Lovely Laos

So far, every year, one South East Asia country has stolen my heart … and this year it was Laos. It is a country of beautiful, gentle people with big smiles and kind hearts. I loved every moment. We arrived late one evening and had only one full day here. Luang Prabang is a small town right on the Mekong River with a decidedly French influence left over from the Indochine era (i.e. most restaurants serve fresh croissants and café au lait). As Lily put it best, "Oh my gosh... normal food.. at last!!"

Bill (the event producer) timed it perfect so that we were in Luang Prabang on the last day of the New Year’s celebration which is the Water Festival. Talk about GREAT!!! The whole city rejoices by throwing water on everyone... it is one giant water fight complete with water guns, hoses, water balloon bombs, plastic bags loaded with water, and pans,-pails-cups-or-anything-handy filled with water to throw on anyone passing by. We spent much of the afternoon in Tuk Tuks in the countryside going from one bonus scavenge event to another … and we were clearly targets in every village we went by. They would see us coming and fill up every handy bucket or pail. And our Tuk Tuk driver (the stinker) would slow down so that the villagers had enough time to aim and fire at us. We were DRENCHED to where I could pour water out of my shoes. We had stopped and bought giant water guns but we were no match for the hoses and buckets. Heavily under-armed we quickly realized that we had bought a squirt gun to a water hose party! Lily was fully engaged in the battle.

In the early morning, we had to go and give alms to the Buddhist monks. Rainey and I bought a tray of rice and a stew like stuff wrapped up in banana leaves, knelt on the sidewalk, and put our offerings into the monk’s bowls. Such a beautiful sight with their saffron colored robes.

We decided to do bonus scavenges basically all day because (a) we were told that much of the stuff in town would be closed because of the holiday and (b) we can only do 5 scavenges a day with Heidi and Lily and the bonus scavenges take a long time and let us spend more time together. So, first we headed out to the Pak Ou caves or the Buddha caves. (Yes, Ben, it is true – we ended up here, at the Buddha cave… one of the places on your bucket list …I promise to bring you back one day as it is amazing). You have to take a boat over the Mekong River to the caves. There are two caves and they are filled with thousands and thousands of statues of Buddha (all kinds, shapes, colors etc). You rent flashlights for the larger cave as there is no electricity. We burned incense, lit candles and - because it is the New Year festival - we also bought blessed water and ritually washed some of the statues.

On the river banks I got conned into buying a bird in a cage for $1 from a tiny Lao boy (mainly because I am a softy for cute little boys). You then open up the cage and let the bird go … which has some religious significance that was lost on me .. but seemed symbolic of freedom. I later realized that the boy probably catches that same bird back in less than an hour and sells it again.

Then we took a taxi to ride elephants in the teak forest. We stopped on the way to drink scorpion spiced rice wine… no, let me be clear… we stopped for Rainey and Brian (from another team called “the Camels”) to drink nasty alcohol flavored from scorpion… There was no way that I was touching any of that.

The elephants were amazing: a slow swinging ride through the forest.

Then we went to the KiangSi Waterfall. There were thousands of people there because of the holiday and stalls set up all over selling the oddest things. I have now found where all of the feet and claws of the chickens that we eat in America end up … on sticks and sold as a delicacy in Laos. Rainey is armed and loaded for action – even at the waterfall (Men and their toys!!!).

We got back to town in time to go into a monastery and watch (very quietly) the evening prayers which involve soft candle-light, chanting and dozens of monks kneeling. The best visual memory – one monk was deep in prayer in this thousand year old temple – and besides him on the is an I-Phone…. The far reach of civilization!!!
Laos was a lovely experience . We are now on to Thailand – but this time to Chiang Mai, the capital of Thailand. I have never been before but it should be great.

Good Morning Vietnam

We arrived in Hanoi to find that we had a day and a half here. Hanoi was much busier, louder and more crowded than I anticipated and I ended up enjoying the countryside much more than the city/. But our hotel here was again FIRST class and we were in the thick of the action in the middle of the Old Quarter and right by the lake. You could not ask for a better location. We were able to walk to almost everything.

Memorable scavenges from Vietnam:
#1: When you get close to the Perfume Pagoda, take a boat up to the temple area.
This one was a WOW… well, after the almost 2 hours in a taxi on a bumpy road to get there… which was not that great. When you arrive in the village, there are literally hundreds of flat-bottomed metal boats and villagers who row you forehand (yes, forehand.. facing the way they are going) up river. The countryside is exactly as you would imagine: the air so thick with humidity that you are damp before you leave the dock, rice paddy fields on either side, misty topped odd-shaped mountains all around. And on the river, villager after villager setting shrimp and crab traps from their boats.

