(all images are copyright 2008 Andy Stoll, and should not be used without prior permission.)

• Leave a comment on this post below, tell us your favorite photo
• See my normal sized photos from elsewhere in Tibet
• Read a bit about my Seven Days In Tibet or read some of my short stories from Tibet.
• See some more of my photos from Japan, Beijing, Hong Kong and Vietnam

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 While I thoroughly respect Buddhism as a religion and, with all due respect to the Tibetans, after two weeks traveling in Tibet I couldn’t help snag the lingering thought that the Buddhism that Tibet is so famous for, might actually be what’s holding Tibet back.  Tibet was, and still is, one of the least developed places I’ve visited, where most people live in extreme poverty with little access to medicine, food and shelter, let alone the more modern amenities of life (e.g. jobs, trade, computers).  “In Tibet,” I was told by a man living there, “you have three options for your future: a nomadic herder, a monk or working in the tourist industry.”   Spending a week touring temples, monasteries and holy places, it amazed me how devout these people are, often spending 2-3 hours a day 1-2 time a day (or more) visiting temples, praying and giving alms.  I’d also guess that many people spend significant portions of their limited incomes on giving to monks and buying offerings (prayer flags, incense, butter candles) for their religions rituals.   Seeing them spend all of this well-meant time on their religious devotion, I began to wonder if it was keeping them from spending their time on other things that might help them develop the things that they need to prosper as a culture.

*  *  *

2. China, The Last Great Colonizer

My time in Tibet did not provide me with any experience that would allow me to comment with any authority on human rights abuses by the Chinese government in Tibet, but I can say that my time there gave me a much greater understanding of the concept of “colonization.”  Human rights abuses aside, it is clear to me that the Beijing government is putting a lot of effort into expanding Chinese influence and culture within the borders of Tibet (e.g. the new state-of-the-art train system direct from Beijing), while trying to suppress more traditional Tibetan culture (e.g. it is illegal to posses any images of the Dalai Lama).  Regardless of whether you think this is good or bad, my advice is, if you want to experience the Tibetan part of Tibet, get there on a visit before it is no more. For those readers who will immediately try to defend the actions of the Chinese government as an effort to grow one of the world’s poorest and least developed places, I’ll side with you in the fact that Tibet needs China to grow its economy and continue to provide basic goods and services to Tibetan people (in a land with few natural resources or industries to allow Tibet to be self-sustaining).  But I think the Chinese government uses these efforts to mask some of their intent to essentially blend the traditional Tibetan culture out by adding more Chineseness to the mix. Would I advocate they free Tibet (and make it is own country)?  No, because I think Tibet would sink deeper into poverty and probably become a new bastion of instability in a region of the world that’s already a bit shaky.  (Besides I believe China would never give up Tibet, which is currently a huge portion of its land mass, in a country whose past emperors were always judged on how they expanded or contracted the size of the empire).  I’ll side with the the Dalai Lama here, keep Tibet as part of China, but stop the cultural suppression and the shady business and make what is presently known as the “Tibetan Autonomous Regions,” actually autonomous.

*  *  *

3. The Little Boy With The Big Heart

 Since the above stories seemed to be a bit ‘doom and gloom’ I’ll leave you with a short story I received in an email from my friend Colleen (from New York City) who was traveling in Tibet about three week prior to my arrival. In an email, she writes: …Be sure to say “tashi dalay” (spelled “dalek” but pronounced “dalay”) to everyone you meet. Its their form of greeting but really means “good luck to you” — everyone was pleased when I said it.  Also, “too jay shay” is “thank you.” And if the kids keep begging you for money (which they will) DON’T give it to them… you might want to pick up a bag of candies or something that you can give to them instead of money. My guide said giving money to them only encourages them to do it more, which is not good. So just say “mean do” when they beg… it means “I don’t have any.” At one Himalayan village I went to, all the kids kept coming up to me and begging for money. I had accidentally left my bag with candies meant for the Tibetan children in the Land Cruiser, so I honestly didn’t have anything to give them. I continuously said, “mean do” (i don’t have any), but one little boy in particular kept begging, saying, “hello, money money money.” So I finally pulled my pants pockets inside out to show him I didn’t have anything. He sort of gave me a sad look and ran away. Hours later, after I had eaten and sightseen and taken tons of photos of his village, the little boy found me and ran up to me smiling. He then proceeded to stuff coins and bills into my pockets!!! Apparently he had begged others for money, and then hunted me down in order to give it all to me, because I had shown him I didn’t have any. THAT is the true Tibetan spirit. So generous. So happy. So loving. I wanted to give him the world, the little boy with the big heart….”

