Go Go Lightly!

Just before our Mui Ne debauchery (see last post), Jill and I spent a month volunteering in Cambodia’s bedazzled capital city, Phnom Penh, and it was a damn fine place to unpack our bags for a while. Before we could even properly spell Phnom Penh without doing a Google search, we both fell in love with its barely-controlled chaos, and as we savored our brief taste of the Cambodian expat life our awe and love-struck giddiness grew.

We didn’t expect to settle in as comfortably as we did. Especially upon arrival: tired and irritable from a 12-hour bus trip from Laos, we quickly planted ourselves in a basic, dropped-tiled, fluorescent-lit budget room in the PP backpacker strip known as Lakeside, and immediately we were taken aback by the area’s seediness: as we headed out to find dinner that night, not-so-subtle whispers offering weed and assorted drugs just the other side of the gateway seemed to sidle up to us from the shadows of every roadside tuk-tuk. Realizing that this would get really old really quickly, we set out the next morning in search of a budget option in a less opiate-laced place.

But instead of settling on an alternate budget option, we somehow ended up in a not-so-budget, brand-new, two bedroom luxury riverside apartment that sparkled and shined sort of like this:

with a view from our large private terrace that looked something like this:

Oops. But also, YAY! And in the YAY! spirit we immediately celebrated our infrugality by hosting a terrace-top housewarming party with our old friends Max and Kris, who were in town for a few days, and our new friend Rachel, whom we met on the bus from Laos. (Rachel had to catch the several hour bus to Siem Reap at something like 7:00 the next morning. The party broke up at something like 3:30 am (???). Sorry Rachel!)

After recovering from the housewarming festivities, we turned our attentions to setting up a proper expat life: we descended upon the buzzing markets in our neighborhood to haggle for fresh veggies and dairy (where I learned to steer clear of the fertilized eggs, i.e. eggs with mostly-formed chicks nestled inside), and we hit up the French market and deli on Street 278, aka Expat street, and stocked our kitchen full of freshly butchered meats and imported cheeses. And, to tone down the damage from our frequent feasts on bacon-wrapped tenderloin, we lined ourselves up monthly memberships at the super glitzy megagym, The Place, which offered us yoga, step aerobics and toning classes and a gazillion brand-spanking-new machines. Remarkably, I even showed up for twice-weekly 6 am personal training sessions with the excellent and fun Swedish fitness queen turned personal trainer, Maria Alhberg (http://www.mariaahlberg.se/) (Hi Maria!).

And the final step in setting up our proper expat life? Adopting a pet. Our Phnom Penh pet was R. Kelly, the Friendly Bathroom Roach. He was a fairly large cockroach, colored a warm, dirty Mekong brown, and he showed up most nights somewhere on our bathroom floor to alternately terrify and delight us with his stealthy, scurrying antics. (He wasn´t as welcome a pet when he became overly confident and ventured into Jill´s bedroom.)

Our next task: learning to navigate the streets. Which was really a process of un-learning every traffic rule we´d previously obeyed. Look both ways before you cross the street?? Nope. Yield to oncoming traffic?? Not if you plan to get anywhere anytime soon.

In PP there´s only one traffic rule: Go and Don´t Hit Anything. Or rather, Go and Don´t Get Hit, depending on who you ask. This rule indiscriminately applies to cars, tuk-tuks, motorbikes, pedestrians, chickens, diesel engines, balloon-chasing children and terrified tourists who idle away dozens of confused and insecure curbside minutes as they await a never-arriving break in the zipping and sidewinding traffic.

And so quickly enough, we learned the Go and Don´t Get Hit technique: like the tenacious little amphibian from my favorite 80s video game, we had to hop, sprint, duck and tumble our way across the various “lanes” of speeding motor vehicles that careened, loomed and slithered and threatened our squashing from every possible direction. And amazingly, it somehow worked, every time.

How the motorbikes are able to manage this precarious dance remains a mystery. Motorbikes in Phnom Penh (or motos, to those in the know) are loaded up and bogged down with every imaginable configuration of people and possessions, such as:

Driver, two women, two children, one baby.
Driver, three monks.
Driver, two men, five foot row of inverted chickens hanging from pole.
Driver, two women, ten speed bike.
Driver, full sized mattress.
Driver, several chopped-up trees.
Driver, large adult male, whole roast pig.
Driver, me, Jill.
And even Driver, entire contents of kitchen, like so:

Thankfully no one in Phnom Penh ever wears a helmet, so at least the poor little motorbikes are spared that additional burden.

