Laos Day 1 (Pakse)

Angkor Wat

Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom Temple.

Kuala Lumpur

After a day of delays, being stuck in Chinese airports and trying to convince airlines that it is their job to give me a refund, I've finally made it to Malaysia. I'm running on about two hours of sleep and have to get up at 3am to make it to the airport to do it all over again tomorrow.

Vacation

So I'm going to be gone on vacation for the next two weeks. Since I haven't had time to update this blog, and I seriously doubt I'll be taking time to sit down and write it on my trip, I'm going to try and take some videos and then post them on here either while I'm on the trip or once I get back. Enjoy.

Harvest Time

It is officially corn harvest time here. To be more accurate, it was last few weeks. Four out of our five corn plots have been harvested. There was a little bit lost in translation with our local partners so a few of them have mixed up the different varieties of corn. It is hard for us to get solid data from those plots, but they can all tell us which kind grew the best, which is the most important thing for them. As I'm about to head into November I can already tell it is going to be a crazy month. The next few weeks are going to be spent in class or out in the villages. Yesterday afternoon I spent the day with one of our farmers after he had harvested everything. We ended up looking at corn for about ten minutes and then spent an hour just sitting around the fire having a great conversation. I constantly have to keep reminding myself that really is what it is all about. It is amazing to me how something as simple as corn can open so many doors. We still have four more villages to visit over the next couple of weeks and hopefully there will be similar experiences. Things here are starting to cool off some so I'll also be out taking care of our coffee and getting it ready for winter. Because the coffee is still young and we're not sure how it will do with the cold here we're going to take some precautions to make sure it doesn't freeze. It shouldn't be a lot of extra work, but it will take some time. Between the agricultural things I also have a friend coming out to visit for a few days this next week. We were going to try and go skiing up in Tibet (yeah... we can do that here), but it is still too early in the season. Instead I think I'm going to put him to work and go out and winterize our coffee. I figure that since he's stuck in a city of a couple of million all year round he would enjoy some time working out in the mountains. I'm also going to do some traveling over Thanksgiving. I have a little bit of vacation saved up so my roommate and I are going to travel through South East Asia before he heads back to the Philippines. He used to work on a coffee plantation in Laos, so we'll be spending a few days there looking at their operation and enjoying some VERY fresh cups of coffee. There are also a few more stops on the trip, but I'll save the details for later.

Mountains

Over the past few days I've been out mountain climbing with some friends. There is a mountain a few hours away that is 17,707 feet. It isn't a very technical climb, but once you factor in the snow and elevation it definitely isn't a walk in the park. Actually I climbed it about this time last year with some friends, but this year we didn't make it to the top. The weather didn't exactly cooperate. The hike is broken up into two days. On day one we hiked from the village at the base of the mountain up to Base Camp (13,500 ft). Day two is the hike from Base Camp up to the peak and then back down. About an hour into the hike the first day it started raining on us. It was a VERY long trip though the mud up to Base Camp. The trip there last year took us about six hours. This year it took us over eight. We also didn't make it in before dark. I'm sure we were looking pretty ragged when we finally made it to Base Camp. And I'm also sure that freeze dried chicken breast never tasted so good as it did that night. Day two we decided to take a rest day and hiked over to a high alpine lake. The weather continued to worsen also. The lake wasn't so much fun considering that it was about four and a half hours in rain and mud. And when it wasn't raining it was hailing or snowing. After spending a few hours sitting by the fire drying out all of our gear we heard stories from some of the other climbers that there was a lot of snow all the way up to the peak. Last year the weather was about perfect for me and it still took around four hours to reach the top. This year there was waist deep snow the entire trek to the peak, and it would have taken at least six to seven hours to reach the top. After talking to our guide he encouraged us to not make a summit attempt. Considering that none of us wanted to spend ten hours hiking through waist deep snow (and considering that two people died up there last week) we decided to just blame it on the weather and come back down. On our final day before we headed down the weather cleared, but the damage had already been done with fresh snow everywhere. It made for some great views and pictures on the way down.