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• See more photos from my 7 Days In Tibet or my photos from some other interesting places

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Hometown: Tehran, Iran now lives in San Francisco, California

Where he traveled: Rishard is a well traveled guy. In the summer of 2006 he took a few months off from his job as an engineer and traveled solo through Japan, China, Nepal, India and SE Asia. (The photo to the left is of Rishard on Mt. Fuji, note the shape of the mountains shadow.)

Where our paths last crossed: Lhasa, Tibet

Rishard and I met only briefly but his enthusiasm for life and his travel stories make him a hard guy to forget. I replied to a note he had left on a travel board when I was trying to arrange a way out of Tibet (and onward to Nepal) and though are travel plans didn’t match up, we had a fine Tibetan dinner together with a group of travelers in Lhasa.

Rishard was born in Iran and grew up in there and in the US, he now works as a engineer in San Francisco. His summer trip was full of wild stories from finding himself stuck halfway up Mt. Fuji with no money and no place to stay, to being mistakenly arrested in Beijing (where he ended up getting a free police escort from the non-English speaking, embarrassed police officer onward to his intended destination), to being robbed of everything he had (passport, camera, photos, etc.) in Thailand. I admire Rishard for his sense of adventure, his energy and his desire to live life out loud.

Below is an excerpt from an email he wrote home right after his trek to Mt. Everest, and since I didn’t make it there during my time in Tibet, this is the closest you’ll get to a Mt. Everest story at noboundaries.org.

As you read, I hope you get a sense of the energy Rishard brings to his life and his travels.

Conquring Mt. Everest by Rishard Bitbaba “I roll over again to try to find a position in which the bed under me is soft enough so that my body can rest from one of the most amazing days in my life. Not a chance. The smell of the fire that has gone out over night is still in the tent, and the snoring of our driver sounds like a bear and lion fighting over the last piece of meat in the jungle.
I turn over again and realize what is keeping me up, it is not the hard bed or the cold wind, that at present is seeping under the door of the tent and finding its way into my sleeping bag and all the way down to my toes, nor is it the blue light from all the stars and the brightest moon ever coming through the piece of plastic put on top of the tent to let light in during the day. In fact, what is keeping me from closing my eyes is the excitement of my previous day, an excitement that still lingering in my mind that is stubbornly refusing to let me sleep soundly. Reliving it again and agin in my head, I get even more exited knowing where I am, and I just can’t wait to see what the next day has to bring. 
My to-do list for tomorrow goes as following, take pictures of the first light of the day on Mt. Everest, run back into the tent, order breakfast, have some Jasmine tea, and talk about our core values, what we stand for and our life missions with my tent mates…”

This was a portion of my writing in my journal as I was sitting in my tent, which was warmed up by this time with the Yak dung burning in the stove as the tents canvas flaps violently fluttered against the walls of our shelter. I keep thanking all the powers that have led me there and I was thankful for this experience that I will always be able to remember if I am ever seeking a state of peace and calmness.

We got to the Everst base camp (18,500 feet above sea level) and hiked two hours to the furthest point that people are allowed to go. With a couple of short cuts, a coffee break on tops of some rocks (made with our portable stove), we made it to what was supposed to be the final viewpoint, though once there we felt a bit unimpressed. So we decide to sneak by the guards and head towards camp 1 of Everest (20,100 feet ASL) though we only got about an hour further and found the most amazing view I have ever seen (though we had to take 4-5 deep breaths with each step to get there): a pond with turquoise water and a perfectly CLEAR view of Mt. Everest. This was going to be our rest area for the day.

By this time it was noon and the sun was so strong that we could feel our skin burning though our clothes. What to do? Well obviously, strip down and jump in the water (note the picture you see below is prior to all the clothes coming off). After two hours of bathing in the sun (we had to put our clothes back on after thirty minutes since the sun was burning us up), we decided to walk back since we saw clouds headed towards us. Within a half hour we were freezing again and all our clothes, jackets, and gloves were back on. All we could say to each other, between long deep breaths, was “What a perfect day, WOW, what a perfect day.”

Manifestation, things happen for a reason, how simple and pure we were at the age of 3, what is love and how much of it do we give on a daily basis, who are we and what is our mission in life, how has traveling changed us and what can we do to have more of our friends get the experience of traveling, and where have we been and what’s next—are just some of the conversations in our Jeep ride across Tibet to Everest and finally to Nepal, which is where I am now.

All I can say, is that you need to jump on making plans to get out here as soon as possible. The humans are changing the face of the earth, and it’s not all in a good way. Come and see this world in its raw stages before hotels and resorts are set up, and humans, with no respect for the land, just leave their garbage on the face of our mother earth. My pictures may tell you a story, and some of my words may resonate with you in one way or another, but no words or pictures can simulate the experience of sitting in front of the highest point in the world. You just can’t get enough of it. The energy that you feel is life changing. The view will burn in the back of your eyes, where you can see it again each time you think of it, and the thought of it will place you back in that spot where you sat and gazed at pure beauty and the power of the world, and you become balanced and energized.