Our various means of traversing the city proved to be among the highlights of our time in Cambodia – deciphering the kinetic confusion of Phnom Penh street life easily provides a month´s worth of non-stop entertainment. Overloaded motos, neon-splashed tuk-tuks, street-side slow-aerobics sessions and never-ending badmitton tournaments (it seems PP’ers LOVE badmitton), pick-up trucks full of monks on the move, women selling featherless baby bird corpses and mismatched shoes….and it just so happens that the playground for this cacophonous mess is accented by the gorgeous, highly ornate Cambodian royal architecture and traced casually by the mighty Mekong. Sensory overload, to be sure.

Phnom Penh street life didn´t always leave us wide-eyed and giggling, though. Notwithstanding its expat conveniences, Phnom Penh is the heart of a developing nation with a very recent, very troubled past (if there ever was a hell, it was run by Pol Pot), and even the most willfully blind tourist can´t ignore its economic realities. Our apartment was on Sisowath Quay, a street that is jammed-packed full of tourist-geared bars and restaurants and just as many tourist-geared street kids. These grade-school-aged kids are typically very cute and very smart, and they can fast talk several dollars out of unsuspecting tourists (aka me and Jill?) before he or she (um, Jill or I?) masters the exchange rate. After talking to some local friends, Jill and I learned not to buy what these kids were selling (postcards, books, newspapers, assorted Khmer bric-a-brac), because, despite their promises to the contrary, they most likely are NOT in school, and the money is most likely NOT going to them – often it´s going to a sort of pimp for street children who holds kids as human property and forces them to do this work.

There are various reputable NGOs that are geared toward helping Cambodia´s street children, and they provide a reliable means for well-intentioned travelers to provide meaningful help to these highly sympathetic kids. One of the best meals we had in PP was at a restaurant called Friends, which is a culinary and hospitality training restaurant run for and by former street children (those kids sure know how to cook up a curry!). The restaurant is one of the many endeavors of Mith Samlanh (www.mithsamlanh.org), an organization that runs health, education and training programs for Phnom Penh street children.

Unfortunately, walking past begging mothers with their naked infants splayed out belly-down on the dirty concrete is easier said than done. And on the sidewalks of Sisowath Quay, this sort of desperate poverty is all too common. Also a little too common for my taste were the frequent sightings of sixty-year-old men walking hand in hand with teenaged Cambodian girls. Bars all around our neighborhood catered to this dirty old man/young dude crowd (Candy Bar; 69 Bar; Cathouse; Up and Down – promising beautiful girls and one lady boy!), and after several weeks of grimacing and suppressing an internal riot at each sex tourism sighting, I found myself very very late on Halloween night, dressed as Pat Benatar´s Backup Dancer #14, chasing a wrinkled, cackling old man out of the bar and down the street and hurling obscenities and idle threats his way as he swept a lovely sixteen-year-old girl onto his motorbike and off to his hotel room for the night. Probably not the most effective way to wage war with the seedy underworld of Cambodian sex tourism.

Thankfully there are organizations like AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Situations), the incredible anti-human trafficking organization for which we did pro bono legal work while in PP (read about their work at www.afesip.org), that are a bit more effective in the fight against sex slavery. AFESIP was founded by Somaly Mam (www.somaly.org), a Cambodian woman who was sold into sex slavery as a young girl, and who, since her escape several years later, has devoted (and in the process risked) her life helping girls and women who are similarly forced into prostitution. AFESIP´s mission is to rescue girls and women from sex slavery and provide them with housing, health care, education and skills training in order to reintegrate them into their communities. Jill and I visited AFESIP´s centers for the girls in both Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, and they were full of bright and lovely girls (and their children) who were very excited to show us their fashion and beauty handiwork. Of course, we fell in love with the babies.

Through AFESIP Jill and I were able to meet Somaly Mam , which was a big highlight for us in Cambodia (she´s an international celebrity now, read about her at http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1894410_1894289_1894268,00.html). And through AFESIP, I accompanied a huge cadre (including the very intimidating chief) of the Cambodian National Police during the raid of brothel full of sweet and lovely 13- to 18-year-old girls. Whoa. Scary. Crazy. Highlight.

