I wonder if moderation is naturally selected for

Of all the True Things ever said about me, I still like Packer's the best. (You can ask him about that.) However, I think perhaps we might all agree that moderation was never my strongest point.

I, as is my nature, have signed on for rarely taken (but often talked about in revered, hushed tones) technical trimix (breathing a mix of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen) dive training. It is so cool. You actually use gases that would kill you if you breathed them on the surface. In normal recreational diving, the manuals always tell you (truthfully) that even if you do something horribly wrong, you'll likely live happily ever after. In my tech manual, practically every other word is "death." Yeah, and in between "death," they like to insert "permanent injury." Sweet. Sounds like a proper challenge.

The standard depth limit for normal human** diving is 40 meters/130'. With trimix, I'll be able to go to 75 meters/250' (that's approximately the roof of a twenty five floor building, in the opposite direction). There's some amazing things to see down there. In the Pacific, there's a sunken Japanese WWII carrier with planes and tanks *still on the deck*. She lies in 67 meters/220' of water. I am so all over that. At those depths, there are things that very few other humans have ever seen [and lived to tell about it]. Clearly, I totally have to go there. Yup, I suck at moderation.


It's been a while since my last missive. I left the Palau ship when the season ended in June and returned to Thailand to work on my teaching chops. (If any of you want to learn to dive, I'm a relatively slick instructor now. Well, relative to before, at least.) Teaching, while rewarding, is somewhat consistent and uneventful. Mildly unworthy of an adventure note, which is my excuse for the egregious lack of recent front line reporting. I know, lame excuse. I did teach the Captain of a US Navy rescue and deep salvage ship how to dive. I felt pretty good about myself that day. Go forth and save some lives sir.


I miss you all terribly, and I know I keep promising and bailing, but I will actually make it back to the States at some point for a visit. In the meantime, next time you climb to the 25th floor of a building, look out the window and think of me.


**I think the standard depth limit for normal chicken diving is something like 500 meters/1650', but I can't be sure. I believe it varies depending on whether it's fresh or frozen. And don't even start about feathers.

oh snap!

New photos up.

I'm still floundering about a bit with the whole taking-pictures-underwater shtick, but you know what they say, practice makes a lot of deleted photos. Anyway, almost all the new ones were taken underwater, so forgive the sometimes dubious composition. Getting fish to hold still and pose while you photograph them is like herding three-year-old children who have just smoked crack and have access to motor vehicles.

One other interesting thing of note: all the main subjects of the underwater photos are animals - no plants; you'll understand why that's both cool and non-obvious if you go have a look.

Uploading 8mpix photos on a 56k dial up connection is like the least fun game ever.

It's never quite like the first time

Yesterday was my first time in the chamber.

As I surface from a beautiful dive with two guests and my videographer, I find out there's some sort of medical emergency involving one of my instructors who was out on a fun dive (no guests). She's just gone to 366 feet (111 meters) and shot to the surface.

For reference, after one hundred feet, you start feeling a little drunk. At two hundred feet, you've just pounded the ugly half of a bottle of Jack Daniels. Past two hundred, the oxygen in the air you're breathing becomes toxic. You start losing control of your extremities; your arms and legs twitch uncontrollably. Keep going, and you lose vision and hearing. Then you have a seizure and drown.

Apparently she panicked when she went blind.

So I'm still wet from my dive, and I'm arranging emergency evac for this girl who can't feel her arms and legs, and is drifting in and out of consciousness. There are so many reasons why she should be dead, I'm actually pretty surprised she's still twitching.

An hour later, we're putting her in the hyperbaric chamber. But they need a diver to go in there with her in case she seizes during recompression. The normal tender is on holiday in Bali. The nurses don't dive. Guess I'm going in.

It's a two person chamber: a metal tube about seven feet long and five feet in diameter. It is not big. Quite the opposite, it is very very small. Over-sized coffin is just about the right image.

No synthetic fibers, no electronics allowed inside; compressed 100% oxygen is serious combustion risk. In fact, there's a hose system to partially flood the chamber in case of fire. A tiny metal tube, pressurized, with a fire inside? Not cool.

We get all cozy, locked in nice and tight. Down to sixty feet we go (pressure-wise), sealed up for a few hours.

It wasn't so bad in the beginning. Mostly just chilling out, being mildly bored (I had forgotten to grab my book when I was arranging the emergency evac, silly me).

