Old World Ways

Despite years of Spanish influence followed by the rapid changes of modernization, Guatemala’s indigenous population has maintained a strong grip on their traditions. Ever-present in their vibrant choice of clothes, their food, medicine, and religious practices are no less strong. However, when it comes to religion, there is a definite blending of two strong cultures: Catholic and Mayan.

During our stay in the Highland town of Quetzaltenango (commonly known by its Mayan tag, Xela), we were lucky enough to make a day trip to the tiny hillside town of San Andrés Xecul. More fortunate still, we happened to arrive on the day of the town festival, where a marketplace, a fair, and a massive religious buffet swirled together riotously.

It is common in Latin American countries for each city, no matter how small, to have an annual festival, typically lasting a day or two and celebrating the city’s patron saint. San Andrés Xecul is no different on these counts, its patron saint being Saint Andrew the Apostle, whose feast day is November 30^th.

San Andrés Xecul is known primarily for its church, a multicolored Mayan-Catholic-Christian affair, covered in vivid depictions of saints, animals, and agricultural motifs on a bright yellow façade. Inside, neon lights and painted Jesus statues abound. In a country (and faith) of silent, stony cathedral faces with their solemn images, this church is as loud and flashy as they come.

Multihued flags waved over the square in front of their yellow church, a crowd gathered to watch traditional masked dancers. Assorted animals mingled with what we can only assume are conquistadors as they prance about to the music pouring over the audience. Without knowing the meaning of the dance, or possessing adequate Spanish skills to ask, the display was perplexing and delightful.

Corn basked in rooftop sun. Thread of red and blue, green and black, swayed in the breeze, drying, waiting to be crafted into blankets and cloth. Meats and baked goods tempted passersby, rich and sweet. Trinkets and toys waited to be won at carnival games. Old women, skin wrinkled from years of sun, displayed big gummy grins full of gaps. Babies, strapped to the backs of their mothers, napped in the midday heat, happy in their personal hammocks.

And we, as lone tourists, tried to take it all in – the colors, the cacophony, the barrage of scents and sights – all the wonders of Mayan culture colliding with the modern and holding its ground, sharing the limelight.

Contrasting Colors

Though teeming with tourists, Antigua is one of Guatemala’s more picturesque towns. Once a grand capital of Spanish colonialism in Central America, today Antigua’s restored glory mostly benefits the tourism sector and the tourists it serves.

That being said, it is a wonderful place to while away a day or two, and hunker down under a blanket or two at night. Ringed with volcanoes, crisscrossed with cobblestone streets, and smattered with churches and cathedrals, Antigua is brimming with photo opportunities and steeped in history.

Massive ruins of once great churches destroyed by earthquakes punctuate Antigua, a glimpse into the Spaniards’ reasoning behind abandoning the city and moving the capital to modern-day Guatemala City. Ruins rest alongside newer cathedrals, past and present hand in hand.

Throughout the city, local indigenous Mayans in native dress, colorful and hand-woven, pedal goods to tourists. Baskets effortlessly balanced atop their heads, they offer everything from fruit to jewelry, stopping here and there in the shade to rest.

And, as in many towns across the world, the real commerce takes place not in stores, shops, or through street vendors, but in the local market. A sweaty, hectic labyrinth, aisles of the market weave and intersect, leading one onward. From shoes, live chickens, and fake flowers to shampoo, produce, or raw meat, all necessities are available at a price. Hawkers call out their wares, voices mingling repetitive calls like so many birds.

The market sits in stark contrast to Antigua’s artesian market, with its wide, clean aisles of stall upon stall of similar goods. The artesian market is a place of tranquility, a sudden silence, shut off from the chaos of the market next door. Souvenirs and trinkets in vibrant hues are pushed at tourists, t-shirts and purses, hammocks and toys.

It is this that strikes me most about Antigua: its contradictory natures coexisting side by side. It is Burger King in a colonial-style building, an ancient church facade in front of a modern structure. The old and the new mingle. The genuine and the artificial mix. In Antigua, the modern dress and the indigenous garb walk down the same streets, harmonizing beautifully. 

