the beauty of winter snow

We just spent time with friends in the snow in Montana, and it was beneficent, a benediction.

We could enjoy winter from the safety and coziness of the house, savoring the sight of the fresh powdery landscape where just outside our kitchen window there were hundreds of healthy elk.

Or we could clamp YakTrax on our hiking shoes, grab our sticks, hike up our mountain road, and be eye-to-eye with the elk, with the falling snow, and our neighbors.

Or we could put our friend’s 18-month-old baby on skis, and on a sled, for the first time, and see how he enjoyed that.  (Not so much.)

Our time in Montana was a beautiful, important, necessary escape from everyday life.

the magic of living in malibu

This was the sunrise and sunset from our home yesterday on November 26, 2013.

People who visit for the first time often ask, Do you still appreciate this view or do you take it for granted?  Mostly, I appreciate the views everyday because the tide is always changing, the surface of the sea is always different.   However, even in this beautiful place on the edge of the Pacific Ocean it is unusual to have such a spectacular sunrise and sunset in the same day.

A friend who was visiting last night when the sun was setting said, It looks fake.  Right.

Enjoy.

dreamy SongSaa Island, Cambodia

Instead of rushing straight back home after trekking in Bhutan, my husband, Ed, and I wanted to take a break to relax and refresh.  But where?

After being disappointed (disgusted?) by the tourist overflow and proliferation of loud-mouthed guides at Machu Picchu this past spring, we vowed to avoid all Tourist Attractions.  So beachy places near Bangkok were out, as was Angkor Watt–both too accessible and too over-run with tourists.

Our travel agent introduced the idea of a remote Cambodian island in the Gulf of Thailand.  She warned us that getting there involved flying to Bangkok, staying overnight in Phnom Penh, a 4-hour car ride to the coast, then an hour boat ride to the island.  But she said the remoteness of this private island was part of its appeal.

After the Khmer Rouge decimated this country in the mid-70s, killing a third of the population–1.3 million people–I’d had no interest in going anywhere near The Killing Fields.

For some reason–was it that the genocide was over three decades ago?–I relented.  However, in my traveler’s mind, our destination was a remote island, not Cambodia proper. We had no expectations for Phnom Penh, and we really enjoyed our one night there.  After being in the primitive, pastoral landscape of Bhutan, finding ourselves in the bustle of downtown Phnom Penh was exciting and interesting.

Raffles, a gorgeous hotel built in 1929, was sparred during the Kymer Rouge because it been converted to a hospital.  Everyone at the hotel, kept saying to us, Thank you for coming to visit us.

So we had this unexpectedly lovely feeling about Cambodia even before we made the four-hour drive to the coast.  From the moment the boat pulled up to the dock at SongSaa, dreamy is the word that best describes this resort developed by a husband and wife team from Australia.

We stayed in an over-the-water villa, which exceeded our expectation that this would be a second honeymoon.

SongSaa doesn’t disappoint.  Even the restroom next to the main restaurant, is simple and gorgeous.

I especially love these images–of Ed swimming in the Gulf of Thailand, and then a dinner table set up in the Gulf of Thailand.

SongSaa casts a spell.  I told one of the people working there that I hadn’t brought any shoes.  I needed to buy some flip-flops.  She said, You don’t need to wear shoes here.  For four days, I went barefoot, enjoying the warm, white sand.  Delicious!

post-Bhutan post-mortem

I travel to exotic, remote places in the world to experience different cultures, peoples, and landscapes and to hike in vast, open spaces.

After spending a week in Bhutan, I would not recommend the Kingdom of Gross National Happiness, or GNH as the locals call it, as a travel destination.

My husband and I decided on Bhutan because last fall we were fascinated by the Tibetan area of China.  We thought Bhutan, nestled high in the Himalayas, and also referred to as the Kingdom in the Clouds, would have similar qualities that we enjoyed in the Himalayas in China.

The scenery in Bhutan is monotonous.  The roads nonexistent.  We traveled on the main east-west road, which is essentially a dirt trail with a few bamboo guardrails, for up to 6 hours a day.  Our driver, Sonam, called it “automobile massage” because it was so bumpy.

The basic Bhutanese diet consists of 3 ingredients: red chilies, red rice (tasteless), and cubes of yak cheese that are so hard you’d crack your teeth if you bit into it.  (You put a cube in your mouth for 10 minutes to soften, and then you chew.  Also tasteless.)  As one traveler, facing more another meal of lentils, said, It’s hard to be in a country where the food is so bad you have to close your eyes to eat.

The Bhutanese have nothing to show travelers except monasteries and nunneries.  But the monks and nuns are often orphans, so it’s a little as if in the U.S. we’d take visitors to tour our orphanages?

The predominant color–other than for the monks and nuns–is a somber brown.  Even Ed, who isn’t usually that observant about clothing, remarked that everyone was wearing brown.  The traditional dresses, worn by men and woman, are almost always brown.  This lack of color is a somber contrast to the explosion of dazzling, vibrating colors of India, which is just to the south.

In Gangtey, the Nature Trail, which crosses over a wetland-marshland, is in such serious need of repair that it is dangerous to balance on the rickety planks.  And should you fall off, you’re up to your knees in mud and muck.  If the Tourism Council of Bhutan continues to tout this as a destination, then they need to repair it.  Now.  The Council could look at the wooden walkways in Torres Del Paine National Park in Chile for an excellent idea of sturdy, stable, safe wooden walkways in a public area.

On the positive side.  Bursts of color are provided by prayer flags which are flown everywhere.  The Bhutanese believe in the power of these flags to spread good will and accumulate blessings.  Nice.  (We have some flying in our backyard in Malibu now.)

Lemon-grass is the aroma of Bhutan.  It smells fresh and clean.  I brought several small vials home which bewildered the security agents at the airports.

The Bhutanese are a gentle, soft, shy, kind people.  I don’t regret traveling to their country.  It’s just that the world is wide and wonderful and there are other destinations that offer much more.

In case I’ve left the wrong impression, I have to add that we were not roughing it.  I call what we were doing luxury hiking.  We were traveling, albeit on the bumpiest, scariest, of roads, from one Aman resort to the next.  The Aman resorts in Bhutan are architecturally handsome.  Our travel agent said, “I don’t know how they built them.  How they got the building materials to those places.” Exactly.  One stroke of genius that Aman did in Bhutan is that the rooms have a similar layout.  Whether we were in Amankora Thimpku or Gangtey or Punakha or Paro, we knew our way around: We could find the light switches.  And the service was excellent.

PRE-BHUTAN

As we prepare to leave for our next Adventure–trekking in Bhutan–the question we’re asked most often is, Where’s Bhutan?

Right.  We had to look it up ourselves.

It’s high in the Himalayas, nestled in a tiny corner between China and India.