Travel Writing by Tim Patterson

The View From Ban Xieng Mene

2009-10-31T12:06:00.004-04:00

One of the reasons I love working for Where There Be Dragons is the chance to spend time with incredibly cool people like Allana Hearn. I first worked with Allana on the Cambodia summer program in 2008, and now we're together on the Mekong Semester.

In this photo Allana and I are standing on the banks of the Mekong, having just arrived in the homestay village of Ban Xieng Mene.

Late Afternoon Light on the Mekong

2009-10-27T02:45:00.002-04:00

Every day we cross the river between Luang Prabang and the student home-stays in Ban Xieng Mene. This is what the light on the water looks like at the end of the day.

photo by Jake Teton-Landis

Trekking in Luang Namtha

2009-10-22T03:19:00.006-04:00

On the advice of Steven Schipani, a former Dragons instructor who lives in Laos, we went trekking in the Nam Ha National Protected Area with the Jungle Tour company.

Many students point to this trek as the high-point of the Mekong Semester.

Here's contact info. for Jungle Tour - send an e-mail in English.

Mr. Chittaphong Chanthakoune
Tel/Fax: +856-86-212025
Mobile: +856-20-2990355
PO Box: 046, Luang Namtha 03000, Laos

Email: chttphng@yahoo.com.au

Photo by Jake Teton-Landis.

On the Mekong...

2009-10-16T03:15:00.004-04:00

We're approaching the midpoint of the Mekong Semester and the students are settled into home-stays in Ban Xieng Mene village, across the Mekong from Luang Prabang.

Here's a shot of students studying on the veranda of the Dragons program house...

We leave Luang Prabang around the end of October, head south through Laos to Cambodia and fly back to the States from Phnom Penh in mid December. I'll be home in Vermont for Christmas and then out to Colorado to start a full-time job in the Dragons Boulder office.

You can read student perspectives on the trip on the Yak Board....

Dragons Mekong Semester

2009-08-22T05:22:00.002-04:00

After a busy summer in Vermont, I'm headed back to Asia to lead the inaugural Mekong Semester program for Where There Be Dragons.

The Mekong program will commence in Southwest China, where we'll trek near the headwaters of the Mekong in the Himalayas. After the trek, we move south along the river to Xishuangbanna, Laos and Cambodia.

Check out the Mekong Semester description, and follow our adventures on the Dragons Yak Yak board.

photo by Paul Stevenson

Foraging Local Food

2009-05-06T16:17:00.002-04:00

I went out and picked some fiddlehead ferns this morning, then caught some horned pout in the afternoon. I was hoping for brook trout, but pout are tasty little fish, too.

Here in Craftsbury there's lots of wild, local food available, but we're not unique. You can forage just about anywhere, even in some cities.

This post by David DeFranza is a good introductory guide to foraging.

Check Out Matador Abroad

2009-05-04T13:33:00.003-04:00

Remember Matador? The online community for travelers? In the past few years Matador has published a bunch of my feature articles, and when Brave New Traveler and Matador joined forces, I began editing for them on a regular basis.

These days, Matador is really taking off. As print travel magazines hemorrhage cash, we're closing new ad deals, becoming profitable, welcoming thousands of new members and publishing some pretty spectacular content on a whole network of travel sites.

Along with Sarah Menkedick, an immensely talented writer who lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, I'm editing Matador Abroad, a site that focuses on study abroad and long-term travel. Sarah and I have put a lot of work into Matador Abroad recently, and I'd appreciate it if you could stop by and leave us some comments.

A good place to start is an excellent essay Sarah wrote yesterday called "Why You Should Travel In Times Of Swine Flu".

And remember, if you have an article to pitch, you've got a friend in the editor's chair!

My Land In Craftsbury Common, VT

2009-05-02T08:58:00.008-04:00

Last fall I closed on 2 acres of pasture just west of Craftsbury Common. The land is sloping and a little wet, but the views are gorgeous and it's just a 2 minute walk from the Common, the library, the post office, the high-school and Sterling College.

Here's a nice photo of the Common.

This summer I plan to break ground on my future homestead, although after the septic system goes in I probably won't have any money left for actual construction.

Right now the water well is in (only 220' deep, which was lucky) and I've got a couple Adirondack chairs in the meadow, which were gifts from my parents.

This morning I went up to the land, set up my tent and took a few photos. Come visit!

Happy Anniversary, Worldhum.com!