AMAZING ...I cannot get my brand-new I-Phone to pick up a good cell signal in the middle of Houston but our Perfume Pagoda guide (who jumps into your boat whether you wanted her or not) got dozens of calls in the middle of the Vietnamese bush!!!

When we got to the temple area, it was a steep, difficult climb up but at the top – the reward was – an amazing cave temple. The Vietnamese have literally given every rock, stalagmite, stalagtite and outcropping religious significance. There is the corner where you pray for fertility and the column that is wet with dampness where you must touch the wet and rub it on your face for luck. We bought $10 of “gifts for the gods” and offered them up to Buddha (along with the mandatory three sets of prayers) – so we are covered on that front for the foreseeable future The most repeated offerings were custard cakes and cans of Red Bull. The question is.. who likes those??? Buddha or the Buddhist monks???

#2: Visit Hanoi Hilton
We went to the infamous prison, expecting to see gruesome photos of tortured American pilots during the war. Instead, we learned first hand that the people who win a war get to write the history. And here, history – according to the Vietnam government – is that the Americans were treated graciously and with great deference. There were photos and propaganda videos of the American POWs reading scripted messages about how great the conditions were in the prison, how happy they were, how tasty the food was…. You get the picture. There are photos of John McCain being given “medical treatment” for his wounds and his entire flight suit that was taken of him when they pulled him from the water.

#3: Find the artistic part of town and interview an artist who is creating “reproductions”: There actually is a part of town where you find shop after shop of artists “copying” famous paintings. This one is some well-known Chinese artist and it’s a pretty believable replica.

#4: Visit the body of Ho Chi Minh (which really is all preserved and on display). Apparently they send him to Russia (no idea why Russia) every year for a face-lift where his body is re-preserved and then he is shipped back and put back in his case. He literally looks like he died last week (not 5 decades ago). Lily’s shorts were too short for the government clothes police so Rainey pulled out some of his gym shorts from his backpack and she pulled them on to create a skirt-shorts very-fashionable look.

Much of our Vietnam visit was permeated by weird food experiences:

(a) We had dinner the first night with several teams. Joanne (of the Mad Dogs) ordered chicken (a seemingly normal choice) only for it to turn up with a full chicken head on the plate – beak and all. You got to love a country that includes ALL parts, even the ones you cannot imagine wanting to eat. (2192)

(b) By the Perfume Pagoda (where the boats docked), we saw hanging corpses in front of restaurants that turned out to be dogs all cured and ready for eating. By the time we came back down, the dogs had been hacked into and eaten for lunch (YUCK, YUCK, DOUBLE YUCK).

(c) One of our scavenges was to find the weirdest food and try it. I selected what I thought was a slice of fish jerky from a woman selling stuff by the lake. It was a thin cross-section slice of an entire fish (eyes, bones and all). The vendor wrapped it up in a piece of paper and sold it to me for 12 cents. When I unwrapped it and went to take a bit, she and 7 other people in the near vicinity jumped at me yelling “NO” in Vietnamese. Apparently this is the ONE thing in this country that you have to eat cooked (who knew there was such a thing in Southeast Asia). So the woman whipped out a frying pan, threw some rubbing alcohol in the pan, lit it on fire, dropped my fish jerky into it and returned a char-broiled slice of fish to me in 84 seconds flat. And yes, the answer to your question is .. it did taste a whole lot like fishy paper dipped in lighter fluid.

(d) And this one takes the cake… for the ODDEST eating experience ever. Bill made us find the “O Sin snake restaurant” which is actually just a family’s home where they cook up some fresh snake for you. You know it is fresh snake because you first have to go in the backyard and choose your snake from bags of snakes waiting out there. Then you walk through Grandpa’s bedroom, through the kitchen where granny is hard at work chopping up your snake dinner and into a small room where 1 table and 4 chairs represents the entire restaurant. Lily took a series of wet wipes and disinfected all around her part of the table (thus the wet spot) in reaction to the far-les-than-clean conditions. We laughed so hard throughout the entire experience that the family probably thought we were crazy. The snake arrived as snake meatballs cooked with HOT pepper pieces.

We are on our way now to Laos, which is apparently celebrating its “water festival” at the moment. We are expecting to have water thrown at us by locals at every turn. It is currently 95 degrees in Laos so a little wetting might be great.

Hong Kong Hustle

The 15 hour plane ride went by in a jiff (with help from Ambien and a 1 AM departure). I was drooling on Rainey’s shoulder by 1:20 AM and stayed in a coma for 8 or 9 hours. We arrived to find that Hong Kong “misty” (a local’s way to describe heavy fog and humidity so thick that your skin feels wet and moldy as soon as you walk out of the hotel). We are definitely in South East Asia.

