Well, I made it home. The trip was uneventful. I had a short layover in Tokyo, which was pretty disappointing. There was a very limited selection of chocolate (e.g. no Cadbury), and the sushi was surprisingly average. The 12 hour flight from Tokyo to Dulles seemed endless, but it gave me plenty of time to finish Anna Karenina, which I had been lugging around since Feb. 1. Spoiler alert: she kills herself.
We landed in DC about 45 minutes early, and I was surprised to see that it was snowing! My conversation with the guy at passport control:
Guy (looking at my arrival card): You were on a vacation to Switzerland, India, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Japan?
Me: Yep.
Guy: How long were you gone?
Me: 2 months.
Guy: Welcome home.
Having survived that grilling, I was picked up by Todd and the boys, who were bearing cold Diet Sprite -- my first in 2 months.
I got home at 5 o'clock, exactly 25 hours after leaving my hotel in Singapore that morning. My first impression on arriving home was how much stuff I have. Having lived out of my relatively modest Patagonia bag -- with 3 pairs of shoes, 5 pairs of pants, etc. -- for 2 months, it was sort of shocking to see all of the clothes and shoes and toiletries and books and cds at my disposal.
Some stats:
Books read: 30
Flights: 23
Other modes of travel: trains, boats, buses, taxis, autorickshaws, tuk tuks, motos, cyclos, bicycle rickshaw, trishaw, bicycle, horse cart, elephant
Items lost: the cap to my moisturizer and 3 contact lenses
I plan to post about Vietnam in the next few days, so stay tuned.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Coming Home
I plan to post about Vietnam too. Especially the food, which was awesome.
I'm sitting at the Singapore Airport, having just had to take off my shoes to go through security for the first time since leaving the US. And they confiscated my toothpaste and contact lens solution. Bummer. But I heard the sweet words, "You have aisle seats all the way." Yay! By my count, this morning was the 30th time I've packed my bags. And these will be my 22nd and 23rd flights.
Singapore was a good transition back to the States. We kept remarking on such marvels as: cabs with meters, stoplights that cars actually stop at, hardly ever having to walk in the street. Also, numerous 7-11s, Starbucks, McDonalds, and other American brands.
The highlight, for me at least, was meeting internet celebrity Belle Waring, with whom we went shopping in Little India and had some dosas. The Asian Civilizations Museum was also great; easily the nicest museum we've seen on the trip.
Take-Out
I know we haven't said anything about Vietnam yet, but I had to share this quick story about how weird Singapore is. This morning I had breakfast at one of the dozen or so Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf shops in the city and before I left I decided to try one of their tea lattes. I was meeting Lara at 9, so I asked for it "to-go" and after a wait, the counter girl brought it to me - in a paper bag. Oh, it was a regular paper cup and plastic lid like you'd get anywhere in the States, but she'd put tape over the sippy portion of the lid and put the whole thing in a paper bag. Now in any other city in the world I'd probably put this down to an odd little cultural difference about what "to-go" means, but in Singapore, known for its martial strictness about littering and gum chewing, I was suddenly paranoid that people weren't allowed to drink in the streets and I realized that of all the commuters I'd watched pass by the windows, not a single one had been carrying a cup of coffee. Being the rebel I am, you know I took that cup out of its bag and risked arrest by brazenly drinking it all the way back to the hotel. It was awesome. And I wasn't arrested.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Cambodia Continued
We're falling farther and farther behind, so I want to quickly catch you up on the rest of our stay in Cambodia. Hopefully, Corina will add her thoughts as well.
On Sunday, after an excellent breakfast of omelets and a baguette from our old friends at the Shanghai Restaurant, we drove from Anlong Veng back to Siem Reap, where we checked into our lovely hotel. We were surprised to run into 6 of the group of Americans we had camped with in Koh Ker. It turns out that the story about the government not letting the trucks up the mountain was not quite true. Actually, the group had been in a car accident. One of their cars had flipped and two people had to be medevaced to Bangkok. They are going to be okay, but it sounds like it was very scary. They were out of cellphone range, and there were no ambulances anyway, but they were lucky to have a doctor in their group who jury-rigged some spinal immobilization boards so that they could be driven back to Siem Reap. It was pretty upsetting to hear about, but we were happy to be able to see them again and hear what had happened to them.