2009-04-30T11:56:00.002-04:00

Worldhum.com is celebrating their 8th anniversary of publishing travel stories. Congrats to Mike Yessis, Jim Benning and the whole Worldhum team.

Read: Pico Iyer's classic essay "Why We Travel" - a Worldhum original.

Update From Laos

2009-04-18T05:27:00.003-04:00

Coming at you from Luang Prabang, Laos. I'm currently designing the itinerary and curriculum for the Mekong River Semester Program that Where There Be Dragons will offer this fall. I've been in Laos for about a month now, following short visits to established Dragons semester programs in Kathmandu, Nepal and Varanasi, India.

Soon, though, I'll be home in Vermont, breaking ground on my cabin.

Here are some links to my recent articles:

10 Travel Jobs Within Your Reach

Put Some Damn Clothes On

Christians Gird For War In Myanmar

Clean Coal

2009-02-27T23:15:00.003-05:00

New Article! Youth Travel Programs

2009-02-22T22:08:00.003-05:00

Each summer, thousands of North American high-school students travel abroad with organizations that specialize in educational travel programs.

Where There Be Dragons

Many of these lucky students return home with increased self-confidence, a heightened understanding of global issues, fabulous photos for Facebook, and a college essay topic that will impress even the most ruthless Ivy League admissions officer.

Parents and students who decide to invest in an educational travel program should be applauded, but choosing the right program is a daunting and complicated task. Dozens of organizations specialize in youth travel, and among these organizations there are tremendous variations in travel style, educational philosophy, and overall quality.

Continue reading How To Choose A Summer Youth Travel Program

Latest Myanmar Feature

2009-02-21T20:06:00.001-05:00

My latest feature from the undercover expedition to northern Myanmar just went live at Global Post - please give it a read!

Ethnic Kachins Defy Myanmar's Junta

To The Future

2009-02-04T23:26:00.005-05:00

by Peter Davison

originally published in The Atlantic

I in completing
this poem
hope at least

to outlive the journey
from a notebook page
to the freedom of

one fair copy to be handed
to a friend and then
to other friends

one of whom may
see to it that
these words are

copied or left about so that
some person who knows nothing of
me who wrote them

may notice and
take the poem as a
delight or disturbance.

May it enlist or
puzzle readers enough so
that by undertaking its traffic

they may speak its language to
multiply its effect
and by voicing both
deliver me to you.

Peter Davison (1928—2004) was The Atlantic's poetry editor for thirty years.

David Miller: Bone Truth Literature

2009-02-02T13:45:00.012-05:00

David Miller and daughter Layla

Up this morning at 5:30. My only time to read and write. Running a Roberto Bolaño story through my speed-reader program while listening to drum and bass. Both at 200 bpm. The story is about a struggling Chilean writer (Bolaño) meeting a famous writer, only in this ethereal realm. Some call it magical realism. But it’s not magic. After enough time in Latin America you realize anything is possible like villages under siege by giant pairs of wings. It’s possible here too. This is all the Americas. It’s just that up here we clean the blood on the streets and keep our elders locked away.

But say you end up falling in love with the idea of this naked land. You go down there. Meet someone. Camp with her beside a Mexican graveyard full of paper flowers. Get married under the warm rain in Buenos Aires. Your parents flying down from Atlanta, joyful and bewildered. Mariachis arriving. People crying in the rain, saying “Dios is watching.”

wedding night in Buenos Aires

And then how quickly it moves to you just working back in the US. Getting up at 5:30 because like the young Chilean writer you think most of what’s out there is shit too. And if you could just get the beats and words to match up before sunrise and the dream-feeling goes away. Not looking in a mirror but out from it. Bee, Andrea, Mom, Dad, Brother Sam, Nana. Bolaño. Everyone there. Here. Time’s up.

- from "Twitter Novel" by David Miller

Within the next 6 months, you will read about David Miller and his real-time novel in the New Yorker, in Harpers, in the Times. His work is just too damn good and groundbreaking to stay out of the spotlight for long.

David is writing a novel in real-time on twitter.com, a micro-blogging website. This is, perhaps, one way in which literature will make the transition to the digital age.

Make no mistake - David's writing is literary. It's beautiful and intimate and real and the bone-truth.

David has been a mentor to me these past two years, even though we've only met in person twice, once in Boulder, Colorado, and once in Buenos Aires, not long after his first daughter was born.

He writes about family, faith, distance and fatherhood, and he writes one line at a time.

Here's the link to David's twitter page, where you can read the novel as it is being written.

