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Questions and Answers We love receiving questions from people -- whether they are armchair travelers or world explorers. We’ve even had questions from our own parents! Please be aware that these questions and responses were from the year 2004. In some cases, we have changed the way we do things. If you have questions of us, please send them to mail@TwoGypsies.com. Q&A Q: You’re been talking about the “Caribbean 1500.” What is that, exactly? Q: In your logs, you mentioned that Laos is inexpensive for visitors. How inexpensive? A: Although international exchange rates greatly affect expenses for travelers, and even though in our case the value of the US Dollar sank to new lows while we were in Laos, we found the country very inexpensive. It is a poor country with a per capita income of less than $500 per year.
The most commonly used bills in Laos are 1,000 and 5,000 Kip (equal to 10 or 50 cents, approximately. We found none larger. It takes two hundred 5,000 Kip bills to equal US $100. But that much money will go a long way. We stayed at the Inter Hotel in Vientiane, the Capitol, for $13 per day. It’s a very nice place, one of the better hotels. We could have paid only a few dollars -- and in fact we did pay only $2 for a room at Pakbeng, an overnight stop on our trip up the Mekong River. Meal prices varied similarly, as did drinks. A large Lao beer costs about 7,000 Kip in a store (meaning, because they’re the size of two regular beers, that 35 cents buys a beer in Laos...slightly more if purchased in a restaurant). We paid $10 each for a two day boat trip up the Mekong. Normal price is about $14. Either is a fantastic value, because the journey is one of the world’s most fascinating. You can catch a Tuk Tuk ride just about anywhere you want to go in any town in Laos for a dollar or two. We paid $3 for the trip with our bags from our Vientiane hotel to the airport, a distance of about about 3 miles. We took the 35 minute flight from Vientiane to Luang Prabang for $57. The bus is $6.50 and takes 10 hours. The distance is about 130 miles as the plane flies, about 220 on the highway. You can get a terrific full body one-hour massage for about $3.50. One thing about paying for anything in Laos is currency flexibility. Although we learned that it is still illegal to pay in any currency other than Kip, you can use Thai Baht and U.S. Dollars just as readily -- and although you lose a little in the conversion, it isn’t much. When a restaurant bill comes in Kip (34,500 Kip, for example), you can ask to pay in dollars or baht instead, and they’ll quickly convert it (about $3.40, or 132 Baht). Laos hasn’t been open to mass tourism a long time, and in some respects they’re still getting the hang of it. But it’s a fantastic place to visit and the smiling people there are doing everything they can to make you feel welcome. We’ll return there as soon as we can. Q: We’ve heard horror stories about the road from the Thailand/Cambodia border to Seam Reap, near the Angkor Wat complex. You were just there (1/04). Was it really that bad? A: Yes! The taxi ride from Poipet, Cambodia to Seam Reap makes the wildest amusement park rides on the planet seem lame. The trip is like a violent three-hour auto crash. Your Toyota Camry careens at insane speeds down a road resembling the craters of the moon. Even if your driver avoids losing control and rolling the car end for end about twenty times, you have no doubt that any second the wheels, or fenders, or some other critical part will fly off the vehicle and smash into a truck careening just as wildly the opposite direction. Q: Since you've been traveling in foreign countries for years, we imagine it's quite easy for you to get around in remote areas. But what about those of us who have never done that? Can you give some specifics? Finally arriving at the train station, we were able to trade in our tickets for the sleeper car seats we wanted, and all was well - except that after we boarded we discovered the entire car was somewhat overrun by roaches. Q: Now that you have been traveling almost five years, and have been forced by family emergencies to return to the USA several times, what does the future hold for the “Gypsies?” By the way, we have followed your website so long that we feel we know you. HL Trenton, NJ A: Funny that you mention that! We’re doing a lot of soul-searching about what to do next. Maybe it’s coming through in our logs. We have invested a great deal to make Pioneer, our ocean-going sailboat and only home, a fine vessel for exploring huge areas up and down the Atlantic coast from Canada to South America. At the same time, family emergencies have three times brought us home in the middle of very extensive travels on the other side of the earth -- and could again. This is a situation many people face when they consider long-distance, long-term travel. The trick is to leave while still young enough to make the most of it, while being both fiscally responsible to ourselves and personally responsible to those we love. We have no children, which makes our lifestyle much less complicated. Still, there are hundreds of important considerations to ponder before taking off -- considerations made more complex by terrorist threats against Americans. We were in Indonesia on “9-11” and when we found that extremists on Java were going hotel to hotel in search of Americans to take hostage, we got the heck out of there (which wasn’t at all easy) and back to Thailand. Still, we long to finish our most recent trip in Asia. It would have taken us from NW Laos, where we were when we had to rush home, up the Mekong into