Rabbit & Wolf

Artist & writer. Photographer & poet. Dancers. Leathertramps. Earth lovers. Yogis. Discovering Asia. A wolf following a rabbit, a rabbit following a wolf.

[wolfandtherabbit]

The Bolaven Plateau

This was my favorite motorbike loop in Laos, the main goals being:

1. Try as many different types as coffee as we can (see ratings above)

2. See and swim in all the waterfalls (there were a lot!)

This turned out to be a great combination. We took it slow, drinking freshly ground coffee out of bamboo mugs whenever we saw a little plantation. There were often women dying fabrics indigo or weaving batik sinhs (traditional lao skirt) which was mesmerizing to watch. Then we’d ride through delicious smelling plantations in the warm wind until we were ready to cool off in some of the biggest waterfalls in the country or watch the sunset in a rock pool. 

It was an easy 3 day loop and we were very lucky with accommodation. On our first night a sweet lady let us camp outside her guesthouse right by the river. On the following night after biking through a furnace of dust we camped at an adorable little homestay where we got to use their kitchen - I missed cooking much more than I realised!  Also wasn’t quite sure about the ‘Vacuum meatballs’ or ‘Machine Soup’. 

[wolfandtherabbit]

Happy Healing Home

The photos above show the process of roasting coffee beans. Firstly crushing them slightly to remove their shells, then roasting them at a very high heat blowing away the remaining shells while trying not to burn them (!) Once they are turning brown and starting to smell good, you continue to roast them until the natural oils come out and the inside of the bean is brown. It was delicious (and not too burned). This is just one of the many things we learned while volunteering at an organic farm a few hours away from Chiang Mai. 

The farm is run by an eccentric ex-Buddhist monk called Pinan Jim who claims that he can heal anything. From ovarian cancer to heartbreak to migraines to a wound so bad that the leg was to be amputated - all healed.

His medicines and techniques range quite a lot. Music is definitely one of them, he was constantly dancing or playing his guitar or singing some fantastic (and hilarious) Thai songs. He also taught us to be mindful about our actions and not to talk too much which I feel is a pretty natural medicine (’reducing incessant, unnecessary bullshit’ as he put it).

His main source of medicine was food, throughout our time there, it seemed as if our main activity was eating (and drinking coffee). As we harvested leaves, herbs, seeds, roots or vegetables from the garden, he often explained the benefits of each one and the unexpected ailments that they could cure. 

Before every meal, he says:

Go the the mountain (the mountain being a huge mound of sticky rice)

May all pinans live a long life. 

Eat a lot ka. 

So we did.

[wolfandtherabbit]

Cambodia's plastic crisis

A few months ago, I travelled through Cambodia and was shocked to see the sheer amount of rubbish in every street, roadside, beach, public area, river and lake. It’s amazing to see that most of the people (locals and tourists) completely ignore and look away from what’s under their feet or in the water they are swimming in.

The country's economy and population has seen significant growth in recent years and with this a huge expansion in the use of styrofoam and plastic (especially from takeaway meals and drinks) that casually get thrown wherever they are used. It’s actually difficult to buy a meal without using plastic - people laugh if you bring your own tupperware to use as plastic containers are so convenient. Moreover, all the types of garbage are mixed together when disposed of making it very challenging to separate recyclables and compostable material from non-degradable waste. 

In Phnom Penh, 40% of residents do not have a garbage collection service. “Many Cambodians do not see the benefits of trash collection due to the cost of services and the availability of alternative disposal methods, such as burning or dumping illegally“ Asia Foundation

In Sihanoukville, I chatted to a few people who explained that the garbage collectors often don’t get paid by the town council or private hotels and restaurants to pick up the vast amount of waste that the town creates. Trucks have also been numerous accidents on the terrible road leading to the town. 

“Plastic finally seeped into the consumer consciousness in 2017 when it emerged that the petroleum-derived commodity, used to make everything from cigarette lighters to drinking straws, now contaminates our tap water and the air that we breathe.” Eco-business

Slowly, more organisations, companies and laws are helping to provide services that properly dispose of waste and plants are being built to recycle plastic. More importantly, schools, universities and NGO’s are raising awareness and educating locals about the dangers of plastic on the environment, people and animals. Bit by bit, everyone can do their part. 

