Yeah, the visits are expensive, and yeah, the volunteers pay to help out, but considering the work that goes into the place and the thousands and thousands of pounds of fresh fruit crushed to a pulp by the elephants on the daily, not to mention the largely unrecognized work the dog project requires, it's actually pretty reasonable. Where else do you get to walk up to 76-year-old elephants, hand them a piece of watermelon, and scratch them begin the ears like a puppy dog as they pop it into their mouth and happily crush it to smithereens?

We do all of that and more. We feed them. We watch them roll in the mud. We give scratches. We walk into the river and bathe the lazy ones, tossing bucket after bucket of water over their backs before they leave us to spray dust over themselves once more. 

And we learn their stories. 

This is what happens when an elephant steps

 on a land mine.

Pops, a "smaller" girl in her thirties known for her gentle manner, reaches her trunk onto the platform to receive chunks of watermelon we hold out to her, wrapping our hands with surprising muscle and substantial slobber. 

The last group we meet is a skittish trio. The largest, a blind female, claims half the corn set in front of the group with gusto. A smaller female favors her left hind leg; a victim of forced breeding, her hip was broken by an aggressive male. The smallest elephant moves her mangled front foot restlessly; scarred tissue and a single crooked nail reveal results of a land mine injury. 

Elephants range in age from two years-- born at the sanctuary-- to nearing 80, skin sunk deep into hollows behind their eyes and tough, leathery skin thinned soft and delicate with age. 

One of the youngest, a wild calf, was brought to the sanctuary from a national park to heal after villagers found him walking with a leg caught in the jaws of a poaching trap. An older girl walks on an awkwardly bent leg, crookedly healed after a tree fell and broke her ankle while working for loggers. 

These elephants are, for lack of a better phrase, the lucky ones. They're not working any more, and they've become famous. As other companies look to the Nature Park's overwhelming success they, too, begin to change their view of business. One or two companies have shifted approaches from riding to humane ecotourism. And when leaders turn, others will follow.

Led by the Blind

Close to an hour's ride east of Chiang Mai, the superhighway narrows to a scarce-traveled two-lane road.  A dirt access track veers up and around through bamboo forest to the base of an imposing black buttress rearing forth from the valley floor. Fallen bamboo leaves lay a golden blanket over steps set into the red dirt hill, leading past an unmarked stone chute through which we squeeze down, pushing packs ahead of us. We duck through a low tunnel, bypassing resting bats to emerge in a tall, slender sweeping chamber. In silence cut only by our breath and clinking metal on rock, route illuminated by sun streaming through natural skylights high overhead, we climb to the light.

Crazy horse, the center of climbing in northern Thailand, lies near Mae On, a quiet town nestled in a broad valley surrounded by rolling mountains. An outcrop jutting from the buttress distinctly resembling a horse's head watches over the parking lot, water refill station and toilets. Trails and ladders snake up and around the buttress, where massive stalactites frame archways, yawning caves offer an escape from the heat and high outcrops look into the distance over the surrounding land. A rocky path leads 20 minutes up a steep hillside past monkeys feeding in the bamboo to Heart Wall-- an imposing, overhung athletic expanse covered in tufas (and millions of ladybugs), offering blessed shelter from the scorching sun throughout the day. Other walls remind me more of home, offering spiderwebbing cracks and bulges or runs of less-vertical rock for which ascension requires a simple combination of friction and faith.

A stone's throw from the access road waits Jira, the local climber's homestay and restaurant. The food is cheap– Nyeung Yao, the owner, makes $2.50 pots of curry and plates of chicken big enough to serve as lunch and dinner combined. The lodging is comfortable-- ranging from $3 open-air "princess beds" protected by mosquito nets to proper rooms and bungalows, hot showers and free water refills included. The scenery is stunning-- a gently sloping meadow borders on fruit orchards and faces the sunrise over low mountains. And the people are a proper family. Nyeung Yao takes care of me like a mother. "I give you tent tonight," she tells me. "Everyone else is a man. Man, man, man, man. It is not good for you to sleep surrounded by men." As for everyone else: we're a modgepodge mix from all over the place. We sleep until the sun wakes us. We drink proper coffee from monster percolators until the clouds clear from our minds. We pack food (Nyeung Yao packs us meals in takeout tubs), split gear and hike to the crag together. We climb, and celebrate, and curse, and fall, and succeed, and climb some more. We reminisce and look forward and dream over iced tea and beer and vats of chicken coconut soup at the end of the day.

