Monday, November 10, 2008
Laos: A Country So Small I Couldn’t Even Ditch My Sister
I arrived to Luang Prabang, Laos no longer on speaking terms with my sister. I wouldn’t let her sit by the window on the plane, she threw a fit, I told her that is exactly why mom and dad didn’t want her to travel abroad, and she told me (and the entire plane) that mom and dad said I was “too big of a bitch to ever get married.” Isn’t it fun to travel with family. After I kicked her out of our hotel room, we met at some point the next day because, well, it’s a small town. And my mom would have killed me had I actually left my sister in Laos.
Luang Prabang
My first solo morning in Luang Prabang I climbed Mt. Phousi, a big hill in the middle of town. There are great views of the city and the mountain is full of golden Buddha’s in various shapes and sizes. At 6am before the town was awake, hanging out with Buddha was amazingly calming.
I then proceeded to have breakfast. Three times. The food in this town was so amazing that I could not stop eating. First, I ate fruit and granola on an outside patio overlooking the street. Then I had a baguette and coffee at another café. Then Lauren and I sat on the sidewalk eating banana and peanut butter crepes from a sidewalk stand. It was gray and misty but this did not diminish from the town. The architecture was beautiful and the streets were clean. The temples and palace were ornately decorated with gold and the “curly cue” design characteristic of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
We took a boat tour to the Pak Ou caves, which were full of thousands of little Buddha statues. Then we stopped at the Whiskey Village where locals were brewing up their own heinous concoctions. We actually bought a few bottles of whiskey and Lauren even managed to get hers home. As it turns out, the stuff was so nasty even her Milwaukee’s Best-loving friends wouldn’t drink it. They instead began using it to take stains off of the walls of their apartment after house parties. Not so shockingly, it worked wonders.
We went out to dinner with some fellow Canadian travelers and Lauren ordered the house special. Wasn’t she excited to find out that the “soft stuff” in her soup was actually pork fat and buffalo skin. I know I was, because I had ordered fish.
Lauren and I got particularly ambitious one day and rented mountain bikes to take what turned into a 30 mile bike ride to Kuang Si Waterfalls outside of Luang Prabang. Although it was raining, muddy, and uphill for most of the way there, it cleared up just in time for us to swim in the waterfalls.
Of course, such a long bike ride made us tired and so we decided to feast back at the Hmong Night Market in town. There we got an all you can eat buffet for 50 cents. Didn’t quite beat the grilled bananas we had for lunch, but the local beer helped everything to go down more smoothly. After our first dinner, we did a second one at a Lao BBQ restaurant. Because it’s a small world, we ended up running into a Harvard MBA who knew a Peruvian guy that worked at McKinsey with me. We roasted our own meat on a table top grill and occasionally the waitress would come over and rub buffalo fat all over the grill to keep things from sticking. Delicious.
As it turns out, we usually have early buses on the mornings after we drink too much. Our 5am wake up call to catch our bus was only bearable because 1. I was still drunk and 2. We got to see monks along the side of the road asking for alms on our way to the station. Long lines of young men with shaved heads and orange robes walk down the street holding out their baskets to be filled with food from devout locals and tourists along the street.
Vang Vieng
The spiritual experience of the monks was completely obliterated by our next activity, tubing down a river in Vang Vieng, Laos. I’m not exactly sure how to describe this place...Imagine there is this quiet town in Laos that no one has ever been to. The town has a really beautiful river that runs between idyllic village scenery on one side and large rock formations on the other. One day, someone decides it would be fun to get intertubes and float down the river. The next day someone gets thirsty floating down the river and opens a bar. Then someone else gets thirsty and opens 12 more bars. Then they realize that drinking is more fun when you can jump off of things so the bars add rope swings, bungee cords, and zip lines. You write this all up in Lonely Planet, and next thing you know you have one long river, 13 bars with dangerous activities, and 2,000 21 year-old foreigners who have lost their life jackets and are tubing down a river completely obliterated. Not surprisingly, the majority of tourists are Irish and British (come on guys, you KNOW its true).
Vientiane
I lasted about one day there and then Lauren and I took another bus ride to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Laos has the lowest population density of any country in Asia, and this is the town where you notice it. Not going to lie, it was kind of refreshing. Sometimes I would walk out of my hotel and not see a single person. This is unheard of in Asia. The sites were interesting and doable in 1 day. We visited the temple Wat Sisaket which had walls full of Buddhas. We visited Pautaxi, modeled after the French Arc de Triunf. And we visited the famous La Phat Thuang, the golden structure of Lao Independence.
We also visited an Indian restaurant for the second time on our trip. Oddly, the same man who had served us Indian food at a restaurant in Hanoi was sitting at the table next to us. No lie, we went over and asked him to verify. Small world, small world.
And finally, the trip is coming to an end. Lauren and I hopped a night bus back to Bangkok that had both air conditioning and a bathroom so we didn’t even care that it was running 5 hours late. Bussing in to Bangkok gave us the chance to see just how massive the city is. For hours before we reached the city center we passed by colorful lorries and busses, a great highway with lines and signs, and big Tesco stores.
Once in Bangkok, wee checked Lauren into the hotel and then shared a wine soaked dinner. I then headed off to the airport in a bit of a drunken haze, ready to relax and sleep on my flight to Africa…
Unfortunately, Ethiopian Airlines was not on the same page. While I wanted a quick and easy check-in so that I could go and lay my tipsy head down in the waiting area, Ethiopian Airlines wanted to know where my dad was. What? My dad? Apparently I had used his credit card to book the flight and so he needed to be there with me. Unfortunately, he was in Iraq. As I waited for an hour for the manager who “had to make every decision,” according to the women at the desk, I watched some of the Africans on my flight check their 10 to 15 massive market bags. They sowed them up using rope and the biggest needle I had ever seen. If anyone is wondering how counterfeit goods make it from Asia to Africa, now you know.
After an hour, a tantrum, a forged letter, and a call to Iraq, I finally convinced “the man who must make all decisions” that I was indeed allowed to travel to Africa. While waiting in line I was pumped up on adrenaline, kind of drunk, and going off a dream that told me I would mean someone important on the trip to Tanzania. Therefore, I started talking up some French guy who, as it turned out, was a merchant marine who guarded oil rigs off of the coast of Africa. And I thought my life was exciting.
I later lost him in the Ethiopian airport during a layover when I was checking email for $5 an hour and just as I was wondering why in the hell Mr. Merchant Marine was so important, I got in line for my flight to Tanzania and remembered the trip was not over yet…
Luang Prabang
My first solo morning in Luang Prabang I climbed Mt. Phousi, a big hill in the middle of town. There are great views of the city and the mountain is full of golden Buddha’s in various shapes and sizes. At 6am before the town was awake, hanging out with Buddha was amazingly calming.