Use reusable containers and don’t buy plastic.

plasticfreecambodia.com

https://www.pickupplastic.org/

http://www.eco-business.com/research/tackling-asias-plastic-problem/

- Rabbit

[wolfandtherabbit]

Be like water...

I never put much thought into the philosophy of Bruce Lee (or Bruce Lee in general, I’m ashamed to say I’ve never seen Enter the Dragon, but am about to change that), until I read an article in The Unbounded Spirit this week. It discusses the wisdom of the martial arts master, the philosophies that he espoused throughout interviews and film scenes from his prolific career. The first idea presented: “be like water.”

Our quest across Southeast Asia has been intentionally replete with water energy. We have experience something akin to spiritual transformation in both the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. We have swam in innumerable lakes and rivers, from the jade green waters of northern Vietnam to Cambodia’s Tonle Sap and on up the mighty Mekong. And through it all, we are always hunting for waterfalls. This corner of the globe is teeming with them, and renting a motorbike to drive to as many waterfalls as we can fit in a day is commonplace in our current journey across Asia. When we reach them, we watch as the water flows forth into a chasm of nothingness, and we bask in the wind that erupts as that water crashes into the deep emerald pools below. We climb rock-faces and vines up each tier, we bathe in the cool water, we let the pounding falls massage our tired bodies and we always make a point to meditate before the sacred mist of each and every one.

So when I read the article on Lee’s philosophy and he first advises to “be like water because it is soft, resilient, and formless. It can never be snapped,” I immediately brought this lesson into the next waterfall I saw. The next day at Katieng Waterfall in Ratanakiri Province of northeastern Cambodia, I paid special attention to the water’s journey down a peaceful river, swiftly swinging side to side around protruding boulders and outstretched tree branches from fallen trees, observed as the water rocketed towards an unforeseen precipice and tumbled to the pools that lie in wait below, filling up with every fallen drop and carrying downstream.

“Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now, you put water into a cup it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle, you put water in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash…be water my friend.”

The water does not care whether it is drifting peacefully or barrelling into unseen depths. If we can train our minds to be like water, then no matter what unexpected circumstances come our way, no matter what obstacles we face and not matter how many times we may feel we are in an uncontrollable free-fall through life, we will maintain the resilience and flexibility to overcome adversity.

In my current journey of strengthening my meditative practice, inculcating the virtues of patience and acceptance into my life and my work, these wise words (from a pretty badass source) remind me to learn from each waterfall we visit, each time drawing from that energy and flowing through life. Formless, adaptable to any situation, flowing, crashing, becoming, being.

This is the sign of a Self that is in tune with the good of the Universe. A sign of a being free of the tumult of the egoic mind. This is the real Self, and it is waiting for all of us once we are ready to let go and flow into it.

“In life, what more can you ask for than to be real? To fulfill one’s potential instead of wasting energy on [attempting to] actualize one’s dissipating image, which is not real and an expenditure of one’s vital energy. We have great work ahead of us, and it needs devotion and much, much energy. To grow, to discover, we need involvement, which is something I experience every day — sometimes good, sometimes frustrating. No matter what, you must let your inner light guide you out of the darkness.”

Thanks Master Lee.

- Wolf

*This blog was written to an unexpected and unplanned soundtrack of Gregory Porter’s “Liquid Spirit” that came on poolside, and lakeside, here at our guesthouse in Ban Lung, Cambodia. Synchronicity.

[wolfandtherabbit]

Photo|Watercolour montages:

1. The American Pacific Ocean and the Thai sky

2. An East African Milky Way in a Redwood tree stump

3. A Vietnamese sky and mountain landscape

Time and place

Over the last 5 months we haven’t stayed in one place for longer than 2-3 days, from camping all over the West coast of the states to putting all our belongings on our backs and galavanting around Asia. We’ve become very good at making a house a home whether it be for 12 hours or a few days. Hanging our clothes and art everywhere, making curtains, stacking our books on tables and lining our things along any surface we can find and then packing it all up in the morning to adventure some more. 

We’ve had some great days and nights in our tent, bungalows, dorm rooms, guest houses, hostels and hotels; some very unique, others not so much. In our last days in Cambodia we found a beautiful, inspiring and spacious house at a great price where both our creative juices started flowing, so we stopped for a moment.

