The Final Countdown

Hey all,
As our trip comes to a close, it's time for the final blog. We find ourselves possibly stranded on Koh Tao, and as being stuck somewhere goes, it definitely could be worse. (More beautiful beaches and scuba?! No! Anything but that!) As most of you probably know, the situation in Bangkok prevents any possibility of leaving on our scheduled Bangkok- Hong Kong flight. As of now we don't really know what's going on but we will find out soon. Hopefully. Enough with the boring technical stuff. On to Scuba!
We arrived in Koh Tao a few days ago and had a day to just relax after a lot of travelling. The next day we watched our orientation video. A little schooling the next morning and then BAM! we were jumping in the pool with all our gear on to do some practice. The next morning we had some more school and then that afternoon we headed out to sea! Unfortunately, it was really windy and there were huge waves. The water was not ideal conditions for a first dive. But we geared up and jumped in anyway. We all grabbed on to the anchor line and slowly followed that down, descending into the depths of the ocean (about 15 meters... pretty deep). You could only see for about a meter or two in front of you and the current was very strong. After 20 minutes we slowly made our way to the surface, with a safety stop 5 meters from the surface to prevent decompression sickness (basically just allowing the excess nitrogen in your body to leave you in peace). We had a break on the boat and moved to another location to try our luck there. It was shallower and supposedly more protected so it should have been calmer, right? Not so much. The current was extremely strong (stronger, even) and did not make for a fun diving experience. But the next day we went out again. Luckily, the wind wasn't too strong and blue sky was seen for the first time in a long time. The conditions were infinitely better: the water calm, the colors present, the abilitly to see one another also present. It made for several good dives. The sun even peeked out during our break so everyone sun bathed on the top of the boat. We may or may not dive today (a few people have to do some makeup dives) but as you can't fly after diving and we are in a sort of might fly might not fly limbo, we didn't want to risk it. But hopefully we will all come back scuba certified and ready to check out the waters around where we live, whether it be ocean, lake, pool, bathtub, or what have you.
So with that we bid adeiu to wonderful Southeast Asia. Hello home, hello culture shock, hello friends and family that we have missed terribly.
See you soon!!
much love,
Team Seasia.
^ o ^

5 Nights In Bangkok and a Moken Village

Hello one and all-
Completed our student ran free travel which we spent exploring the vast complexities of Bangkok. It was a little hard getting used to the city life, which was far more hectic than Chiang Mia. Regardless the city was great. Spent one of the days doing a cooking course which varied with 10 courses and a trip to the market to know what we were using. And with all the travel and work, Team Seasia had a date night; which included dinner and a movie (James Bond). But don't worry, thats where the date ended. After a few more days exploring Bangkok we bused down to Ranong to start work with the Mirror Foundation on the Moken People's Island of Koh Payam. The Moken People are known as "Sea Gypsies" and have been ocean dwelling people for several hundred years. But know with the world changing they have settled on some small Thia islands, although not very welcome. With our time with them we worked on several projects including building a housing shelter for their power generator, laying a cement foundation around the well making it easier to bathe, dug a huge pond which will soon become a fish farm, and finally help lay a huge cement foundation around another town building. All in all we kept very busy and enjoyed our time with them, and they informed us we are welcome anytime. And with that we leave you to go S.C.UB.A.!!!!!!!!!
So until next time....

IWP and Home Sweet Home

Welcome back faithful readers, hope all who read this are doing as well as Team Seasia. After our adventures in Chiang Mia, the troop set off for IWP, a women's justice center located in Mae Rim. There we learned much about Buddhism, eachother, and our inner being; deep stuff. There was a tight schedule of meditation of various sorts throughout the day; from sitting mediation, to walking meditation, to yoga. It was a little hard on the group at first, but it started to grow on us, and some of us are still doing it after the justice center. We had some wonderful teachers that taught a great deal about the different types of Buddhism, as well as meditation techniques that were both calming and frustrating. After the IWP we embarked on our most immersed expiriece yet; homestays with families that spoke absolutely no english, which it turns out dramatically increased our thai. Living with the families was an incredible expirience, it really gave us a sense of thai life style that we would have never had otherwise. Team Seasia's morale is high, although living with families made the team miss being back in familiar homes; regardless it was one of the most memorable expiriences on the trip. Next up on the agenda is free travel picked by US!! so look out team leaders...muahahaha.
Much love,
your adventurers on the other side

Fun Fun at Pun Pun (and in Chiang Mai)