I am now in Kathmandu, Nepal, as I got here last night. I met a guy in a bar that was going river rafting and invited me to go (the river is at its biggest and best now, as the rain season is near its end. I say near its end because we got rained on all day today). So we river rafted all day, the bus ride took 7 hours (though it should have been 3), and we are planning another 3 day rafting trip next (Nepal is one of the best places in the world for white water rafting),before I am to jump into the jungle and sleep in tents so I can maybe spot a tiger (and hope fully not be his or a Rhino’s meal).

I’ll be back on email in a week, until then….

Plan your next trip. Where do you want to go? What is your dream vacation? Just think about what place you want to go. Don’t think if you can do it or not, just write down where, and how many days, and what you want to do there. What is your dream vacation. It’s not hard to do it. So many people I meet are living their second or third dream vacations. I want my friends to live that out.

Talk to you when I’m done and in India. Again, thanks for your emails and wishes. I have the same for you all.

-Rishard

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 See my other photos from Tibet in my Flickr Gallery by clicking here or on the collage below:

What you can do now:

• Leave a comment on this post below.
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When we stopped the car on the top of a mountain pass to take some photos, these teenagers—from a nearby group of nomadic people who were tending their sheep–came over to ask for money (and sweets).  We ended up convincing them to take a photo with The Cow, and it has been the only time on my trip thus far I actually thought someone was going to steal the cow; right after I snapped this photo I thought for a moment the kids on the end was going to make a run for it.  Instead we gave them some candy, which they proceeded to essentially beat the sh*t out of each other to get their share.  A bit scary honestly.  On a mountain pass in Southern Tibet. What you can do now:

• Leave a comment about this post below.
• See a collection of other photos of The Cow from Around The World
• Read The Cow’s Story

• Read more about my Seven Days In Tibet

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The Chinese invented movable type and thousands of years later, with the same fervor the ancient Chinese built the Great Wall to keep out the advancing Mongols, it seems the modern Chinese government was now using such ‘fine print type’ to keep out this advancing mongrel traveler. 

As most readers will be even peripherally aware, Tibet is a sensitive issue and the intricacies of the debate are more complicated than either side will lead you to believe.  It was this debate that led me on a quest to decode the fine print and score a ‘tourist permit’ into Tibet.  It seems the rules and regulations of travel in Tibet change daily and even after subsequent calls to the Chinese embassy and extensive Googling, the rules and regulations on Tibetan travel made about as much sense to me as a brush stroked scroll of Chinese characters.  Adding to the mess was an incident that occurred a  few months prior, in which two American travelers unfurled a ‘Free Tibet’ banner near the Mt Everest base camp, which led to their expulsion from China, a complete lock down that kept all tourists out of Tibet for weeks and a stiffening of travel regulations in the region from there on out.

As it turns out, at the time of my travels, a tourist permit was required to enter Tibet (actually to even board the plane to Tibet) and permits could only be obtained through Tibetan-based tour operators who would also require that you buy a tour package.  No independent travel was allowed anywhere in Tibet, and technically, I was not even allowed to walk around the capital city of Lhasa without a tour guide in tow (although when we landed, this regulation was not being enforced in Lhasa). 

A mess of permits was also required to travel around Tibet and unless one could decode Chinese, it was nearly impossible to distinguish what was needed for where, thus a local tour operator was required.  Police road checks were frequent and the permitting seemed to be in full force.  Part of it is the way the government controls access to sensitive parts of Tibet and part of it is an excuse to make more money from a region that has few exploitable natural resources.  Regardless, once all of the necessary permitting had been taken care of from Hong Kong via a local Tibetan travel agent, and once I landed in Lhasa, I had no problems traveling independently in Lhasa and with a tour guide/driver outside of the city.

[TRAVEL WARNING: If you are reading this seeking tips on how to score your own tourist permit for Tibet and/or how to get around while there, be warned that policies seem to change daily and you should not, under any circumstance, believe that the rules during my visit in September 2007 apply at any other time.  Do your homework or you may waste a lot of time and money.  The Lonely Planet Thorn Tree is a good place to start.]

Having overcome the formidable visa form, I landed in Tibet and found the most beautiful scenic nature I’ve ever seen, full of a kind, friendly, simple, yet very poor people,  so devout in their religion I believe it hampers their development.  I traveled amongst the people through the fertile green valleys, on the shores of the sapphire lakes and underneath the endless cobalt skies of this great empire hidden for centuries at the top of the world, an empire whose culture is flickering and may soon disappear forever.

Over the next few posts I invite you to come with me as I share some photos, stories and perspective gained from my seven day tour of Tibet (and additional seven day stay; more on that later).  I hope you’ll join me, there’s no permit required.

What you can do now:

• Leave a comment on this post below.

• Read some of my thoughts on China-US Relations in my story of Marching in a for Democracy in China.

• Read about my visit to a Cheese Factory in a Tibetan village in Yunan, China in There’s No Sesame Chicken in China

• Visit The Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Discussion Board on Tibet

• Don’t know much about Tibet?  Check out Wikipedia.

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Walking through the remote Tibetan village that housed the Shangrila Cheese Factory, we were met by a number of curious villagers, who came out to see who we were. The father and son in this photo came walking by and we asked if we could take a photo—the father is leaning a bit funny because I think he wanted us to see his basket and he was also reminding his son to stand up straight.

Imagine what you’d do if someone, speaking a language you didn’t understand, came walking through your neighborhood and asked to take a picture of you?

• Leave a comment on this post below.
• See another installment of “In This Picture” of another father and son in Vietnam.
• Read more about Langdu Village and their Cheese Factory in There’s No Sesame Chicken In China.
• See more photos from the factory and village in my Langdu Village Flickr Gallery.

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The black hole void of sesame chicken in a country I was once fairly certain invented the dish, is a topic for another time, as I’d like to take a closer look at another seemingly paradoxical culinary contradiction in the above mix: Chinese don’t eat cheese, yet there I was in a Land Cruiser on a bumpy ride through the mountains in search of the country’s first gourmet cheese factory, deep in a poor, remote Tibetan village high in the mountains of Yunan Province, China.

How a cheese factory came to be deep in the heart of China, complete with cheese advisors flown in from Wisconsin (America’s undisputed cheese capital), is a story of how two passionate young Chinese women came to the realization that sometimes it is such paradoxical thinking that can make all the difference.

Born from a winning business plan submitted to a social entrepreneurial competition thousands of miles and world’s away from Yunan, in the halls of Harvard University, Mei Xiang Cheese is the first business venture of Boston, Hong Kong and Shanghai based Ventures in Development. Harvard classmates, Marie So from Hong Kong and Carol Chyau from Taiwan, along with a few friends, disappointed in the lack of focus on development work in China, decided they wanted to do something for the millions in their home country that were being left behind, despite the headline-grabbing economic growth.

Starting with less than $50,000 USD, mostly raised from winning the business plan competition, they set up their non-profit/for-profit, a non-profit social entrepreneurial incubator that would work to set up sustainable, for-profit businesses in Mainland China that would direct their growth and profits into improving the quality of life in the villages that built the businesses. The profits and benefits of a successful business, it is hoped, will trickle down to create jobs and spread wealth within the village, plugging the villagers in a small way into the global economy that was, at one time, leaving them behind.

Ventures in Development’s most successful project to date: Mei Xiang Cheese, follows the women’s strategy to leverage readily available local resources, in the case of the cheese factory: Yaks. Yaks, sort of a cross between a buffalo and a sheep, live well in the high altitudes and harsh conditions of the mountains in China’s interior and have been a staple animal for the Tibetans for centuries. The women partnered with local organizations to scout out and select a village in Yunan to pilot their cheese making process. Then turning the more traditional model of aid a bit on its head, the organization sought paid volunteers from the village to undertake the leadership and management of the to-be-built factory. The found, after an exhaustive search, just one volunteer: Zhuo Ma and her family, who were willing to take the risk and learn about the foreign concept of gourmet cheese making.

With the startup money in hand and a local family to lead the project, they began construction on a cheese processing facility that would turn the Yak’s milk into China’s first gourmet yak cheese.  After flying in a professor and cheese expert from Wisconsin (USA), the factory developed a product line and worked to perfect its processing and aging techniques.

Nearly two years after the first brick was laid, on a beautiful piece of land nestled in a valley of pine trees on the banks of a crystal clear cold mountain stream, and four hours on treacherous roads over towering mountain passes to the nearest city (Zhongdian/Shangrila), our Land Crusier came to rest in the misty afternoon weather, were we were hustled into the factory’s restaurant for a cup of tea and—what else—deep fried cheese.

The journey from startup to their now weekly cheese output was not as simple as it sounds, as the challenges were numerous and roadblocks relentless, yet despite a lack of MBAs and large bank accounts, the villagers seem uniquely qualified to persevere.

While we sat comfy in our flashy winter jackets drinking our green tea, having just completed our 4-hour Land Cruiser ride, in the door came a woman with her young daughter who couldn’t have been more than 14-years old. The two, soaking wet and wrapped in thin blankets, had just walked for nearly a day and a half in the sleet and freezing rain over the same mountain pass our Land Cruiser had just bounced and tumbled. The young girl stiff and shivering was clearly in the early stages of hypothermia and was wrapped in a sleeping bag and laid next to the wood-burning stove. “They were walking from town,” we were told, “the only way for them to get from there to here.” None of the locals seemed to blink at the emergency because, as I later learned, adversity was so common here it seemed not at all out of the ordinary. A few days before we arrived, three villagers had been electrocuted and killed at the power station just across the road from the cheese factory. “Most people here live with the goal to simply get to tomorrow,” it was later remarked.