- Rabbit

[wolfandtherabbit]

Waterfall Hunting

Throughout the last few months, we’ve driven the national parks of California, hiked the national parks of Thailand, biked the mountains of Vietnam and found wilderness to explore and camp in anywhere we can - and a lot of waterfalls. 

An offline app called Maps.me always tempts us to follow a little trail or go off a road to see what that little star saying “hidden waterfall” could be (it’s also navigated us back to safety a number of times). Sometimes we find little dribbles and streams, other times we find multiple tier waterfalls hundreds of feet high that we make it our mission to scramble and climb to the top of, like a mountain but you get to cool off on the way. We’ve had close calls with snakes, sharp and slippery rocks, dead trees, navigating in the dark and some difficult climbs and jumps that we probably shouldn’t have done but there is nothing like having a waterfall all to yourself. Being deafened by the thousands of gallons of water pouring on your head from 50ft high while swimming in the crystal clear water flowing down what you just climbed up for hours is the dream.

-Rabbit

[wolfandtherabbit]

The Ha Giang motorbike loop.

As I edit through the pictures from this trip, I’m remembering how often my jaw dropped as we turned around every corner. Each strenuous switchback we drove up, something completely different would come into view. From the first half an hour, I was completely distracted from the crazy trucks as perfectly painted mountains started to pop into sight. Over the next few hours; mountains dripping with jungle vines would swoop over and around us - another corner and there would be thousands of pine trees cuddling the hills.

As the sun set and the road cut into more limestone, hundreds of stairwells of rice paddies appeared - layered into the mountains, sparkling and glowing in the sunlight. Each body of water was a colour I’d never imagined, each sight I took in went on for more and more miles. It was like going through meadows in France, to Pine trees in Oregon to rivers in Croatia. Constantly riding towards the unknown blue of distance.

It was an extreme trip. Devin, me, our tent and our bag of warm clothes was a heavy load for the 500 miles of countless hairpins our little semi-automatic had to endure but I don’t regret a moment of it. Also very glad we got some use out of our tent on a little rice paddy and woke up to an epic sunrise.

-Rabbit

[wolfandtherabbit]

We went for a chilly walk around some harvested rice paddies in Tam Coc the other day (no-one told us it was winter!?) and came across a large cement factory. I loved the pastel greens of the factory contemplating the pastel pinks of the rocky cliffs accentuated by the moody weather. As we were walking back to our bike, I looked around and saw what I thought was a mudslide happening in the distance - about 2 seconds later, we heard the dynamite explosion and saw huge amounts of dust and smoke rising from it. It made us look back on the amount of construction going on in every corner of every city we’ve been through. I wonder how long these mountains will last?

Vietnam sold 64.6Mt of cement in the first 10 months of 2017 but the country is still predicted to face a surplus of 26Mt of cement this year according to the Vietnam Cement Association. Vietnam’s cement sector has been listed as one of top 5 in the world in terms of capacity, after China, India, Iran and US. 

-Rabbit

[wolfandtherabbit]

On food, and the art of finding it

We eat our way through every day here. There’s no shame in that, right? 

The culinary masterpieces to be found all across Southeast Asia are one of the region’s most compelling draws. From the explosion of flavours in the fried rice and noodles of Thailand to the hearty soups and meats of Vietnam, we’ve been happily gorging on whatever we can find, knowing that even when we’re being ripped off, we’re still only paying about $2 per person per meal. 

Many of the places we’ve visited are squarely within the oft-trodden backpacker circuit, and with that comes a proliferation of tourist-friendly restaurants, with picture menus that obviate the need to get tongue-tied over the local language, and watered down flavours that leave your tongue wishing you had gone somewhere else. Which is exactly what we always do. 

Finding food, for us, is always part of the adventure. If there’s a picture of a hamburger or pizza, a sign boasting “Authentic Thai/Vietnamese Food!”, or English translations of any dish on the menu, we know we’re in the wrong place. Though frustrating at times, we challenge ourselves to learn each local language and engage as much as possible with the people who speak it. This often means walking or driving an extra 20-30 minutes through dingy alleyways and dirt roads in search of the perfect meal. We often roll up to places that clearly never see tourists, who hear horror stories of the stomach ailments of fellow travellers and stick to the “safe places” (we heard one couple boasting about how they only eat at one restaurant in Hanoi because they trust it, never drink anything with ice, and basically only eat the same dish over and over, etc. - how boring is that?). 

