It was just before 6am when the tuk tuk we’d arranged the night before arrived.  We’d been waiting in the lobby with our bags.  I tossed them in and asked him to take us to the bus station.

We didn’t expect Phonsavanh to be so cold in the morning.  It must have been close to freezing and we were wearing shorts and sandals.  We never went over 30kph, but the tuk tuk was open to the elements and our teeth were chattering when we arrived at the bus station on the outskirts of town.

We showed our tickets and shoved our bags underneath the bus.  Oksana climbed aboard to claim our seats while I looked over the snacks at the station kiosks.  I started up a conversation with the only other tourists in sight.  Derek and Paulien were from the Netherlands and had just traveled through all the same places we’d been, going all the way back to Phuket, in Thailand.  When I asked them if they were going to Vietnam, too, they looked relieved.  It always feels good when you get independent verification about the bus you’re about to get on.

Shortly we were underway, but our driver took us on a tour of Phonsavanh before pointing us in the direction of Vietnam.  By the time we’d arrived at the border, I’d read a few chapters of my dog-eared copy of Kitchen Confidential and watched a movie on my iPhone.

The Laotian side was nothing more than a concrete corridor with a row of windows along one side.  Unaware of the protocol, Derek, Paulien, Oksana and I neglected to add our passports to the stack from our bus, so we were the last to get our exit stamps.  Bringing up the rear, we hefted our bags and hiked across the border.

The immigration office on the Vietnamese side was a different beast altogether.  High-ceilinged and full of echoes, we gawked a bit when we entered.  Instead of the loops and swirls of Laotian, the signage was written in a Roman-derived alphabet. The plentiful and peculiar accent marks were the only clue that one should not pronounce them without first learning more about the language.

Beyond the tall glass doors, a long counter sat in the sunlight.  As we entered, an official behind the desk pointed to a waiting area with rows of airport-style plastic chairs.  I set my bags down in front of one, turned back, and raised my eyebrows.  Here? (more…)

Way back in December, Oksana and I spent some time in Baños de Agua Santa, in Ecuador.  We had just finished up a tour of the Galapagos Islands where we’d gone way over-budget, so we were looking to slow down and save some money for awhile.  Baños was the perfect place for that.

Our friend, Jeff, who’d toured the Galapagos with us, stuck around long enough to take a jungle tour with us, but he was influential in our Baños stay in another way.  While in Quito, he had been trying to assemble a custom chess set made out of carved tagua nuts.  When we arrived in Baños, he stumbled upon a little shop called “Tagua de Wilson.”

While trying to fill in the gaps for his chess set, we got to talking with the eponymous owner.  Jeff asked if he did custom work, then asked how much a full chess set would cost.  $60 USD, but there was a catch.  It was Christmas season and Wilson was busy carving ornaments, nativity scenes, and the like. It would take him up to two weeks to carve a full set.  Oksana and I offered to stay in Baños so that we could FedEx it back to Jeff, in Alaska, when it was completed.

Originally, I thought this video would be the story of how Wilson carved the chess set for Jeff, but while Wilson was happy to talk about his work, he wanted to keep the carving of the figurines a secret.  The theme changed a little in editing, but I’m happy with the way it turned out.

A note on the subtitles: Every conversation with Wilson was necessarily in Spanish.  Not only did that make it difficult for me during the interview sessions we had, but it made editing pretty tough, too.  If you’re bilingual, you’ll notice the translations are not exact. I tried to stay as close as I could to the words he used, but most of the time I translated in service to the story, rather than to the language.  (I probably should have run the final subtitles by a native Spanish-speaking friend, but oh well.  I’m a long way from fluent, but I’m still proud that I was able to do as well as I did!)

And finally, I want to mention how much Oksana helped on this video.  You’ll see me talking with Wilson in most every shot and that’s because Oksana was there to help with the cameras.  A lot of her work has appeared in previous podcast episodes, but this is the first one where she did the bulk of the shooting.  Way to go, Oksana!
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