Greetings,
apologies on the lateness of this message as well. A week and a half or so ago, seasia traveled to Pun Pun organic farm to learn about organic farming (obviously). There we learned from nightly slideshows the importance of seed saving and the ease of earthen building.
We did a variety of different tasks every day. One day we made compost, a mixture of manure, old straw, banana leaves, and EM (a multipurpose substance that is incredibly easy to make, you just take fruit or old food and cover it in sugar then leave it for 2 weeks et voila! You either have yourself a delicious drink or something to pour on your compost to boost its ability to help the plants it will be put on... end of tangent). We watched videos on the importance of variety in food and how horrible monocropping is. It was very inspiring. Team Seasia is definitely going to return to the states with a bigger awareness on the importance of shopping organic.
We also learned about earthen building. It's so sad that people spend 30+ years of their lives saving up to buy a house when all you need is dirt, rice husk, and water. So easy. With just a little bit of effort you can build your very own earthen home, exactly as you want your home to be for ridiculously inexpensive costs. We watched a slideshow with different photos showing examples of the countless posibilities for earthen building.
With minds filled with hope for the future we headed back to Chiang Mai where we started our language and massage schools. However, we lost 1/4 of our Seasia team on the second day back. Something that was incredibly difficult to deal with and accept. His presence is sorely missed by all of us. We managed to try and start up our normal routine again, definitely with a missing presense. In the morning from 10-12 we studied Thai. Afternoons from 1-4:30 we studied Nerve Touch Massage, a technique designed by the famous Mamma Lek. It's incredible how quickly we were all able to pick up on language and massage. After a short 5 afternoons we got our certificates in Thai Massage. And our notebooks fill up more and more daily with information that helps us speak Thai to locals. We're going to have much more time to practice when we're staying with our homestays, which we're all looking forward to.
Now off to our afternoon session at the International Women's Partnership for Peace and Justice. To talk about our country's victory. Yay Obama!!

A delayed Gibbon Experience

Hello avid and probably confused readers!

I would like to apologize for this late entry on our Gibbon Experience as it was almost assuradly not quite as recent as the timing of this blog would indicate! try about 2 weeks or so back in time.

In any case we all enjoyed the Gibbon Experience immensely. Trekking through hilly and steamy jungle terrain was not nearly as high in quantity as our Nam Ha Challenge but it was certainly close to it in quality in some places. Anywho our first day consisted of jeeping in on a 4x4 truck a 3-4 hour drive if I remember correctly. The last hour and some change was spent on some really rough roads and muddy tracks festering at the bottom of almost every big hill. I think it is also safe to say that the drive back was just as entertaining.

But onwards to the meat of our adventure....and you will hardly believe it...We stayed in treehouses way up in the canopy or even above! wowzers! Falling out was a most guaranteed way of dying. Never fear all precautions for safety were set in place. Getting into the tree houses required a harness strapped to you and a roller thingamajig attached to the harness.....and lastly attaching the roller to a steel cable stretched out from a thick stable tree to the treehouse. A small push and off you went, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzziiiiiiipppppp! and presto there you were. It should also be mention that some of these ziplines spanned many gullys and at a maximum of about 300+ meters in length for some of them and had a glorious height...errr well high enough to see everything below you :D <---(thats a smily face)

Our days consisted of eating meals in tree houses zipping around and believe it,or not, that we never saw ONE gibbon. Other than that it was a fairly cool experience flying across gullies at about 40+ mph on a steel cable....and I heartily suggest signing on for a gibbon experience...if only for the zipping around HEHE!

PS. I was having a gastly time with my photobucket account....the computers here not really great as they upload 1 picture per 10 minutes or so. Ill be sending out a disc or something to each member of our trip so they can share with their friends and families sometime after the trip. PEACE OUT!

Jungle Excursion!

Greetings faithful blog minions!