Our hotel, The Harbor Grand, is fabulous, right on the water and our room looks right across the Hong Kong bay. Plus you got to love a hotel with a breakfast buffet that includes both an egg and omelet bar as well as a “we will make you a nice bowl of soup with ramen noodles and tofu and weird shaped and even weirder smelling mushrooms” for breakfast. Not a “yum” on my list.


We rushed out of the hotel for 1 ½ days of high paced scavenges … so many great things to see… so little time. How weird is this? They built an entire cruise liner ship in the middle of the city and turned it into a shopping center.




Fun scavenges…
(a) Proving that we were at the NoonDay Guns at noon (a tactical nightmare as you don’t want to waste one minute waiting around but we had to be there right at noon).

(b) Interviewing people on the ferry. We had to ask 5 strangers whether they would prefer for Beijing to rule Hong Kong or to become an independent nation… and yes, Rainey chose only pretty Asian women as his sample population..





Highlights of Hong Kong were:

(a) Lantau … where we had to take a cable car up to the Po Lin monastery. The weather was grey and very windy so the cable car was swinging wildly in the gale force winds. I am petrified of heights and I admit it .,. I was so scared I almost wet myself. I spent most of the ride with my eyes shut and my fingers in my ears (so I could not hear the howling wind) .. in a full out panic. Meanwhile, in a true show of solidarity and compassion, Rainey, Heidi and Lily laughed uncontrollably at me. At the monastery we had to walk up 10,484 steps (or so it seemed) - to the giant Buddha at the top. But how cool is this.. the weather was so foggy that the stairs led straight up into the clouds (our own private stairway to heaven) until we reached the top, and the skies cleared, and there was this majestic and gigantic Buddha smiling down at you. Awesome… it’s like Bill (the producer of the event) personally arranged the weather for maximum impressive effect.

(b) On the island of Macau, we had to find a hole-in-the-walls locals-only restaurant (yes, for the Bajans reading this.. it was like having to find Marshall’s restaurant). After stopping dozens and dozens of people, we arrived to a very basic, serve yourself place with GREAT food and chatty patrons. Not a place that has ever been mentioned in a guide book or even a phone book.

(c) We had to get our “chop” made … a Chinese seal. And yes, there is an entire alley of stores (one right after the other) whose only product is seals… who knew that in this world of emails and internet there was still a thriving industry for chops to seal envelopes or stamp the bottom of letters / documents?

(d) WOW .. we had to find the Foreign Correspondents Club (a members only place for all of the karmically blessed people who get to be foreign media based in Hong Kong .. talk about a cushy gig). Because it is private, we had to talk our way in, and get a photo of the original picture of the last US helicopter leaving Saigon. In that same room, was the originals of literally dozens of unbelievably famous photos from the Southeast Asia conflicts. I was stunned.

(d) We went to the High Court to see a trial. First, the woman on the elevator could not take her eyes of Rainey… not so much because he is so cute but because he was sweating so much from us running there that he was dripping onto the elevator floor (she had never seen such a thing in a government building). Second, the lawyers wore the British white wigs and black gowns… and spoke in Chinese. It seems so wrong to be all done up in the English garb and speaking in Chinese. Unlike our attempts to watch a trial in Beijing in 2008 … when we were firmly turned away… Hong Kong does have an open court system that even lets in very sweaty foreigners wearing shorts.

So long ...San Francisco

Day 1 of the 2010 worldwide scavenger hunt started in San Francisco at 3 PM on Friday with a "rules and regulations" meeting followed by a "meet and greet" dinner. Once again there are new rules. This year, instead of just trying to amass as many points as possible, each rally leg becomes it own unique competition. If you win a leg – your score is then 1 (for being first) multiplied by the value of the leg (which is weighted according to how long, difficult and paralyzing that country is - anything from a 1 to a 6). To win, you have to get the LOWEST score at the end of the 25 days. It makes the trip harder because you cannot build up a lead and then slow down in one rally or even take a day off. You have to go out hard every day. It keeps the trip competitive for everyone until the last day. And it will certainly make all of us up our game.

There are a great group of competitors this year: Carol & Rebecca (Carol was in the 2002 hunt and came back this time with her grown daughter); Brian and Sammy (a very adventurous couple from Dubai who actually arrange adventure races for a charity called "Gulf for Good"), Kit & Joanne (a returning team from the 2008 Hunt who were great competitors last time), Barbara and Mom (who are both exceptional travelers),

Heidi and Lily (my sister and 13 year old niece who is so excited she has not slept in nights in anticipation).

