Hot, Hot, Hot.

There is much to say about the past two weeks Nod and I have been in Thailand, but since I'm writing to you from Bangkok, first things first: we are melting in the heat. We are withering. If there is one enduring memory I will take from this city, it is that of the utter relief I felt whenever we found a scrap of shade or caught a whiff of breeze in the stagnant city air. Nod and I had only planned to spend 24 hours in Bangkok, eager to press beyond the big city sites for places more remote and organic in their charms. But a trip to Thailand isn't complete without a trip to such an important and iconic city, so we planned a day we hoped would include the Thai royal palace, glittering Buddhist temples, large weekend markets, and as much pad thai noodles as we could physically hold in our bellies.

Now, every day we've spent in Thailand has been warm, to be sure. The southern islands were hot and muggy, but with the ocean all around, we just floated around like hippos with our noses above water and stayed comfortably cooled as we swam. In the northern city of Chiang Mai, breezes are fresher, and afternoon rainstorms broke the worst of the afternoon sun. And, ok, full disclosure: we've booked places with air conditioning almost everywhere we've been. Backpackers, judge us all you like, but we've done our time in the heat without a/c in Egypt and Ethiopia, and at the ripe age of 28, we're feeling like we're a bit done with sleepless, hot nights.

Bangkok is challenging us on all fronts: humid, stuffy air without oceans for relief, bright afternoon sun without any cooling rain storms-- and a hostel with no air conditioning. A hostel so hot, in fact, that the deodorant I left inside the room all day completely melted. Bangkok is not messing around.

I'm smiling in this photo, but inside, I was slowly losing the will to live.

A much more accurate picture of how I spent the day: sweating, uncomfortable, and in visible pain.

Our plans for Bangkok wilted along with our bodies. We made it to the royal palace and its Buddhist temple at high noon, and decorum required us to cover our shoulders and our legs. Nod hadn't seen the memo before hand, so he had to borrow these sweet pajama pants that they have on loan for all such immodest tourists. The sweat began to run in rivers down our body almost immediately. The buildings on the palace ground are stunning-- the ground is all white marble, the buildings are covered with blue or green tiles, and everything sparkles with gold. These dazzling colors captivated our attention away from the heat during the snatches of time we could duck into shade, but the marble ground acted like a magnifying glass for the sun, burning the bottom of our bare feet and blinding us from the light. We stayed as long as we could possibly manage, until we went running for a tuk tuk and a bottle of water, stripping off our extra clothing as we went.

So much beauty, so much gold to magnify the sun...

From then on, we decided to make a game of it. Thailand, as you may know, is home to many lovely things: mango sticky rice, tropical islands, hospitable people, a rich history, elephants, monkeys that will steal your water bottle when you're not looking. But there's one treasure that we weren't expecting: 7-11 convenience stores. And these aren't knock offs, but the real, honest-to-goodness chain with slurpees and chili cheese dogs and all the rest. Now, the Walter family loves slurpees more than I can possibly describe. Slurpees were a part of every significant moment of my childhood. We had slurpees when we brought home a good report card, to celebrate birthdays, little league games, to bribe us to play tennis or clean our rooms, to commemorate family vacations or to reward good behavior. And in Thailand, 7-11s are as popular as Starbucks--a glowing orange and green sign dots every single corner in Bangkok. So to beat the heat this afternoon, we played the game: "How long can you last before ducking into 7-11 for air conditioning and water?" (We're working on a catchier name; this is just the working title).

So we hopped from 7-11 to 7-11 through Bangkok's china town, we did it all along the banks of the river, through parks and gardens, in the backpacker neighborhood of Khao San, between our trips to the roadside food stands, until we finally returned to our hostel past sundown in hopes that the temperature inside had cooled.

Sweet, sweet relief

In short, Bangkok revealed us to be big temperature babies on our last day here. Thailand 1, Wazis 0.

But apart from all our sissiness today, Thailand has been glorious. Some of our favorite days here were spent in the chill town of Chiang Mai, riding bicycles from temple to temple, sampling delicious (and fiery) northern Thai dishes, and meeting up with some friends of the family. We took a cooking class there, too, so here's hoping we can re-create some of the deliciousness we had.

Cooking Class = even more Pad Thai in my belly. Win.

Tomorrow we'll cross the border into Cambodia to take in the glories of the Angkor Wat temples and learn more about Pol Pot and the killing fields. (Nerd alert: I've been reading a history book on Cambodia this past week to give myself a crash course on their history and of the genocide, so I'll write up more as I get to see and learn more about it there. And if anyone can recommend a good book on the Vietnam war, I'd love suggestions!)

