Floating the Mekong

I've always thought river travel to be the most romantic way to travel. Train travel is a close second, especially when it comes along with old smokey stations, but nothing beats river travel. It might be that it conjures up nostalgic ideas of floating down the Mississippi back in the frontier days, Mark Twain, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Amazon rides all at the same time. 

Back when I was planning my big trip, I really thought about doing some Amazon exploration (see my post here), but South America got put on hold. I finally got a chance to get in some serious river travel in Laos.

It was long. It was hot. It was crowded. But it was also my favorite part of the entire trip.

Supy and I slept at a tiny hotel on the Thai side of the border where Grandma rented us a very basic room (super cheap, but we did decide to spray down our mattress with bug spray before sleeping). We woke up early and headed to the boarder crossing. After Thai immigration you walk down to the river... 

And hop a small boat across to Laos. It's one of the world's only border crossings by boat. 

From there we went through Lao immigration, which was a bit more involved, but still pretty easy. We bought ourselves a boat ticket and some sandwiches and fried rice for the long journey. (We also attracted an annoying and somewhat sketchy German traveler who was difficult to shake...) We sat on the boat until every single seat was filled and then headed out on our two day route. 

The boats were long and skinny. This is from the engine/storage room looking forward to the front of the boat. Their wooden benches had somewhat recently been refitted with old Thai bus seats. 

A closer look at the engine (with a few Buddhist offerings on and around it). This bad boy was loud.

Only one boat makes the trip each day. Families live on the boats when they aren't shuttling passengers and cargo down the Mekong.

The scenery was varied. Sometimes the river was narrow, sometimes extraordinarily wide. Sometimes the banks were sandy, sometimes there were rapids and massive rocks everywhere. 

We also saw lots of wild life--cows, goats, water buffalos, etc. 

Lots of local fishermen and women, and children swimming around too. I'm sure things have modernized considerably in the last few decades, but it seemed as if life was going on as usual as it had for centuries. 

The sunset on day one was pretty spectacular

This is Pak Beng, where we stayed the night. The boat pulled up to the dock and we were surrounded by people trying to get us to come to their hotels. Supy found a kid who gave us a good deal and some banter (and promised that the electricity would run all night), so we followed him to our home for the evening. 

It turned out that making sure our hotel had a generator was a good move because the electricity in town went out before we could even get back out the door. The electricity flickered on and off all evening (making it difficult for us to get our daily quota of fruit smoothies), but we eventually found food in the form of buffalo sausage hot dogs and strolled around town a bit. Finally we figured out the reason for the black outs--a storm was coming. Unfortunately we didn't make it back in time and got ourselves a soaking. 

Everything was clear the next morning though

This is the boat and family that ran the boat on day one. Day two we switched out to a different boat for the rest of the journey. 

 What is a long trip without some snacks? Supy was in love with seaweed flavored anything, but I will admit these seaweed flavored sunchip-type things were tasty. On the right is a ball of flavored sweet fried noodles. It wasn't bad but had a flavor I couldn't place. Finally I figured it out: it tasted like popcorn dipped in sweet and sour sauce.  

River pictures from day two: 

Day two was particularly scenic. These pictures can't do it justice. After two days on the boat though, we made it to Luang Prabang--which was laid back and lovely. 

A sneak peak of the Mekong from Luang Prabang: 

It was my longest water adventure to date, and my first real stab at river travel. The travel was slow--but that was probably just why I liked it. There was plenty of time to read a novel that's been passed along through 2 friends and 3 continents, listen to Joe Purdy sing about the Mississippi, nap, chat, and just enjoy the world floating by. 

Not a bad way to travel at all. 

ER Adventures

So not long ago I ended up on a date with the Syrian Mr. Collins. This week? It was a date with the neurologist.

I should have never mentioned that the culture here reminded me of a Jane Austen novel. First the whole Mr. Collins thing, and then I also unwittingly acted out a scene from Persuasion. In the need of a brief novel to give my brain a break, I picked up Persuasion off of Janee's bookshelf. My mom and I are going to Bath in a couple of weeks, so I thought it would be a nice read. I hadn't realized a large portion of the plot revolved around one of the girls falling and knocking herself unconscious. I might would have avoided the book otherwise.

Anyway, we all know what I then preceded to do--I fell down the stairs and banged the back of my head into the concrete wall. That's nothing new though, I told you about that last week. Everyone kept insisting that I go get my head checked, but I refused. It wasn't that big of a deal. By Sunday though, I was feeling worse instead of better. The headaches were getting stronger, so much so that I thought I might pass out during church on Sunday. My vision was getting a little blurry and I was feeling dizzier than normal.

I started to rethink the idea of going to the doctor. (I've seen way too many medical shows where someone dies of an aneurysm all because they didnt go get their headaches checked out.) The system is a bit different here, so Janee suggested I go to the ER. At this point they were still at the hospital in the next town over, so I hitched a ride there with a couple from our church. After a 10 minute wait (!) I was back in the ER getting checked out, and then got to do one of my least favorite things--a CT scan. Thankfully it came back in the clear but the doctor scheduled me an appointment with the neurologist for an EEG the next day.

Really Lauren? I don't know how I get myself into these things.