For the past week, and a day on either side of the week for rest, our motley crew have been occupied with our group trekking choice of THE NAM HA CHALLENGE. This trek, picked from a website given to us by our trip leaders early in our trip, was a 7 day excursion into the jungles of luang namtha and around the Namtha national park. The terrain was very muddy and full of the most feared creature known to man! THE LEECH! these little critters were the plague of the jungle we were in. Not all the spiders and mosquito bites and the slipping and sliding down slick muddy paths all put together could rival the leeches' bloodsucking ways. In short the hike was challenging and we all struggled on different levels physically and mentally. Every day consisted of waking up around 7-7:30 and eating breakfast. Gear was packed damp sweaty clothes were donned. During this wakeup process sticky rice wrapped in palm leaves and water was distributed. Each day varied in length but a few things remained constant. Leeches, long stretches of thick mud, humidity/occasional rain. Around midday we would break for lunch and rest up for about an hour and the finish off the rest of the distance. Getting into "camp" was always a welcome reprieve from our blood thirsty parasites and a good opportunity to peel off our sweat soaked clothing and lay down and shower at some point while our guides prepped dinner for us. It is only now that I will mention that lunch and dinner were most definitley a group affair. Each one of us had our own plate piled with sticky rice but if you wanted soup meat or anything else with it we all found our hands or spoons dipping into the community dinner platers or bowls. During the entire trip we saw amazing scenery and small villages. I feel safe to say everyone was glad to have taken part in this adventure and even happier to get into clean clothes.......to be continued!

In my youthul impatience I have overseen a few more details that I feel need some more attention. I would like everyone to know that our guides were and still are the most amazing set of people we could have possibly gotten to lead our trip. Their names were Sai(pr:Sigh) and Me(haha no funny pr: there). Sai's grasp of english was simply amazing and all of us spent lots of time conversing with him about various aspects of our hike or just pleasurable things about life in general and even some more complex things. He was very aware of the group and called breaks for water or catching breath appropriately. Me was know to us and prove himself worthy of the nickname jungle man. He apparently didn't speak english except for a few words but I feel that I speak for the group that he definitly understood more of our conversations than he let on. He was a strong hiker and great companion for sitting around to lounge during breaks or in the evening. Both were great cooks and they cooked us all our meals!

The terrain itself was something most people in the world never get to experience. Mountains+Jungle made for a very rough terrain to hike in. The mountains themselves during our hikes upwards never really took more than an hour to get up and it was even faster down if it was muddy or just good trail, slower if it was wet rock. Seeing exposed views at the tops of these rolling mounds in the land made for a startling view of a very dramatic and extremly green landscape.

My trip leader thought it might be a good idea to include sounds we were exposed to during the hike. For the most part it wasn't very dramatic. In some areas you could hear cicadas whirring whatever sound parts furiously together to the point that you could swear they were everywhere....and now that I think about it they probably actually were.

All the towns we stopped at to spend the night in were very pleasent. The people in the village accomodated us and fed us their own food and provided sleeping arrangements to boot. It was an amazingly kind jesture on their part. The people here in Laos, all the places we have been, have been extrodinairily friendly!

ps. heres a link to some pics I have taken during the trip take a peek! its in the South east Asia album (ill be adding more as the trip progresses but since I started late it will take some time to catch up to our current place :D)

http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a10/Burtoxulous/Sout%20east%20Asia/

Only the beginning

After saying our last goodbyes in battambang we backed up and headed to Siem Reap. Seven hours of travel by boat and we arrived at our new home, Nita Villa, for a couple days. Our first day was spent touring a silk farm and learning the meticulous process of silk weaving, all the way from silk worm to silk shirt. Later that day we also got to see some stone and wood carving studios. Both of these places helped train locals in the trade and then hired them after the training period. The next day we visited one of the wonders of the world, Angkor Wat. The entire day was spent touring the massive site and ended with a not so climatic but very peaceful sunset on top of one of the outer lying temples. One free day later and we were on a plane to Laos, the second country we are visiting. Our first night we met with a carpediem contact named Dave who took us around and showed us the city of Vientiane. The next day we got to experience some local delicacies in the form of herbal sauna and traditional massage. We then traveled by bus to Loangprahbang, an event that ended up lasting 11 hours. Once we got here we got settled into a new guest house and woke up the next morning ready to explore. After deciding to rent bicycles we rode around all day visiting various memorials and wats. The next day, today, we went to see some epic waterfalls in the nearby mountains and after hiking up a near vertical trail to get to the top we cooled down in the pools of water at the bottom of the falls. Tomorrow we leave for our next activity, trekking for seven days in the mountains, at eight a.m.