So Long and Thanks for All the Arepas

For our final Colombian destination, we chose Cartagena. After two months of calling Colombia home, a much shorter time than anticipated due to some very unexpected changes in our plans, we were down to our last couple of days.

Cartagena oozes old world colonial charm. Buildings, facades crumbling and faded, repainted in vibrant hues, wind along narrow streets throughout the old quarter of town, a UNESCO World Heritage gem. The walled old city, surrounded by the coralstone protection of once-great fortress walls, maintains an air of Spanish colonialism infused with a taste of the Caribbean.

We roamed the city, took in the sights and the history. We indulged in our final Colombian arepas, corn-flour pancakes essential in the local diet, piled high with cheese and eggs. We sipped on juice made from local fruits. 

Church-studded, flavored with diverse history, Cartagena makes for a beautiful place to laze about, stroll around, and generally take in bit by bit. Scorching heat, high humidity, and a perplexing lack of water (of our three days in Cartagena, we only had water for a day), and heavy afternoon showers drove us into the hostel’s shady patio for much of the time.

Maybe not ideal by most postcard holiday standards (I certainly could have used another shower or two), but Cartagena served as a lovely sendoff in its own right, a beautiful goodbye to Colombia. And it gave us a bit of calm before our Central American whirlwind tour

Rewind: Christmas in Laos

Christmas 2010, Win and I were given an incredible, unexpected gift: a week off from teaching, contingent on our doing a “visa run” to Laos. Your typical visa run involves going to a Thai consulate in another country with a massive envelope of paperwork (Laos, apparently on best consular terms with Thailand, is the country of choice among teachers), waiting x number of days, and going back to Thailand with a Non-Immigrant B visa in-hand. However, having decided to get yearlong multiple entry visas, our visa run was a cake walk: leave Thailand, see another country, come back to Thailand and get a new 3-month entry stamp. So to Laos we went.

Twelve hours on a train, an hour waiting around at the border crossing, and a single sign telling drivers to start driving on the right, and we were in Laos. Flat, dry, and rundown, Laos’ capital city of Vientiane made for a lackluster first impression. Buildings, storefronts, even the stray cats, everything was sparse, dismal.

Aside from the presence of a bowling alley and the city signage having French flair – a trait that carried over to street, restaurant, and hotel names – Vientiane was very much like a small Thai city. The manner and language were similar; the architecture and tuk-tuk drivers much the same; there were the same orange-robed monks, the same women hiding from the sun beneath umbrellas, the same stray dogs rummaging through garbage. We navigated the city on foot, walked its streets, saw its museums. We ate its food, drank its beer, and spent its devalued kip (worth so little, I was withdrawing a million kip from ATMs the whole time, which was bizarrely satisfying in its own right).

After a day and a half, in what would turn out to be a moment of poorly executed planning, we boarded a bus to head into the heart of northern Laos.

Having been told that there wasn’t a bus leaving for Luang Prabang until evening, we were surprised when the ticket seller told us a bus would be leaving at 4 pm. As we stowed our backpacks and climbed aboard, it seemed a positive turn of events, catching a bus right as we arrived at the station. As the passengers were finding seats, the driver and some helpful hands started filling the aisle with packages, copious amounts of luggage, bags of rice, and all manner of freight, including three pieces of PVC piping, a foot in diameter and at least 12-feet long. In order to reach our seats, we now had to clamber and balance our way over piping, walking along armrests at times.

And so we set out, luggage shifting precariously in the aisle, Lao karaoke blaring and crackling from the speakers. Up and around steep, jutting hills, through luscious jungle foliage, encroaching thick and dark along the roadside, pushing its way toward the bus windows. As mid-afternoon gave way to evening, we passed through meager villages, clusters of single-room homes, many without furniture or front doors. The countryside wore its poverty openly. Bonfires served as stoves, simple elevated bamboo platforms as beds, possessions were few. Late into the night, long after the small village clusters went to sleep, the bus lumbered jerkily along half-finished roads, karaoke still blaring.