I then proceeded to have breakfast. Three times. The food in this town was so amazing that I could not stop eating. First, I ate fruit and granola on an outside patio overlooking the street. Then I had a baguette and coffee at another café. Then Lauren and I sat on the sidewalk eating banana and peanut butter crepes from a sidewalk stand. It was gray and misty but this did not diminish from the town. The architecture was beautiful and the streets were clean. The temples and palace were ornately decorated with gold and the “curly cue” design characteristic of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
We took a boat tour to the Pak Ou caves, which were full of thousands of little Buddha statues. Then we stopped at the Whiskey Village where locals were brewing up their own heinous concoctions. We actually bought a few bottles of whiskey and Lauren even managed to get hers home. As it turns out, the stuff was so nasty even her Milwaukee’s Best-loving friends wouldn’t drink it. They instead began using it to take stains off of the walls of their apartment after house parties. Not so shockingly, it worked wonders.
We went out to dinner with some fellow Canadian travelers and Lauren ordered the house special. Wasn’t she excited to find out that the “soft stuff” in her soup was actually pork fat and buffalo skin. I know I was, because I had ordered fish.
Lauren and I got particularly ambitious one day and rented mountain bikes to take what turned into a 30 mile bike ride to Kuang Si Waterfalls outside of Luang Prabang. Although it was raining, muddy, and uphill for most of the way there, it cleared up just in time for us to swim in the waterfalls.
Of course, such a long bike ride made us tired and so we decided to feast back at the Hmong Night Market in town. There we got an all you can eat buffet for 50 cents. Didn’t quite beat the grilled bananas we had for lunch, but the local beer helped everything to go down more smoothly. After our first dinner, we did a second one at a Lao BBQ restaurant. Because it’s a small world, we ended up running into a Harvard MBA who knew a Peruvian guy that worked at McKinsey with me. We roasted our own meat on a table top grill and occasionally the waitress would come over and rub buffalo fat all over the grill to keep things from sticking. Delicious.
As it turns out, we usually have early buses on the mornings after we drink too much. Our 5am wake up call to catch our bus was only bearable because 1. I was still drunk and 2. We got to see monks along the side of the road asking for alms on our way to the station. Long lines of young men with shaved heads and orange robes walk down the street holding out their baskets to be filled with food from devout locals and tourists along the street.
Vang Vieng
The spiritual experience of the monks was completely obliterated by our next activity, tubing down a river in Vang Vieng, Laos. I’m not exactly sure how to describe this place...Imagine there is this quiet town in Laos that no one has ever been to. The town has a really beautiful river that runs between idyllic village scenery on one side and large rock formations on the other. One day, someone decides it would be fun to get intertubes and float down the river. The next day someone gets thirsty floating down the river and opens a bar. Then someone else gets thirsty and opens 12 more bars. Then they realize that drinking is more fun when you can jump off of things so the bars add rope swings, bungee cords, and zip lines. You write this all up in Lonely Planet, and next thing you know you have one long river, 13 bars with dangerous activities, and 2,000 21 year-old foreigners who have lost their life jackets and are tubing down a river completely obliterated. Not surprisingly, the majority of tourists are Irish and British (come on guys, you KNOW its true).
Vientiane
I lasted about one day there and then Lauren and I took another bus ride to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Laos has the lowest population density of any country in Asia, and this is the town where you notice it. Not going to lie, it was kind of refreshing. Sometimes I would walk out of my hotel and not see a single person. This is unheard of in Asia. The sites were interesting and doable in 1 day. We visited the temple Wat Sisaket which had walls full of Buddhas. We visited Pautaxi, modeled after the French Arc de Triunf. And we visited the famous La Phat Thuang, the golden structure of Lao Independence.
We also visited an Indian restaurant for the second time on our trip. Oddly, the same man who had served us Indian food at a restaurant in Hanoi was sitting at the table next to us. No lie, we went over and asked him to verify. Small world, small world.
And finally, the trip is coming to an end. Lauren and I hopped a night bus back to Bangkok that had both air conditioning and a bathroom so we didn’t even care that it was running 5 hours late. Bussing in to Bangkok gave us the chance to see just how massive the city is. For hours before we reached the city center we passed by colorful lorries and busses, a great highway with lines and signs, and big Tesco stores.
Once in Bangkok, wee checked Lauren into the hotel and then shared a wine soaked dinner. I then headed off to the airport in a bit of a drunken haze, ready to relax and sleep on my flight to Africa…
Unfortunately, Ethiopian Airlines was not on the same page. While I wanted a quick and easy check-in so that I could go and lay my tipsy head down in the waiting area, Ethiopian Airlines wanted to know where my dad was. What? My dad? Apparently I had used his credit card to book the flight and so he needed to be there with me. Unfortunately, he was in Iraq. As I waited for an hour for the manager who “had to make every decision,” according to the women at the desk, I watched some of the Africans on my flight check their 10 to 15 massive market bags. They sowed them up using rope and the biggest needle I had ever seen. If anyone is wondering how counterfeit goods make it from Asia to Africa, now you know.
After an hour, a tantrum, a forged letter, and a call to Iraq, I finally convinced “the man who must make all decisions” that I was indeed allowed to travel to Africa. While waiting in line I was pumped up on adrenaline, kind of drunk, and going off a dream that told me I would mean someone important on the trip to Tanzania. Therefore, I started talking up some French guy who, as it turned out, was a merchant marine who guarded oil rigs off of the coast of Africa. And I thought my life was exciting.
I later lost him in the Ethiopian airport during a layover when I was checking email for $5 an hour and just as I was wondering why in the hell Mr. Merchant Marine was so important, I got in line for my flight to Tanzania and remembered the trip was not over yet…
Vietnam: The Mekong, Motos, and Mangosteens
Small stilted houses along the Mekong, thousands of motorcycles swarming the streets of Saigon like angry bees, and markets filled with unknown fresh fruits were my first impressions of Vietnam. Later, my impression would be rounded out by awesome historic sites, inaccurate museums, noodles, and people half my size that wanted to kick my ass.
Mekong Delta
We floated into Vietnam via the Mekong River from Cambodia and we passed by farmers working in the fields in their conical hats, houses on stilts, water buffalo, rice paddies, bathing children, and even a little boy pooping off of the side of a boat. Minus that last part, it was idyllic.
On our Mekong tour we also visited a floating market, which consisted of a number of boats centralized in one area that were selling all sorts of produce and other goods. We visited a fish farm, which consisted of a floating house that had traps beneath it that people used to hold and harvest the fish. As a part of our tour we stayed one night at a small home on one of the many channels of the Mekong. The hosts showed us their rice fields and talked about the difficulties they were having producing rice now that inputs (oil and food) were so much more expensive. Throughout our trip, it was interesting to see how the struggling world economy affects everyone in every country. Many people that I met spent a much larger percentage of their income on food and gas which meant that rising prices affected them much more severely. For us rising gas prices may mean we bike to work. For some of these people, it may mean they don’t eat.
Saigon
After several days on the Mekong we eventually got onto a bus and rolled into Saigon, also known as Ho Chi Minh City. The first thing you notice about Saigon are the motor bikes. There must be millions of them. They have a full set of lanes to themselves and they move like a swarm of bees. The second thing you notice, after having traveled through developing countries for a while, is how clean it is. There isn’t garbage piled up and there aren’t stray animals everywhere. The third thing you notice is the language. It is very nasally and sounds like people are yelling at each other.
Somewhere in our travels we befriended a Vietnamese American girl about Lauren’s age. She took us on a tour of Saigon, which included sitting down with some plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk one evening and feasting on Vietnamese food. She insisted that we try the local specialty which included developed duck egg (an egg where the baby duck is actually partially developed--Yes, you eat feathers), clams, robin eggs, and snails that come in long shells. Apart from this little experiment, the food in Vietnam was actually quite good.
After eating developed duck egg, the second strangest thing we did was visit a Cao Dai Temple a few hours outside of the city. The Cao Dai religion mixes Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism and the temple looked like it came out of Alice in Wonderland, with its pink, garishly decorated exterior. Inside, the pink pillars were adorned with dragons. During a ceremony we watched hundreds of worshippers march into the temple wearing bule, red, yellow, and white robes while they chanted a language that even the Vietnamese said they couldn’t understand.
After the strange religious lesson, it was time to learn about how terrible Americans were from an always entertaining source, the Vietnamese government. We visited the Cu Chi Tunnels in a town that, although located in Southern Vietnam, had sided with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The informational video at the start of the tour showed old black and white footage of Vietnamese peasants fighting in the fields and hiding in the infamous Cu Chi Tunnels, a network of underground tunnels where the Vietnamese hid during bombing raids. A highlight of the video was the comment: “the devils and ruthless killers [Americans, for those of you who are dense] then bombed women, children, schools, chickens, dogs, and pots and pans.” So when you confess to war atrocities, where does the “yes, I bombed pots and pans fit in?”
Upon re-entering Saigon and taking a quick tour to the ugliest royal palace in South East Asia (we really shouldn’t let communists build palaces), Lauren and I visited the War Remnants Museum. The museum was devoted to The American War. A war you may still be mistakenly referring to as The Vietnam War due to its occurrence in Vietnam and because it involved the Northern Vietnamese fighting the Southern Vietnamese. As has become a theme in my travels, history takes on a different perspective depending on who is telling it. It was extremely sad to see all of the devastation that took place during the war. There was an entire area devoted to foreign journalists who were killed and to civilians who were disfigured from napalm. There was also a section on protests against the war that were going on throughout the world and a section describing all of the atrocities wreaked on the North Vietnamese, commonly referred to as The Liberation Army. According to this museum thousands of Northern Vietnamese soldiers died in the war at the hands of the Americans and South Vietnamese. However, there did not appear to be any South Vietnamese or American troops who died in the war at the hands of the North Vietnamese. Which makes the Northern Vietnamese victory that much more impressive.
Nha Trang
From Saigon we hopped a train to Nha Trang, a beach town about 7 hours north of Saigon. While the scenery was spectacular, the cockroaches crawling out of every hole and the blaring Vietnamese music were not. Once in Nha Trang we jumped on to our now preferred method of transport, the back of motor bikes, and went to our hotel. We decided to make dinner cheap that evening and bought potatoes and corn on the cob from a woman squatting in front of a grill on the side of a busy road.
We came to Nha Trang to check out the diving in Vietnam. As we arrived into town late, we went with the only dive shop that was still open. That probably wasn’t a good idea. My personal guide spoke such bad English that we had to get someone else to come over and translate for him. Luckily, when my regulator broke 20 feet under water, English wasn’t necessary as I pretty much used hand motions to tell the guy that I was getting the hell out of there. After that was straightened out, my unprofessional dive continued as my guide touched and picked up as many things as he could find underwater. On one hand, it was cool to get to touch so many things that you normally aren’t allowed to, on the other I felt a little bad that these “professionals” were following such horrible diving practices.
After the somewhat stressful dive, Lauren and I chilled out in some therapeutic mud baths on the outskirts of town. The “spa” consisted of about 15 bathtubs that get filled with silky mud. Lauren and I shared a bathtub with a Vietnamese Dutch couple who spoke no English and were a great time. They led us through the process from mud bath, to showers, to hot water geysers, to hot tub. I don’t know what was in that mud, but my skin definitely came out much softer.
Hoi An
From Nha Trang, Lauren and I reserved seats on a bus going to Hoi An, about 12 hours up the coast. The busses in Vietnam were following a most inefficient system. Instead of the passengers going to the bus station, the bus would come around to each hotel and pick up the passengers. That means that this massive, lumbering bus has to drive all over town picking up two people here and there. Our bus came and picked up two people at our hotel, left, and then came back to pick us up. At this point, the bus was running 3 hours late. After they wasted an insane amount of time trying to pick everyone up, we drove for about 5 hours and then stopped at a restaurant at midnight where everyone was woken up to have dinner and use the bathroom at the singular rest stop on this 12 hour journey. Did I mention the bus didn’t have a bathroom? The bus also was set up with bunk beds. There were beds one on top of each other running down the left side, right side, and middle of the bus. In the back, there were 5 beds across the bottom and 5 beds across the top. Lauren and I got those top beds and so we were squished between a French couple and some teenage Vietnamese boy. The beds were probably 1.5 feet across which meant you were definitely touching the stranger that you were sleeping next to. After 12 hours on the bus, we arrived in Hoi An. The bus proceeded to stop at hotels that give them a commission and tried to convince us to get off. Exactly what I like to do at 7am.
Once we finally got there, Hoi An had a wonderful section of town that was very old with small streets and classic Chinese-influenced houses. Most of the houses had been converted into shops selling a variety of artisan goods including vases, opium pipes, necklaces, notebooks, dishes, and paintings. We did most of our shopping here. We also popped into a Vietnamese cooking class which included a market and spice garden tour. It was a scorching 99 degrees with humidity outside and so we did most of our activities in the evening.
Hue
From Hoi An we booked a bus to Hue. Hue is known for its ancient Citadel and the Pagoda and Royal Tombs in the surrounding area that are from the Nguyen dynasty. The Nguyen Dynasty was one of the longest reigning in Vietnam and many people took Nguyen as their last name, which is why it is so common among Vietnamese people today. Both the Pagoda and the Tombs used a lot of wood and gold and seemed modeled after Chinese architecture, which is different from Laos and Cambodia which tend to look more like Thailand.
In my mind Hue is also the point where I began to wonder if I liked Vietnam. At one of the tombs Lauren asked a woman selling food from a kiosk about the price of an ice cream cone and was told it was 10 dong ($1.50). Lauren paid with a 20 and the woman returned 5 dong telling her the price had just been raised to 15. She refused to give her back the other 5. In a similar incident, when I got off of a motorbike that had given us a ride, the guy changed the price that he had originally offered us. On top of that, as I was pulling out my cash, I began to hand him a 100 dong bill (confusing it with the similarly colored green 10 dong bill) and he violently grabbed my hand and the bill telling me 10 dong would be fine and wouldn’t let me look at the bill. I finally wrestled it away from him and left him yelling after me. We had yet another problem trying to leave Hue when our bus company substituted a non-sleeper bus in at the last moment (which should have been nearly half the price) and refused to refund any of the money to us. I realize that all of this accounts for about $20 at the end of the day, but it was just adding to a list of grievances…
Hanoi
If I was surprised by those incidences, I was shocked by the way we were treated in Hanoi. I could go on for at least several pages on the number of times someone tried to blatantly rip us off, physically assault us while trying to blatantly rip us off, or chased after us screaming. Suffice to say that between the number of taxi drivers (3), bus drivers (2), tour guides (2), restaurants (1), and hotel attendants (2) that did these things, I was beginning to wonder what in the hell we were doing wrong. (Did I mention we were only in Hanoi for 2 days?) There really isn’t much you can do in these cases except refuse to pay people, which made them violent and psychotic, or steal their car keys when they aren’t looking. None of it really changes anything, but at least the latter made ME feel much better.
Thank God they at least had good food. Thanks to my friend Alisha’s recommendations, we pretty much ate and drank our way through Hanoi. (Alisha, I would also like to say that you must have the patience of a saint to have lived here for two years). We found that Vietnam tended to have three main food choices: fried noodles, noodle in soup, and fried rice. You would then add either chicken, beef, or shrimp to one of the above. In Hanoi they had wonderful noodle soups, great iced coffee with condensed milk, fresh fruit cups covered in condensed milk, and fresh fish.
Hanoi also has 2 highly recommended historical/tourist sites. First, was the stuffed Ho Chi Minh Museum. (I believe they actually call it embalming...) Either way, we got to see a really old, dead historical figure lying in a glass tube surrounded by lights and that was cool. We also had to walk side by side at a designated pace in order to view his casket. I even got grabbed (see here is the overly pushy physical touching again!) by an armed guard at one point for not keeping up the pace. It was kind of fun to act communist while checking out Chairman Ho.
Second, we visited Hoa Lo Prison. Our own John McCain spent about 5 years there during the Vietnam War after he crashed his (4th) plane into a nearby lake. It is commonly referred to as the Hanoi Hilton. The prison, now a museum, is mostly devoted to honoring the Vietnamese Revolutionary Patriotic Soldiers (that’s their wording for themselves, not mine) who fought against the French Criminals (again, their wording, not mine) for Independence in the 1950’s. However, there was a small section devoted to U.S. POWs which held John McCain’s flight uniform and showed a picture of him being pulled out of a nearby lake after he crashed. There were also some signs and photo captions referring to the prisoners “best conditions” and Vietnam’s “humane policy” towards POWs. The rest of the photos generally revolved around the POWs celebrating Christmas with lots of presents, a Christmas tree, and a turkey. It made it seem kind of nice. But then again, anyone who watches FOX news knows how easy it is to bend the truth.
Halong Bay
Speaking of fair and balanced, our trip of Halong Bay showed that we were not the only ones having “cross-cultural” problems in Vietnam. Halong Bay, a bay full of giant, grey limestone formations sticking out of the ocean, is where we did a 2 day houseboat tour with 15 other tourists. For our tour, Lauren and I boarded a houseboat for 2 days with 15 fellow passengers. We went kayaking and visited “Surprise Cave,” named for a massive phallic stalagmite that you see (mainly because it has floodlights on it) when you round a corner of the cave. (Yes, at least they have a sense of humor). We also got to jump off of our houseboat and go swimming. There were women rowing little boats around selling food and beer and so we had access to a bar while swimming in the ocean. Not a bad idea.
The tour was relaxing and fairly uneventful until the some of the foreigners on our boat had a blow up with the crew. Lauren and I were drinking enough to placate ourselves and so we tended to watch the drama unfold from the sidelines. The trouble started when a couple people realized that they had paid double the price and were not getting any of the boat amenities they had paid for. Then, the crew served the Vietnamese tourists on our tour twice as much food as the foreigners and then made all of the foreigners squeeze together at smaller tables. Then, on the last morning, the Vietnamese crew started knocking on everyone’s door at 7am to wake them up so that they could clean for our 12 noon departure from the boat. Being that we had downed a bit of whiskey the night before, a 7am wake up call was kind of brutal. When people came out and asked them to stop, we watched the crew continue to knock on doors, while laughing, just to piss people off. As a rule, I usually don’t mess with Texans or Israelis, but apparently no one told the crew that. I think they know now.
Sapa
While the rest of Vietnam was causing blood pressure spikes, Sapa was a welcome oasis. We sat in the “hard seats” on the overnight train to Sapa because we had been a bit late buying tickets and therefore could not get “sleeper beds.” While there is little to compete with the level of discomfort involved in sitting straight up on a piece of wood squished against the person next to you for 10 hours, we did save $7.
Once at the train station, we spent at least 15 minutes fending off drivers that were trying to pull us into their vans for the 2 hour ride to Sapa. We finally found a van and only had to move all of our things once to a new van because the first one decided it no longer wanted to go to Sapa. Of course this confusion of changing vans meant that the man we paid got lost in the shuffle and so when our van dropped us off in Sapa, the driver chased us through the street demanding we pay again. Did I say Sapa was an Oasis? Well it is, but you kind of have to get away from where all of the people are first.
Sapa, located in northern Vietnam and several miles from the Chinese border, is known for its ethnic hill tribe people. The best guess is that these people migrated here from China, Thailand, and The Himalayas over 500 years ago. Due to the mountainous terrain, these groups had very little communication with surrounding areas. That is why they have kept so many of their customs, the most obvious being their form of dress. The three main groups are the Ty, Red Dao, and Black Hmong. The Ty dress in somewhat traditional Thai clothing while the Red Dhao women wear large, red hats and pluck their hair and eyebrows. Why they pluck all of their hair was in dispute between our guides – it was either to keep away head lice or for beauty. The Black Hmong women wore skirts and blouses made of a darkly dyed cloth.