The EEG in itself was an odd experience. She started taping probes on my wrists and ears and then pulled out a giant syringe. I panicked--nobody had mentioned injections! Thankfully it was just to squirt gel. She then pulled a cap with about 87 wires attached onto my head and started filling all the little holes in the cap with the gel. (Which I am still trying to wash you of my hair...) Once the test started it was a lot of open your eyes, close them, breathe through your mouth, breathe through your nose, and then a lot of try not to go into a seizure as we blink all kinds of colored lights in your face.

Anyway, I finally got to see the neurologist, who was incredibly nice. After doing a couple dozen little tests (and him squeezing the bruise on my foot!) he showed me my CT and EEG results. All in the clear. (Hamdula) He said since I have had migraines before it is probable that the trauma has triggered them. He said that Post Concussion Syndrome can explain all of my symptoms, and that it could last a week or two or a month or two (lets all pray for weeks not months!).

In the end he prescribed me some good painkillers (which I should probably mention I am taking at the moment...so if none of this makes sense, now we know why), we chatted about healthcare and Belgian and US politics, and he mentioned that if life were like Grey's Anatomy that by that time I "would have been whisked away to the OR for brain surgery with McDreamy." He then followed it up with "or whatever his name is." But it was too late, he was caught.

So in the end, it has been a long, strange week. My head feels like someone is massaging my brain with brass knuckles. But on the upside, they gave me my CT scan on a CD. How cool is that? And while I lament my ability to do the most ridiculous things, I figure everyone who's traveled to Brussels has seen the Grand Place and the Atomium. But how many have seen the inside of the neurology department?

That's right, probably just me.

Depth Perception

After I wrote it, I realized that it was a lie. Last week I said that I hadn't finished a single non-school related book since I got here. That's not actually true. My first month here I finished this guy: 

Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions by Susan R. Barry 

I had been wanting to read it for a while and remembered at the last minute to pick up a copy before I left Texas. It was a little more scientific than I bargained for, but it was fascinating. 

It might seem like an odd book to read unless you know that (drumroll please) I am stereoblind. 

Yep. You've probably heard me talk about it endlessly or not at all. Basically it means that your two eyes don't necessarily compute and combine the slight differences they see resulting in a lack of depth perception. Now before you start lining up cups and asking me if the blue one or the red one is in front, I can do that kind of stuff. No need to take away my driver's license. It's not that I can't see that something is in front of something else. It's just that I can't see the space between things. 

I had been trying to tell people about this for years. The only reason I knew that I didn't have depth perception was because every once in a while I did. Occasionally, when walking home or dashing around campus, especially if it was a sunny day, I would notice the leaves on the trees were really defined. All of a sudden it is like stepping into a pop up book. It always seemed like magic. I remember the fist time I saw why it's called looking through the looking glass. I had always seen myself flat on the plane of the mirror. 

I would usually confuse people by saying, Oh look. I have depth perception today! For a while I tried to explain it by saying that I basically saw the world like a regular movie, while other people saw the world like a 3D movie (which probably helps to explain why I never really understood 3D movies). After reading the book though, this doesn't really help either: apparently the eyes of people with stereovision (those with depth perception and 3D vision) actually create 3D when they watch regular films as well. 

Anyway, I believe it was the crunch time of the Spring semester that led me to procrastinate by researching my vision online (I think it was also after I had tried to explain it to a friend...who told me that was not how normal people saw). I was surprised to find out that other people had the same experience, and found a review of this book online. 

As it turns out, stereoblindness is not that uncommon. Some people who are cross-eyed or have a lazy eye (or did as a child) or even just don't have eyes that are perfectly aligned have the same problem. Sometimes it is just because one eye is much stronger than the other. It's kind of funny because I always said that I felt like my center of gravity was over to one side of my body--I am constantly ramming my shoulders into door panes and walls. Turns out, it might just be that my eyes use images from one eye predominately. 

The fun part of the book is that there are lots of little exercises to help you practice your vision. Sitting around in airports and offices I am sure there were plenty of people confused by my squinting and focusing. I had already figured out that if I tried really hard I could conjure up a bit of depth perception. If I close my left eye, focus the right one well, and then open the left one, sometimes I can get the images to merge. When I am just sitting around, I try to practice. This came in handy when I drove back and forth between Abilene and FW two dozen times this summer (watching the hawks flying through the air is fascinating when you have depth perception!) or when I got bored in class (I would try to make a desk, or a pencil pop out,  or even sometimes I would just stare at the professor and try to see his nose in 3D. Ha!) (Apologies to any professors reading, I'm sure it wasn't your class!)

All of this to say that when I was little and wondered if what I saw as blue, was really what you saw as blue, or if we all saw things a bit differently, might have a bit of truth in it after all. (Cue some postmodern philosophy and situated hermeneutics!)

So now you know. 

The Art of Saying No

As I mentioned the other day, I am horrible at telling people no. It's probably yet another thing I inherited from my dad. I just can't help it. The problem is, it gets me into all kinds of situations. For example, my inability to say no is exactly what got me tangled into spending the evening with Mr. Collins last night.

I have been joking for a while about how the Arab culture here surrounding marriage, dating and matchmaking seems like something straight out of a Jane Austin novel. Turns out, the joke was on me!

But don't you worry. I channeled Elizabeth and when marriage came up it was not difficult for me to dig up the word no.