One of the nice things about our hotel is that they had some arrangement with the nearby Sofitel so that we could use their spa, pool, and gym. We both took advantage of this to get (much-needed) pedicures and I used the gym.
Our guide had told us that we should plan to get to the temples early to avoid the rush. We thought we were doing this by leaving at 7:30 the next morning. But it turns out that wasn't early enough. After finding a tuk tuk driver and getting our tickets, our first stop was Ta Prohm, also known as the Jungle Temple. Apparently, this temple was featured in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," which you may be surprised to learn I have never seen. You could sort of see how it might be cool because it had not been restored, so it was fallen down in parts, and there were trees growing all over it. The only problem was the 8 billion other people who were also there. And the kids aggressively trying to sell us bracelets (3 for a dollar on the way in;6 for a dollar on the way out).
The next stop was Angkor Wat. It is massive, with a huge moat around it. It was by far the most intact temple we had seen up to that point. And it had really impressive bas reliefs. But we were a little underwhelmed, I think because there were just so many other people and we were used to having temples pretty much to ourselves.
The next morning we did manage to get up before sunrise and made it to Angkor Thom before the crowds. We both really like Bayon, which has dozens of the faces shown here:
The rest of our time in Siem Reap was spent shopping, eating, getting more spa treatments, watching the premiere of the Amazing Race Allstars, and having tea at the very posh Raffles Hotel.
We left early on Wednesday morning to head to Sihanoukville. This involved a 5-hour boat ride down the Tonle Sap (Great Lake) to Phnom Penh, following by a 4-hour bus ride to Sihanoukville on the coast. The boat ride was not the peaceful journey we had experienced in Burma, mostly because the boat was a lot faster, hotter, and more crowded. But I had a nice talk with my seat mate, who was from Chicago but was living in Taiwan as a Fulbright scholar. The bus ride was interesting because it featured a stewardess who handed out water and all sorts of mysterious snacks. She also served as a tour guide telling us little stories about the things we were passing. Unfortunately, about an hour into the trip, I got an email from the hotel at which we had reserved rooms saying that the hotel was full and they could not confirm our reservation (which they had already confirmed the day before). But Blackie (my blackberry) came to the rescue and after a few frantic phone calls, they offered us rooms in the low rent district of the hotel.
When we got to Sihanoukville, we didn't see any taxis or tuk tuks, so we had to go to the hotel on the backs of motorcycles, with our bags precariously perched in front of the driver. This worked out okay except for the accident that Corina's driver only narrowly averted. The beach was lovely, exactly what had been hoping for in Thailand, white sand beach, clear blue water and not a 7-11 in sight. The hotel was quite nice too, except that we were staying in the "small hotel" across a grass field from the main one. We were sort of wondering what the field was for, but learned the next morning that they land helicopters there. Peaceful!
On Saturday, we headed back to Phnom Penh. We visited the National Museum, and walked around looking at shops. Our hotel was right on the riverfront, and when we walked out to get dinner we were pleasantly surprised to see dozens of people picnicking in the park, catered to by street vendors. (Not so pleasantly surprised to read in Corina's guidebook the next morning that the street vendors are a hotbed of bacteria and Hepatitis A. But we survived.)
The striking thing about Phnom Penh was the tuk tuk drivers cheerfully asking us if wanted to go to the Killing Fields, and when we declined, asking if we wanted to got the Torture Museum instead. We didn't do either.
The next morning was incredibly hot. I went to the Royal Palace and to see the Silver Pagoda. Corina went to drink tea and find an ATM. It was so hot that we both got blisters from shoes we had been wearing every other day for a month. We were pretty relieved to head to Vietnam, where we heard it would be cooler.