China and, after exploring much of southern China, to Tibet before heading back down to northern Vietnam. If we decide to resume that journey we will include Turpan and Urumqi in far NW China. Don has been there twice on Senate trips and describes the things he found there as among the most incredible of all his world travels. So to answer your questions, we don’t know. It is expensive to own Pioneer and not use her. If we head back overseas, should we sell her? We don’t know. We do know that our burning urge to seek out more of our world’s nooks and crannies has not cooled. When Don resigned from his post as a director at the Smithsonian Institution he said he and Becky would be traveling at least ten years. That was met by laughter. But we’ll get the last laugh! Concerning your comment that you feel you know us, it’s surprising how many people have come up to us recently to say just that. It usually happens when other sailors see the name Pioneer on the transom of our Cabo Rico. We love it, and it encourages us to maintain this site (which at 252 pages is a huge job). Thanks for your encouragement! Update September 2004 Update October 2004 Q: You’re been talking about the “Caribbean 1500.” What is that, exactly? A: Much of the following information is taken from the Caribbean 1500 Website: Scheduled for early November, 2004 the West Marine Caribbean 1500 is both a sailing rally and a “cruise in company” from Hampton, Virginia nonstop to the Village Cay Marina on Tortola in the Caribbean’s British Virgin Islands. Over the years some 700 sailboats boats have chosen to join the Caribbean 1500 in making their passage to the islands, and they find it a very special experience, as many repeat participants attest. Once the fleet arrives at Tortola, nightly awards parties bring participants together to swap experiences and exchange cruising plans. The passage typically takes 7-12 days. Pioneer is one of the smaller and slower boats entered. Following the start, planned for November 7th, participants will share positions twice daily via short-wave radio during scheduled chat hours. Position reports will be given and problems and solutions will be discussed, as are privately arranged weather forecasts. The fleet will gather at the Bluewater Yachting Center in Hampton, VA, for several days of briefings and final preparations leading up to the start. All participants are invited and newer passage makers are encouraged to arrive two days early (November 2) for additional briefings and inspections. Required briefings for skippers include: Benefits of participation include: The West Marine Caribbean 1500 is open to seaworthy yachts of any type or nationality. The lower size limit is 33 feet LOA. All boats must pass inspection and must be sailed by two or more sailors, with final determinations made by the Event Committee. There must be at least one experienced offshore sailor on board. Boats may arrive as late as 9 am Thursday and will be inspected by a representative of the Event Committee. All skippers are encouraged to participate in two additional days of briefings and discussions to help in preparing for the passage. These sessions will begin on Tuesday morning, November 2, 2004. Skippers may choose to enter the Cruising Class or the Rally Class. Boats sailing in the Cruising Class do so for the adventure of making a good and safe passage and will not be judged on performance or handicaps. They will not be required to maintain engine use logs. Their safe passage will be recognized in the order that they arrive in Tortola. Boats sailing in the Rally Class will be assigned performance handicaps and will report engine usage nightly. Unlike races the rally permits the use of engines with running time added to the elapsed time as a motoring penalty The corrected time for each vessel will reflect her time allowance and engine usage. Skippers may at any time elect to change from the Rally Class to the Cruising Class. Stopping in Bermuda or taking on fuel after the start will indicate participation in the Cruising Class. Responsibility for self-sufficiency, safety, handling emergencies and for any accident or mishap rest with the skipper, owner and crew as specified in the Rules and Conditions for this event. Skippers seeking crews should contact the event organizers for a list of volunteers. Normally, it is the responsibility of the crew member to provide transportation to and from the event, and the skipper's responsibility to furnish provisions for the time underway. All boats completing the event receive awards recognizing their accomplishment. In addition, a number of special awards recognize skills and contributions to the group in keeping with the values held by many sailors. Departure will be from: Arrival will be at the: After September 1, the entry fee is $950 per boat, plus $40 per person. Veteran Caribbean 1500 skippers will receive a $100 discount. Sponsor: Tel and Fax 757-223-5070 Pioneer is entered in the Cruising Division, and will sail be sailed comfort and safety being more important than speed. Posted October 21, 2004 UPDATE February 3, 2005 In summary, we completed our voyage safely thanks to our previous experience and months of preparation, but we are seriously disappointed with Caribbean 1500 Rally management. We were particularly disillusioned when President Steve Black stopped relaying highly-promoted Commanders Weather reports while we were still at sea, and ceased updating the C-1500 website with boats’ daily position reports as promised, and effectively cancelled the “gala awards dinner” for those in the back of the fleet. He neglected other important details as well. If we were