Jigity-Jig

Dublin, Ireland

--Home again Home again Jiggity Jig, Said the big dog to the wee little pig No more time to dance, no more bones to dig Home again Home again Jiggity Jig -- We've been gone a long time I'd have to say Gone from Ko Tao Caye to Galway Bay and we've met a lot of people along the way Dread-locked sadhus and the occasional Taoist Slick Italiens to a fully armed Maoist We rode on the back of Pachaderms then washed our hands to avoid the germs In Kathmandu we shopped for Kookras In Istanbul we smoked a Hooka Daysha even wore a Kutra Hours and Hours were spent on the trains We took 14 boats and 11 planes We laid on the sands of Andaman Took rickshaw rides at 3 am I know you're asking if we're still tight Yeah we made it we're all right We had our problems an occasional fight, but we always said I love you at the end of the night. So... now it's back to a familiar scene riding the rivers on the Mississippi Queen Why do you do this backbreaking task That's what all the passengers ask For the adventure!!!, For the river!!! that's what we'll say But it's all about the money at the end of the day. So goodbye squat toilets goodbye cheap beer The time has come the time is near To travel by jet but not by lear back to the boat we love so dear Back to the bunk beds back to the crew mess Nights out in Natchez and Oak alley drug tests Getting up early and looking our best (Ma'am can I get you the cheesecake with the orange zest?) For now this is my last group email But don't you cry and don't you wail Cause in writing you personally I will not fail (Unless I die or go to jail) Y'all know me y'all will see There's always another adventure I'm always on a trip But if I don't see you I'll catch you on the flip. Peace, Michael Moe 5/9/02 Dublin, Ireland

Mmmm... Budvar

Dublin, Ireland

Boy, time is slipping away fast. At this time tomorrow we'll be on a flight home. So let me get you caught up to the moment. The pictures won't be available until next week, but it'll give you a sense of suspense. From Venice, Italy we traveled by train north to Vienna, Austria. Coming from the absolute madness of India, and the relative crazyness of Turkey, Greece, and Italy, finding ourselves in the organized and sterile world of Vienna was quite a shock. The trains and busses were on time, the subway was on time, it was like stepping into a robotic dreamworld. It's a place where rules are taken very seriously. On our way to find our hostel, we were about to cross the street, when we caught numerous dirty looks from our fellow pedestrians. There were no cars coming, but there was still a neon red hand flashing. It was clear that jaywalking would not be tolerated, and there were several people ready to place us under citizens arrest if this law were breeched. Despite having to get used to the fact that laws were expected to be followed, it was refreshing to be in a place where everything ran as it was supposed to, for once. Vienna is full of cultural things to do, museums, beautiful cathedrals, operas, we didn't go to any of them. Everytime we would try to do something cultural our eyes would cross, our legs would go weak, and a voice would come from nowhere telling us to go directly to the gift shop and buy the coffee mug sculpted to look like the Hofburg Palace, or the tea towel signed by the Vienna boys choir. We steered clear of these places. Instead we took walks and maintained our tradition of taking picnic lunches somewhere scenic.

From Vienna we moved north to the Czech Republic. We first went to a little town named Cesky Krumlov. It's a small medival town in the south, dominated by a large castle and a couple of beautiful churches with tall steeples over looking the town. It was all very picturesque. The whole town is protected as a historical lanmark by UNESCO, as a result very few of the buildings there have changed structurally for hundreds of years. The tourist season had not yet come to this part of the Czech Republic, and as a result we had a hostel to ourselves. We had a double room that was adjacent to the empty dorm room in which there was a kitchen, and a bathroom that had a very exciting feature: a bathtub!!!. It was like having our own house. We spent a week in Krumlov, waiting for Daysha's atm card to be sent to us. As I was about out of money we had to eat and drink cheaply. So we mostly cooked meals ourselves, and drank the cheapest things in town. It just so happened that the cheapest thing in town to drink, cheaper than water, cheaper than coke, at thiry cents a bottle, was the beer. Not nasty American beer either, really good beer. It's really harsh sometimes having to conserve money, but we perservered. When Daysha got her card, we tore ourselves away from Krumlov and moved north to Prague. I was excited, because throughout my travels I've always heard how cool Prague was, a place only discovered by hard-core travellers who sat in dimly lit bars and held significant discussions while listening to hip, jazzy music. We were too late. Bus load after bus load of tourists descended on the city. There were more American accents than Czech. The architecture was very beautiful, but under each building was some guy from California playing the guitar and singing Bob Dylan. It was way too cool for me.