After lunch, we ventured up the mountain for a short tour and to meet Yak herders who were coming over the mountain to deliver the latest milk supply. The rain from the previous week had washed a tree across the only dirt road over the mountain, so the herders were leading their Yaks to meet us halfway.

After leading the yaks up slippery logging roads and trudging through knee high mud, their milk barrels were loaded on the back of our truck bound for the wood roofed cheese factory in the fertile green valley below.

Despite the adversity, these villagers, it seems, always find a way through.

* * *

Ventures in Development is still working to get approval from the USFDA and EU to export to the US and Europe, but their gourmet Yak cheese is now available from the company’s first shop in Zhongdian, Yunan (aka Shangrila) and a few other places in China, including Hong Kong. You can read more about Mei Xiang Cheese at www.shangralacheese.org or by visiting Ventures in Develop at www.venturesindev.org.

I’d like to pass on a special thanks to Ventures in Development co-founder Marie So, her sister Annette and Zhuo Ma and the crew in Langdu Village for allowing me a glimpse into their wonderful little cheese business in the heart of a country that I once thought didn’t know much about cheese.

The interior of the cheese factory has very strict sanitary rules and one of the challenges of building the business has been educating the villagers about the strict government sanitation requirements for food export.

The factory complex is built in one of the most beautiful, pristine and remote wilderness areas I’ve seen on my trip.

L to R: Marie, Ventures in Development co-founder; Annette, Marie’s sister from Hong Kong/London; Mei Ziang Cheese Factory Renaissance man responsible for cheese making/repairs/transportation/taking tourists on tours; Sheena, fellow traveler from Hong Kong and my resident translator (Thanks Sheena!).    

On the drive to fetch the milk canisters, we were taken on a short tour of the village and given a peek into a village home.  Hanging dried meat in the home’s living room (2nd picture above). The lack of electricity and the gray rainy day made it quite difficult to see when walking through the massive three story house.

The herders led their Yak’s through the mud and cleared the upturned tree to deliver the milk canisters that were necessary to avoid a halt in the cheese production for the week.

• Leave a comment on the post below.
• View more photos in my Langdu Village Flickr Gallery.
• Visit the website of Mei Xiang Cheese.
• Learn more about Ventures In Development and their other cool startups.
• Read a bit about my thoughts on why this is a great example of social entrepreneurship in A Hand Up, Not Out.

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Though these people are certainly poorer then you and I (since you are reading this on the internet, I know you that is true), they are not any less happy or any less human. Their difficult life situations arise because the cards they were dealt at the dawn of their lives were just as arbitrary as the ones that allowed you and I to find ourselves in the top billion—a hand that put them in situations that don’t allow them access to things that we take for granted: stable governments, jobs, the internet, a roof, clean water, hope. But, in my travels, I’ve learned that the answer to their problems is not as simple as moving the wealth from here to there by writing a check to the UN.

In talking to those I’ve met in sprawling, snarling third world metropolises to struggling rural communities, I’ve learned that the solutions that can bring the bottom billion up is not what we typically think of when we’re asked to ‘help the poor.’ All people in all cultures, regardless of income, have an internal sense of pride and shame, and most would much rather earn their living them take a hand out. Certainly there are situations where such charity is needed (e.g. the recent cyclone in Myanmar, the eathquake in China, the floods in Iowa), but for viable and sustainable solutions in non-crisis situations, my travels have taught me that there are basically two routes: 1) education and 2) plugging people into the global economy.

The key is to educate people and give them opportunities to participate in the global exchange, because most people don’t want a hand out, they are simply looking for a hand up.

I have been exploring these two avenues (education and entrepreneurism) in depth as I travel and will be sharing some of my discoveries here in the coming months. My next post will share the story about my visit to a great project in Yunan China that is teaching Tibetan villagers to make China’s first gourmet cheese from Yak’s milk.

• Agree?  Disagree? Leave a comment on this post below.

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#1 Taken in a tourist market in Hong Kong, this place caters to the American in all of us. I can pretty much say there is not a single person of the 1.3 billion people in China that would fit in this shirt.

#2 In a country notoriously known for fake products, a pharmacy tries to set things straight. Sign in Macau, China.

#3 This one had me laughing for days. Ok, so Chinese pirated goods are pretty rampant and I got this gift wrapped present (below) while in Hong Kong. I recognize some of the designs on the package from other places, which leads me to believe that the “Espana” and little “cute precious moments” doll characters were stolen from existing wrapping paper and then the ‘pirate designer’ decided to add his own touch of English to really bring his message of LOVE home (look carefully at the English words by the ribbon; that’s really printed on the paper).