And .. last but not least ...April and Travis (April, our office manager, and her 7 foot former-NBA basketball player friend who we all have bets will really turn some heads in the Far East). A nice sized group. And US... the most excited team in the group.

At dinner, we learned that we are leaving for Hong Kong tonight … YEAH…. I have never been to Hong Kong (at least not out of the airport)… can’t wait.

2010 - THIRD TIME IS A CHARM

Less than two weeks to go before we start our THIRD time competing in the Great Escape Global Scavenger Hunt. We can't wait !!!! And this time, we are bringing three extra teams with us: Heidi and Lily (Zoe's sister and niece from Barbados); Christine (Zoe's mom) who is back for a second time and is teamed up this year with Barbara (a great competitor from the 2009 Hunt) and April and Travis (April works for Zoe and Rainey and the office may well fall apart while she is gone as she is the true back-bone of our operation). Yes, we had so much fun the last two times that we dragging everyone we know with us this time.... Counting down the days now.... (P.S. The photo is us in the Nevada desert at the Burning Man festival last Labor Day - so that explains the odd outfits - which are far more colorful than the khaki and beige that we will be sporting every single day of the Scavenger Hunt).

Terrible – and terrific – day in Boston

First, terrible – because after trekking all across the world, encountering every bacteria and germ known to man, and staying healthy as a horse - Rainey got deathly ill today on American soil. He has not been out of bed since breakfast, has fever and chills, headache, upset stomach – basically you name it and it is not working right on him. He is so sick that it breaks my heart. He made me go out and scavenged all day with Ben and Nanny – so I have great adventures to relate – but it was a beautiful day in Boston and Rainey missed out on all of the fun. Plus, you do not get any points unless both team members are present at every event - so, we ended up with ZERO points for the Boston rally.

Luckily, we did not need the points - because - on the terrific side – I am SOOOO proud to announce that the Littlepage Booth Penchas teams did a clean sweep of first and second place. Rainey and I won FIRST place and received the “World’s Best Traveler: 2009” medals and trophy this afternoon (he got his in abstention – but it still counts). In addition to the awesome medals, winning also means that we get to come back again next year – FOR FREE!!!! I can’t wait…only 364 days to go…!!!! Be ready for more blogs.

And, in SECOND place (surprising everyone with their travel skills, stamina and drive), came the Something Old, Something New team of Nanny and Ben. It was a great evening. For a recording of all of the scores for every team for each leg, go to: http://www.globalscavengerhunt.com/scoreboard.htm

Now – on to Boston. We started off with a Ride the Ducks tour of the city (100 bonus points) which was a great start as it gave us a good overview of the city and some landmarks for the rest of the scavenges. Then we video-taped Ben reciting a Longfellow poem while on the Longfellow bridge (which first required a trip to Borders to copy out a Longfellow poem as, for sure, none of us knew any by heart). Next on to Fanueil Hall and Quincy market for a food scavenge and where Mom “got in the act with a local street performer” and danced with a street musician (35 points). We got side-tracked watching a contortionist performer who literally fit his body through a squash racket (not an easy talent to describe on a resume). No points for that one but the train-wreck draw of his show kept us back almost half an hour

Our favorite other scavenges from today (like all days in this event, we do so many things each day that I can only choose a few to talk about or this blog would go on and on):

Scavenge # 1: At Boston City Hall, you will find a large outdoor Tea Kettle. What sits under it.
First, the kettle actually puts out smoke or steam all day (just like it is boiling) and second, can you believe it? Below it is a Starbucks… (they really are EVERYWHERE... except Cambodia and Tunisia as we learned on this trip).

Scavenge # 2: Near Paul Revere’s house, visit a triangle that is a square. What two things meet but don’t cause an eclipse?
Cute riddle. Right in front of Paul Revere’s house is a small town square that is actually shaped like a triangle. Two of the intersecting streets that make up the triangle are called “Moon” and “Sun”.

Scavenge # 3: Visit Widener Library.. what was the main condition of the benefactor?
This is Harvard’s library and the benefactor required that “no brick on the building ever be changed”. So, as times have passed and the university needed to expand the library, they could not change the structure, so they have had to dig down below it and expand downwards. Ben got a kick out of seeing the Harvard campus.

And so ends this second year of Great Escape Global Scavenger Hunt. With great sadness, we leave tomorrow for 12 months without the high pace and drama of traveling around the world ay a break-neck . We cannot wait to start again... next year. Thank you all, once again, for supporting us and following us on our adventures. It has been ANOTHER trip of a lifetime !!!