Some of you may remem­ber the Gibbon Experience from pre­vi­ous posts on the blog.

The Gibbon Experience is a con­ser­va­tion project in north­west­ern Laos based on eco-tourism. Apparently the local people were hunting the gibbons to extinc­tion before a con­ser­va­tion group helped them to trans­form that life­style into sus­tain­able project.

Tourists who pay for a chance to visit the Bokeo Nature Preserve also get to sleep in tree houses con­nec­ted by a remark­able zip line network. We went for three days and had a fant­astic time.

The project is set up to employ as many locals as pos­sible so as to spread the rel­at­ive wealth. Although some of the trekking was a bit arduous in the humid jungle, the whole exper­i­ence was fant­astic. Check it out if you’re heading to Laos.

http://www.gibbonexperience.org/

The music in this is by Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Mangan.

http://www.danmanganmusic.com/

The video was edited together quickly using iMovie. Please excuse some of the poor quality shots. This thing was filmed with a small Canon point-and-shoot camera in the sweaty jungle. We were far more con­cerned with having a good time than getting award-winning cinematography.

When I got the invit­a­tion to the Purple Party, I asked the same ques­tion you’re prob­ably think­ing, “What the hell is a purple party?” It’s quite simply actu­ally. The name is telling you exactly what it is. It’s a party where every­one wears as much purple as they can.  Then of course all the dec­or­a­tions, drinks and food will be purple as well. In this case, Abby, the host loves purple so the decor of the appart­ment is actu­ally what inspired the theme of the party. Unfortunately this evening I was more inter­ested in talking and drink­ing then doc­u­ment­ing the decor. However, I did manage to catch a couple shots of some of the lovely purple people that atten­ded.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Daily Notes
Pizza lunch for two: 57,000 rials (~$5.70)
($1 US = 10,034 rials)
Bus from Quazvin to Tehran for two: 30,000 rials (~$3.00)

Chris and I got an expens­ive hotel last night for $66.00. We needed a little western feeling to re-coop and collect ourselves. We had Internet and BBC in the hotel room. It was glorious.

Today we decided to head for Tehran and skip the excur­sion to the Valley of the Castles. We didn’t have it in us to take a taxi on a winding moun­tain road for 110 kilo­met­ers and them be stuck in a small town. So here I am sitting on a rather hot, packed-full bus bumping along the highway to Tehran.

Northwestern Iran land­scape, some­where between Tabriz and Zanjan.

Hordes of young Iranians were gathered at the bus station. We had to push our way through the crowd to make sure we didn’t keep getting squeezed to the back of the line. A young man who helped us find the right bus to get from Qazvin to Tehran, was already on the bus. Chris and I were unsure about pushing and elbow­ing too much because we didn’t want to insult anyone. We slightly widened our stance, to keep from being pushed over as we stared long­ingly at the door of the bus. Seats were running out fast and this was already the second bus in the matter of a few minutes to fill up to the brim. What if the third bus to Tehran didn’t come for a while....or hours? This thought alone made me push and elbow a little more than usual. The heat of the day was hightened by the exhaust of the bus and my head­scarf and hot, con­ser­vat­ive cloth­ing put me into a bit of “sur­vival of the fittest” mode. Chris and I were going to get on that bus.

Suddenly, the man who helped us find the bus called out and waved. We pushed by a handful of people to get on. The man had saved us two seats. Relief and thank­ful­ness swept over me. As we scooted into the dusty, sand crusted, torn seats, I heard him gig­gling and taking with his girl­friend and other friends.

In front of me a couple are cud­dling and caress­ing one another. The young man has his arm around the woman’s shoulder. Her head is nestled in the crook of his arm. He gently strokes her face and the part of her hair that is showing. Kitty-corner from me, another young couple is doing the same thing, although I’m con­vinced they’ve snuck in a few kisses.

The bus is over­flow­ing with hip, young Iranians; the new gen­er­a­tion of Iran. Some young ladies have enough make-up on their faces that I could carve my name into it. This outward, public display of affec­tion and western ideal of make-up is sur­pris­ing to see but it also makes me feel like I could somehow com­mu­nic­ate better with the indi­vidu­als on this bus than the older indi­vidu­als we’ve met so far in Iran.

Saturday, June 19, 2010
Daily Notes
Breakfast: 14,000 rials (~$1.40)
Taxi to bus ter­minal: 20,000 (~$2.00)
Bus tickets from Tabriz to Zanjan: 90,000 (~$9.00), about a 4-hour ride
Hotel in Zanjan: 450,000 (~$45.00) Dinner: 33,000 (~$3.30)

Chris exchanged $300 US at a shop located in what appeared to be a gold souk.  The exchange rate was $1 = 10,034 rials.

The bus from Tabriz to Zanjan doesn’t actu­ally pull off the highway into Zanjan. Instead, it pulls over on the side of the highway where a bunch of taxi drivers are waiting to shuttle you off the highway into town. The taxi from the highway took us to another des­ig­nated taxi area where it was appar­ent we had to cross the street and find another taxi, a city taxi, to continue.

As we crossed the street some­what con­fused, due to the order of things, a lady in her late 20’s recog­nized our con­fus­sion and gestered for us to share a taxi with her. Shrugging our shoulders, “Why not?”, Chris and I got in. In her begin­ner English she asked us where we were from. After that, con­ver­sa­tion pretty much seized for the remainder of our 5-minute ride. She ordered us to get out and insisted on paying for the taxi ride. She then pro­ceeded to walk us to a hotel. When I hes­it­ated to cross the street she smiled and looked at me lov­ingly like I was a young, inno­cent child. She grabbed my hand and lead me across the weaving traffic. When we came to the next big inter­sec­tion she instantly did the same thing. I felt silly being guided by this petite lady who was a foot and half shorter than me, but who’s bravery/experience with road cross­ing was four feet taller than I. Her name was Meana.