Until then-!

On Monsoons, Canadians, and Apocalypse Now

Dearest friends and loved ones,

We write to you now after a week on Thai beaches--which is to say, from paradise (if paradise is filled with mango sticky rice and Mai Tais, which I think it is). Coming from chilly fall weather in New Zealand and the rustic comforts of campervan life, I spent the first three days marveling at the tropical heat, the dramatic afternoon rains, and the simple joy of clean sheets. I should mention here that Gary and Nancy had hooked us up with a few days at a Marriott resort as a wedding present, so our introduction to Thailand was exceptionally posh, and happily so.

But the real adventures and lessons from the road were to come the moment we left the gorgeous luxury of our honeymoon resort and rejoined the ranks of backpacker travelers.

Lesson #1: travel companions
Nod and I count ourselves extremely lucky to be such great travel companions to one another. It's perhaps no coincidence that this is so--after all, our first 'dates' were in places like Jerusalem, Cairo, and outposts in the Saharan desert while we were both living abroad after college. If we weren't good travel companions, we never would have survived our first year of dating. We like to refer to this year--which included interrogations by Israeli border officials, numerous bouts of food poisoning, and countless moments of mistranslations--as our year of "team building." And indeed, team Wazi was born out of all those experiences, and more.

But while we can still enjoy passing hours together on bus rides or waiting out the rain with cards or our trusty new ukulele, one of the joys of the road is to be swept up in the current of other travelers, enjoying the moments of serendipitous connections with voyaging strangers. Last week, this connection took the form of a Canadian man, Anthony, who we met on a boat between Thai islands. Anthony embodied the image of Canadian niceness, keeping up a steady stream of friendly chatter while letting out a whistle and a "holy moly!" whenever he saw a beautiful tree, beach, flower, cloud, monkey, or bird (which is to say, often).

Anthony, the friendly Canadian

Since Anthony was traveling by himself, we adopted him as our surrogate wild uncle figure, watching him toss back an impressive number of margaritas (in the friendliest and happiest of ways) after two days of snorkeling together. It was with Anthony that we rented a local long-tail wooden boat to visit the famed Maya Cove (where "The Beach" was filmed), swim with parrot fish, and loll around in the bathtub-like turquoise waters of the Andaman sea. Nod and I would have enjoyed doing all these things ourselves, of course, but having a new friend to share our time with made it all the more memorable.

Snorkeling in Koh Phi Phi

Lesson #2: it rains, stupid.

So in planning the outline of our trip through SE Asia, we knew that we would be racing the clock--and the weather--to travel before the worst of rainy season hit. Now, as natives of temperate climates, Nod and I had only a vague notion of what rainy season means, but I'm pretty sure I pictured streets flooded with swirling, muddy waters and cows floating away in the currents. In actuality, so far it has only meant an afternoon rainstorm. Given that temperatures have reached the 90s most days, the rains offer welcome relief from the heat and provide a good excuse to siesta (as if excuses were needed).

Despite all this planning and thinking about how to avoid the worst of the monsoons, however, Nod and I actually did very little to, you know, actually prepare to get wet. I mean, how would you prepare for a monsoon? The word itself seemed too foreign to calculate in practical terms. So while we each packed a raincoat, we have nothing to protect our packs, nothing to keep our clothes dry, and I thought it would be a great idea to keep my computer and valuables in a leather messenger bag as we travelled. At no point did we consider that it might be a bad idea to board a leaky wooden boat in the middle of the afternoon with all our possessions on board.

Great weather for a boat ride... I mean, right?

In fact, the rain had already decided to pour before we even managed to get on board. Only 8 passengers could fit on board the tiny boat, and all of us, Thai and foreigner alike, we're already soaked to the bone. We wrapped a beach towel over our camera and computer, pretending this did any good, and began sloshing across the sea to the beachside town of Railay. Railay is actually on the mainland of Thailand, but it has the charming distinction of having no roads, so boat is the only way to access it. As we were to discover, Railay has the slightly less charming distinction of having an immensely shallow shore. Since we were arriving at low tide, our boat could only get within 200 yards of shore before it grounded on the shallow bottom. The only way to get there now was to carry our bags and wade to shore, a little too reminiscent of wading rice paddies in wartime photos. The water itself was 85 degrees, so it felt--not unfavorably--like walking through a kiddie pool fully clothed. I couldn't have been more pleased.

Apocalypse Wazi from Nodair Razi on Vimeo.