Battambang- and the Adventures in Ptea Teuk Dong

Hello one and all-
Greetings from Battambang, we arrived here after a lengthy bus excursion and have been staying at the Ptea Teuk Dong Center for rehabilitating those who have been affected by the sex trade. The people we have been living with are simply wonderful. Their hospitality is is only matched by their graciousness. In our time here so far we have had the opportunity to partake in several projects; including building a straw roof on a building overlaying a beautiful pond, as well as digging a rain outlet from the pond for more water access. The mix of work and heat has been hard on everyone but the morale is high with all the positive energy from those staying their. As well as physical work we have been teaching English in the afternoons to most of those at the center, who are learning what we teach amazingly fast. Going nonstop all day has led us to a fairly regular schedule of settling in when it gets dark and waking up when it gets light, although to our surprise on the first night there is a religious anniversary underway which involves loudspeakers started to blast chants and prayers from about 3:30 in the morning to about 5. After a few days of this we decided to ventured out at 4 in the morning to the source to find hundreds of locals lighting incense and conducting ceremonies so early in them morning. All and all it has been an incredible experience staying here, and hope the best for everyone we have been with. Our next adventure is a boat trip to Siem Reap, so until next time...
Goodnight and goodluck
Team Seasia

Final days of Phnom Penh

Hello readers,
We find ourselves on the final eve of our time in Phnom Penh. Yesterday the group visited the Killing fields. It was quite emotionally trying. We saw the Bone Tower which housed thousands of skulls of the victims of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. We then moved on to see the many mass graves that were scattered all around the surrounding field. It was very painful just learning about the atrocities committed in this country. After wandering around the grounds for a little bit, we stopped to sit under a tree,just thinking about everything we'd seen. James pulled out his mandolin and played some tunes, something that the group really needed after the sadness of the day.
Later in the afternoon we went to visit S21, the Khmer Rouge prison. There were thousands of photos of prisoners and Khmer soldgers. Our tour guide was herself a victim of the Khmer Rouge.
The group came back and stayed in for the rest of the day, reflecting on everything we had seen and heard. It had been an emotionally exhausting day and it's something I don't think we'll ever truly understand - how things that horrible can happen to good, innocent people - but we are all glad we saw these places. All our educations had great holes in the times of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It's nice that they are now filled and that we know more about this wonderful country we are in.
Tomorrow we head out by bus to Battambang where we are going to begin some volunteer work. There might not be internet access there so until next time, over and out from the Seasia team.

Eager to Explore!

Hello from Phnom Pehn!!

Yes, after some rough spots in the journey, we are safe and sound in Phnom Penh. The students are on a scavenger hunt as a means to explore the city and get a bit more comfortable with their environment. We are well rested and energized! Tomorrow we will go to The Killing Fields and S21, both historical sights of the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. We have already heard a very personal account of one man's experience and losses during this time....so much sadness, yet so much hope as the country moves forward. The country's population is very young, as can be seen in the countless teenagers cruising down the streets on their scooters, sometimes piled 3 and 4 per bike. Don't worry...the group will not be riding scooters or mopeds!!

That is all for now...the students will be blogging from here on out...expect to hear from us in a few days.

We hope everyone is healthy and happy....we are!
James and Dawn

Flight Delays

The group is doing fine and as we speak have all their luggage and some good meal & hotel vouchers from Cathay Pacific as they've had to make an unexpected stop over in Vancouver, Canada. There were some minor mechanical issues that caused the stopover and subsequent cancellation, but there's some good news. Everyone for Southeast Asia that was booked on the Hong Kong leg have been rescheduled to depart at 2:55 AM and will arrive one day later into Phnom Penh.

I've just been on the phone with the Travel Consultant at Global Vision Travel and despite the unexpected hiccup, we both were extremely happy to have the pilot make the call to cancel the flight before being stuck over the Pacific ... this is yet another reason we love working with Cathay!

Yours,
Ethan Knight

Notes from the Airport

It's official, the group is complete! The group leaders just gave me a call and they have their full group - yes, everyone is there! There's been one piece of last-minute changes as Marissa unfortunately decided to postpone her journey this semester. We'll miss her, and trust that she made the right decision for her. It takes a lot of courage to do what's right in the moment despite the momentum in another direction - and she made her decision. So, our inaugural Southeast Asia program begins officially with 6 amazing people who in about three hours will be airborne and embarking on a journey of three-months and a thousand experiences.

Yours in spirit and adventure,
Ethan

Hey there ya'll...hope this finds you all in smiles and excitement. James and I are currently in training, going over the intinerary, becoming enchanted with it all. The more that we discuss the trip, the more we realize how truly magical and rewarding (and yes, challenging!) this journey will be. We hope that you are all as excited and ready as we are, and look forward to meeting you all. Feel free to email us with any questions/comments/etc. that you may have.

We're downloading a couple of photos that Ethan took on his recent trip to SEAsia, hope you enjoy them...

Be well, see you soon,
Dawn and James