But the reward at these places is a much more (I hate this word, but) authentic eating experience, where the flavours in your mouth are more in line with the flavours in the locals sitting in the tiny plastic chairs all around you. We are also rewarded with meals that cost closer to $1 rather than $2, which, for a budget of $10/day, makes quite a difference. Tourists occasionally walk by, looking at us, then looking at the signs for the restaurant, seeing none in English (if they are there at all), confused as if they missed something (”This isn’t in Lonely Planet! Why are there travellers here?!”). 

It’s been much more challenging to see the “unspoilt”, “off-the-beaten-track”, DIY Southeast Asia than we’d hoped thus far, but these little meals are our little treats for our persistence. We hold them as small gems, something we feel is uniquely ours as strangers in strange lands, filled with opportunities to learn new vocabulary, and if nothing else, make someone smile in our fumbling attempts to pronounce them.

One dirt-cheap meal at a time, we are living the dream, or at least our version of it. And we couldn’t be happier. 

-Wolf

[wolfandtherabbit]

Cat Ba island, near Ha Long Bay. 

This is the best view I’ve ever woken up to. On the cloudy day before, we decided to bike around and find a trail that no-one else was on. We climbed this magnificent, rocky mountain and came across a meadow FULL of daisies and butterflies surrounded by huge bamboo and gigantic mountains all the way around us. The romantic I am was set on camping in this adorable little field and as it got dark there were fireflies as bright as stars. #alwaysdothething

-Rabbit

[wolfandtherabbit]

“Is it worth it?”

We’ve developed a bit of a mantra on our travels that we try to stick to as much as possible: “always do the thing.” Whether it’s driving the extra 30 minutes to reach one of hundreds of waterfalls around Chiang Mai that may likely be nothing more than a trickle, or splurging the twelve dollars it costs for a day long cruise around Halong & Lan Ha Bay, or climbing yet another 500 meters to reach the highest peak with the best view in one of the dozen jungles we’ve visited thus far, we’ve learned that saying “yes” to any experience tends to yield much better results than saying “no.”

We spotted a long, rickety wooden walkway built upon stilts, traversing a small bay in Cat Ba, Vietnam, which appeared to lead to nothing but a karst rock face and a dilapidated shack. In no hurry to be anywhere else, we decided to begin walking across, listening intently to the sound of the creaking of the wooden planks as they elevated us above the murky blue-green waters below. When we reached the end, what we found was not merely a shack, but a small temple guarded by stone dragons, replete with shrines to any number of fallen ancestors. Behind it lie a multi-level cave with filled with the smell of burning incense, with images of both Buddha and Uncle Ho Chi Minh himself mingling amongst the spirit houses built to honour the dead. 

We were in awe. 

As we made our way back to the motorbike, we passed a fellow traveler who seemed hesitant, peering past us at the unimpressive shack that lie at the end of the 10 minute walk along the cliffs. “Is it worth it?” he asked. “That all depends on your definition of ‘worth it’!” we replied. 

Everyone comes to this corner of the world for different reasons, and we try our best (as hard as it can be) not to judge. Many have shorter timeframes than us, and have to be selective. But the beauty we have found in deciding, up front, with full conviction that “yes! it will be worth it” has unveiled treasures we will hold in our hearts for the rest of our lives. 

Always do the thing. Because yes, it’s worth it. 

-Wolf

[wolfandtherabbit]

A day in Bangkok. We’re not big fans of cities - we take trees, oceans, lakes and mountains over pollution, tourist crowds, traffic and gap year hostels. We generally can’t sit still so we usually end up going for a “short walk” that sometimes ends up being 10 hours or more, It’s always worth it, so we always do the thing. 

I could not get over the detail of the broken Chinese porcelain and tiles used to decorate Wat Arun (or Temple of Dawn). It reminded me of being in Parc Guell in Barcelona or around Lisbon. This splurge of Mediterranean architectural inspiration and colour merged with ornate, golden Buddhas and jade elephants was well worth the broken feet. 

-Rabbit

[wolfandtherabbit]

On the open-windowed train from Ayuthaya to Pak Chong. Babies being lulled to sleep, the freedom to stick your head right out the doors and windows.

Views of giant Buddha statues, temples and jungle - plus a year's supply of food going up and down the aisles non-stop. Didn’t mind the 2 hour delay one bit.

-Rabbit