And now we're bidding the fondest farewell to beach life. Tomorrow we'll wade out to the same wooden boat (fingers crossed for no rain) and later board a flight to the northern city of Chiang Mai, known for its temples, cooking classes, and elephants. I'm elated already.

Until next time-!

Marriage in a Campervan

So as you could probably imagine, driving through New Zealand for two weeks in a rented campervan was one part backpacker adventure, one part road trip of a lifetime, and one part marriage boot camp. 

Now, admittedly, I'm not one to study up on travel guides--it's too much information to take in all at once, so I usually get tired of reading and toss the guides aside to watch "Girls" on HBO instead. Nod is more patient at planning out the big picture of our trips, and had been reading the New Zealand lonely planet guide ferociously. Nod and I have travelled a lot together--nine countries so far in the four years we've been together--so I trusted his planning and his judgment, and figured I could join in planning the details as we went along.

By the time we arrived in Christchurch two weeks ago, however, I hadn't so much as opened a map yet. If someone had told me to pack my sunscreen for a trek across the New Zealand desert, I might have believed them. The towns, which often have Maori names, got jumbled together in my head--was it Tekapo or Kaikoura or Wanaka that was next on our itinerary? I knew that we would see sheep, but was otherwise fairly clueless about what was in store.

Unbeknownst to me, Nod had been carefully mapping out hikes and treks and climbs through three different mountain ranges in New Zealand's South Island, so happy to see snow-capped mountains after a summer in Sydney and even longer in the flatlands of Washington, DC. It wasn't until the fourth day of strapping on our hiking boots and massaging sore calf muscles that I thought to ask if we were going to be hiking every single day of our vacation. In fact, that was the plan. My blisters protested and the rain clouds intervened, however, so that we ended up spending half of our time atop majestic peaks or by turquoise alpine lakes, and half of the time squealing at adorable wildlife in the lowlands (most of the squealing by yours truly, but don't let Nod tell you otherwise--he loves baby lamb faces, too).

Queenstown, hike #3 of our Trip

Would-be hike #4 of our trip: Mt. Cook. Unfortunately, the weather was too bad to do this overnight climb, so we settled for a little jaunt to a mountain lake and back down again.

Roy's Peak by Lake Wanaka, hike #6 of our trip

Stretching tired muscles after hike #8 in two weeks - but what a beautiful country to be sore in! 

It is also the case that it has been a long held dream of mine to be a kayaker. This comes at the end of a long list of career aspirations. When I was young, I dreamt of being an archeologist of Native American artifacts, or perhaps a Subway Sandwich Artist. When I was a little older, I discovered that working at a Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop is, in fact, the greatest job ever, but I supposed that Secretary of State might also be a good job title. Today, I still dream of working as a sheep farmer or opening my own cafe/bed and breakfast/hair salon, but I'm still on track to be an historian of the modern Middle East. To this title, I hope to add: amateur kayaker and slam poet. I'm still working on reviving my slam poetry career, but New Zealand provided a real chance to make gains on the kayaking front. The only problem? I had never really kayaked before. But never mind. I have wanted it so clearly and for so long, I was sure I would take to it naturally. The kayak guide might even offer me a job before I was finished.

My big chance came at Milford Sound, where giant green peaks rise straight out of the ocean, reaching breathtaking heights. Forests cling to the rock face, creating an improbable forest inlet where waterfalls spring to life whenever it rains, cascading water into the sound with such force that it can uproot the precarious trees. Jade stone sparkles in the rocks. It's an incredible watery world, and, I hoped, it could be the start of my kayaking career. Nod agreed to go along, less out of any love of kayaking than for the reason that there weren't any alpine views to be had in the sound anyway--you have to see it on the water, whether by kayak or cruise boat.

Beautiful Milford Sound

The experience was saltier and more blustery than I had imagined, but no less magical. True, we did look a bit silly putting on the kayaking company's standard issue striped long johns, and there really is no good way to wear the splash skirts that strap around your chest to seal you into the kayak nice and dryly. 

Milford Sound is notorious for bad weather-- it rains more than 18 feet per year, and the winds can be so strong that tornados form on the water. We managed to paddle out on a day without rain, but the headwind was stiff and my arms felt sluggish after a few hours. It was not the athletic debut I had hoped for. But all was redeemed when we discovered that a fur seal was swimming alongside us! It rolled in the water and waved its fins, oblivious or indifferent that he was only a few feet away. Not to lose my cool in front of the other kayakers, I did my best to squeal under my breath. Hard to do, in retrospect.

LOVE. I think he feels it, too. (This is actually footage from an even more recent seal sighting just two days ago. TWO seal sightings in one week! How could a girl be so lucky?)

