LOCALadk Magazine

I am addicted to travel. Not the 1000 thread count sheets, Four Seasons kind of travel, but the backpacking to places you've only seen on the cover of National Geographic kind of travel. The kind of travel you always dream of one day doing. They say all addictions begin with a gateway drug. My gateway drug came in the form of a college Tropical Ecology trip to Belize while I was at Paul Smith's College. Little did I know that my first trip outside the confines of the United States would start me down a path of an insatiable appetite for travel to places afar. Many trips of exploration followed that first trip, but for my thirtieth birthday I planned my greatest adventure yet. My itinerary included exploring Greece with a girlfriend, venturing alone to Southeast Asia to mountain bike, kayaking part of the Mekong River Delta, obtaining scuba certification on a chain of islands in Thailand, and heading to the top of the world to hike to the famous Everest base camp in Nepal. The spotlight of my journey shines boldly on Southeast Asia's mighty Mekong River. The world's 12th largest river stretches from the frozen peaks of the Himalayas in the Chinese territory of Tibet, down through Burma, Loa, Cambodia, Vietnam, and finally draining into the South China Sea. My guide was Mick O'Shea, a live-on-the edge chap from Australia with a heart the size of the river itself. Mick was the first and only person to navigate the entire Mekong River, paddling over 3,000 miles. Mick's story wasn't just one of exploration. It was primarily an environmental distress call and an attempt to bring attention to what is at stake for the future of the river and the 60 million people that survive off of it downstream. After having remained primarily unscathed for eras, the river is currently part of a mega-dam project developed by the Chinese government in their quest for economic growth. The Chinese government convinced Loa to borrow money directly from them to start damming the Mekong to provide hydropower to benefit the villagers. What the villagers weren't told was that China doubled the actual cost of building and will make money off of the interest that Loa will be paying for years to come. The dam will affect not only the population of fish downstream, it will also starve the rice crops of vital nutrients from river silt. I knew my time to go was now. The Beginning: Vietnam After boarding a classic sail junk, we arrived in a remote section of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, whose name translates to "where the dragon has descended into the sea." It truly was as though a dragon descended into the water and created copious amounts of islands. It would do any soul good to spend a couple days of paddling through pinnacles made of limestone rising up from the South China Sea. The turquoise waters brought me through hidden lagoons with floating jellyfish, creating once in a lifetime wildlife viewing areas, uninhabited beaches, endless Epic Journey Kayak ing the Mekong River Story & Photos by Tiffany O'Brien 50 Summer 2014

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