Your voice sounds different in there. It's the density of the air, I think. Sound travels faster, everything is more high-pitched.

After a while, you start to feel like you could really go all-the-way insane in there. You completely lose track of time, except for the doctor's voice over the ancient staticky radio telling you how many hours left. Nothing to do. No space. Sit. Lie down. Fidget. Sit up. The witty banter dies out. You need to pee. But you're stuck in the chamber. Fidget. Lie down. Sit up. You're hungry. There's no food. Lie down. Sit up. Fidget. Dust off the dried salt crystals on your legs from the morning's dive. You need a shower. Lie down. Fidget. Sit up. Try not to have a seizure. Fidget. Fidget.

On the bright side, cigarettes and beer are remarkably effective after you've been chambered. Of course, if you were actually sick when you went in, those things are forbidden, so it's a benefit reserved for tenders. Zing!

Epilogue.

The girl is still having motor function difficulties in her legs, but otherwise, she's made a decently miraculous recovery, considering there's a grocery list of reasons why she should be hanging out with Davy Jones right now. She was chambered again today for five hours; I was locked out for 24 hours, doctor's orders, so some other lucky sucker won the tender prize today. But it looks like I might be headed back in tomorrow. Doh.

And one more final note for those thinking about learning to dive: please don't let this scare you; this girl didn't have an accident. She fully intended on going that deep. She didn't tell anyone beforehand (because we would have stopped her), but it wasn't an accident (except maybe for the panicking part). I suspect some serious preexisting mental health problems or unprecedented stupidity, which I guess are the same thing. She's definitely getting a psych eval before getting discharged. Whatever, the story's about me anyway, not her. Focus!

Diving is fun and safe. Seriously.

Wish you were here making funny faces in the tiny chamber windows.

a moment on dry land

Just a quick note.

I've started working on a liveaboard yacht in Palau. It's amazing. We're out at sea for six out of seven days, and I've got about two hours off a week, but it's utterly and completely worth it. Sharks, turtles, whale sharks, mantas, crazy Superman currents (because you fly like Superman), and schools of fish so dense they blot out the sun. Ironically, I have an underwater camera now, but not enough free time to upload photos.

The ocean is so so so blue. Every beautiful shade of blue. Uninhabited rock islands coated with gorgeous lush jungle. Cruising on speed boats with the wind in your hair, a rainbow on the horizon (all the time here!), the blue ocean dotted with tiny islands as far as the eye can see, and the bright clean sun in the sky. Even when it rains, it's still amazing with the infinite drops splashing in the sea.

Come have a holiday with me. I'll be running the 150' yacht in about two months. Seriously, I'm training now to be Big Cheese.

My couple hours on dry land are nearly up, so I'm back to the ship.

Miss you terribly.

back on home base

I think I'm starting to find there's actually something to that whole road less traveled thing. Walking off into the jungle has a much higher probability of maximal awesomeness than, say, taking a tour of yet another city. Or perhaps I'm just getting southeast Asian city fatigue.

Safely back in Thailand now, with a medium-sized pile of fantastically therapeutic, mildly crazy adventures in my journal, I figured I should probably report in on the highlights, lest the highlights alone grow into a novella-length monster. Well, also, of course, to let y'all know that I got out of Cambodia without further incident, and that in fact, Vietnam went quite well. That's somewhat of an understatement, I suppose.

Canyoning is bad ass. It was me, a mate (met in Saigon), two local guides, and the mountains and the river. I promise I'm not allergic to other humans, but having nature to yourself seems a certain kind of special to me. It wasn't the fifty foot rappel down that sheer cliff face that was the best. Or the eighty foot rappel *in* the crazy waterfall (hang on to that rope with the weight of all that water beating down!). The best part of my day was the free hanging inverted (yeah, upside-down) descent into a waterfall called "The Washing Machine" because it spins you in circles. I like this sport. Not another human all day, hiking around the mountain jungles in the central highlands of Vietnam, jumping off cliffs, rappelling down waterfalls, and riding rapids like water slides. Didn't suck.