But so New Zealand was a magnificent trip all around: snow covered peaks, sheep-filled meadows, starry night skies, sparkling alpine lakes, and a new career launched as a wildlife sea kayaker.

Now we've packed our bags, turned in the keys of our stalwart campervan, shipped home our warm jackets, and headed to the airport. I secretly love the feeling of waiting at the airport-- possessions stripped down to what you can carry, and so many places to go. Tonight we'll head back to Australia for just one day in the artsy, seaside city of Melbourne. And from there- our adventure in SE Asia will begin!

Until then--!

Farewell to Sydney, we're off to NZ!

Dearest friends and loved ones—

Well, we’ve done it. Nod—ahem, Dr. Razi—is officially finished with physical therapy school after completing a 14-week internship in Sydney. We bid the fondest farewell to our adopted home, sad a sad goodbye over one last dinner together with our beloved housemate Alison, packed our enormously oversized bags (ok—we packed Nod’s reasonably sized bag and my behemoth bone-crushing sized pack), and set off for our grand two-month journey through New Zealand and SE Asia. 

Nod keeping watch over his modestly sized packs while waiting to be picked up from the airport

It's hard to smile when your pack weighs 60 lbs.

The last month we spent in Australia was some of the most special time we spent down under. My sister Lauren and her friend Kendall flew all the way to Sydney for their spring break, giving us the chance to play host and tourist all at once, and guaranteeing that they would make all of their friends completely jealous. Determined to pack in as much as we could into their 9-day stay, we all managed to:

• ·      swim with a sea turtle in the great barrier reef
• take a thousand cheesy photos in front of iconic Sydney sites
• ·      share with Lauren and Kendall all the glories of lawn bowling
• ·      eat our collective body weights in Australia’s delicious Tim-Tam cookies
• Introduce our Australian housemates to scrumptious American s'mores

Roasting s'mores with H. and Ms. A. 

We were so lucky to be able to spend time with these girls—it was amazing. Sadly, though, we knew that their visit was to mark the beginning of the end of our stay in Sydney—Lauren and Kendall left only two weeks before our own departure.

The end of our time passed by in a blur. There was the remaining site-seeing to be done: visiting the Koalas, Emus, and terrifyingly muscular Kangaroos at the Taronga zoo.

Terrifying

Nod had bittersweet goodbyes to say to his coworkers, who had become a close-knit family during their long days together treating patients.

I spent my remaining time frantically cramming French grammar lessons and re-visiting all of my favorite coffee shops in Newtown (the winner: Corelli’s, with its ricotta honey toast and soy dandelion lattes). 

I also have a completely non-morbid appreciation for old cemeteries (think history major, not True Blood). Sydney has some amazing ones. There’s the old cemetery on majestic sea cliffs by Bondi Beach, with the dearly departed pointed toward the horizon on $10 billion property. My favorite cemetery, though is nestled behind an old Anglican church in Newtown. The church has been restored and cared for over the years by a lively congregation, but the cemetery has been allowed to crumble in a sort of pleasant way—tombstones all awry and at obtuse angles in the afternoon sun, the graves’ writing completely worn away. The neighborhood uses it respectfully as an odd little park, a place to take an after-work stroll or play with the dog. The cemetery has a few famous residents—the first mayor of Sydney, for one. But the cemetery also has the woman rumored to have inspired the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, which is what sent me out to the graveyard with Nod’s camera in tow.

That wasn’t the end of our odd run-ins in Sydney, in fact. After Lauren and Kendall reluctantly returned to America, Nod and I spent Easter weekend in the Blue Mountains, just two hours outside of Sydney.  It was a rare two days of vacation for Nod and our last chance to gather our thoughts and reflect on our time down under before we plunged into our final week in Sydney. Looking for a place that could act as a reflective retreat, we were lucky to find this gorgeously constructed treehouse in the middle of the Blue Mountains’ eucalyptus groves. The family who built this treehouse lived on the other side of the property, in a gorgeous southwest-style home that could have belonged to Georgia O’Keefe. Wallabyes nibbled at their lawn in the misty morning hours, and brightly colored lorakeets chattered in the tree branches. The moment we arrived, I immediately booked the treehouse for a second night. Really, I was actually just ready to move in permanently.