Among many Cambodian highlights. Phnom Penh nightlife (Magic Sponge, hi Eran! Riverhouse Lounge – where Jill loved her some bad Katy Pery tunes on a regular basis. Talkin´to a Stranger – dumb name, great bar, super awesome bartender, excellent popcorn and perfect gin and tonics.). Expat dancing awesomeness (Hi Arielle and the Cambodia Daily crew!).

Weekend beach trips to the stunning tropical beach paradise called Otres in Sihanoukville. The mind-blowing incredibleness of the temples of Siem Reap and the buried jungle treasures at the dilapidated temple Bang Mealea. And the people – friendly, funny, cheerful, welcoming, and perhaps the cutest kids on the entire planet.

One little month for this big, beautiful place definitely wasn´t enough.

Much love!

Heather and Jill

We had really wholesome intentions for our trip through Laos. After our tipsy collisions with South Africa’s rugged coast and a somewhat raucous night out in Bangkok clinking Tiger beers and cocktails to the off-tone tunes of a Thai heavy metal cover band, Jill and I both swore that we’d devote our time here to cultural exploration, exercise and, most importantly, temporary vice eradication (i.e. detox). And we started out on the right foot … we spent each of our two days in Laos’ lovely capital, Vientiane, ambling down its charmingly French-influenced avenues, taking in its striking Buddhist monuments, and (shockingly) enduring grueling three-hour workouts at Laos’ only Western-style megagym, where all-day access to its multiple floors full of sparkling new machines and its enormous, chemical-blue pool and adjacent hot tub runs the weary traveler a whopping $6 (complete with a complimentary one-hour Lao massage).

But then we headed north to Vang Vieng and things went haywire. Rapidly.

I blame this on the Canadians (because “haywire” can’t possibly be our fault). We met Vancouver’s Maxwell and Kristoffer (Hi Max and Kris!) a couple of hours after our arrival in this small town, which is located a few hours north of the capital city on the jaw-droppingly beautiful Nam Song River. Not that we noticed much of its beauty on our first day … instead, upon finishing our delicious lunch at Aussie Bar, we accepted an invitation to join the Canadians’ table just across the way, and for the next several hours our attentions were entirely consumed by the intense Apples-to-Apples and Shithead playing, bad joke telling (fsssshhhhhh!) and tequila-shooting with the Canadians along with a long-traveling German named Sebastian, a tall, buff British birthday boy wearing a flouncy, polka-dotted, waist-high blouse with lacy red trim (some sort of birthday tradition that was never clearly explained), and some bare-chested, well-tanned Danes, all of whom would become our intermittent companions over the next few days.

Vang Vieng is spread out along the banks of the river, which meanders alongside lush, foliage-covered limestone karsts bursting dramatically through swirls of steamy tropical air as they stretch hundreds of vertical meters into the sky. It is peppered with crystal-clear turquoise lagoons that spill out of cool, dark caves, which conspire to echo the sounds of the many rowers chanting in unison as they make their way across the river. This adds up to a town that is chock-full of tempting outdoor activities, including kayaking, spelunking and some of southeast Asia’s best rock climbing, all in, on and under some of the most outrageously gorgeous scenery we’ve ever come across.

But the real superstar activity here — the one that travelers gossip, brag and fondly reminisce about across the entire Southeast Asia backpacker circuit — is tubing down the Nam Song River. Or should I say “tubing” down the Nam Song River. Or better still, occasionally floating for maybe a minute or two from pulsating open-air bar to pulsating open-air bar on a dubiously-inflated tractor tire, with Beerlao in hand. And despite our aforementioned healthy lifestyle intentions, that’s what we really came here to do.

The Canadians too, it seems. Hence sometime during our Aussie Bar hijinks we’d made plans to join forces the next morning for our jaunt down the river. Which became the next afternoon, due to some slow and false starts the following day as we dragged ourselves out of our respective beds and into the notorious Lao heat. (It’s the cool season here. I’d ballpark that it’s about 197 degrees outside. Celsius.) Which was postponed for yet another day, as rain descended over the town and we gave in to our grogginess and our unwillingness to move all that much. The four of us decided to take it easy that night …. which apparently meant walking across the river on the creaky, narrow, wooden-planked foot bridge that drops passers-by off into the Bucket Bar (advertising Free Buckets with Food!), ordering up a bunch of buckets (a sickeningly sweet but highly effective mixture consisting of a full pint of whiskey, a hell-a-ton of Red Bull and the complimenting soda of your choice, served up in a sandcastle-building bucket complete with about 15 straws … this is the staple “food” for many backpackers in Vang Vieng), and sinking for several lazy, swinging hours into the cozy cotton hammocks alighting the parameters of the bar’s backyard.