David Miller's twitter novel

You can either start at the beginning by clicking on "older posts" or just follow the flow.

Or, you can go to this link, where David transcribes the novel with minor edits:

David Miller's novel - full version

Give David some of your time, and when his novel is featured in The New Yorker, you can say you heard about him way back when.

all photos copyright David Miller.

Ryan Libre's Kachin Photos On The BBC!

2009-01-28T15:39:00.001-05:00

Check out Ryan's photo essay from our trip to northern Myanmar, recently published on the BBC.

Here's the link: Kachin Photos

A Fragile Peace

2009-01-02T18:08:00.016-05:00

On a blustery afternoon last December, senior officers in the Kachin Independence Army gathered for lunch in the Himalayan foothills of northern Myanmar, just a stone’s throw from the Chinese border, at a wartime military base called Pajau.

Lunch was a classy affair, served outside on a picnic table next to the liaison office. The officers ate and drank with the mountain sun on their faces. They were in their 50s and 60s, and had fought the Burmese military in these mountains since their teenage years.

Ever since a ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994, there has been peace in Kachin land. On this December day, the officers attended a graduation ceremony for Kachin army clerks, followed by lunch in the sun with two American journalists.

The food was rich and fatty, and attentive young soldiers stood by with Merlot and Johnny Walker Black. The officers leaned back in their chairs, loosened their belts and soaked it all in.

Zeng Haw, a 61-year-old colonel wearing a U.S. Army jacket with BATMAN on the name badge, commented happily on the scene.

“Before the ceasefire, we never had enough rice. There was no salt, and we were always cold. Life was hard. Now we have wine and pork and American guests.”

After lunch, two of the officers drove down the switchbacks from Pajau to Laiza, the Kachin’s peacetime headquarters. On the way, they stopped at Victory Hill.

“Four-hundred of our soldiers died here in ’91,” one said. “We killed eight-hundred Burmese and took the hill.”

Down in the valley there was no wind and military academy cadets practiced advancing under fire, a sort of one-legged crab run through the dust.

These cadets were polite, smooth-skinned and eager for war. They wanted freedom. They wanted development. They wanted to fight Burmese.

“I have a degree in economics, but there is no job for me,” said a 22-year-old, his AK-47 loosely slung over his shoulder. “There are no good positions for Kachin people. There is oppression and exploitation everywhere.”

“My generation thinks there will be a war, but we don’t know what the leadership will decide. We will follow their orders.”
…….

There is no freedom in Kachin land. Ordinary Kachins are mired in desperate poverty. Heroin use is epidemic among the youth.

Has the Kachin leadership gone soft and sold out their nation?

Some think so. Others say peace is a blessing in any form. Most agree that good or bad, the peace is fragile, and cannot last for long.

The Kachin flag displays a pair of traditional crossed swords on a red and green background. The red represents the blood of martyrs who sacrificed themselves for freedom. The green represents the natural beauty of the Kachin homeland.

Young Kachins like the man in this photo tend to support a renewed struggle against the Burmese military, but their elders are tired of fighting. As the natural landscape of Kachin is despoiled through jade mining, logging and hydro-power projects, the anger of the youth becomes harder for their leaders to contain.

The generation who fought in the jungles were hailed as masters of guerrilla warfare but crippled by a lack of sophisticated military hardware and communication technology.

In this photo, the head of the Kachin military academy stands in a brand-new computer center located on the edge of the jungle near the Chinese border. The Kachins are desperate to engage with the outside world and keep abreast of modern trends.

One military academy cadet described his generation's desire for development and frustration with the lack of opportunity since the ceasefire:

"Internationally, this is the era of economic development. But if we look at the economy in Kachin, it’s been over ten years since the ceasefire and nothing significant has changed. We try to develop in many ways ourselves, but the Burmese military government hasn’t given rights to Kachins. They gradually restrict our rights more and more. "

Possession of the Human Rights Watch report on the 2007 crackdown on Buddhist monks by the Myanmar military would be grounds for arrest, interrogation and imprisonment in most of Myanmar, but not in the small pockets of territory controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization.

Although indigenous Burmese opposition to the Myanmar military government has drawn attention in recent years, the ethnic insurgencies on the fringes of Myanmar are largely ignored by aid organizations and Western media alike.

These are the 5 pledges Kachin military academy cadets repeat everyday at dawn and dusk.

1. “We will keep our promise to the nation and people for all eternity.”