On Sunday, after an excellent breakfast of omelets and a baguette from our old friends at the Shanghai Restaurant, we drove from Anlong Veng back to Siem Reap, where we checked into our lovely hotel. We were surprised to run into 6 of the group of Americans we had camped with in Koh Ker. It turns out that the story about the government not letting the trucks up the mountain was not quite true. Actually, the group had been in a car accident. One of their cars had flipped and two people had to be medevaced to Bangkok. They are going to be okay, but it sounds like it was very scary. They were out of cellphone range, and there were no ambulances anyway, but they were lucky to have a doctor in their group who jury-rigged some spinal immobilization boards so that they could be driven back to Siem Reap. It was pretty upsetting to hear about, but we were happy to be able to see them again and hear what had happened to them.
One of the nice things about our hotel is that they had some arrangement with the nearby Sofitel so that we could use their spa, pool, and gym. We both took advantage of this to get (much-needed) pedicures and I used the gym.
Our guide had told us that we should plan to get to the temples early to avoid the rush. We thought we were doing this by leaving at 7:30 the next morning. But it turns out that wasn't early enough. After finding a tuk tuk driver and getting our tickets, our first stop was Ta Prohm, also known as the Jungle Temple. Apparently, this temple was featured in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," which you may be surprised to learn I have never seen. You could sort of see how it might be cool because it had not been restored, so it was fallen down in parts, and there were trees growing all over it. The only problem was the 8 billion other people who were also there. And the kids aggressively trying to sell us bracelets (3 for a dollar on the way in;6 for a dollar on the way out).
The next stop was Angkor Wat. It is massive, with a huge moat around it. It was by far the most intact temple we had seen up to that point. And it had really impressive bas reliefs. But we were a little underwhelmed, I think because there were just so many other people and we were used to having temples pretty much to ourselves.
The next morning we did manage to get up before sunrise and made it to Angkor Thom before the crowds. We both really like Bayon, which has dozens of the faces shown here:
The rest of our time in Siem Reap was spent shopping, eating, getting more spa treatments, watching the premiere of the Amazing Race Allstars, and having tea at the very posh Raffles Hotel.
We left early on Wednesday morning to head to Sihanoukville. This involved a 5-hour boat ride down the Tonle Sap (Great Lake) to Phnom Penh, following by a 4-hour bus ride to Sihanoukville on the coast. The boat ride was not the peaceful journey we had experienced in Burma, mostly because the boat was a lot faster, hotter, and more crowded. But I had a nice talk with my seat mate, who was from Chicago but was living in Taiwan as a Fulbright scholar. The bus ride was interesting because it featured a stewardess who handed out water and all sorts of mysterious snacks. She also served as a tour guide telling us little stories about the things we were passing. Unfortunately, about an hour into the trip, I got an email from the hotel at which we had reserved rooms saying that the hotel was full and they could not confirm our reservation (which they had already confirmed the day before). But Blackie (my blackberry) came to the rescue and after a few frantic phone calls, they offered us rooms in the low rent district of the hotel.
When we got to Sihanoukville, we didn't see any taxis or tuk tuks, so we had to go to the hotel on the backs of motorcycles, with our bags precariously perched in front of the driver. This worked out okay except for the accident that Corina's driver only narrowly averted. The beach was lovely, exactly what had been hoping for in Thailand, white sand beach, clear blue water and not a 7-11 in sight. The hotel was quite nice too, except that we were staying in the "small hotel" across a grass field from the main one. We were sort of wondering what the field was for, but learned the next morning that they land helicopters there. Peaceful!
On Saturday, we headed back to Phnom Penh. We visited the National Museum, and walked around looking at shops. Our hotel was right on the riverfront, and when we walked out to get dinner we were pleasantly surprised to see dozens of people picnicking in the park, catered to by street vendors. (Not so pleasantly surprised to read in Corina's guidebook the next morning that the street vendors are a hotbed of bacteria and Hepatitis A. But we survived.)
The striking thing about Phnom Penh was the tuk tuk drivers cheerfully asking us if wanted to go to the Killing Fields, and when we declined, asking if we wanted to got the Torture Museum instead. We didn't do either.
The next morning was incredibly hot. I went to the Royal Palace and to see the Silver Pagoda. Corina went to drink tea and find an ATM. It was so hot that we both got blisters from shoes we had been wearing every other day for a month. We were pretty relieved to head to Vietnam, where we heard it would be cooler.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Safari Day 3 or Chinese New Year or Pol Pot's Chicken
Still not able to post as myself, so I'm Lara again. Although, as Lara posted earlier, apparently there's no difference as far as Cambodian immigration is concerned.
On the third day of our safari, which happened to be Chinese New Year, the holiday that had been messing with out plans since we left Burma, Lara and I both woke up, independently, and wandered up to the temple to see the sunrise. Anyone who knows either of us knows how unlikely that is, but it was so amazing having this beautiful place entirely to ourselves. Not only were there no tourists there yet, but even the locals hadn't started setting up their stalls selling cold drinks and bootleg CDs. For breakfast we walked across the border into Thailand. No, that's not a very good description of what we did. We went on a forced march halfway down the mountain to eat noodles in Thailand (where they had electricity! And running water! And western-style toilets! In addition to a paved road that made our trip up the Cambodian side seem even more reckless than it did at the time, and kind of absurd). On the post-breakfast hike back to our camp we had plenty more opportunities to curse ancient Khmer step builders (seriously - rise and run should be consistent and it's nice if more than 1/4 of your foot fits on any one step). Our huffing and puffing was put a little into perspective by the Cambodian boys who couldn't have been more than 11 carrying huge bags of ice on yokes across their shoulders back from the Thai market to their families' drink stalls at the top of the mountain. They work so hard.
Once we cooled off and got our breath back, we heard our moto drivers honking; it was time for the ride back down the mountain - both faster and more terrifying than the trip up. But no matter how scary the ride, it's infinitely better than the alternative - we saw dozens of locals hiking up on our way down.
Coming down from the mountain was really the end of the safari portion of our tour. That we were supposed to be sleeping in a guesthouse in Anlong Veng - the last Khmer Rouge stronghold and Pol Pot's final resting place. The night before we'd read dismal reviews of Anlong Veng's guesthouses, only one being described as "comfortable" by my guidebook. Luckily that's the one we ended up in. If we'd shared that room earlier in the trip, we no doubt would have complained about the lack of hot water (and toilet paper) and the dismal and spartan furnishings, but instead we were completely giddy - it had an air conditioner and we could flush the toilet! And while the shower wasn't hot, it was a vast improvement over the camp shower.
But before we made it to the hotel, we stopped for lunch, with our guide, as usual, ordering for us since in these areas not exactly crawling with tourists, not many people speak English. I got my usual - fried noodles with vegetables, but Lara got a special treat - we can't be sure, but we think it was chicken necks and fresh ginger. Lara did her darndest to eat some of it, but mainly we shared my noodles. Afraid we'd already offended our smiling and solicitous waitresses with our failure to make a dent in the pile of chicken necks, we couldn't be so churlish as to refuse the ice they kept adding to our glasses of coca-cola. And so in the Shang Hai restaurant in Anlong Veng the last of our diminished stock of food paranoia got swallowed with the ice in our wonderfully cold drinks.
After lunch our guide, who'd seemed increasingly disappointed in our lackluster touring, left us at the hotel and said he'd pick us up at 4:30 so we could see Pol Pot's "tomb" and watch the sunset. Um not so much. When we went out to the lobby at the appointed hour we found our driver waiting for us alone. I don't think he'd spoken a word to us since picking us up at the airport, so I was a little surprised when he explained in broken English that we were going to pick up our guide at a friend's house. We found this friend's house and our guide, drunk off his ass, told us we'd llike to go see Pol Pot's tomb and then come back and have a drink with his friend. Lara and I: "[long pause] Um. OK."