#4 English menus in China are an endless source of amusement, but most blunders do not make me laugh as much as this one did. I assume what we’re trying to order here is “Potato with crab,” but…well…see for yourself.

Look a little closer and you’ll find a couple more amusing Chinese>English translations on this menu. I’d offer to fix them, but I’d deprive future tourists of hours of amusement. Found in Lijang, China.

#5 For those who may not know, my last name is “Stoll” (It’s German). Continuing on with some translation blunder in Chinese>English signs….this one, well the jokes on me….I was greeted by this sign in a bathroom in Zhongdian, China.

• Leave a comment about this post below.
• See our first installment of “Things That Make Me Laugh” from Japan
• Read more Lost In Translation stories in I Bought A Camera From A Guy Named Fish
• Not into funny? Learn more about pirated goods in China in an entertaining story about my search for designer women’s handbags in Hong Kong Is A Shoppers Paradise.
• Submit your own photo from your own collection to be considered in the next “Things That Makes Me Laugh by emailing us.

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• Leave a comment in the box below
• See other photos of the cow from around-the-world and with new friends.
• Read the cow’s story

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Months later, as I crested an ocean front sand dune in Mozambique, the salty sweet smell of the ocean smacking me in the nose as I came face to face with a postcard perfect panorama of a few lone beach-front palm trees leaning in as if to take a drink of the turquoise waves of the ocean, the first thought that came to my mind, “I’m in a Microsoft screen saver.”

The thing that’s funny about modern life is that what is unreal has become more real than the real. What we think is real, comes from what we’ve seen in the unreal world: movies, television, media, zoos and amusement parks. That unreal is our reference point to what we think is real.

For the average person from the developed world, our understanding of lion behavior come from Simba (which means “lion” in Swahihi) and Scar, our benchmark for beautiful oceans come from airbrushed glossy magazine spreads in National Geographic and our closest brush with pirates came when we were face-to-TV with Johnny Depp.

This phenomenon leads us to two problems:

1) The Real Turns Out Not To Be As Exciting As What We Think Is Real: Because the real thing isn’t edited, scripted, “Photoshoped” and backed by a John Williams orchestrated score, when we see things that are real and they don’t measure up to our expectation, we instead desire for the unreal “real” version instead.

“The sharks were pretty sleepy. I thought they’d be more aggressive, I didn’t get any good photo,” remarked one disappointed woman on a Great White shark cruise in South Africa. Too bad her traveling husband with the camera wasn’t Steven Spielberg.

2) Our desire for this idealized version of the real (the unreal), causes many places to give us what we think we want. Since tourists have certain expectations of the places we go, it is no surprise that these places are going to give us what we think we want.

During my travels in China, I visited Lijang a popular tourist destination in Yunan. The area known as the “old city” appears to have been lifted directly out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with the crafty addition of neon lit pubs overflowing with Tsing Tao beer and Chinese women in short shorts, karaoke bars and kitschy souvenir shops.

Night on the streets in Old Town Lijang, Yunan Province, China.

The reality of China is that people don’t live in movies like Crouching Tiger and darkened cobble stone streets with glowing red lanterns are not where most Chinese exist in the modern era, but the image that tourists have of China is exactly that, so in the end the demand causes the unreal to become real.

A picture in front of my guesthouse in ‘Old Town’ Zhongdian, China.
A city that recently changed its name to “Shangri-la” for obvious tourist purposes.

So if on your next trip you find yourself watching Kenyans dancing and whooping around a camp fire to the beat of leather drums or Geishas bowing to you at the gates of Kyoto-esque temples or even cowboys and indians chasing each other around a dusty stage in South Dakota, enjoy it for what it is, but please my friend take a taste of the real, at least for a bit, and get out of the theme park.

• Leave a comment in the box below.
• Read more of Andy’s ego-talk, this one on American-Chinese relations, in his post Marching for Democracy In China
• See some “Photoshoped, glossy photos” from such reality in the Noboundaries.org photo galleries

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Tours from all part of northern Vietnam come for multiple day cruises that putter around the massive bay, occasionally docking to see caves, beaches and seaside restaurants. I stayed on board a ship for two days in a private room that was complete with a private bath and shower. The ships staff cooked fresh Vietnamese meals aboard, which were served in a shared dining room with a bar around low tables and cushy chairs. Activities including eating, drinking, tubing, touring, diving off the boat, swimming, spelunking and most often, just sitting passing the time with the boat’s other passengers and the stillness of the bay. Small row boats selling snacks, drinks and touristy trinkets weave between the ships and an occasional small boat with a begging family float by signaling you by rubbing their thumb and first finger together…the international sign for money.