Sapa is beautiful and surrounded by green, rolling hills. Lauren and I took a two day, one night hike through the area. At the start of our hike we were followed by a number of women trying to sell us earrings and cloth. The rest of the trip was spent getting the silent treatment from our Vietnamese tour guide. About three hours into the hike on our first day, our guide informed us that the river had risen slightly and that we would need to walk through foot-high water for a distance of 10 feet. In lieu of having soaking wet hiking boots for the next 5 hours of our hike, I decided to take off my shoes and socks and wade through barefoot. My guide told me not to, I asked him why, he didn’t have a good reason, and so I did it anyway. After I made it safely to the other side and put my shoes back on, our guide fumed silently for about 10 minutes before he blew up on me screaming: “I am guide! All tourists listen to me! But you, no! You don’t listen to me! You need to do what I say because I am guide and you took off shoes when I said don’t take off shoes!” I really don’t have time for male temper tantrums and/or power trips, but I felt that I was justified in my decision to not walk for 5 hours in soaking wet shoes, and so I told him that. I also asked him what I should do if he told me to jump off of a bridge. That stumped him. We continued for several hours before he would speak to me again.
The one night we had on the trail we spent with a Red Dao family. The first thing that struck me about their house was that the father was sitting in the middle of the floor sucking tobacco smoke out of a long pipe that was immersed in water. I hadn’t seen a real water bong since, oh, about 11th grade. We sat around the fire on our little stools helping our cook make dinner. The cookware and fire were reminiscent of my kitchen in Peru. For dinner we feasted on rice, tofu, noodles, vegetables, and some rice wine that tasted like kerosene.
After our hike back into Sapa town, Lauren and I spent the night in a $12 per night hotel with beautiful views of the surrounding valley. The following day we took a 7 hour bus ride to the Bac Ha market. The majority of the people at the market were the Flower Hmong. The women in this group wear brightly colored skirts and blouses and reminded me of some of the rural areas of Peru. The rest of the people were predominantly tall Caucasians of European descent with cameras around their necks.
We then took our overnight train back to Hanoi. Once again we had not bought our tickets in time and got stuck with hard seats. However, this time we were smart and bought two hard seats each which gave us enough room to lay down. Unfortunately this made everyone else on the train think that there were empty seats and floor space and we spent the majority of our time fighting off weird men.
Back in Hanoi, my favorite city, I began to wonder what it was that made getting along with the Vietnamese so difficult. On one hand, I thought it could be the language barrier. I don’t speak Vietnamese and people in Vietnam do not speak English very well. Perhaps it is all miscommunication. Secondly, I thought that it might be what I refer to as the “what the f*** face” that the Vietnamese use. I used to think they actually meant “what the f***” when they gave me that look, but after getting the look in friendly situations, I began to think that it might be as significant as me scratching my head. Again, a miscommunication. A third idea is that we got mistreated because we were Americans. It would make sense. After all we barged into their country talking about dominoes and then they beat us in a war only to find that Americans got to go home to a 2 car garage and freedom while they got stuck with 2 more wars and a political system known for repression and ugly architecture. Not exactly justice from their perspective. However, most people thought I was German, and they were still mean to me.
It appears that I have had too much human interaction over the last few weeks and I am itching to get out of Vietnam. Our next stop, mercifully, has the lowest population density in all of Asia. Laos here we come!
Mekong Delta
We floated into Vietnam via the Mekong River from Cambodia and we passed by farmers working in the fields in their conical hats, houses on stilts, water buffalo, rice paddies, bathing children, and even a little boy pooping off of the side of a boat. Minus that last part, it was idyllic.
On our Mekong tour we also visited a floating market, which consisted of a number of boats centralized in one area that were selling all sorts of produce and other goods. We visited a fish farm, which consisted of a floating house that had traps beneath it that people used to hold and harvest the fish. As a part of our tour we stayed one night at a small home on one of the many channels of the Mekong. The hosts showed us their rice fields and talked about the difficulties they were having producing rice now that inputs (oil and food) were so much more expensive. Throughout our trip, it was interesting to see how the struggling world economy affects everyone in every country. Many people that I met spent a much larger percentage of their income on food and gas which meant that rising prices affected them much more severely. For us rising gas prices may mean we bike to work. For some of these people, it may mean they don’t eat.
Saigon
After several days on the Mekong we eventually got onto a bus and rolled into Saigon, also known as Ho Chi Minh City. The first thing you notice about Saigon are the motor bikes. There must be millions of them. They have a full set of lanes to themselves and they move like a swarm of bees. The second thing you notice, after having traveled through developing countries for a while, is how clean it is. There isn’t garbage piled up and there aren’t stray animals everywhere. The third thing you notice is the language. It is very nasally and sounds like people are yelling at each other.
Somewhere in our travels we befriended a Vietnamese American girl about Lauren’s age. She took us on a tour of Saigon, which included sitting down with some plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk one evening and feasting on Vietnamese food. She insisted that we try the local specialty which included developed duck egg (an egg where the baby duck is actually partially developed--Yes, you eat feathers), clams, robin eggs, and snails that come in long shells. Apart from this little experiment, the food in Vietnam was actually quite good.
After eating developed duck egg, the second strangest thing we did was visit a Cao Dai Temple a few hours outside of the city. The Cao Dai religion mixes Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism and the temple looked like it came out of Alice in Wonderland, with its pink, garishly decorated exterior. Inside, the pink pillars were adorned with dragons. During a ceremony we watched hundreds of worshippers march into the temple wearing bule, red, yellow, and white robes while they chanted a language that even the Vietnamese said they couldn’t understand.
After the strange religious lesson, it was time to learn about how terrible Americans were from an always entertaining source, the Vietnamese government. We visited the Cu Chi Tunnels in a town that, although located in Southern Vietnam, had sided with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The informational video at the start of the tour showed old black and white footage of Vietnamese peasants fighting in the fields and hiding in the infamous Cu Chi Tunnels, a network of underground tunnels where the Vietnamese hid during bombing raids. A highlight of the video was the comment: “the devils and ruthless killers [Americans, for those of you who are dense] then bombed women, children, schools, chickens, dogs, and pots and pans.” So when you confess to war atrocities, where does the “yes, I bombed pots and pans fit in?”
Upon re-entering Saigon and taking a quick tour to the ugliest royal palace in South East Asia (we really shouldn’t let communists build palaces), Lauren and I visited the War Remnants Museum. The museum was devoted to The American War. A war you may still be mistakenly referring to as The Vietnam War due to its occurrence in Vietnam and because it involved the Northern Vietnamese fighting the Southern Vietnamese. As has become a theme in my travels, history takes on a different perspective depending on who is telling it. It was extremely sad to see all of the devastation that took place during the war. There was an entire area devoted to foreign journalists who were killed and to civilians who were disfigured from napalm. There was also a section on protests against the war that were going on throughout the world and a section describing all of the atrocities wreaked on the North Vietnamese, commonly referred to as The Liberation Army. According to this museum thousands of Northern Vietnamese soldiers died in the war at the hands of the Americans and South Vietnamese. However, there did not appear to be any South Vietnamese or American troops who died in the war at the hands of the North Vietnamese. Which makes the Northern Vietnamese victory that much more impressive.