And the next day, we do it again.

As much as I love to climb, though, if climbing was all I did when I travel, I would miss out on so much the world has to offer.

On my first rest day I head into the city to Chiang Mai's annual flower festival, where thousands of people line the street to watch high school marching bands and floats constructed of flowers parade through the streets in an oddly imperial, less-comercialized version of New Year's Day in Pasadena. Street vendors sell toy dragons next to cotton candy, floats stop for crowds to flood the avenue and take selfies, and men regaled in gold costume and crowns wave from platforms amongst floral elephants, dragons and harpies.

I also take a week to learn massage from a blind man. Mr. Nat and his colleagues work out of an... atypical massage parlor, for lack of better phrasing. It has a clinical feel, simple metal beds with blue mattresses and sheets spaced for ease of movement, separated if need be by curtains you'd expect to find in a hospital. Chatter and laughter fill the room as noise and stories take place of sight in the masseurs' world.

Mr. Nat is childlike, perpetually happy and giddy, and loves to sing. His thumbs are thick and calloused from practicing massage day after day. Nat throws me off the deep end, teaching through touch, demonstrating technique on a friend, then on me, and then having me repeat the practice on himself. He's so capable, and feels so acutely what I'm doing, that at times I find myself forgetting that he's blind.

It's frustrating, at first-- Nat teaches and describes things through feel. Sometimes there's a slight language barrier, and sometimes finding specific places in the muscle is just plain hard. By the end of the week, though, I'm able to decipher individual lines, to feel when i'm in the right place or not... most of the time. Nat shows me lines and pressure points and techniques throughout the body, utilizing my hands and fingers, then goes over everything again using elbows and knees. I learn to use my body to brace and direct pressure, pressing between muscles in what tends to be described as painful, but therapeutic. If it doesn't hurt, he tells me–– a deep, good hurt that makes you want to cry, I'm not pressing hard enough.

He receives visitors throughout the week as we work. Ramsey, a crazy perpetual traveler brimming with energy, stops in a couple of times to say hi and checks over my position, adjusting posture Nat can't see. This is not a back rub, he tells me. It's ok to make people cry!

Point noted.

An, a Vietnamese girl learning massage in a different school, offers herself as a practice partner "outside of class." Together we head to a park in the Old City's southwest corner filled with an eclectic mix of travelers, locals and expats walking slacklines, practicing acroyoga and massage, spinning poi, playing flutes and meditating next to a pond crossed by bright white bridges. It's like I've walked into Monday Funday, except it's an everyday occurrence and cops don't tell you to take slacklines down.

We don't get a lot of practice in, but I walk some lines by a pond and enjoy finding some balance until the sun goes down and mosquitos emerge. At the end of the week, I say goodbye to Mr. Nat. He shakes my hand and says, in the simplest of ways, "Thank you for trusting the blind."

Northern Thailand with a Touch of Home

Never Let Your Computer Crash In Southeast Asia. 

It will crash spectacularly. And although there may be Apple certified service centers, that doesn't mean they carry parts. Actually, you can be guaranteed they'll have to ship the parts in, but by the time the parts arrive you'll be in another city. Or province. Or country. Which will also take up to six weeks to order parts, apparently available only in Singapore. Road trip, anyone?

The "New City" of Chiang Mai lies in a broad valley amongst northern Thailand's rolling mountains. A crumbling brick wall approximately 2 km square surrounds the Old City, a bustling mass of twisting streets and brick alleys that proves a cross between classic SE Asia and hippy Portland... really it's pretty much Southeast Asian Hippy Portland on Steroids. In a good way. The area brims with guesthouses, motorbike rental shops, massage parlors and temples, and street food markets are never more than a block away. Organic cafés and coffee shops (bring your own takeaway container!) sit across the street from secondhand stores full of flowered shirt-dresses and leather jackets. 

In true fashion the city greets me with low clouds, light rain, and Portland-style bone-penetrating cold in some sort of record-low weather system. After two nights sleeping huddled in every coat, scarf, and extra layer I can scrounge from my bag (thai hostels are truly unequipped for the cold), weather clears and the sun shines bright. 