The very next day, we (the same canyoning crew) did a decently serious bike trip, around fifty miles. It took us about five hours. We started in the mountains right below the cloud line, and biked up a few miles into the clouds. We're literally riding in the clouds. It's cold; we're a mile about sea level. I'm soaked (clouds are made of water - cold water, I learn). But then we start a twenty mile downhill (continuous for twenty miles!) descent. I'm riding through mist and rain and mud in zero visibility, and then suddenly, we drop below the cloud line and everything opens up. The clouds are caressing amazing, lush mountains nestled with rolling green valleys. All the while, I'm screaming down curvy, car-commercial roads, whipping around deserted mountain cutbacks at breakneck speeds (brakes are for wusses). I must've whizzed past more than a dozen crashing waterfalls cutting paths through vivid red clay. I had to constantly remind myself to watch the road every now and then, as the scenery was so gorgeously distracting. The uphill bits later in the ride got pretty brutal, but at no point did I give up, get off, and push. In the end it was all worth it. We started on a mountain and we finished at the ocean. The South China Sea never looked more lovely than after that crazy ride.

Yep, those were pretty awesome. But. If you do one thing in all of southeast Asia, if you had only enough time to do one thing here before you died, you must, without a shimmer of doubt, kayak Halong Bay. Not some boat tour, not some luxury cruise. You must go to Hanoi (or Haiphong) and book the longest kayaking trip you can find (the longest one I found was three days and two nights). Yes, the water there is the purest, clearest deep turquoise I've ever seen. Yes, the majestic, towering limestone karsts thrusting from the sea to the sky are utterly, unequivocally stunning. But those aren't the reason to go. Those aren't the reason to kayak the bay. It's the lagoons. Here, an unadulterated excerpt straight from one day in my journal.

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March 10, 2008 - Halong Bay

I kayaked four today, each more spectacular than the last. The first one, we (you need a local guide) slipped through a meter-high archway at the base of one of the [thousands of] karsts, to find ourselves in a totally enclosed lagoon. Clear and blue, surrounded by massive, lushly coated karsts, and accessible by that small archway on the ocean. We're getting pretty close to paradise here.

Back out on the still blue sea, we paddled through a limestone tunnel maybe a hundred feet to get to the second. Eagles soaring overhead and complete silence save for the call of birds echoing off the cliffs reaching at the heavens. The unrippled, reflective water, a color that I thought only occurred in dreams.

A short cave off that lagoon took us to the next gem. A lagoon within a lagoon! Red-faced monkeys frolicked in the trees blanketing the cliffs, eating various leaves, leaping from bough to bough, and generally ignoring their brother primates gazing up at them from below.

The grand finale. From the postcard ocean, we entered a deep, dark cave. For a thousand feet, we made our way slowly and carefully through the pitch black cave (good thing I brought my flashlight), dodging jutting rocks and ducking stalactites. When the cave finally (it seemed like forever in the exhilarating black) opened out into that lagoon, that brilliant, immaculate, totally encircled pool, the beauty brought tears to my eyes. I'm serious. My eyes welled up. I couldn't speak. It was overwhelming. This unimaginable perfection, accessible only through this insane cave, only when the tides and currents are just right, it pretty much rocked my world. Hard. Then we did the cave a couple more times because it was so frickin cool.

---

So yeah, I had a decent time in Vietnam. I'm back now in Thailand regrouping and vaguely looking for a diving gig that will open a door to somewhere new. I've got leads in Mozambique in Africa, Bunaken Island in Indonesia, and Palau in Micronesia. My friends in Fiji aren't responding to my emails. Hmm. Anyway, we'll see if any of that pans out.

In the meantime, I hope you are well, and miss you ever so much.

Taking one for the team.

fate smiles on the bold

Cheeky fucking bastards. I almost want to thank them. Almost. The thieves turned in my passport to the US embassy (my first time on US soil in about six months). Hopefully, I'm picking it up tomorrow morning. Too bad I had to bribe the local police $130 to sort this crap out (at least I'm getting this bribery thing down - you know, you can actually haggle a bit with the right attitude). But whatev, after a bit of a stumble, what do you do? Get back on the damn pony.

To answer a few questions: No, they didn't have weapons (thank goodness, or things could've turned out much, *much* worse). Yes, I was somewhat, though not incomprehensibly, drunk. No, it wasn't a friendly mugging, they did actually attack first and didn't bother with the niceties of asking for my money (which I would've frickin given to them happily, stupid punks). Yes, I busted out my (albeit drunken) ninja skillz, and yes, that's why they didn't get all my valuables. I don't really condone violence, but they struck first, and by the way my knuckles look and feel, I bet they don't feel too good today. In other news, it's really hard to do shit when your hands are messed up. Fetching stuff from my pockets hurts like a bitch.