But the next morning (if 2 PM equals morning), Jill, Max, Kris and I were geared up and ready to go. And by 2:15 PM we were spilling out of our rickety tuk-tuk (Southeast Asia’s answer to the El Camino – a festively adorned and typically coughing, overwhelmed motorbike latched on to some sort of cage-enclosed truck bed, which in this case was stuffed full of eager tubers and topped off with several tenuously-fastened inflated tubes) and into the welcoming arms of the girl who was standing on the steps of the first bar on the tubing track extending free shots of Tiger whiskey in our direction.

That’s when the madness began. As we planted ourselves on the deck of the bar, our jaws went slack with stunned amazement as we surveyed what lie before us. Hundreds of bikini- and board short-clad revelers guzzling whiskey, Beerlao and buckets and then jumping off of the decks of the myriad bars within eyeshot and floating giddily down the river, as boys swung perilously above their heads on shoddily-constructed rope swings and zip lines before plunging dozens of flailing feet and smashing (often back, belly, or even face-first) into the water.

We’d been advised via our trusty Lonely Planet that several people die on this river each year, mainly due to a toxic combination of (1) zip lines, swings and slides patched together without fear of liability, (2) alcohol-fueled confidence, and (3) sheer stupidity. And sadly, we’d even heard a rumor that an Irish guy had died on the river just seven days before, after drunkenly catapulting himself backwards down a several meter slide with an upward trajectory at its base – he was flung off of the slide and high into the air before smashing neck first into the water, which allegedly knocked him out, causing him to drown as he was washed down the river. He was on his honeymoon.

This was a scene you’d never, ever see in the United States, or Canada, or likely even Mongolia for that matter. We were shocked and a little intimidated but above all absolutely giddy with the ridiculousness of it all, and after the Canadians took on a few of those ill-advised swings (Jill even braving one epic swing that ended with a massive bruise-rendering thigh-flop into the water– this was enough encouragement for me to pass, thanks very much), we tossed our tubes into the river and paddled our way down to the next bar.

That’s when Ma Ma Lao burst into our lives. How to describe Ma Ma Lao …..? A burly, rough-skinned, dark-browed bear of a woman who emanated a wild, angry humor and whose body was wrapped into sausage-like folds by too-tight clothing. We’d briefly come across her at the first bar when she stomped up to the buff British guy (we would run into him and the amply-bronzed Danes throughout the day) and kicked him smack-dab-smash on the leg …. apparently because he didn’t take her home a couple of days prior when she met him at a bar? (Exceptionally wise choice, buff British guy.) When we stumbled into her domain at the second bar, her face was contorted under her sweaty, furrowed brow as she arm-wrestled a victory away from a fairly well-muscled guy. She scared me immediately, and my fear only intensified as she stood in the center of the bustling deck and drew obscene images out from under her shorts and down her dense thighs with a thick, dark permanent marker. We kept our distance, but it seems there’s no keeping things from Ma Ma Lao, because a few minutes after our arrival, without any prompting or discernible justification, she marched across the deck and up to Max, grabbed a handful of curly chest hair and in one swift motion ripped it straight out from its roots, and then tossed the punished cluster of hair onto the ground and gruffly laughed as she stormed away. After recovering from the shock, Max promptly climbed up a nearby wooden ladder, swept down a zip line and flipped himself belly-side-down into the river to deaden the pain. Having finished our second round of free whiskey shots and Beerlaos, we agreed that the chest-rip was our cue to move on to the next bar and far, far away from the treacherous Ma Ma Lao.

