The day we got mugged...

Since leaving France in 2011, we've traveled and worked and traveled again for a total of three years. We crossed four continents and visited 15 countries. And in that whole time we never had any trouble until the last month of our trip and in the last country, when we were mugged ! Not with guns or machetes and whatnot, but we were threatened and robbed. Can you believe that ? We were in Malaysia, visiting the botanical garden on Penang island, the last place you'd expect to encounter ruffians.

You looking' at me ?

There we were, sitting on the curb, eating some fruit, when some thugs started walking in our direction, throwing us dirty looks. We were told they were called Macaques. Mac, eh ? Sounds Irish. And they could barely walk upright. Yup, a bunch of Irish alright, drunk in the morning, and heading home. Then they started veering our way with menacing grins.

Staggering home on all fours.

Fast as lightning, this Mac-what'shisname rushed Pauline in a threatening manner. Pauline knew better than to mess with drunk Mac-whatevers in the morning. She dropped her bag and ran before they could take anything else. Luckily, they just got some mangoes, bananas, and apples.

That's what she said...

Sitting at a café in Northern Laos, I was reading my e-mail when the young Englishman next to me says without a trace of humor to his girlfriend, "I really need to get my hands on some Vietnamese dong." And all of a sudden, all of my friends from childhood to adulthood who still have this joke in their repertoire were there sitting with me, and we were laughing our asses off.

Dong is the currency of Vietnam

Priceless.

Magical Moment in Laos

Today, on our first day in Laos, we ate lunch at a brightly colored eatery that announced indelibly on a wooden sign that, yes, they had Nutella. We didn't want nutella at the moment, but it felt good to know that it was close at hand. The shop was called Magical Moments with Mr. Man. I saw no man there, just a few women of various ages. There was a half-nude boy, however, sleeping on the floor under a green lacey cover the same shape as the glass cover I used to protect sweaty cheese on hot days in Sweden. But this was Si Phan Don, Lao for "Four Thousand Islands", at the bottom of Laos, where the dolphin-filled Mekong pours into Cambodia.

We sat and looked around. Two cats with crooked tails ran past along the path. We later found out that almost all Indochinese cats have crooked tails, genetically produced. But at this moment, we were considering the cruelty of the sweet-natured Lao. "Do you think they slam their tails in special drawer ?" I asked. We glanced at the menu, usually a good source of laughs. Only some "sweat n sour" dishes stuck out, so Mr. Man clearly has better-than-average English. An ancient woman lay sprawled next to the half-nude boy. She was furiously rubbing something, presumably betel nut, across her reddened teeth and gums.

Finally, a younger woman took our order, and as we waited for our omelette and pumpkin curry soup to arrive, I had another look around. On the wall, there was an intriguing photo of an aging woman, perhaps the mother of the owner, or even the owner herself absent for the day. She had an expression that asked, "why are you doing this to me." Her hand stretched toward the camera lens, becoming about the size and shape of a dragon's claw. Squeezed between her forefinger and thumb was the largest grub I have ever seen, one that would make Pumba from the Lion King squeal with glee. The grub was 95% enormous abdomen, with a tiny head and beady glowing red eyes. I counted only four legs, two on each side, but I'm sure another two were hiding somewhere. "Why are you making do this ?" repeats grandma's sad eyes, as if the photographer just barked, " Eat it !".

What do you think that woman's doing? I ask to Pauline, who's still hypnotized by the photograph. "I don't know, maybe just grossing out tourists. But feeling guilty about it."

Crooked cats, sweat n sour, naked baby under green lace that suddenly throws off his cover and runs down the path, creepy photo on the wall featuring a grub, an old mouth stained with betel juice, and, when it finally came, great food : they all added up to this perfectly Lao moment that transformed the everyday into the dreamlike.

Flashback : The Magic Cave

There I was in Laos, a karstic country studded with breathtaking caves, hoping to visit some. I love caves. It's one of the things I search for on the internet when I know I'm going to see a new country, the others being Earth Sandwich-ableness, coordinates of gravity hills, and mountains and highpoints to climb.

With the exception of a few caves I visited with my brothers and dad back in Florida, this new-found love of caves started in France on a hitchhiking, hiking, and camping trip on the Mediterranean coast. That trip led us to the Magic Cave.

La Ciotat

One morning, a group of Montpellierans hitchhiked east to the town of La Ciotat, which in Provencal colorfully means "the city." It's known as the birthplace of petanque, a Southern French version of boules and bocci balls. "The city" also lies along the calanques, which are, superficially speaking, French fjords. Junko, my hitchhiking partner, and I caught a truck going all the way from Montpellier to La Ciotat, known in my hitchhiking world as a hole in one. In town, we and the other groups of hitchhikers couchsurfed, swam, and Tai-chi'ed with an older Danish-French couple living there. The following day we started hiking back west in the direction of Cassis and Marseille across the calanques. Upon leaving, Jorgen, the Danish half of the couple, mentioned that there may be a cave in the calanques where we could spend the night, but he wasn't sure exactly where it was. So our group sent Sofia, the circus student, to climb down the various cliffs looking for a cavern. By dusk, we were losing hope of finding the cave and started looking for camping spots. Within moments, we spied a narrow steep trail heading down the cliff toward the sea. So down we went, too. And there it was, an opaque entrance looking out onto the Med. Heck yeah !

On the cliffs looking down.

The cave consisted of one large rectangularish room with a long table and a chimney. We were not the first visitors. In the middle of our joy, our true situation dawned on us. This was one of our first hiking trips and one of the most hastily-planned : we had three or four small headlamps, a few matches, a bottle of wine and a bottle of water. I don't really remember if we had any food to speak of. And it was cold in the cave, nearly freezing. We played some card games by headlamplight, but we were all dreaming of a fire and some food.

Mouth of the cave.

That's when we heard a rustling. And a swishing. From outside. Then the rustling became a bustling, and the swishing a stirring. Then came the whispering. Oh shit, who are these guys ? We started to get worried. Then we saw lights flickering at the mouth of the cave, and then two young - obviously French - men burst into the cave, carrying...firewood and potatoes. Welcome to our dark abode !

Our bottle of wine disappeared before our visitors arrived, and while we were introducing ourselves, the collective mind of the Montpellierans was now dreaming and hoping that Dionysus might just drop in. We got the next best thing : more French people entered the cave carrying backpacks full of wine bottles. The fire raging, the potatoes steaming, the wine flowing, the cave party had begun. All we were missing was a bit of musi---and here come two more francais carrying guitars. Someone else must have been thinking of some pot because that showed up a few minutes later. Within an hour, our motley group of Canadians, a Moroccan, a Japanese, a Spaniard, a Swede, an American, and a howling dog went from hungry and bored to well-satiated and raucous. Thanks to the Magic Cave.

From then on, we sought out all the caves we could in southern France...and they were all mostly amazing, but not quite as magical as that first cave. Not sure why. Did I mention that we found a monkey's paw on the route to the magic cave ?