Sorry for the somewhat less-than-eloquent message this time, but I just wanted to let you all know how much I appreciated all your emails of support - seriously, it's what got me through this day. Knowing all you guys are backing me up means so indescribably much when you're this far from home. And I wanted y'all to know I'm a little shaken, but I'm shaking it off, and pushing on to Vietnam as soon as documentarily (I don't think that's really a word) possible. (I know it's a bit cliche, but those fuckers can't hold me back.) You'll have to forgive me, as Vietnam will utterly lack any visual corroboration (see: stolen camera). But I've got a new notebook, so maybe we'll have some nice pretty reports from the front again.

I'm aiming for the jungle again in the Mekong delta when I cross over to Vietnam; peace, quiet, and some immersive, enveloping nature should be just what's needed for some recharging.

Thank you all again for all the shout-outs; it means a lot, and it just makes me miss you all so much more.

Your point man on the front lines.

unexpected update

I got jumped by three guys last night. Coming home from a bar. In Phnom Penh. I'm okay, except for some scrapes and bruises and bloody knuckles from fighting them off. They made off with my camera and my passport (how annoying is that). Ironically they didn't get any money or cards. But.

But.

But, they also got away with my notebook, on which all of my (hopefully) entertaining entries have been based. That really sucks the most. The fuckers.

Well, anyway, I'm now stuck in this god-forsaken place for a few weeks while I sort out a new passport, which is more an irritation than actually difficult. Drop me an email to tell me you love me in these frustrating times.

Here is the entry I was working on before this all happened. My most recent notes have obviously been lost, so, yeah, it's vaguely incomplete.

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Cambodia is interesting, though mostly in the sense of the [supposedly] Chinese (the true origin is actually undetermined) curse, "May you live in interesting times."

For example, Khmer (the vast majority of people in Cambodia are ethnically Khmer, to the point of synonymy) traffic is barely contained chaos. There are no obvious rules of engagement. It seems to be a moment to moment negotiation between the dozen obstacles nearest you, which are often moving in two dozen different directions at wildly varying velocities. Admittedly, in most of the region, it is acceptable to drive the wrong direction on the wrong side of the road (is that a double negative? whatever, you know what I mean), but Cambodia is insane. Like when the bad guy in the high-speed Hollywood car chase gets trapped on the wrong side of the divided highway and is forced to charge headfirst (or should that be hood-ornament-first?) into oncoming traffic. Except it's not just the one guy over there going the wrong way; it's him, his entire extended family, his barber, the guy who sold him that buffalo that one time, all the people from the next village over, etc, you get the picture. And in all that empty air between all those cars swerving everywhere, add approximately one gazillion motorbikes carrying anywhere between one and five people with optional livestock (I've seen multiple live pigs on a single bike). Finally, attempt to navigate in that mechanical death soup on a bicycle (this stuff should be on X-Games). It can be exhilarating or horrifying, depending on how in control you are of your fight-or-flight response.

Wise or unwise, I hired [The Crappiest] bicycle [In The World] to brave Khmer traffic and explore the Temples of Angkor on human power, clocking fifty-something miles over three days. No permanent injuries, and I had a frickin' blast playing chicken with tour buses (I did not win often). Angkor Wat, though worth seeing for bragging rights, was underwhelming. I expected it to be bigger, grander, more, but that might be a result of over hyping. Or perhaps it was the suffocating crowds of tourists (I'm talking Times Square levels here). There were other, far more engaging ruined temples, many with no other people around at all.

Quiet, reflective, ancient. I best liked wandering around and exploring the ruins with winding, maze-like passageways and chambers that I could explore in silence and solitude. I was astounded by the sense of peace that some of these massive, millenia-old ruins instilled in me. Overall, there's a zen Indiana Jones feeling to the whole place: you're in the middle of the jungle with (hopefully) no one else about, climbing (literally) the steep, broken steps of giant stone ruins, peering down zig-zagging halls that dance with light and shadow, slipping through narrow openings into dead-end rooms only to find the way forward is a hole in the ceiling one hundred feet up. The huge, chunky, rough-hewn stone blocks, with which all these ruins are built, also lend to the adventurous feel, offering up small handholds and footholds, enticing you to scale those walls and venture deeper.