The driver drops us off on the side of the road points at a path, indicating we should follow it while he stays with the car, so being obediant tourists we do - and come to a bamboo fence enclosing a grave shaped pile of ash (Pol Pot was cremated), covered by a bamboo roof. There's a chicken carcass at one end, a small blue sign saying "Pol Pot's grave", a scary looking group of children smoking, drinking, leaning on the fence and laughing at us as we stand in the middle of this grassy field at twilight, firecrackers going off all around since it is Chinese New Year. I really can't convey adequately how bizarre the scene was. Lara took a few pictures and we scuttled back to the car and then back to Mr. Ra's house - our guide's drinking buddy. As Lara and I sat there, our guide slurring his speech as he explained that Mr. Ra was a "VIP", the head man of the village we were in, two men involved in a car crash came to Mr. Ra to settle their dispute over compensation. As our guide said - "there are no lawyers in Cambodia. If you're in a car crash and you know the head guy, you may pay only $200 but if the other guy knows the head guy, you'd pay $2000." Mr. Ra used to be a big wig with the Khmer Rouge our guide tells us, but now he's a "general commander" for the government. We ask him why there was a chicken at Pol Pot's tomb, and our guide looks freaked out, hushes us and says he'll tell us later. He never did. But he did say that this small village, where Lara and I elicit more stares than anywhere else on our trip, harbored the Khmer Rouge longer than anyplace else.
And Lara and I watch our guide and our host get drunker and they start offering to take us to Thailand for the night with a VIP police escort, because they can, and we politely say "no" finish our Cokes and say "We really think it's time for us to go back to the hotel now.". We get in the car with our driver, who's looked grumpy since he picked us up from the hotel (in other words since our drunk guide delegated responsibility for the two french ladies), and our guide persuades Mr. Ra to come back to town with us and have some dinner. Um. Great!
Dinner was actually far less awkward than the interlude in the Khmer Rouge stronghold. The owner of the restaurant joined the table, and the three of them showed us how to eat a local delicacy involving fermented fish paste that tasted like blue cheese and then we walked back to the hotel and left them all celebrating Chinese New Year.
I never would have imagined that one day, after wakinf up in a tent on a mountaintop I'd share fermented fish paste with a former lieutenant of Pol Pot's. It was all so unreal. Hopefully Lara will chime in with some of her thoughts on the day.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Commenting
It's come to our attention that some people aren't commenting because they don't have blogger accounts, or don't want to use their blogger accounts. We've opened the blog to anonymous commenting, so feel free.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Leaving Cambodia -- Now It Can Be Told
We're about a week behind on the blog, so I'm skipping ahead to today. I'm writing this on a plane from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City. We're flying straight to Danang from there and staying the next couple of days in Hoi An, which is on the coast a little south of Danang.
We're hoping it will be a little cooler. It was brutally hot in Phnom Penh this morning -- I think the high today was supposed to be 99.
Okay. So here's the funny story about our arrival in Cambodia. We didn't get visas in advance because you can get then on arrival at the airport. But you need a passport photo, which I had brought with me but foolishly put in my checked luggage. I was sort of hoping that there would be one of those instant photo booths (as there is in the Bangkok airport), but there wasn't.
Anticipating a huge hassle, I asked Corina if I could borrow one of her extras. (A little back story here: aside from being similar heights, and both having dark brown hair -- with gray streaks -- and fair skin, we don't look anything alike. For example, Corina has blue eyes, while mine are brown. I'm also 7 years older. Nevertheless, people keep thinking we're sisters.)
And it worked! I gave my passport, application, $20, and Corina's picture to the exact same guy Corina had just given hers to. It was then passed down a row of 5 or 6 people who processed it. And then the same guy handed our passports back to us. It made for a couple of tense moments, but I think the moral of the story is that we all look the same to them.
We're hoping it will be a little cooler. It was brutally hot in Phnom Penh this morning -- I think the high today was supposed to be 99.
Okay. So here's the funny story about our arrival in Cambodia. We didn't get visas in advance because you can get then on arrival at the airport. But you need a passport photo, which I had brought with me but foolishly put in my checked luggage. I was sort of hoping that there would be one of those instant photo booths (as there is in the Bangkok airport), but there wasn't.
Anticipating a huge hassle, I asked Corina if I could borrow one of her extras. (A little back story here: aside from being similar heights, and both having dark brown hair -- with gray streaks -- and fair skin, we don't look anything alike. For example, Corina has blue eyes, while mine are brown. I'm also 7 years older. Nevertheless, people keep thinking we're sisters.)
And it worked! I gave my passport, application, $20, and Corina's picture to the exact same guy Corina had just given hers to. It was then passed down a row of 5 or 6 people who processed it. And then the same guy handed our passports back to us. It made for a couple of tense moments, but I think the moral of the story is that we all look the same to them.
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