I spend my first few days in the area simply orienting myself with existing once again in the more-developed world. My search for a computer repair shop takes me into no fewer than three mega malls. I find sports shops and department stores, food courts and cinemas. I lose myself in the aisles of a supermarket, finding western-style hair products, navel oranges, and girhadelli chocolate chips. I sit in coffee shops at tables made of fish tanks framed by leopard-print sofas, reconstructing my resume and beginning to search for jobs once more on a borrowed computer while I sip $1 coconut shakes from mason jars. I eat fresh strawberries for the first time in a year and a half, and indulge in Tex Mex for the first time in even longer. 

And I do touristy things. I pile into a songathew, an open-backed red truck and hurl up tight, twisting curves to visit Doi Suethep- Northern Thailand's most important temple, overlooking the city from a perch high on a nearby mountain. I duck into one the city's ubiquitous family massage parlors, paying less than six dollars for an hour's deep massage. I walk the city's Sunday Night Market, stopping to watch a man blow glass into gold-crested dragons. 

My search for temporary work while I'm in the area takes me to CMRCA, Chiang Mai's local climbing custodians, gear shop and adventure education hub. Their staff prove one of the most genuine and welcoming families I've come across, happy to chat about mutual connections and local climbing and geek out on gear. On my friend Noel's last night in the city, we caravan in motorbikes to a restaurant where a waiter dumps a massive bucket of marinated seafood onto a plastic- shrouded table in front of us. Guarded by plastic gloves and bibs, we dig in, making short work of the mountain of food. We, this mix of Thai and Foreign, guys and girls, English- speaking or not, laugh and trade stories and steal seafood from each others' piles, and I begin forming those connections I search for, finding people with whom to laugh and celebrate simply living through my few weeks in Chiang Mai. 

No Boat? No Girlfriend.

Saigon may well be the most hectic city I've ever experienced. Motorbikes swarm around cars by the millions. Heavy machinery goes about its business in the middle of the street. Markets sprawl in twisting mazes of thousands upon thousands of stalls. Men and women practice Rumba and tai chi in public parks by the score. Powerlines make Hanoi look organized. 

We spend a solid day sightseeing. We tour the Reunification Palace, a stong but elegant building styled after bamboo, a symbol of the south's surrender filled with ornate reception rooms, 70s pop furniture, and a drab, expansive bunker network housing room after room of ancient radio communication. We visit the post office, where high, arcing ceilings frame hand-painted murals of old international trade routes and deep brown polished wood still holds cubicles where transactions take place. We visit a lacquer workshop, where artisans grind duck shells and lay them into intricate patterns, to be cured by layer upon layer of finish over the course of several weeks' time. And we visit the War Remnants Museum, a striking, comprehensive tribute presented primarily through room upon room of photographs (supported by propaganda posters, torture devices and air crafts) that somehow manages to come off as fascinatingly, elegantly morbid. 

We take a taxi across town into the upscale sectors, where mega malls and Western comfort-companies (first time I've seen a 24-hour Fitness since leaving home) command prime real estate, and find our way to the only cinema in the city playing Star Wars (apparently it's not really a thing here... sorry Travis). 

We spend the next three days in the Mekong Delta, navigating Vietnam's southernmost region primarily via waterways. This is a place where transport relies heavily on boats ("No Honda, No Girlfriend" changes to "No Boat, No Girlfriend") and the Mekong churns slowly toward the sea, flat expanses of muddy water and floating hyacinth pushed onward by water flowing from mountains hundreds of miles upstream. Slender fingers branch from the main river, engulfing thousands of islands and miles upon miles of stilt houses and fruit orchards in a broad maze of smaller rivers and tidal canals.

Once we cross leave the city and cross the river on our first day we see fruit trees everywhere we look. Coconuts cluster high in palms and rambutan bunch by the thousands in canal-fed orchards. Mango, longen, pomelo and lime trees grow by the row in gardens, often supporting dragonfruit's cactus vines. Jackfruit trees stand tall, massive spiky green-yellow fruits drooping low. People do not spend money for food here, our guide tells us. Everything they need grows in their garden or swims in the river.

In a canal just outside the small city where we've left our van we visit a small factory where cakes and crackers and candies are produced from coconut and rice. Rice is used for everything here: the the grain is eaten, made into popped rice and crackers and cakes. Rice husk fuels production fires, literally spilling from rooms dedicated to its storage, shoveled into heavy brick stoves. Ships built specially to transport husks carry towering loads to factories up and down the Mekong.  Leftover ash serves as fertilizer, returning to fields and crops once again.