Nha Trang
From Saigon we hopped a train to Nha Trang, a beach town about 7 hours north of Saigon. While the scenery was spectacular, the cockroaches crawling out of every hole and the blaring Vietnamese music were not. Once in Nha Trang we jumped on to our now preferred method of transport, the back of motor bikes, and went to our hotel. We decided to make dinner cheap that evening and bought potatoes and corn on the cob from a woman squatting in front of a grill on the side of a busy road.
We came to Nha Trang to check out the diving in Vietnam. As we arrived into town late, we went with the only dive shop that was still open. That probably wasn’t a good idea. My personal guide spoke such bad English that we had to get someone else to come over and translate for him. Luckily, when my regulator broke 20 feet under water, English wasn’t necessary as I pretty much used hand motions to tell the guy that I was getting the hell out of there. After that was straightened out, my unprofessional dive continued as my guide touched and picked up as many things as he could find underwater. On one hand, it was cool to get to touch so many things that you normally aren’t allowed to, on the other I felt a little bad that these “professionals” were following such horrible diving practices.
After the somewhat stressful dive, Lauren and I chilled out in some therapeutic mud baths on the outskirts of town. The “spa” consisted of about 15 bathtubs that get filled with silky mud. Lauren and I shared a bathtub with a Vietnamese Dutch couple who spoke no English and were a great time. They led us through the process from mud bath, to showers, to hot water geysers, to hot tub. I don’t know what was in that mud, but my skin definitely came out much softer.
Hoi An
From Nha Trang, Lauren and I reserved seats on a bus going to Hoi An, about 12 hours up the coast. The busses in Vietnam were following a most inefficient system. Instead of the passengers going to the bus station, the bus would come around to each hotel and pick up the passengers. That means that this massive, lumbering bus has to drive all over town picking up two people here and there. Our bus came and picked up two people at our hotel, left, and then came back to pick us up. At this point, the bus was running 3 hours late. After they wasted an insane amount of time trying to pick everyone up, we drove for about 5 hours and then stopped at a restaurant at midnight where everyone was woken up to have dinner and use the bathroom at the singular rest stop on this 12 hour journey. Did I mention the bus didn’t have a bathroom? The bus also was set up with bunk beds. There were beds one on top of each other running down the left side, right side, and middle of the bus. In the back, there were 5 beds across the bottom and 5 beds across the top. Lauren and I got those top beds and so we were squished between a French couple and some teenage Vietnamese boy. The beds were probably 1.5 feet across which meant you were definitely touching the stranger that you were sleeping next to. After 12 hours on the bus, we arrived in Hoi An. The bus proceeded to stop at hotels that give them a commission and tried to convince us to get off. Exactly what I like to do at 7am.
Once we finally got there, Hoi An had a wonderful section of town that was very old with small streets and classic Chinese-influenced houses. Most of the houses had been converted into shops selling a variety of artisan goods including vases, opium pipes, necklaces, notebooks, dishes, and paintings. We did most of our shopping here. We also popped into a Vietnamese cooking class which included a market and spice garden tour. It was a scorching 99 degrees with humidity outside and so we did most of our activities in the evening.
Hue
From Hoi An we booked a bus to Hue. Hue is known for its ancient Citadel and the Pagoda and Royal Tombs in the surrounding area that are from the Nguyen dynasty. The Nguyen Dynasty was one of the longest reigning in Vietnam and many people took Nguyen as their last name, which is why it is so common among Vietnamese people today. Both the Pagoda and the Tombs used a lot of wood and gold and seemed modeled after Chinese architecture, which is different from Laos and Cambodia which tend to look more like Thailand.
In my mind Hue is also the point where I began to wonder if I liked Vietnam. At one of the tombs Lauren asked a woman selling food from a kiosk about the price of an ice cream cone and was told it was 10 dong ($1.50). Lauren paid with a 20 and the woman returned 5 dong telling her the price had just been raised to 15. She refused to give her back the other 5. In a similar incident, when I got off of a motorbike that had given us a ride, the guy changed the price that he had originally offered us. On top of that, as I was pulling out my cash, I began to hand him a 100 dong bill (confusing it with the similarly colored green 10 dong bill) and he violently grabbed my hand and the bill telling me 10 dong would be fine and wouldn’t let me look at the bill. I finally wrestled it away from him and left him yelling after me. We had yet another problem trying to leave Hue when our bus company substituted a non-sleeper bus in at the last moment (which should have been nearly half the price) and refused to refund any of the money to us. I realize that all of this accounts for about $20 at the end of the day, but it was just adding to a list of grievances…
Hanoi
If I was surprised by those incidences, I was shocked by the way we were treated in Hanoi. I could go on for at least several pages on the number of times someone tried to blatantly rip us off, physically assault us while trying to blatantly rip us off, or chased after us screaming. Suffice to say that between the number of taxi drivers (3), bus drivers (2), tour guides (2), restaurants (1), and hotel attendants (2) that did these things, I was beginning to wonder what in the hell we were doing wrong. (Did I mention we were only in Hanoi for 2 days?) There really isn’t much you can do in these cases except refuse to pay people, which made them violent and psychotic, or steal their car keys when they aren’t looking. None of it really changes anything, but at least the latter made ME feel much better.
Thank God they at least had good food. Thanks to my friend Alisha’s recommendations, we pretty much ate and drank our way through Hanoi. (Alisha, I would also like to say that you must have the patience of a saint to have lived here for two years). We found that Vietnam tended to have three main food choices: fried noodles, noodle in soup, and fried rice. You would then add either chicken, beef, or shrimp to one of the above. In Hanoi they had wonderful noodle soups, great iced coffee with condensed milk, fresh fruit cups covered in condensed milk, and fresh fish.
Hanoi also has 2 highly recommended historical/tourist sites. First, was the stuffed Ho Chi Minh Museum. (I believe they actually call it embalming...) Either way, we got to see a really old, dead historical figure lying in a glass tube surrounded by lights and that was cool. We also had to walk side by side at a designated pace in order to view his casket. I even got grabbed (see here is the overly pushy physical touching again!) by an armed guard at one point for not keeping up the pace. It was kind of fun to act communist while checking out Chairman Ho.
Second, we visited Hoa Lo Prison. Our own John McCain spent about 5 years there during the Vietnam War after he crashed his (4th) plane into a nearby lake. It is commonly referred to as the Hanoi Hilton. The prison, now a museum, is mostly devoted to honoring the Vietnamese Revolutionary Patriotic Soldiers (that’s their wording for themselves, not mine) who fought against the French Criminals (again, their wording, not mine) for Independence in the 1950’s. However, there was a small section devoted to U.S. POWs which held John McCain’s flight uniform and showed a picture of him being pulled out of a nearby lake after he crashed. There were also some signs and photo captions referring to the prisoners “best conditions” and Vietnam’s “humane policy” towards POWs. The rest of the photos generally revolved around the POWs celebrating Christmas with lots of presents, a Christmas tree, and a turkey. It made it seem kind of nice. But then again, anyone who watches FOX news knows how easy it is to bend the truth.