After Prague, we had to get ourselves to London to meet Daysha's friend Maria. So we took a train through Germany to Belgium and took a flight to London. We stayed with Daysha's uncle, who very generously gave us a room to stay in for a couple days. We went out one night with Maria, and took a couple of days to explore the city. We then flew on to Ireland. We only had 10 days to see Ireland, and by now we had finally given in to the fact that we had transformed in to what we had despised for so long. We were tourists. We stayed at quaint bed and breakfasts, went to the tourist sights, ate "traditional" Irish food, and listened to "traditional" Irish music. We enjoyed ourselves. We are now in Dublin and fly home tomorrow. I hope that everyone has enjoyed and have not become too bored with my emails. I've enjoyed sending them, and they have served as sort of a diary for me. I will only be home for 4 days before going back to working on the boat, but if you email me or call me in that time, I would love to hear from you. In about a week or so all the pictures will be up at www.flickr.com/photos/moemntm/and you can take a look. I will send one more message that will follow this one, but it's just a fun little one, nothing too long. Okeydokey, I'll see y'all when I see you. Moe

Cappadocian Dreaming

Rhodes, Greece

Hello once again, boy it's only been a week or so since my last email. I'm having a harder time keeping up on these now that the mail is delivering the pictures faster. Back in India I could count on at least a month or so between emails. Oh well. So let's see when we last left off Daysha and I we're bidding a bittersweet adieu to India. From Bombay we flew to Istanbul, Turkey(with a brief layover in Baharain). Driving in to Istanbul, we coundn't help but notice how clean and organized everything was. There wasn't garbage everywhere, barely any beggars, and the drivers kept, for the most part, to the correct side of the road, it was shocking. Of course, we then met some other Americans who had come from Europe and we're complaining about how dirty everything was and how the roads were just chaos. We had to laugh. Anyway, we really enjoyed Istanbul, it's a beautiful city with mammoth marble mosques, and lots of ruined forts and walls. There were shops on every corner selling Turkish carpets of every shape, size and design. We thought about buying one, but after carefully inspecting the space in our backpacks we decided to wait until next time. And after carrying a surprisingly heavy stone statue, that I had bought in Rishakesh half way across the world, we deemed it a wise decison.

From Istanbul we delved deeper into the heart of Turkey, ending up in Gorme Cappadocia. Cappadocia is a dreamscape that's full of valleys carved out of tuff rock, leaving crazy rock formations, some of which are embarassingly fallic in nature. The tuff rock that these formations are made out of are easy to burrow into, and so for thousands of years people have been carving into the rock, making houses, churches, and monasteries. In fact in some places entire cities were carved out of one massive rock formation. Daysha and I spent a couple of days hiking and exploring all through the valleys of Cappodocia. The churches were especially a treat with beautiful paintings depicting scenes from the bible on the rock walls and ceilings. We had a lot of fun imagining what it would have been like to live back then. We actually had a chance to see what it was like. When we checked into our hostel, they asked us if we wanted to spend the night in a normal room or a cave room. I, of course, jumped at the chance to stay in a cave, but as we moved our luggage into the small unheated and quite drafty cave, it started to snow. After several minutes of careful consideration, commen sense(Daysha) eventually did prevail, and we stayed in the warm and comfortable room.

Unfortunately, because we only have a month or so to explore Europe, we only had time to go to one more place in Turkey. The place that we decided on was a small town named Olympos on the Mediterranean coast. Set amongst craggy rocks and Roman ruins, it was beautiful place to spend our last few days in Turkey. Because of the Roman ruins, people aren't allowed to build out of stone in Olympos. I guess that the government doesn't want anybody to use the already conviently made, and remarkably fashionable carved pillars to make an outhouse or something. So someone came up with the creative idea to use tree houses for hostels. We stayed in one that had several tree houses that were used for rooms, but using our commen sense again, and seeing that it was still pretty cold, we stayed in a comfortable room on the ground. While we were there a bunch of kids from the local universtiy showed up and stayed for a couple of days, and we made friends with them. They took delight in staying up around the fire singing traditional Turkish folk songs and drinking Raki the Turkish national drink. I think they might have annoyed some people who were trying to sleep, but I had a good time staying up and listening to them throwing in a Elvis song or two(after which I had numerous requests, unforunately my AC/DC and Guns and Roses are a bit rusty). Well I think that about does it for now. I think that these pictures are among our best and you, as always, can check them out at moemntm.flickr.com I hope that this email finds everybody well. Our trip is winding down and we will be home soon, but don't worry there's still a couple emails left. I'll talk to y'all later, Moe