We continue into the island maze, navigating canals in a slender boat rowed by a petite woman weilding long double oars. Trees droop low over the water and orchards tower overhead as we pass people going about their daily business from houses built alongside a narrow sandy track lining the waterway. Eventually we pull alongside the bank, climbing past mudskippers to a house set in a sprawling garden full of fruit trees and squacking ducks. Our host spends the evening teaching us to make traditional southern pancakes, spreading batter, shrimp and mushrooms thin in massive woks over single-burner cook stoves. 

We begin heading north the next day, stopping into a fruit nursery on our way out of the canals and walking amongst row upon row of coconut shoots (still in the shell), roseapple trees, jackfruit trees and dragonfruit cacti. We also visit a monster operation of a ceramic factory set on the river bank, where brick kilns large enough to hold houses tower above corn husk storehouses and sprawling rooms where workers press clay into potted molds. Row upon row of Easter island heads stand drying in front bricks stacked ceiling-high, all waiting to be fired by the thousand before being exported. We spend the night in the delta city of Can Tho, walking a mid-street night market full of miniature potted cacti and watching an undulating light show on a massive suspension bridge spanning the river beneath our hotel. 

We wake early to visit the Cai Rang floating market, a bustling wholesale affair conducted from dozens of clustered boats thirty minutes' ride upriver from Can Tho. Men and women toss watermelons, pumpkins and tapioca between cargo boats piled full and clustered according to product, examples displayed high from the prow on bamboo poles to guide customers toward the appropriate boat.

We visit a rice noodle factory to see a woman spreading wide, crepe-like discs of batter made from rice and tapioca flour over a scorching fire fed by rice husks while her partner lays them over bamboo racks to dry in the sun. A third man feeds dried sheets through a machine, cutting them into slender noodles before wrapping and tying 5-kilo portions in paper to be shipped to market.

Later in the day as we head north, orchards and islands give way to rice fields. From our raised road we look out over young golden-green growth sectioned and fed by occasional canals, stretching flat to Cambodian mountains silhouetted on the horizon. Scarecrows constructed of bamboo and plastic ponchos dot the green expanse, and workers dwarfed by their surroundings bend low to tend young shoots in the afternoon haze. This is the rice bowl of Vietnam, our guide tells us.

We stop in the afternoon at Tra Su Bird sanctuary, a place originally planted in 2003 as a way to 

preserve paperbark and mangrove trees which has since attracted a stunning spectrum of wetland life. Our boat winds into a maze of blooming water hyacinth and paperbark trees from which birds rise by the dozen as we pass. Herons and egrets perch on low branches, anhingas sun themselves overhead, cerulean and crimson kingfishers wait amongst leafy clusters, and various other flocks circle above the trees. In a way it reminds me of home; it's the first time I've been in a wetland forest since arriving in Southeast Asia.

We reach a small dyke and change into a non-motorized paddle boat on other side, entering an etherial world. Young mangroves rise from the water in tangled brown masses of roots to funnel into slender trunks, twisting upward into branches scattered with songbird nests that join low overhead. Miniature water lilies shroud the water on which we travel, providing a platform from which birds pluck insects from the wetland's surface.

We spend the night near the Cambodian border in a hotel overlooking two rivers' confluence, watching a steady progression of boats as they navigate the waterways. Activity calms as day turns to dusk, lights in the fishing village lining the opposite shore reflected in the slow-moving water beneath a deep blue night.

We eat dinner in a highrise after returning to Saigon on our final day in Vietnam, watching the sun set over the earth's gentle curve from high above the city. The next morning we wake and I say goodbye to my parents. They leave for the airport to travel homeward, and I continue... forward.

Dragons, Water and Gold

Patchy winter clouds welcome us to Cat Ba as I return to the island for the last time. I give my parents the simple tour: we duck into the AO office and walk the cliffside path around a peninsula ringing the main harbor, watching kites wheel over the water, nesting material clutched in their talons. We visit the hotel I've called home for the better part of a year in Ben Beo Harbor, drink tea with my landlords, and pay an older gentlemen in a suit to take us through the floating village of Cai Beo in his basket boat.