to make the Chesapeake to Caribbean voyage again, we feel we would be safer, have a better value, and be a lot less frustrated to simply hire a commercial weather service for our time at sea and make the long trip independently. We made many good friends among the participants, found the seminars to be valuable, and are especially indebted for the kindnesses of Hampton super-volunteer Trudy who exhibited the finest spirit of cruiser generosity and thoughtfulness. To be fair, although we would not join the C-1500 again on a bet, we do know some participants who would. We continue to reply personally and in detail to sailors contacting us for more details of our Caribbean 1500 experience. Q: So now that you traveled more than 1,700 miles of open ocean and are now in the Caribbean, what will you remember most about the trip and about your decision to see a portion of the world by sail? A: Years from now the discomfort, danger and physical pain will fade from memory and we’ll most remember the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, the serenity of a calm ocean hundreds of miles from land, and especially our sense of personal accomplishment. We will also remember how well Pioneer served us. The Force 10 winds that battered us for nearly three days tested her, and us, to our limits. Every wire, rope, connector, piece of hardware and system on Pioneer was stressed beyond reason in a storm much more severe than forecast -- and yet she came through just fine even though some other more expensive, faster and larger boats tore sails, had major engine or electrical failures, lost the use of autopilots, refrigeration, short wave radios and chart plotters. By comparison, we suffered minor rope chafe, failure of a drinking water pump (replaced underway) leaking at a combing vent (repaired underway) and very minor hardware problems (all corrected enroute). When we arrived in Road Town, Tortola there wasn’t much to do other than use nearly 400 gallons of water getting salt off the boat. On the other hand, once the salt was off of our bodies, we continued to display numerous bruises, cuts and scrapes. We will always remember our many, many months of preparation for this adventure. We learned skills and mastered systems and came to deal with challenges we would never have otherwise known, but for this undertaking. They were skills crucial to our very survival. It has been an enormously complex and intense education. Years from now we may think of this adventure as the most difficult thing we ever did -- and the one that gave us the most pride and sense of accomplishment. We put a great majority of our resources into Pioneer, and she helped us open a window to a world known only to a select few. The physical discomfort of being slammed from one side of the boat to the other as it pitched violently in horrific sea conditions is, in the big picture, a small price to pay for something that will bring us a sense of accomplishment and pride the rest of our days. Many people talk of doing such things. We’re proud to be among those who do them. If we have a twinge of regret, it concerns the cost of sailing and maintaining a well-equipped sailboat. They say that sailing will take everything you have, and that’s more true than we realized. Sailing’s demands are total. We have earned and paid for the good things Pioneer has brought into our lives -- financially, emotionally and physically -- and yet we constantly think of the less fortunate people we have met in other adventures, people who still need our help. We have run into people who say we should not be concerned about the Hill Tribe victims of Burma’s brutal Army, or the lepers we know in western Nepal, or all kinds of other good people who are only in dire straits because of where they happened to have been born. To those people who tell us we’re wrong to offer assistance, that the less fortunate must find a way to help themselves, or die, we express our most profound disagreement and abject disgust. One reason we will return to America in the spring of 2005 to sell Pioneer is to reserve our time and resources for people less fortunate than ourselves. We will likely return to Nepal, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand -- perhaps even Indonesia and other places -- where a few dollars and a lot of blood, sweat and tears will help people who are struggling against the odds just to survive. In all, we have learned self sufficiency from sailing. We have learned, from all our travels in so many countries, a new sense of humility. Our travels as the Gypsy Wagon Expedition since December 11, 1999 continue as the most empowering and satisfying force in our lives. And yes, just as we hoped from the beginning in 1999, we can see that seeking out the world’s nooks and crannies, and being interested and concerned by what and whom we find there, is giving us what we always sought, understanding and perspective. Don Hardy and Rebecca Hill
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The exchange rate dropped while we were there -- but we still got about 10,400 Kip to the dollar (more for T-checks and large bills, a bit less for smaller bills). This rate is so extreme that we kept running low on cash because we felt we had so much money bursting from our pockets. In fact, $100 is all it takes to be a millionaire in Laos, and carrying more than 1,000,000 Kip around requires big pockets. Although there are few one Kip bills like the one depicted here in circulation, it would take more than 10,000 of them to equal a single US dollar. That’s a pocket full! Still, paying a few dollars worth of Kip for something lightens the load considerably.