Thirty seconds later we were pulling ourselves out of our tubes and into the third bar, which was bursting at the seams with tubers twitching and swaying to the screaming, bass-heavy music. Another free shot. Another Beerlao. More people flinging and flipping and swinging and flopping from increasingly steep zip lines into the river. Backflips off of tall wooden towers into tube-infested waters. People sweeping by in the river below and waving desperately to be tossed the ubiquitous deckside ropes that serve as lifelines in the swift high-water current. And after taking in the increasing wobbly euphoria of the sun- and whiskey-drenched masses, we set off for yet another bar.

The fourth bar. The Smile Bar. AKA the bar where everyone is absolutely brown-soaked with thick, wet mud. Due to: A Mud Tug-of-War. A dipping-pool-sized mud puddle (full of people). And the kicker: Mud Volleyball. A very very popular game of Mud Volleyball, where there are no points and everybody wins. And of course, another round of Beerlao and free Tiger shots, this time poured into our mouths directly from the bottle by a circus-worthy bottle-juggling bartender named Trent who as of that day had been tubing for 279 non-consecutive days. (The number was written on his chest in marker – we later learned that he’d only taken 14 days off during his 279-day stretch, and that his longest consecutive stretch was 70 days. He told us it almost killed him. Uh, yeah.)

And then the fifth bar. The Swing Bar. AKA the place where, if you’ve somehow escaped the messy delights of the Smile Bar, you surely cannot survive the mud-sodden Slip and Slide that constitutes the 45-degree angle walkway leading upwards toward the bar. Made even further complicated by the highly and obnoxiously intoxicated guys that tackle anyone that’s still remotely clean and hurl them down onto the muddy slope. Although remarkably, we did survive … cautiously digging our toes inches deep as we plucked our way through the careening crowd and up towards our next free shot. But (and this is no joke), we were much, much more sober than a good 85% of the tubers that day, and many of the now-smashed people that swarmed around us were doomed …. a blubbering mass of mud-caked people slipping, flopping and slithering up and down the impossible path.

Fresh Beerlao in hand, we made our way to the safety of a riverside sala. Which is where we witnessed something that in my heart of hearts I wish I’d never seen: Ma Ma Lao just meters away, greedily smashing her hands down the trousers of Dex, the Irish dude who inexplicably was returning her affections with coarse, sloppy kisses. ICK. ICK. YECK. (He had just minutes before bragged to Max that he’d “Just snogged her”. My brain can’t process this tidbit of information.)

Once again, our cue to move on. Back on our tubes and loaded up with cans of Beerlao, we decided to skip the next few bars and take on the long and often-skipped haul to the last bar on the tubing track, which we were told was about thirty minutes away. So we settled in cozily, our feet interlocking our tubes together, our heads idly hanging off the back of our tubes so we could take in the heart-stopping scenery. There was one big problem with our plan though: we didn’t know where the last bar was, and it was late, and we were alone on this last leg of the tubing track. The sky faded from blue to amber to dark to black. We floated for maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes or so, and the current greatly intensified. And soon enough, we found ourselves soaring down the river in pitch blackness, our bathing suit-clad bottoms bumping threateningly into the large, sharp rocks down below. But thankfully, a few minutes later, lights spilled out from an upcoming island, so we all decided that it was every man for himself, and we all disengaged our feet and attempted to paddle solo to the upcoming banks.

It wasn’t working. Paddle, paddle hard as I might, I soon lost sight of my three companions and found myself whizzing past the lonely lights on shore and into the great Nam Song unknown. But just as I screamed out “HELP!!!! I CAN’T GET TO SHORE!!! WHEERRRE ARRRRE YOUUUUUUU……?????!!!!” …. I was rescued. By a super sexy Argentinian surfer-bartender who swept me into his arms and consoled my trembling body as he carried me to his welcoming bar.

Except not really. I was rescued by a four-year-old Lao girl, who galloped through the rapids barefoot, flung me out of my tube, flipped the tube over her head, latched onto my hand and pulled me through 15 meters of balance-toppling water to safety. I felt ridiculous. Except not really, because it turns out that Jill, Kris and Max were all similarly saved.

All of this meant it was time for another free shot at our destination: the Sunset Bar. And Beerlao. And many, many more of the same, until we found ourselves singing Rolling Stones tunes at the top of our lungs, chair dancing with utter abandon, and deciding to meet up the next morning to do it all again.

Which we did, with even more enthusiasm than the day before. The first bar: drinks, swings, flips, check. The second bar: drinks, dancing, ziplines, flips, check. The third bar: drinks, dancing, and stenciled spraypainting all over our bodies, check. Fourth bar? Mud volleyball, check.