Inside our treehouse

We spent our first day hiking through the lush canyons, through the canopy of the eucalyptus trees to the breathtaking waterfalls below, listening to the calls of the peacock-like lyre birds calling through the trees, photographing the stars at night. One of our hikes took us far from our house, though. Rather than re-trace our steps our hosts offered to pick us up. The father of the family picked us up. He was charming—he had a mop of white hair, focused eyes, and an absolutely terrible sense of time (when asked when he had built the treehouse, he replied “Oh, that would have been back in the ‘70s. Or maybe in the ‘90s.”) When we asked him what he did, he coyly responded that he was a writer, and that the treehouse had been his writing studio when his children were young. And what did he write? “Oh,” he said. “Just a little of this and that. I used to live in London. Let’s just say that Salman Rushdie really enjoyed staying at that treehouse, too.”

At this point, my jaw hit the floor. Too polite to ask our host who he was exactly, since we only knew that his first name was Richard, the mystery squirmed inside me until we could get back to Sydney.

It turns out that our host was Richard Neville—little-known outside Australia, but a major figure for Australians who had grown up near the counter-culture movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Neville was one of three Australians charged with obscenity for publishing unflattering political satire in their offbeat journal, The Oz. The case went all the way up to Australia’s Supreme Court, where the charges were eventually thrown out and the freedom of speech was definitively confirmed. In the movie version of his life, Richard Neville was played by Hugh Grant. And I rode in the back of his jeep with my muddy hiking boots.

There was one final coincidence to be had with Richard.  When we returned to Sydney, I had been breathless with excitement in unraveling the clues about our host’s background (this being second only to the time when I found “June 18, 1984: I set her free. Now she is happy” scribbled under the desk in my rented room in Newtown). As I scoured the internet for more facts about Richard, I saw that he co-wrote a book about a 1970s serial killer named Sobhraj with a woman named Julie Clarke. The very next day, I walked by the used bookstore next to my house and a book propped in the store window caught my eye. It was Richard Neville’s book! Looking at the book jacket, I saw that Julie Clarke was none other than his wife Julia, who had looked after us during our stay in her treehouse. Mind. Blown. Of course, I bought the book immediately and read it all in one sitting (note for the future: reading a book about a serial killer for an entire day is kind of unsettling; I wouldn’t recommend it). The book itself was really well-written and gripping, though.

So there you have it: Richard Neville and I, bonded for life. (Not really, of course. But now I’ll totally win in the “Six Degrees of Separation” game if I ever need to find a link with Salman Rushdie).

Of course, I realize that I haven’t even gotten to the biggest news of the day: Nod and I are in New Zealand! We’ve been touring the mountains of the South Island in a campervan for the past 4 days.

In fact, I’m writing to you now in the soft, red glow of our budget RV (the drapes are red, the reading lights are in Amsterdam red).  We totally have campervan envy. It turns out that there’s a pecking order in the world of motorhome travel, which is a really popular way to tour NZ. The Maui company has a fleet of posh BMW campervans, complete with ladders to the upstairs loft bed, ensuite showers and toilets, and nicer cooking ranges than your home kitchen. Apollo and Britz are just a step below, with VW engines, spacious living rooms, and these handy little awnings that you can pop out to protect you from the sun while you’re enjoying a roadside picnic. I’m not sure what manufacturer originally made our mighty little van, but with over 200,000 miles on the odometer, I’m not sure it really matters anymore.  Rather than a cute little house door to welcome you inside to our living area, we just have a sliding van door—the kind you have to heave with all your body weight to overcome the rusted hinges. The two long benches that line the inside of our “living room” double as storage units and transform Tetris-style into a bed when you rearrange the jigsaw-style cushions. The problem is that the bench cushions long ago lost the Velcro that kept them in place, so our entire living room goes flying whenever we make a sharp swerve (usually to avoid a wandering sheep).

Our mighty campervan!

Another thing I’ve learned: New Zealand has a population of only 4.4 million. That’s it! And one in three of them live in Auckland, up in the north island. I’m not sure how many people live in the South Island, but based on what we’ve seen, I would estimate that there are approximately 485 sheep to every person, which is a kind of paradise for me to be around so many sheep. I haven’t convinced any to jump into my arms yet or to sit with me in our campervan while I strum the ukulele, but we have a few more days to try to work my sheep whisperer magic.

Speaking of the ukulele, it’s been going great. I know only four or five chords, but the beauty of pop music is that this is sufficient to play all of Jack Johnson, most of Adele, a healthy sampling of Beatles music, Rufus Wainwright, and Lady Gaga a la ukulele. Bad romance never sounded so good. Nod, who had to listen to me playing “Rolling in the Deep” while he was driving down windy mountain passes on the left side of the road, might have a slightly different perspective on how my ukulele is progressing.

That’s it for now—we’ll have lots more to report soon, and even more photos to post. Until then!

Some Bonus photos from the past few days: