it is traveling time again!

for the next month my dear friend, ariel borden-deal, and i will be traveling in southeast asia.  it will be my first international trip in almost two years, and i am really ready to see asia again.  our plan is to visit four countries: thailand, vietnam, cambodia, and laos.  i am not sure if we will end up getting to all four or not.  we’ve done very little planning and so we are free to stay anywhere as long as we like.  this, to me, is one of the best parts of traveling. 

with that said, we have talked about hitting the beaches in thailand, cambodia and vietnam.  i want to go snorkeling.  we’d also like to see the temples of angkor wat in cambodia and i really want to see halong bay in northern vietnam.  halong bay is pretty close to the rail link into china.  sadly, we aren’t able to include china on this trip (with the olympics in august, chinese visas have become difficult to get and expensive) and i am a little reluctant to go so close to the border.  i’ll want to run across like crazy and hop a train to wuhan, but i’ll have to restrain myself!

my greatest interest on this trip is the mekong river.  as we travel the region we’ll cross over the river many times.  i am fascinated by river systems and loved living on the yangtze in central china.  the mekong starts in the tibetan plateau and flows for 2700 miles before entering the south china sea.  i’ve heard we may be able to see river dolphins in laos and cambodia, and if we are really lucky there is the rare siamese crocodile and manatees!  i never got to see the river dolphins in china.  they were believed to be extinct in the yangtze but there have been recent reports of a sighting. 

the mekong flows from the tibetan plateau through yunnan province in china before heading into burma, thailand, laos, cambodia and vietnam.  occasionally the river acts as the border between the countries.  my great interest comes from the international cooperation necessary to manage such a resource and use it sustainably.  i read that over 90 million people rely on the river for food (the mekong is famous for HUGE catfish) and irrigation waters for rice paddies. with lasting peace and stability, the countries of southeast asia are developing economically and demands on the mekong grow.  the river is increasingly polluted by the use of pesticides and industrial waste.  china has built a number of hydroelectric dams on the river and has more planned.  while these dams and the electricity they produce benefit many chinese people (even outside of the mekong watershed), the impact of their existence is felt downriver.  other dams exist along the river south of china and more are planned as demand for electricity grows.   dams are traumatic to the environment of a river, many species do not survive their construction and existence.  in addition to these problems, the mekong river delta relies on annual floods.  when the floods come, sediment brought downstream replaces the land lost through natural erosion.  the sediment is also rich in nutrients and therefore important to agriculture in the delta.  other practices are changing the flow of the mekong as well. traditionally, the river was shallow with many rapids and difficult to navigate.  to increase navigability and therefore trade, rapids along the length of the river are being blasted.  all of the development and modifications to the river’s natural flow effect the people living on or near the river, both positively and negatively.  yay for this opportunity to see the mekong!        

i’d better stop there for now.  i am visiting my sister and her two kids in san diego and we are off to the beach!  tomorrow, ariel and i meet at the l.a. airport and our flight leaves for bangkok tomorrow afternoon.  next time i check in, we will be sweating in thailand!