And so the day went, until we once again found ourselves the last tubers on the river, richocheting down the dark watery abyss toward the Sunset Bar, this time performing some sort of scream-hum rendition of Emotional Rescue for the benefit of all of the bankside communities. And yet again, the Sunset Bar, cajolling and headbanging to Black Sabbath, until Max fell backwards ecsatically off of his barstool onto the muddy ground below. This time, it didn’t take Ma Ma Lao to give us our cue to go.

It’s the next day now, and we’re still here in Vang Vieng (after seeing the Canadians off this morning), readying ourselves to get back on the detoxing track (seriously Moms & Dads, we mean it this time). Kayaking, rock climbing, trekking, villages, here we come. We leave it to you to believe it’s true.

Our Love from Laos,
Heather & Jill

Seven early morning hours on a rickety, congested, diesel-fueled bus — that’s what it takes to reach Lushoto, a colorful little German-influenced town nestled cozily in the center of Tanzania’s Usambara Mountains. 
 
And so we wake up to our taxi driver’s anxious phone call, 5:50 AM, Sunday morning.  We were supposed to be up much earlier so we could reconstruct our deconstructed backpacks, but (don’t be shocked!) we’ve slept through our 5:30 AM alarm due to a boisterous and too-late night out in Dar es Salaam doing African line dances to bad R&B covers amongst the locals and the ex-pats boozily mingling at Sweet Eazy.   Sleep in our eyes, toothbrushes dangling from our mouths, we clambor about the room in our haste to leave, surmising that our bleary-eyed state means that we’re probably in for a very long and unpleasant ride.
 
But little do we know what comforts lie before us!  Arriving with what is apparently plenty of time to spare, we slide into our row on the voluminous bus and expand confidently across the three seats.  I slip my pillow (aka multi-purpose puffy vest) under my neck, sink back into my sweatshirt to ward off the slight morning chill and prepare for a restful ride.  When it is sufficiently occuppied (but fortunately far from full) the bus departs, and Jill and I take turns drifting in and out of sleep as the bus veers us skyward into the mountains.
 
These comforts aren’t to be taken for granted though – they usually don’t last.  This time, no exception.  Because a few hours later, I am jolted awake by a searing pain scrambling inside my right temple.  I lean forward and plaster my cheek against the seat in front of me hoping for some cooling relief.  But it’s hot now – very hot – and my cheek slides slickly up and down the plastic seat cover, lubricated by my accumulating perspiration.  Unappeased, I lift my head and survey the now heavily-populated bus.  A rolling mass of heads wrapped in brightly-colored kangas peeks out from above the seat tops.  Silhouettes of women with babies slung low on their backs fill the aisles.  A man in a cream-colored  taqiyah and matching poly-blend dishdasha now sits thigh to thigh on my left, jovially eyeing Jill and me and seemingly discussing our very conspicuous Mzungu-ness with his friends in the row to our front (we are the only Mzungu on the bus). 
 
Time passes and dehydration grows (the choice: pain in the head due to absence of frequent water replenishment, or pain in the swishing belly due to absence of bathroom breaks).  Roads become more treacherous and inclined.  Jill fidgits nervously, more bug-eyed and pale with every cliff-skimming corner.  But the signs pointing onward to Lushoto are becoming more frequent, and, renewed by this optimism, I decide to strike up a conversation with my new travel companion.  I grab the Lonely Planet out of Jill’s bag, flip to the basic Swahili section and turn confidently toward the man at my side.
 
“Hii ni barabara kwenda Lushoto?” (translation: “Is this the road to Lushoto?”).  The man flashes a big white-toothed smile at me, nods cautiously, and proceeds to openly gossip about me to his friends.  Jill looks at me quizzically. 
 
“What did you say?”
 
“I asked him if this is the road to Lushoto.”  Mocking laughter follows.  Which is deserved.  Of COURSE this is the road to Lushoto.  The bus has DAR – LUSHOTO written in huge block letters on it’s windshield.  There are signs that say “LUSHOTO” with arrows pointing straight ahead cropping up along the side of the road every five minutes.  And there’s only one road.  The road we’re on.  Stupid question.
 