We wind through rows upon rows of anchored houses and fish farms, taking in the bustle of everyday life as fishermen spray nets and feed fish, kids laze in hammocks on porches, bright red flowers burst from potted gardens and dogs watch from atop overturned basket boats. The afternoon sun breaks through winter clouds for a few short minutes to light squid nets into blazing halos, and right toward the end, langurs make an appearance. It’s the closest I’ve ever seen them, and we pull up to the rocks behind the village to watch as they navigate the razor-sharp rocks with well-practiced ease, pausing to groom and pull leaves from the shrubbery. Our driver flags down young men as they pass in small basket boats, and they switch to row with their feet so they can pull out iPhones to take photos as they gawk alongside us.

We watch the sun set from Cannon Fort, an old outpost overlooking Cat Ba Town to one side and Lan Ha Bay to the other, sihlouetting fishing boats black against a golden sea.

We head to Butterfly Valley for dinner with Trinh, Nga and Toan, the family who runs Asia Outdoors' trekking and keeps a restaurant and farm next to our largest crag. Nga lays a beautiful feast in front of us in celebration of my family's visit and my father's birthday. We're joined by the rest of their family and my roommate Lizzy, who translates in rapid-fire fashion between stories about office pranks, and Chris, probably the person I've become closest with through my time on the island– and one of the few who've been around longer than myself. We eat amazing food, we laugh (a lot), and we drink. A lot. Trinh is so excited to have someone his own age to drink with, and as the night progresses somewhat of a dude-oriented shot challenge commences. After multiple liters of rice wine disappear a square glass jar is procured, in which Trinh gleefully points out a monster of a suspended gecko. Glasses dip, glasses are raised, and the final shot of the night is consumed.

The next day we head out into the bay on a junk boat. I visit Ba Trai Dao for the last time, showing my parents temples tucked into caves and my favorite secluded lagoon guarded by an ornate, seahorse-shaped rock. We cross the channel into Ha Long Bay proper to kayak into Le Mekong, a twisting system of lagoons connected by deep, black tufa-studded caves and tunnels. We kayak against a strong current; water drains from the massive system as we paddle in. We're here at the lowest tide I've experienced: tunnels yawn and stalactites hang far above our heads. We follow a short, twisting passage into a small side lagoon where two men in a basket boat scare fish from the bottom by slamming a bamboo pole on the water's surface.

Later we wind further out and up into the bay, circling a large cluster of unfamiliar islands. We pass between slender, twisting spires and caves hung heavy with stalactites, winding through territory i've never seen before. Massive ships navigate the natural maze, an alien species in this wide world of water and rock. Starkly contrasting worlds converge as foot-powered basket boats collect a day's meal as they move next to cargo ships importing thousands of tons of goods.

The tide drops throughout the day, exposing steep undercuts hidden beneath unsteady spires as we swing back down into Lan Ha bay for the evening, and I spend one last night on the bay following a beautiful dinner laid before us by Quang's crew.

The next day we visit Lien Minh one last time for my parents to see the valley by daylight, and to say goodbye to Toan, Trinh and Nga. It's a bittersweet goodbye, with hugs and some tears. See you next time, I say. I'll be here, Toan replies. But we both know next time is hypothetical. For all the times I've had pieces of me wrenched away as people I worked with and laughed with and cried with have moved on, for Toan, I've now become one of those people. And for all that I know I'll move forward and step into that transient lifestyle, Toan knows he'll be saying goodbye to every single person who comes through, for weeks or months or years.

We stop into a small souvenir shop where a company friend sells pearls, spend an evening making spring rolls for ourselves over the barbecue, and the next morning I truly say goodbye to Cat Ba.

We fly south from Hai Phong and drive to Hoi An, a village in the old Thu Bon river delta known throughout the country for tailor shops, shoe shops and silk lanterns. Although the place has obviously developed for tourists, Hoi An retains the charm of its deep historic heritage.

The town's French-style streets burst with tailor shops- hundreds of storefronts display various designs and walls hold thousands of bolts of silk, cotton, wool and polyester. Shops copy runway designs in mere days and build structured jackets and dresses overnight. Lantern workshops tuck between tailor shops, men and women working with quick hands to stretch thin silk over round bamboo frameworks amongst piles of completed orbs. Younger vendors sell mango cakes and fruit smoothies from small sidewalk tables nearer to the river, where a bridge lined with stylized fish and lanterns links the crossing between islands. 