After twelve cramped hours, we arrived in Luang Prabang at 4 am. The whole town, all guesthouses and hotels, was sound asleep. We tried knocking on doors, calling phones, checking to see if anything was unlocked, all to no avail. So, we sat down somewhere well-lit to read and nap and waited for Luang Prabang to rub the sleep from its eyes.

Ill-timed though it may have been, our 4 am arrival had two unexpected benefits. First, as the sun started to peek over the mountains and the town stirred to life, we got to start our day off with fresh fruit-filled crepes, a treat one would be hard-pressed to find in Thailand. Also, we got to witness Luang Prabang’s famed procession of monks, numbering into the hundreds, lining the streets every morning bowl-in-hand, going from storefront to doorway, collecting alms, something many tourists wake early to see.

After schlepping around and scoffing at prices (“Only 40 US dollars a night”), we finally found a place to bed down for several days. It was a dank little hole of a room next to the guesthouse kitchen, but it was affordable. Luckily, as we discovered after napping well into the day, Luang Prabang was a lovely town, giving us little reason to spend excess time in our room.

Nestled between the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers, The Unesco World Heritage city of Luang Prabang sits high above the flowing waters on its hilltop peninsula. It was my first tryst with a World Heritage City, a first fling that would, unbeknownst to me at the time, turn into a travel love affair.

Roaming around town, the architecture is awash in French colonial remnants; beautiful balconies, wooden shuttered windows, massive homes mixed in with smaller, more Southeast Asian structures. Cafes, baguettes, creperies, Luang Prabang embraced its heritage as part of the French colony Indochine, using it as a tourist selling point surely, but also full of genuine relics of its past.

French remains Laos’ dominant second language (though it is being steadily overtaken by English), and to hear the Laos (plural of Lao, referring to the people of Laos) speak French was a surreal experience. There was none of the harsh, nasally, pretentious quality that you get when listening to French or other Europeans speak; instead, the words were tranquil, a calm, steady flow, all rounded edges and curved letters. It was delightful to listen to, as if the Laos spoke French as it was intended, a beautiful, delicate language.

Mixed in with its French heritage, an abundance of Buddhist temples stood their ground, solidly announcing Luang Prabang’s Buddhism. Although, with the highest number of Buddhist monks per capita (a statistic I might be making up, but there were certainly an impressive number of monks), the predominance of Buddhism in the area announces itself. Everywhere we walked, groupings of orange-robed monks, from small male children to wrinkled elderly men, meandered along the streets. In all of Thailand, never had I seen so many monks, especially child monks, all in one place.

Despite the attempts around town to appear more festive, garland and lights and trees appearing in large numbers, it wasn’t a particularly Christmasy Christmas. And, with near-tropical temperatures, it certainly wasn’t a white Christmas (although I don’t know that Southeast Asians would know what to do with themselves if it ever did snow).

In fact, we spent Christmas Day flying back to Bangkok through Luang Prabang’s ‘International Airport’ (a building so small it resembled a bus station more than an airport). The flight was my Christmas present to us, a way of avoiding 24 hours on buses and trains. Buying airline tickets also gave us time enough to spend three days soaking in Luang Prabang: enjoying its dichotomous culture, eating French, Lao, and French-Lao food (I even ate some buffalo), and most of all, just relaxing, reading, and relaxing some more. 

Markets of Thailand: Student Market

Like many countries, a vast portion of Thailand’s economy revolves around consumerism. With the abundance of shops, restaurants, markets (street, night, produce, floating), and even stores selling nothing but temple-sized Buddha statues, Thais earn a living (or at least a supplemental income) selling goods to tourists and their fellow Thais.