Undeterred, I press on.  “Lushoto hospitali iko wapi?”  (translation: “Where is the Lushoto hospital?”).  The man nods again (curling his eyebrows into a question mark), points straight ahead and continues his gossip. 
 
A brief pause, and then I loudly announce:  “Nina mzio wa nyuki!!!”  (translation:  “I am allergic to bees!!!:)
 
Now the man and his friends seem a bit concerned.  It’s likely they think that I’m on an mysterious, ill-advised several-hour mission from the relatively modern Dar to the backwoods Lushoto hospital to attend to a recent, life-threatening bee sting.  To assuage them, I quickly follow with: “Nahitaji fundi!!”  (translation: “I need a mechanic!!)”
 
This is met with great enthusiasm, as the man points furiously at his friend and proclaims “He is Fundi!  He is Fundi!  Yes!  Yes!  Fundi!”  Hands are slapped mid-air, laughter envelops the knowing nods and we all sink back into our seats with a collective “ahhhhhh…..”, satisfied for the remainder of the trip because we’ve accomplished something.
 
We spend a restful two days in Lushoto, hiking up to Irente Farm for a scrumptuous picnic lunch (homemade cheese/butter/yoghurt/herbed cottage cheese/rye bread/passion fruit juice = yummm), and playing ruthless rounds of Shithead (an apparently universally known drinking/card game) with a couple of strapping South African skippers who are passing through town on their way to Moshi.  Then we set off on a two-day climb up and down mountains, through teeny Muslim villages, past damp, fertile pines and under dense tropical rainforest (with every twitching stick we jump and wonder: Puff Adder?  Boomslang?  Green mamba?  Why aren’t the strapping South African skippers here?  If there’s ever a time for a piggyback ride, it’s now).  After a quick sleep in a quaint hillside convent (we’re probably not the most appropriate guests), we finish with a hike up to the lovely tip-top mountain village of Mtae.
 

 

 
This multi-day sport-fest is aided, though, by a two-hour bus trip from Lukozi to the convent, which is likely the most ridiculous, impossible ride of our trip so far.  People crammed so tightly that there’s only space on the floor for three of my ten toes.  Four and a half people for every three seats.  Jill’s bent 90 degrees forward at the waist, a child’s head enclosed in the inverse curve of her belly.  I’m waiting for the goats to board, and preparing to duck from any low-flying chickens.  We careen past plummeting mountain faces at angles that can only be acheived on two wheels.  I think Jill might vomit.  For comfort, she amuses herself by introducing African school children to the wonders of a Le Tigre video on her iPod.   And in the meantime, I find myself falling even more in love with this place. 
 

 
3:45 AM.  It’s now Thursday morning.  We wake to a sound that’s most likely being made by a too-happy bugler escaped from the circus asylum.  The bus horn?   We are running late for the bus back to Lushoto.  Dear lord who picks this schedule?
 

 
We board what looks like the Porno Party Bus…..lipstick red plastic seats framed by a thick black shag rug somehow fastened (via stapling?) to the ceiling.  I look around for strobing blacklights but only see our headlamps and those of the six other Mzungu on board.  The bus is ready to depart, and the horn screams its lunatic song again.  Calling all clowns! 
 
I’m sleepy.  The horn rises again.  Off to clown college!  Tiny men in red and white suspenders climb off of stilts and in through the windows.  A woman bathed in turquoise sequins rides down the aisle on a well-coiffed tiger.  Jill pulls herself up out of her seat and performs acrobatic swirls on the luggage rack.  I’m violently thrust forward by some sort of road/bus-underside collision.  Eyes now wide open, Jill’s right beside me.  No tigers, no satin-clad men dancing in colorful circles.  Circus antics cancelled by reality. 
 
The “road” is really a series of pockmarks and dips punctuated by the occassional motor-crushing canyon.  The seats vibrate violently – I think this bus could have a second career as an anti-cellulite treatment for the fifties housewife (Benson & Hedges on lips, bon-bons on lap, let the seats jiggle your sins away!).  I discover what the shag carpeting is for when my headlamp grazes the ceiling during a particularly dramatic pothole-induced crash.  It’s padding for my protection!  Seatbelts unnecessary!
 
Which I guess works, because we make it back, safe and sound in Lushoto, and begin preparing for tomorrow’s bus trip to the coast.  We just can’t get enough.