Uphill Both Ways

Port Havelock, Andaman Islands, India

Well hello everyone. Its been a long time. Sorry about that. A lot has happened since I talked to you last. Daysha and I have been trekking on the Annapurna Circuit, safariing in Chitwan National Park, and snorkelling off beaches on the Andaman islands. But most of that your going to have to wait to hear about(unless you write me back personally), because I've decided to write about our adventures only after you can see the pictures of what I'm writing about. You can always check out pictures of our trip at http://www.flickr.com/photos/moemntm/.
So with that said, sit back, relax, and let me tell you about our trek on the Annapurna Circuit, in Nepal. The Annapurna Circuit is a three week trek around the Annapurna mountain range crossing the 17,500 foot Throng La pass half way through. It's definetly not a small hike, but you don't realize the magnitude of it until you actually do it. We started on January 3(god, it has been awhile!), I had just gotten over being sick with what I had thought was a bacterial infection, traveller's diaharrea. We thought about waiting for a few days until we were sure that I was better, but it was already January and we were worried that if we waited much longer it might snow on us. So Daysha and I along with a small Nepalese man named Krishna that we hired as a porter, started our hike. The first few days went fantastic. We were feeling like we were still in good physical shape from a small trek in Northern Thailand, and exercising in Ko Tao;. We followed the stunning Marshiandy river gorge, the days were sunny and hot and the nights cool. As we wandered during the day we saw water buffalo grazing in rice paddies, and army trucks blown up by Maoists. At night we stayed in tea houses run by toothless old men drunk on rice whisky and hard working women with grubby, crying children. Everything reeked of the adventure we were looking for. On the fourth night, however, my sickness came back, I was up all night on a, hmmm, well I would like to call it a toilet, but it was more like a hole in the floor. If you don't know, Asian toilets are not built like Western toilets. Their built sunken into the floor, so you don't sit on them, you squat like a catcher in a baseball game, and even as Asian toilets go, this was not a good one.. Unfortunately, my body is not really meant to squat(which explains why I played first base) and so Asian toilets are not my favorite. On this trek, I had to go without three things that are close to my soul: Beef, Beer, and Sit down toilets. I really missed the toilets. So, needless to say, I had a very uncomfortable night, with virtually no sleep.

This did not make for a good hike the next day. As Daysha ooohhhed and aaahhhhed at the mountain vistas, I aaahhhhhed and ooooohhhhed from stomach cramps. I made it, though, and after a good nights sleep was just fine the next day. I continued to feel fine right up till that next evening when I again was sick, but the following morning, I was a trooper and kept on going. Meanwhile the landscape was changing. We were still following the Marshiandy river valley, while it was still sunny, it was getting quite a bit colder. Yaks replaced Water Buffalo, and herds of goats roamed the countryside. We finally stumbled into Manang, the Northeast Annapurna region's metropolis(pop. 6,000 or so). At this point we had been hiking six hours a day for seven days, we were also at 12,000 feet and starting to feel the affects of altitude sickness. For these reasons its recommended to stay an extra day in Manang to rest in acclimatize, but I was still sick as a dog so we stayed two. Luckily we finally figured out what was wrong with me,(I've already been graphic enough, so I won't tell you how) I had Giuardia, a stomach parasite. Thanks to Daysha's preparedness(I never would have thought of it) we had the proper anti-biotic to treat it, and after two days in Manang we were ready to go again.

We hiked about four hours, and thought about continuing on to the foot of the pass, but because of the altitude we decided to stay where we were. When you're up at high altitudes you want to take it slow. The weather had been perfect up to this point, but as we started the next day we saw some snow clouds gathering. We hiked to Throng-Pedi, the foot of the pass, and had lunch. It was too late in the day to go all the way over the pass, but we decided along with a Dutch couple who had joined up with us, to hike the most difficult part of the crossing that afternoon, and stay the high camp, a cluster of tea houses only 2 hours from the highest point, that night. Luck was not with us. As we started up the steep incline the first flakes of snow fell, and by the time we made it to the high camp it was coming down hard. At this point, we were at 16,500 feet. That's 2,000 higher than Mt. Rainer in Washington. That night while we slept bundled in just about every piece of fabric we could muster, the snow contiued to fall. The next morning we woke up to four feet of snow, and it was still falling. After wearing out all the expletives in three or four different languages, we came to the conclusion that we had to go back down. We were simply not prepared to make a hike through that kind of snow, through terrain that we didn't know. And if we stayed put, the way the snow was falling, we could still be there. So, after 10 days of hiking, we had to turn around and go back. You would think that going down would be easier than going up, but going downhill in waist deep snow is quite a bit harder than going up with no snow. The snow stayed with us for four days on the way back down. The cool thing was that the snow transformed the land so we barely reconized it. It was just as beautiful, but in a different way. When we finally made it back, we had been hiking for 18 days with only two days rest. I lost 15 to 20 pounds. Its amazing what a little exercise and a smidgin of giuardia will do for you. Well, that's enough for today. I feel better now that I've finally gotten that story off my chest. All righty, talk to y'all later, Moe