Where Water Buffalo Roam

The sun is up. The low hanging ceiling of fog is receding, revealing ridge lines puff painted in green fauna. The old white sheet lifts, the scene is set. Yesterday I wrote off the walls of limestone encrusted valleys as an endless uphill battle. Today is different, today has started with a new feeling--the last day on the bike of a human powered journey covering over 2,000 kilometers. Though I'm not feeling fresh, I saddle up with a smile. Today I will ride to the ceiling of Vietnam; Tram Ton Pass. There are bright colored hill tribe women trading goods at the market, chiefly, H'Mong and Black Thai. The ebbs and flows of the market are a 3D screen-saver; uneventful and constantly entertaining. One last sip of coffee. I start pedaling. *** The remote border crossing in the mountains of Lao/Vietnam border territory, tape-worm-roads, and agricultural shelves in the Vietnamese highlands near China can most aptly be described as having more variety than I normal...

I’m searching for a way to transcend the experience... When the bus dropped us off at the junction of the two roads there wasn’t much we could do. I had been riding my bike for 1,115 kilometers through the northern stretches of Thailand and Laos. My visa for Vietnam started in two days, I needed to rest while still covering ground; I didn’t know what to expect and was too tired to care. In retrospect, I think the driver had the mid-way drop off planned before we departed. At 7:30am a mother, her small child, a middle aged man with worn through dress shoes, the Iguana and I loaded the flatbed-turned-bus in the junction town of Vieng Thong. At 7:45am the bus-driver pushed the front seat forward, pulled out a bamboo-bong, walked out to the road, smoked himself some opium, then came back and starred blankly at the front drivers side tire. Five other Laotians trickled over twenty minutes of philophosphorizing followed. Half-hour later the stoned driver was wheeling the tire in...

“The first of November is the end of the rainy season and the beginning of clear skies and cool nights,” Markus said in a promising tone. It had been precipitating in Mae Sot for three unrelenting days. My usual ten minute bike ride to work in the mornings with an occasional rain peppering had turned into something of a ride of doom which inevitably left me showing up to work sopping. For three days it was the same; get soaked in the morning; show up to work pruned and damp; sit a puddle behind my computer underneath water weighted clothes until the end of the day. One of the downsides to traveling with nothing more than a daypack is dampness. Seeing in how it was Halloween night and Markus had completed building yet another playground for migrant schools in Mae Sot, spirits were high and the wet week was becoming a distant memory. Halloween night felt a lot like Washington; dark and moist. It ended up raining so hard that night the golf-ball sized drops sounded like they mig...

I had just reached the five mile mark of my runners high. With ear-buds blaring I was shouting the chorus of a choice Citizen Cope song (in my head), probably looking like people I usually laugh at—oblivious to their surroundings—and loving every breathless track. The gravel road turned back to chuck-holed cement, my indicator to pick-it up, I was less than 10 minutes from a refreshing cold shower. The milliseconds between shuffling songs provided just long enough pause to realize something didn’t feel right; I was being watched. *** Because of the time of day I run the only onlookers are those awake to give the local monks food on their daily alms rounds. I’ve grown quite accustomed to the farang (Westerner) sighting stares and sheepish glances from the children; this unsettled feeling was different. Like starring down the imaginary monster in my closet while waiting for sleep, I could not rest without a feeling of resolve. Last resort; I paused the last song of my ‘Mornin...

It is uncomfortable for me to build the context that I am witnessing, so I won’t. It makes more sense to let the voices of the people who live here tell you what they see; the following two stories paint a vivid picture. We Have To Fight For Our Education I write this message to you about our Karen “aim.” We need to open our eyes and see the suffering of all the minorities in Burma. We have the right to think about our state, our freedom, and one day we will definitely become the best leaders and save our people from the SPDC. We need to destroy the SPDC with our education. The Burmese army has had power over our Karen people for many generations. Before the British, Burmese kings came into the Karen state and took over power. A lot of Karen people were killed by the army. I’ll never forget a story I heard from my parents about what happened to our Karen people. They had to dig a pond with their fingernails. At that time a lot of Karen people had died. They had to work ...

These images are from my first day at Hsa Thoo Lei, where I am working. It was also World Teachers Day which included a Karen traditional dance performance.

Migrant youth would a person born by an illegal migrant worker. They do not have Thai registration and, therefore, are unable to leave the migrant camps in which they are born.

Pho Chit starring down the morning sun, ready to tackle the day. She is a 3 year old from Burma.

Today was a very good day. Last night? Apprehensive. But today, ah, today was the introduction to a world I’ve never known. We’ve all been to Nowhere. It might have been in the middle of Seattle or Saskatchewan. It might have been at a Zen monastery, a no-man’s-land border outpost, or a bungalow in a nameless beach town. You may have found Nowhere on a sultry summer night in Paris when you’d spent your last euro and had no place to sleep; or on a midnight jeep safari in the Botswana bush after you’d blown your last spare tire, with your campsite a distant pinprick of light; or in the comforting cocoon of an all-night train compartment, sharing soul-secrets with a total stranger. Nowhere is a setting, a situation and a state of mind. It’s not on any map, but you know it when you’re there. This time it has taken, as it usually does, a tremendous amount of energy and an open mind to get to Nowhere. This time, Nowhere is Mae Sot, Thailand. I tend to prefer the places that Lonely Plan...