Since it is such a big part of Thai adulthood, the schools (or at least the two where we have taught) allow students to host a market for their teachers and fellow classmates once a year. Everything is either student-made or student-cooked (possibly student-purchased instead). The kids practice at playing vendors and merchants, and I’m sure they don’t mind missing a half-day of classes.

Last year, while teaching at Benchamarachutit in Ratchaburi, the students had a market with an environmental theme. Old bottles had been turned into lamps, flowers and animals; pictures and decorations were made from re-purposed straws; hats had been made from braided banana leaves and old soda bottles. There was a full traditional Thai band, complete with a massive bamboo organ. And the best part, they were all so excited that foreigners had showed up, they kept giving us things for free, refusing to take our money.

At C.V.K.’s 2011 Student Market, the fare was simple. Students made pressed sandwiches, cookies, cakes, ice cream sundaes, milk shakes, meat on a stick and various fried foods (although the deep frier did require teacher supervision). There were also keychains, bows, comic books, and burned copies of movies.

Over the course of an hour and a half hanging around with my students, I sampled an array of foods, tasty and not-so-great. I was talked into eating something with a consistency somewhere between Jello and gummy bears, full of pieces of corn and topped with coconut, I tipped my older students in (useless) half baht coins, and students kept trying to sell me their used Thai comic books knowing that I can’t read Thai. The highlight: when the kindergarteners were paraded across the street to spend what little baht they had; even the middle-schoolers, so tough, cool and above it all, thought it was adorable.

The food might not have been the best, and many of their goods were overpriced (let’s hope that they were raising money for some school function), but it was a nice experience. Not only was it fun to spend time with them outside of class, mixing English, Thai and a boatload of miming to form a conversation, but it was lovely to see some of the quieter kids out in full bloom, vying for the best compliments from Teacher.

Markets of Thailand: Floating Market

Thailand’s most popular floating market, Damneon Saduak, is in Ratchaburi province, roughly an hour plus from where we lived last semester. A floating market, is exactly the same as many street markets in terms of goods and wares for sale, just instead of walking you are in a boat, so there is the added danger of capsizing. This token difference turns Damneon Saduak into a giant tourist magnet. 

Due to the throngs of tourists, Damneon Saduak can be incredibly expensive. As is the case with many tourist areas in Thailand (and, honestly, everywhere in the world), the locals view it as a lucrative opportunity for overcharging foreigners. From the bus ride to renting a boat and someone to control the boat to buying anything vendors are selling, everything is a chance to rip off a tourist, tacking on anywhere from 20 to 400 baht more than the price should be. We were lucky enough to be traveling with P’Gee (our Thai mother), so we had to deal with less of the hassle. One of her former students was even a police officer at the market, so our boat ride (normally the most expensive part) was on the house.

Two types of boats cruise the river: longtail boats with their lawnmower engines extended dangerously far into the water and clouds of putrid black smoke; and slow boats, equally long, but motorless (so without the speed, but also the noise, sounds, and danger) and relying instead on a Thai to paddle down the river. The whole river is such a traffic jam that speed matters very little anyhow, so we opted for a quiet, leisurely ride in one of the slow boats.  

Amid the chaos, shop owners wield a long stick outfitted with a hook to catch their prey. Show any interest and your boat will be singled out. The shopkeeper uses the hook to pull the boat over to the riverside stand and hold it captive while he or she tries to sell things for hiked up prices. 

 

By mid-morning, as the sun starts to hover overhead, the floating market heats up considerably. As sun protection, many of the boats keep a full stock of big floppy hats. And as you float up and down the river, there is no shortage of cold beer, water or chilled fruit. Boats bump and knock together, jolting tourists and vendors alike, as everyone jostles to inch forward. 

While there were a couple of shady, quiet stretches of water away from the crowd, our overall impression wasn't entirely positive. Hectic, frenzied and expensive, not to mention inconveniently located, Damneon Saduak isn’t somewhere I would choose to go again. But, thanks to the presence of an experienced Thai who kept the swindlers at bay, it wasn’t the worst day trip.