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Smoke billowed throughout the tent and left the area a-glow in orange. The flames lapped up from beneath the metal spherical disk. She pounded the dough into a flat pizza like form and simultaneously stoked the fire with more wood with her free hand. The spherical metal ‘griddle’ was just the right temperature…thwak! The flattened dough landed on the griddle and immediately went from dough to solid form, bubbling from the intense heat. Kids covered in dust stared at me until I gave them a glance and then they turned and ran the other way or tried to hide behind anything to escape my eyes. It felt as if I was in an undiscovered land or had moved backwards through time; and in a way – I was.

I was lucky enough to get invited into the Bedouin woman’s tent to watch this process. The woman who’s face I could not photograph... Read more »

"Yella! You are in charge!” yelled Mo as he headed towards the door. "If anyone stops in, tell them that we have 2 rooms available and have them wait here until I get back.” I looked up from my laptop, my eyes met his, and realized he was talking to ME. Cheryl the bubbly employee from the Philippines was putting on her coat and they were getting ready to leave the hotel. "Whoa…wait a minute…you are leaving?!” I said somewhat panicked.

Mosleh was the owner of the Cleopetra Hotel in Wadi Musa and it slowly dawned on me he was indeed walking out and leaving responsibility for the hotel with myself and the two other people in the common area; we were ‘in charge’. He said he had to drive Cheryl home and that he’d be back shortly. The other 2 people in the common area were just as dumbfounded as me. Mo and Cheryl disappeared through the door and the ... Read more »

Short interlude from my Laos posts. I’ve always advocated learning as much of the local language as possible, and at a minimum words beyond the usual "hello” and "thank you” and "where’s the bathroom”. Even if it’s how to say "no problem”, it tends to go a long way in a strange and chaotic new place. But part to what makes learning Thai so story-worthy is how inherently difficult it is to learn the language’s many tones. There are 5 of them, and to a Western ear they are subtle enough that parsing through the auditory fog to truly grasp how they are meant to sound is difficult. For example, "mai” can mean 5 different words, depending on emphasis.

I recently learned how awkward these tones can be when I was informed that my polite attempts to say "excuse me / I’m sorry” while walking or apologize if I knocked into them was a huge fail. Instead of saying sorry, I was, in fact, asking permission to fart. Yes for the last few weeks I was as... Read more »