Halong Bay
Speaking of fair and balanced, our trip of Halong Bay showed that we were not the only ones having “cross-cultural” problems in Vietnam. Halong Bay, a bay full of giant, grey limestone formations sticking out of the ocean, is where we did a 2 day houseboat tour with 15 other tourists. For our tour, Lauren and I boarded a houseboat for 2 days with 15 fellow passengers. We went kayaking and visited “Surprise Cave,” named for a massive phallic stalagmite that you see (mainly because it has floodlights on it) when you round a corner of the cave. (Yes, at least they have a sense of humor). We also got to jump off of our houseboat and go swimming. There were women rowing little boats around selling food and beer and so we had access to a bar while swimming in the ocean. Not a bad idea.
The tour was relaxing and fairly uneventful until the some of the foreigners on our boat had a blow up with the crew. Lauren and I were drinking enough to placate ourselves and so we tended to watch the drama unfold from the sidelines. The trouble started when a couple people realized that they had paid double the price and were not getting any of the boat amenities they had paid for. Then, the crew served the Vietnamese tourists on our tour twice as much food as the foreigners and then made all of the foreigners squeeze together at smaller tables. Then, on the last morning, the Vietnamese crew started knocking on everyone’s door at 7am to wake them up so that they could clean for our 12 noon departure from the boat. Being that we had downed a bit of whiskey the night before, a 7am wake up call was kind of brutal. When people came out and asked them to stop, we watched the crew continue to knock on doors, while laughing, just to piss people off. As a rule, I usually don’t mess with Texans or Israelis, but apparently no one told the crew that. I think they know now.
Sapa
While the rest of Vietnam was causing blood pressure spikes, Sapa was a welcome oasis. We sat in the “hard seats” on the overnight train to Sapa because we had been a bit late buying tickets and therefore could not get “sleeper beds.” While there is little to compete with the level of discomfort involved in sitting straight up on a piece of wood squished against the person next to you for 10 hours, we did save $7.
Once at the train station, we spent at least 15 minutes fending off drivers that were trying to pull us into their vans for the 2 hour ride to Sapa. We finally found a van and only had to move all of our things once to a new van because the first one decided it no longer wanted to go to Sapa. Of course this confusion of changing vans meant that the man we paid got lost in the shuffle and so when our van dropped us off in Sapa, the driver chased us through the street demanding we pay again. Did I say Sapa was an Oasis? Well it is, but you kind of have to get away from where all of the people are first.
Sapa, located in northern Vietnam and several miles from the Chinese border, is known for its ethnic hill tribe people. The best guess is that these people migrated here from China, Thailand, and The Himalayas over 500 years ago. Due to the mountainous terrain, these groups had very little communication with surrounding areas. That is why they have kept so many of their customs, the most obvious being their form of dress. The three main groups are the Ty, Red Dao, and Black Hmong. The Ty dress in somewhat traditional Thai clothing while the Red Dhao women wear large, red hats and pluck their hair and eyebrows. Why they pluck all of their hair was in dispute between our guides – it was either to keep away head lice or for beauty. The Black Hmong women wore skirts and blouses made of a darkly dyed cloth.
Sapa is beautiful and surrounded by green, rolling hills. Lauren and I took a two day, one night hike through the area. At the start of our hike we were followed by a number of women trying to sell us earrings and cloth. The rest of the trip was spent getting the silent treatment from our Vietnamese tour guide. About three hours into the hike on our first day, our guide informed us that the river had risen slightly and that we would need to walk through foot-high water for a distance of 10 feet. In lieu of having soaking wet hiking boots for the next 5 hours of our hike, I decided to take off my shoes and socks and wade through barefoot. My guide told me not to, I asked him why, he didn’t have a good reason, and so I did it anyway. After I made it safely to the other side and put my shoes back on, our guide fumed silently for about 10 minutes before he blew up on me screaming: “I am guide! All tourists listen to me! But you, no! You don’t listen to me! You need to do what I say because I am guide and you took off shoes when I said don’t take off shoes!” I really don’t have time for male temper tantrums and/or power trips, but I felt that I was justified in my decision to not walk for 5 hours in soaking wet shoes, and so I told him that. I also asked him what I should do if he told me to jump off of a bridge. That stumped him. We continued for several hours before he would speak to me again.
The one night we had on the trail we spent with a Red Dao family. The first thing that struck me about their house was that the father was sitting in the middle of the floor sucking tobacco smoke out of a long pipe that was immersed in water. I hadn’t seen a real water bong since, oh, about 11th grade. We sat around the fire on our little stools helping our cook make dinner. The cookware and fire were reminiscent of my kitchen in Peru. For dinner we feasted on rice, tofu, noodles, vegetables, and some rice wine that tasted like kerosene.
After our hike back into Sapa town, Lauren and I spent the night in a $12 per night hotel with beautiful views of the surrounding valley. The following day we took a 7 hour bus ride to the Bac Ha market. The majority of the people at the market were the Flower Hmong. The women in this group wear brightly colored skirts and blouses and reminded me of some of the rural areas of Peru. The rest of the people were predominantly tall Caucasians of European descent with cameras around their necks.
We then took our overnight train back to Hanoi. Once again we had not bought our tickets in time and got stuck with hard seats. However, this time we were smart and bought two hard seats each which gave us enough room to lay down. Unfortunately this made everyone else on the train think that there were empty seats and floor space and we spent the majority of our time fighting off weird men.
Back in Hanoi, my favorite city, I began to wonder what it was that made getting along with the Vietnamese so difficult. On one hand, I thought it could be the language barrier. I don’t speak Vietnamese and people in Vietnam do not speak English very well. Perhaps it is all miscommunication. Secondly, I thought that it might be what I refer to as the “what the f*** face” that the Vietnamese use. I used to think they actually meant “what the f***” when they gave me that look, but after getting the look in friendly situations, I began to think that it might be as significant as me scratching my head. Again, a miscommunication. A third idea is that we got mistreated because we were Americans. It would make sense. After all we barged into their country talking about dominoes and then they beat us in a war only to find that Americans got to go home to a 2 car garage and freedom while they got stuck with 2 more wars and a political system known for repression and ugly architecture. Not exactly justice from their perspective. However, most people thought I was German, and they were still mean to me.
It appears that I have had too much human interaction over the last few weeks and I am itching to get out of Vietnam. Our next stop, mercifully, has the lowest population density in all of Asia. Laos here we come!