By night, Hoi An comes alive. Lanterns light in every door front and hang from strands overhead, bathing streets in a soft sheen and reflecting from the river's gentle waters. Old women sell candles in paper lanterns from the river bank, charging a small fee to set one in the water from a slender bamboo pole and watch the current carry it onward, granting wishes and good luck. Small boats line the shores. They’re built more slender here, built for river travel rather to withstand sea swell and chop, painted eyes pointed downward from every prow.

A bicycle tour takes us out of the city center and into a maze of islands, passing fishing nets slung low over the river as we weave through rice fields and shrimp farms, giving us the opportunity to meet people as they go about daily business in the delta. On a riverbank near the ferry several men pound bolts into planks wide enough to nap on, performing routine maintenance on a fishing boat pulled high out of the water. We step into a rice wine factory, where a massive (read: really, truly gargantuan) sow huffs in a pen next to kiln-sized vats of distilled alcohol and another happy pig squeals eagerly next to a piggy-sized cauldron boiling cheerily away. From the rice wine factory a tiny woman trails us to the river and gives us a short but sweet lesson in paddling Hoi-An-style basket boats: sealed with buffalo dung and historically round and flat enough to pass for produce baskets and avoid taxes when the French came calling. On our last stop we visit an ancient couple who weave dyed bamboo sleeping mats; as a weathered woman slips stalk after stalk to her husband in patterns memorized through decades' repetition, he slides them just as quickly through the strands of his handheld loom.

After two days in Hoi An we move northward, driving through Da Nang, stopping to walk white sand beaches in front of penguin-shaped trash cans and driving over the coolest dragon-shaped suspension bridge I ever hope to see. We continue toward Hue, detouring around commonly-used long mountain tunnels to wind up along the coastal cliffs toward Hai Van Pass, where a cloud bank spills dense and low over a dip in the mountains, dissipating before it reaches the broad azure cove below. Although fog utterly obscures the pass' ancient lookout posts, we descend the other side to a fishing harbor where we stop to watch men lay nets from small slender row boats as a train powers by alongside us.

The city of Hue itself holds the center of the old imperial kingdom, home to the country's emperors for hundreds of years through the end of the French occupation before the capital moved to Saigon. Much of it, including most of the Forbidden City, is still being rebuilt in the aftermath of extensive damage sustained during the war as it served as a stronghold for northern soldiers. The wide, murky Perfume River divides the city, allocating taller buildings of the business and tourism centers to the west while historical sectors to the east retain low rooftops in deference to the Imperial City.  

Our day in Hue is filled with imperial splendor. We spend hours exploring the Imperial and Forbidden cities, wandering endless twisting paths through immaculate gardens, ponds and sculpted concrete archways around living residences and alters dedicated to the dynasty's emperors and immediate family.  Cast bronze bowls twice my height stand opposite a temple dedicated to the emperors, alters themselves shielded by intricate dragons painted on massive bamboo curtains. In the only building to fully escape damage during the war, high, sturdy beams support an arcing roof over a gold-gilded throne and canopy from which dragons watch over proceedings.

In the afternoon we visit tombs. The first sprawls across wooded grounds overlooking a tiered veranda and a broad pond constrained in red stone walls. Terraced and tiled gates lead to a white marble tomb set within a broad, low-walled burial enclosure-- more of a landmark than a true tomb, the location of the emperor's body beneath the enclosure long kept hidden to prevent theft or destruction by future rulers.

The second tomb is a work of art straight out of legends. A set of black dragons guards a flight of stairs hundreds high, climbing the hillside through ornately gated landings where rows of stone soldiers stand guard and tall pillars frame a rotunda holding the stone tablet proclaiming the emperor's accomplishments. In the burial hall proper at the top of the hill, dark, imposing concrete explodes into splendor. Mosaics blanket the walls. Flowers trail up pillars and frame corners. Dragons wrap columns and adorn a heavy concrete canopy blanketed in tile and gold. A life-sized, gilded statue of the emperor sits on a tiered throne above his remains, buried some nine meters below, backed by a massive gleaming sunburst and mirrors reflecting the hall’s adornment. Dragons watch from above, intricately painted into the ceiling amongst cloudy heavens. The entire thing takes my breath away.

During my evenings I find an old coworker, Thanh, at a bar not far from our hotel, still sporting that same mischevious grin and pristine Patagonia trucker hat as last time I saw him. We play some pool (Thanh schools me soundly) and shoot the shit for a while, and does it ever feel good to see that kid again.