Drinking an ice cold bottle of Hue Beer at midnight, watching the moon rise over the dark silhouettes of the limestone karsts, has been one of the most relaxing experience of my trip. Total price for a 4 hour shuttle from Hanoi (with return), three meals, and a private room on the ship set me back a cool $37.

The best way to book your trip is to wait until you land in Hanoi–or you’ll pay substantially more. All guest houses and hotels will be more than happy to sign you up for their Halong Bay Tour (even the night before). Keep in mind that its important to shop around and make sure all parties are clear on what the price includes (beer, shuttle, etc). The cheapest doesn’t often equal the best, especially in Vietnam. The competition is so great to get tourists, tour operators have been forced to cut corners because the competition has driven the price for the basic tour so low.

As in most travel, you do get what you pay for.

Also, you must take your passport with you, or they won’t let you on the boat. A group on my boat was sent home with no refund, because they’d left their passports in Hanoi. (Special thanks to Janny Leung for providing some of the photos below.)

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• See other photos of the cow from around-the-world and with new friends.
• Read the cow’s story

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Train travel in Vietnam is safe, inexpensive, and a fantastic way to meet locals, while seeing a lot of the country. The food is delicious and there’s plenty of English across the country, so you’ll have no problem finding a place to eat or sleep.

Here are a few photos from the trip.

Click on the collage below (or right here) to see the entire photo gallery.

• Leave a comment about this post in the box below.
• Learn all you need to take the train in Vietnam, from one of the absolute best travel sites out there: Seat 61.com.
• Read about My Tour of Duty in Vietnam
• Meet some friends from the train In This Picture: in Da nang, Vietnam
• See photos from my train trip: Across Japan by Bullet Train (Shinkansen)
• See photos of my trip across Cambodia by bus
• See all my photo galleries from my trip around-the-world

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When I started out, it was pretty typical that when you met new friends on the road, you eventually exchanged emails and promise to keep in touch.

But, in the past five or six months, now all people say is, “Are you on Facebook? Ok, I’ll find you there.”

Is email going out of style?

I think I knew Facebook was going to be a big thing, when I was sitting in an internet cafe in the middle of Cambodia (a place where all computers are of the Pentium and sometimes 486 variety). In between ‘tagging’ photos and ‘poking’ my friends, I looked up to see that 12 of the 15 people in the room were on Facebook…in Cambodia…and half the room was locals.

So, months later I’ve finally figured out the controls at the fandangled Facebook, and created a little group for you all to join. So, if you’re a Facebooker, please Facebook me, as I’ll be also Facebooking some exclusive content to that group as well. If you have friends that have been Facebookized as well, ‘poke’ them and tell them to join too (see there is a purpose for that tool).

For those that have not been swept up in the Facebook craze, don’t worry, this NoBoundaries.org is still the main source for all my travel posts—-and ALL of its content is EXCLUSIVE.

As always, keep it tuned here for more to come.

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• Join the NoBoundaries.org Facebook group “Andy Goes Around The World.”
• Laugh yourself silly, by seeing our Guest Traveler post on Davey “Dance” Fishel
• Read about my regretful search for The Best Sushi In The World in Japan

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On board a passenger train I took from Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam headed north, we met Nguyen and his son Pak. The two shared a train cabin with us and we shared a little stuffed animal and some of our snacks.

Although they didn’t speak much English, Nguyen knew a few words from his time as a Vietnamese soldier in the Vietnam War (“The American War” to those in Vietnam). I fortunately spoke the language of “small child,” and we all got on rather well.

At every moment his dad left for the bathroom, Pak would turn into your typical 4-year old monster: jumping from bunk to bunk, throwing toys and making funny faces. “Kids everywhere, are kids,” my travels have taught me.

As I stepped off the train, Nguyen handed me a piece of paper with his email address scribbled in sloppy English. “Please,” he said, “Email the picture to my son.”

Seems people everywhere, are people too.

[In This Picture: A new series sharing the story behind a particular moment in time, capture in a single frame.]

• Leave a comment in the box below.
• Read about My Tour of Duty in Vietnam
• See a short video: What It’s Like: To Fire A Machine Gun In Vietnam
• Need a laugh? Check out Things That Make Me Laugh: Japan #1

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• Read about my Tour of Duty in Vietnam
• Watch another What It’s Like Video:
  • Climbing Angkor Wat in Cambodia
  • Walk Through A House In A Fishing Village in China
  • In A Karaoke Bar In Hong Kong
  • To Buy A Duck In China

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Well, after circling the globe it seems he didn’t shake the travel bug just yet, so he’s recruited a friend and set out on an equally adventurous endeavor: to walk across The United States of America.

During his around-the-world trip, we caught up with him more than halfway through the journey, but this time you can join in just as the adventure is beginning. Brian and his college buddy Denny Clark set out today on what hopes to be a three month walk across the country. Brian is a fantastic writer and has a great way of getting himself into interesting situations, so I suggest you follow along and lend them your couch when they come through your town.