In addition to fantastic ruins, Cambodia also has an extremely well developed sense of food poisoning, more advanced than I have yet encountered on my travels. In the span of about two weeks, I was seriously ill twice (fever, chills, the works), perhaps a result of my tendency to constantly order the weirdest possible thing on the menu (kangaroo tastes like venison). (It might also be because there's a different standard of hygiene here.) I did wuss out on the big fat hairy spiders on the snack stand at that bus stop, but I had just recovered from a two day bout of digestive apocalypse that morning, and my go-go-adventure-meter was still pretty low (I know, lame excuse, blah blah). I bet my insides are collecting a nice variety of parasites.

goodbye Lao, hello Cambodia

The Mekong is a big river (my guidebook says it's the 10th largest in the world by volume). A big muddy river. Up in northern Lao where I met up with it, it carries so much silt that it no longer resembles water; it is brown and opaque. It only takes a couple boat trips on the Mekong before it starts to sink in that I'm in a totally different place now (I can barely remember where Kansas is, let alone have any illusions about being there). Whole families bathing in the river, fisherman on long boats throwing nets at dusk, small farms pushing right to the edge of the riverbank, waiting for the rains to flood their fields. And of course, the unkempt jungle in between.

Clearly, there needed to be some trekking into the jungle. I (and a mate) hired a local guide to lead us into the mountains and jungle of northern Lao. After clambering (on all fours, at times) over three mountains and fifteen miles into the jungle (and a couple swims in some fantastic mountain waterfalls), we finally stopped for a few days at a hill-tribe village. Bamboo huts on stilts with thatched roofs. Pigs and chickens and goats and the odd buffalo wandering about (get yer organic free-range right here). There was no electricity, and no running water in any usual sense of the term. It's remarkable when you find yourself without such ubiquitous things, sometimes you realize how much you really don't miss them. Going to sleep when it gets dark, and waking with the light seems so intuitive. Writing journal entries by candlelight has some kind of romantic charm. (Prehistoric charm, but charm nonetheless.)

Also, mosquito nets = awesome.

Of course, in the spirit of things, I had to try some of the villagers' daily chores, which generally involved watching someone do a chore for a bit, and then seeing if I could have a go at it whilst the villagers chatted and giggled amongst themselves at the antics of the silly inept foreigner. Interestingly enough, they didn't stop me from manhandling the construction of the grass broom or even the weaving of the thatch roof (I suspect those holes weren't actually supposed to be part of it, though they *will* think of me during the rainy season); they just seemed to offer up new fun tasks for additional comedic performances. Let me share with you this: it is very very fun to hack around in the jungle with a machete. It's also remarkably easy to chop your own leg off. Forget shooting yourself in the foot, machetes are where it's at for serious self-mutilation. I managed to emerge unscathed, save for some new and interesting blisters, but I hope they don't starve next winter because we botched up their teak field too miserably.

Over the past month (I don't know, has it been a month? I'm not really sure what day it is), I have ambled my way south along the Mekong through Lao; it is a gorgeous gorgeous country. Not a few days have been spent lazily reclining in a hammock, gazing at the picturesque river framed by giant karsts, and reading a book to the sounds of the gurgling water. I do find that I miss the ocean, after having spent so long in such close proximity. But it's not long now, as soon I'll be heading for Vietnam's expansive coastline on the South China Sea. But first, the Temples of Angkor await.

I've just crossed the border into Cambodia, and find myself in a small border town on the Mekong. The last five or so miles on the Lao side of the border is a dusty dirt road in various states of [de]construction. The three foot dips in the road were, well, entertaining; I'm glad my pack didn't fall off the roof. Lao immigration consisted of a small wooden hut on the side of the road with three guys inside. Not even a weak attempt at a gate or anything, though I'm sure they probably had automatic weapons in that hut, and that is gate enough for me. A bribe, a stamp, and it's a sweaty hike further down the dirt road through no man's land. About a hundred meters later, the Cambodian side of the border appears, which, funny enough, is a wooden hut with three guys inside. (I shouldn't be unfair: the Cambodian hut *was* on the opposite side of the road.) A couple more bribes, a sticker, a stamp, and I'm safely(?) in Cambodia, which has a phenomenal likeness to the dirt road in Lao. A little further on an exciting mix of dirt and paved roads, and voila! Civilization! Well, at least it has electricity, if not flush toilets. But hey, hopefully tomorrow night I'll be in Siem Reap, just a hike away from Angkor Wat, one of the seven or eight wonders of something or other.

I miss you all, and hope you are well. I do wonder now and then what it would be like to return to the States, to return home. How severe would the culture shock really be? Or would I just easily fall back into old patterns? Well, until we meet again, at least know that I think of you often.