2. “We will fight for the independence of our nation and people.”

3. “We will follow the leadership of the Kachin Independence Organization without deviation.”

4. “We will always keep our promise to the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the nation and people.”

5. “We will never give up our arms.”

The graves of the founders of the Kachin Independence Army are located just a few hundred yards from a Burmese military position. Many of the original Kachin patriots are now dead. For young soldiers, war is an abstract idea. For the veterans who survived, the memories of death, cold, hunger and fear are still present in every hill along the Chinese frontier.

photos and video by Ryan Libre

project funded by the Pulitzer Center.

for more: "Myanmar: The Kachin Struggle For Freedom"

Inside the Kachin Independence Army

2009-01-01T19:05:00.000-05:00

Understanding the Kachin Conflict

2008-12-19T06:42:00.002-05:00

“Myanmar politics are the most complicated in the world,” said Daw Kong, director of the Kachin research and information network, as we settled down for tea and conversation on a hilltop near the Chinese border.

After three weeks in the small pocket of northern Myanmar held by the Kachin Independence Organization, I still struggled to make sense of the tangled history and delicate balance of power that defines the political landscape of Kachin state.

In the interest of clarity, here are 11 key points that will help a general audience make sense of the drama unfolding in the Himalayan foothills of northern Myanmar...

Read the rest of this entry at the Pulitzer Center's Untold Stories blog.

Kachin Land

2008-12-15T22:49:00.003-05:00

DAMN, it's been hard to keep my mouth shut.

As you probably know by now, I love to babble about my travels - where I've been, where I'm going, the dirty details of my latest existential crisis.

But my trip to the far north of Myanmar had to be kept secret. I didn't have a Myanmar visa, wore a disguise in public places and snuck back into China by wading across a cold river in the middle of the night. Not exactly the sort of activity it's smart to advertise in advance.

But now the trip is done. I've decided to forget about writing under a pen-name and just let the chips fall where they may...

Ryan Libre and I just spent one month in territory held by the Kachin Independence Army on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. At the moment we're holed up in Hong Kong, eating instant ramen in a tiny room and sorting through piles of notes, thousands of photos and hours of video footage.

We'll be blogging about the trip at the Pulitzer Center's Untold Stories website, so please go there to check out the first post in the series. I'll add an excerpt here with a link to the full article.

Apart from a brief introduction to the Chief of Staff of the Kachin Independence Army, we spent our first day in Myanmar locked inside a hotel room. Our Kachin hosts were apologetic but firm. At the moment, it was too risky to go outside...

Here's the link to the complete post over at Untold Stories - I'd love to see your comments there!

Myanmar: Open Military Camps, Closed Teashops

Thanks for reading everyone.

With Becky In Laos

2008-10-30T09:01:00.004-04:00

I haven't been writing much, but Becky is blogging up a storm.

Happy Birthday BNT!

2008-10-13T15:24:00.002-04:00

Here's the Brave New Traveler 2nd birthday party video!

New Article: Travel Risks

2008-10-12T12:00:00.002-04:00

My latest article was just published over at the Traveler's Notebook. If you have a moment, please give it a read.

10 Travel Risks NOT Worth Taking

"Clean Coal" Is A Farce

2008-10-11T07:48:00.002-04:00

You know those "Clean Coal" ads that feature a bunch of actors pretending to be patriotic Americans looking into the camera and saying "I Believe"?

Well, the coal industry sure spent a ton of money on the ads promoting Clean Coal, and the investment seems to have paid off. Both Presidential candidates support Clean Coal, and Barack Obama even praised Clean Coal in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention.

There's just one little problem.

Clean Coal doesn't exist, and it never will. Coal is dirty, new coal plants are expensive and coal mining devastates God's Creation without contributing much of anything to the economy.

We just published an article at Matador in which my good friend Josh Kearns exposes the myth of Clean Coal. Please read it and share it with your friends.

I don't care how much money the coal lobby spends on ads or how much money they donate to political campaigns - the truth will always emerge.

The Myth Of Clean Coal

Tom Gates: New Matador Editor

2008-10-10T06:51:00.003-04:00

Tom Gates is one of the most talented writers I know. His style reminds me of David Sedaris and Bill Bryson - cynical, wry humor, flawless sense of pacing and that rare sort of self-deprecating honesty that makes narrative writing shine.

Tom is the newest member of the Matador editorial team. For a sample of his work, check out his hilarious rant about New York City or read any of the blogs on Tom's Matador profile.