You can follow along with their adventures on their website No Stranger Land.

Name: Brian Triplett(right) and Denny Clark(left)

Hometown: Davenport, Iowa (USA) and Ankeny, Iowa (USA) respectively.

Where and how they’ll be traveling: In their own words: “We are spending the summer of 2008 hiking coast-to-coast across the United States, performing random acts of kindness for the new friends we meet along the way. Our adventure begins on the Atlantic coast of Maine on May 20, and we hope to conclude our trip on the Pacific coast of California three months later. We will live minimally by traveling with our supplies on our back, camping, and cooking our own food. We will exist without luxuries, never paying or asking for accommodations or transportation. That said, we’re open to any good fortune that may come our way. In an adventurous, extreme approach, this is a study of how Americans interact with one another in today’s society.

Trip duration: Three months

Where our paths last crossed: Mickey’s Pub, Iowa City (USA).

• Leave a comment about this post below.
• Read our Guest Traveler post on Brian from last July and a bit about his time in Africa.
• Visit Brian’s blog on his trip around-the-world: Exploring The Unknown
• Read a bit about Brian and Denny’s walk in an article from The Cedar Rapids Gazette.
• Suggest yourself to be featured as a future noboundaries.org “Guest Traveler” by contacting us.
• Read entries from other past “Guest Travelers” featured on noboundaries.org:
  • 陈峦 - Helen Chen Luan, a friend from Shanghai on her trip to Lugu Lake in Yunan, China.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central
    and South America for a year.
  • David Strackany writing 365 songs in 365 days, while living in his car and touring The United States.

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“American M41 Tank Destroyed By A Delay Mine In 1970″

The casualties were high: nearly 60,000 American troops, over 1 million military personnel from other countries and more than 2 million Vietnamese civilians—along with any semblance of a sound American foreign policy in Vietnam.

Thirty-five years later, I entered Vietnam with a backpack in a dust covered bus with a cracked windshield, and willingly paid money to crawl through the underground guerrilla tunnels that slithered beneath the dense foliage of the Vietnamese jungle; tunnels that most from my father’s generation would have paid large sums of money to never see.

‘Ironic’ doesn’t even begin to describe my experience in Vietnam. As I toured the Cu Chi Tunnels (i.e. The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam’s [a.k.a. The Vietcong] base during the Tet Offensive), I tested out homemade “booby” traps used to spear American soldiers of my father’s generation, listened to our tour guide describe America’s horrific use of chemical weapons (the famed ‘agent orange’) on the northern Vietnamese, spent actual US dollar bills to pay to fire a fully-automatic machine gun, and even posed for photos with life sized Vietcong soldiers made of plastic.

Walking around Saigon, I discovered that only recently, in 2006, had the downtown museum once known as “The American and French Atrocities of War Museum” changed its name to the more politically correct “War Rememberance Museum.”

A train ride from south to north took me through places whose names I already knew, despite having never been here before: Saigon, The Mekong, Da Nang, and Hanoi among others.

As I traveled the country, images replayed over and over in my head of a war that happened a decade before my birth, but whose images and names live on in our collective popular culture from blockbuster movies to news stories drawing parallels with the present war in Iraq.

I tried to reconcile the images in my head with what I was seeing in front of me. At times my stomach turned, stuck between uneasiness and remorse, for a war fought on my behalf; as well as the realization that only a slightly different turn of events three decades earlier could have put my father in these very same jungles, with the same people (our tour guide was a former south Vietnamese solider), with the same machine guns and the same booby traps, but under entirely different circumstances.

The commodification of war imagery on 24-hour cable news stations and in our movies and video games tends to lead to a desensitization that makes the real seem unreal. And the farther from home the actual war and the more images we see, the more unreal I think it becomes to us.

But my time spent in Vietnam, seeing first hand what I once only knew through the eyes of Forrest Gump, took the unreal and made it real again. The experience not only brought the Vietnam War to life for me, but it also brought ALL wars to life and made me realize one reason we travel.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far in my travels is that people are people, and language and cultural differences aside, we are all more alike then we are led to believe. But its hard to see and understand that when our only spyglass into the world is through our televisions and the internet. In that sense, we turn to 24-hour cable news, newspapers and movies to inform us on how the world is and how different those other people really are. This is a mistake that can not be solved by reading more books or thinking a bit harder, as it’s only when we see these people and places for ourselves do we travel far enough to leave our own baggage and stereotypes behind.

So pack your suitcase, kiss your sweetheart goodbye, and fly on over here to Vietnam cause the DMZ awaits you. You’ve been drafted my friend. Please don’t run away or the casualties might include you.

The DMZ: Da Merchandising Zone in Ho Chi Min City’s Cu Chi tunnels.

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