Just when the West thinks it's all over for the holidays until next year (with the exception of a card for Valentine's Day or a good Halloween party), Asia is gearing up for Lunar New Year. Called by various names like Spring Festival or Chinese New Year, this holiday signals renewal, rebirth and another chance at a lucky year. This Monday will begin the Year of the Dragon, and, as usual, decorators nation-wide (well, probably continent-wide) are going nuts for Dragons. 

I've found the debate in the China Daily newspaper over whether Chinese dragons should be fierce or cute to be very interesting. Here's some more links if you'd like to check them out.http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-01/18/content_14465416.htm, and  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16422945

Also, near our apartment, the city has set up its yearly Flower Street, where entrepreneurs and school groups man booths to sell flowers and trinkets to people before the New Year. Prices were high when we checked out the street on Thursday.  If there are any left, we may go back when the street is winding up on Monday and buy some jonquils and chyrsanthemums for half price.

Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快乐！

America.

Okay. I'm cold.

After five months in Thailand and more than a year in summer weather, 50 degrees Fahrenheit feels like stepping in to a freezer.

The guy at the airport whose job it is to help people on to the shuttle between terminals huffs and blows and stamps his feet in the cold. "You should have got here last week," he tells us. "It's cold now."

I'm wearing a thin but long sleeved t-shirt and Dan's got rugged hiking pants, but the wind is brisk and I can sense the air is different.

I taste fall.

***

America hits me in the face like a tradewind.

I'm blown away by the choices, by the noise, by the sound of the people talking.

I can understand everyone I hear. Strangest are the hispanic workers in the Mexican restaurant my friend Laurel takes us to on our first day in Portland. Like a song I haven't heard in years, I can hear them in the kitchen talking, and understand. Part of me I forgot existed.

Three days before we were in a Laotian village watching barenaked toddlers run and play on the dirt highway. One day ago we were in clean, orderly Tokyo watching business people calmly pedal their bicycles through storybook streets. Today we're in America, and it's a little bewildering.

First of all, there's the strain of talking so much. I love it but, Damn!, we are tired. And the issue of being polite—I'd known in theory, but in practice forgotten, just how many 'sorrys', 'thankyous' and 'haveanicedays' are required in American functional talking. I remind myself to home in on this in my lessons when we begin teaching in China again in February. In a lot of the world, I've gotten by on just my smile. Here, it looks like I've got to use my voice to go along with it.

Dan seems even more at sea. His accent confuses people. “What would you like on your sandwich?” the young woman at Subway fast food restaurant asks him. “Salt and pepper,” he replies quickly. She's confused. “What's pep-ah?,” she asks. “Pep-PER” he throws in. She nods and gives him the sandwich on a tray. “No, we'd like that takeaway—I mean, 'to go,'” he says. He learns fast.

* * *
Laurel is a great hostess. She's determined to show us a good time in her city. The first night features burlesque dancers and $4 Guinness. I start to fear Dan won't want to leave.

We accompany her to a lot of Portland eateries, thrift stores to buy warmer clothes, bars to sample microbrews (beer not made from rice! Yipee!) a Halloween party at a friends home. I meet up with my roommate from college. I can't believe 9 years have passed. Does her bathroom still look like a Mexican barfight? I forget to ask her fiance.

We are tired, hungover, freezing, feeling poor, but happy when my parents pick us up a few days later.

This is America.

Dan and I walk through a paddock inhabited by slightly angry cows. Then we climb a stile made of bamboo over a rickety fence and into a grove of banana trees still bearing fruit. We come to a stream bridged by long bamboo poles held together with twisted baling wire.


"Where are we?" Dan wonders as the path takes another turn.



"In Laos," is all I can offer him.



We are lost in Southeast Asia, gloriously lost, but at the same time we know that once we find our location, our long vacation is evaporating behind us even as the dust settles behind our knock-off Tevas.


This week we're still on vacation, and next week and next month too, but the 'endless summer' portion of our wanders is over.

Tomorrow, we take a bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, then the next day we train it down through Thailand to Bangkok. The day after we fly to Tokyo to spend a day looking for sushi. And the day after that we touch down in Portland, Oregon for a nice long visit with my extended family and friends.

I'm thrilled to go to the States (it's only been three years since my last visit) and happy to check out Tokyo, but as Dan and I walked down this Laotian path startling two-toned butterflies being stalked by the most patient of lizards, it occurred to me that this was really the end of our Big Trip through Southeast Asia. We're entering the visiting phase of our travels and ending the traveling phase of our trip.

We climbed one more bamboo stile over a barbed-wire fence, rounded a clump of particularly thorny bushes interspersed with the most delicate purple flowers and passed into the shadow of the limestone cliff that bordered the farmer's lands. We were headed today, mostly, for a look at a limestone cave and a dip in a river. On our rented bicycles we'd passed a hand-lettered sign that promised both, so we'd paid a man 10,000 kip each to come traipse through this field, jungle and cow pasture to do so.

As we stepped from the 1 p.m. sunshine into the shadow of the bluff I noticed a quick, distinct temperature change--at least 10 degrees difference Fahrenheit according to Dan's thermometer. After our sweaty bike ride in the near-100 degree heat, the suddenly cool breeze was refreshing. A few more steps down the path and it got nicer--a grotto with a pool large enough for us to take a dip in. We changed into swimming clothes and eased into the glassy pool, disturbing the muddy bottom only a little.

The cave-fed stream bubbled up out of the rocks behind us and went falling through a man-made weir through to an underground cavern we could hear but not see.

The cool water woke us up, took off the grime and sweat from our bike ride, and made me start to think about the sensations of heat and cold. After spending the last nine months in countries where the climate ranged from boiling to steaming, transitioning to North America at Halloween seemed a chilly proposition. New clothes are in order.

I looked up from the pond to the craggy limestone ceiling and out to the light green leaves of the jungle we'd just walked through. As gorgeous as I'd hoped.
We dried off with our t-shirts and put on our soon-to-be-obsolete clothes and then started off toward another cave on the way back Vang Vieng. If this was the end of the Big Trip, it was beautiful.