Friday, October 17, 2008
Cambodia: Temples and Terror
After arriving into the Bangkok airport from Japan my first task was to find my missing sister, Lauren, and then find a way to make it to Cambodia. Due to the mishap that is called Malaysia Airlines, I was 12 hours later than expected. Luckily I have a track record for missing flights and being late, so Lauren didn’t worry as she spent the day waiting for me at Bangkok International.
All of my research on entering Cambodia stressed that it was much easier to fly from Bangkok. Complaints about cheating bus companies and shady border officials are supposed to deter travelers. I thought that made it sound exciting. So Lauren and I set off on a train from Bangkok to the Thai-Cambodian border. After being stamped to leave Thailand, we crossed through No Man’s Land and lined up at the Cambodian Visa booth. The sign over the booth read “Cambodian Visa: $25.” When I handed my passport and $25 to the visa agent he said “No, it’s $35.” Hmmm. I explained to him that the massive sign hanging outside of his office said $25. He threw my passport at me, slammed the window, and went back to playing cards with his 4 other uniformed friends. I asked someone next to me where I could find the police. Pity, it turns out that the men charging $10 extra for visas were the police. All of the other pushover Americans ahead of us had paid the extra money and so I wasn’t left with much bargaining power (I wanted to start a strike) and so I threw a tantrum until he eventually lowered the price to $30.
As far as first impressions go, Cambodia wasn’t doing so well.
After we eventually made it into Cambodia we stood at the border with 30 other foreigners who had been ditched by their unscrupulous bus company and were ride-less. Luckily, we had heard about that scam and had opted instead for the train and finding our own transport once inside Cambodia. A number of shady men who had been “helping” us with the visa process were now trying to “help” us on to “tourist busses.” I tracked down a few taxis but everyone that agreed to take me was then subject to harassment from the man “helping” us to find a bus. The entire racket was so frustrating that we finally hiked down the road with our backpacks, found an independent taxi that was using us as a cover to smuggle shoes through a checkpoint (he had over 50 pairs of shoes hidden under our backpacks in the trunk and under the mats in the car by our feet), and offered him a reasonable price to take us to Siem Reap.
Upon entering Cambodia, its most notable characteristic is schizophrenia. It accepts three currencies: the Thai Baht, the Cambodian Real, and the American Dollar. Dollars come out of the ATM machines, change is given in Real, and Baht are worth 30% less than in Thailand. They drive on the right side of the road. Or the left. It kind of depends on what is in front of you. Normally, you can try to determine which side of the road to drive on based on which side of the car is the driver’s side. However, in Cambodia, some cars had the driver’s side on the left, and some had it on the right. Our first stop within this befuddled country was Siem Reap.
Siem Reap’s fame comes from its proximity to the Angkor Wat ruins. It’s got a few streets full of trendy, touristy restaurants and bars (such as the clever “Angkor What?” bar) but right outside of that center is a pretty typical Cambodian town: Motorbikes, dust, street markets, and burning garbage. Lonely Planet and other guide books suggested spending anywhere from 3 to 7 days perusing the nearby Angkor Wat ruins. Lauren and I penciled in a day and were done by 1pm. The numerous ruins were laid out over several square miles and we had to hire a tuk-tuk (motorbike with a cart attached to the back) to take us from ruin to ruin. The crown jewel of the ruins, THE Angkor Wat temple, was where we went at 5am to watch the sunrise. After that we visited some other famous spots including Tha Prohm, left a ruin for so long that massive trees were growing out of it; Ta Keo which we were able to climb up for some great views; and Preah Kahn which had phallic symbols on everything including a little water spout shaped like a penis. At this point, Cambodia started to redeem itself.
After the world’s fastest tour of the Angkor Wat ruins, Lauren and I packed up our backpacks and climbed (backpacks and all) onto the back of a set of motor bikes and jetted off to the bus station. Holding a 40 pound backpack on your back while judging how tightly you should be hugging the little Cambodian man driving the motorcycle is always challenging. My case was especially challenging because I was also screaming at him to turn around as I had forgotten my sunglasses at the hostal. Once I finally communicated this message, which was unfortunately once we were already at the bus station, we turned around and returned to the hostal to search for my sunglasses. I guess hostals don’t really expect you to come back once you’ve checked out. If they did, they would probably go to more of an effort to make it at least look like they’ve changed the sheets and towels. How pleasant. Even more unfortunate was that my sunglasses weren’t even there and that I had left Lauren to stall the bus for me. After enduring 30 minutes of glaring stares from fellow passengers, Lauren was very happy to see me return with my sunglasses. Which had actually been in my purse the whole time. Oops.
The ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh allowed us to sample the culinary cuisine at each road side rest stop. Some people may think this is why I contract regular food-borne illnesses while traveling. I think there is no other way to really experience the country. On this trip I sampled boiled eggs, fresh corn on cob, and bananas stuffed with sweet rice, all without hazard. But occasionally, you do get burned. Lauren and I had opted to play it safe and skip the fried grasshoppers in favor of some packaged crackers. Perhaps a bit less protein, but what could be safer than packaged crackers? After holding them in her purse, on her lap, for at least 2 hours, Lauren opened the crackers and 3 little cockroaches crawled out. Playing it cool, Lauren started screaming at the top of her lungs and jumped up onto the seat while throwing the crackers halfway across the bus. I took my flip flop and frantically started squashing cockroaches. We had not made many friends by holding up the bus for 30 minutes. We lost our remaining allies with this little display. I suppose it is one thing to waste 30 minutes of your life, but another thing entirely to miss part of one of the most romantic Cambodian love song videos of all times, which just happened to be playing on the bus at that moment.
The bus ride led us into the pulsing heart of Phnom Penh. After the green rice paddies and wooden stilt houses of the country side, the tall dirty-white buildings and streets bustling with motorbikes was a change. Phnom Penh does have a very nice area full of restaurants and bars along the Mekong River and a Royal Palace to attract tourists. Unfortunately for Cambodia, the other main attractions are The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Prison.
For a quick history lesson on Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge came to power sometime after the French lost control. Their main goal was to create equality in society by returning Cambodia to its agrarian roots (sometimes called communism). To the Khmer Rouge, this meant exterminating and relocating anyone in society who qualified as educated, elite, or urban. This included everyone from teachers and doctors to people who wore glasses to people who had recently moved to cities from the countryside. They relocated thousands of people back into rural areas where they were forced to work side by side with, and hold a lower status than, their rural countrymen. Many people were forced into Tuol Sleng Prison and other “jails.” The jails and countryside became feeders for the mass extermination graves now referred to as The Killing Fields. It is estimated that anywhere from 1-3 million people were killed between the years of 1975-1979. Cambodia’s population was only about 7 million at the time.
Toul Sleng prison was a former high school whose rooms had been turned into mass holding cells where people were chained together by their feet. Other rooms had rudimentary wooden walls set up to create solitary confinement cells. Today it is a simple museum with metal bed frames and torture tools left in the cells, hundreds of prisoner mugshots posted on the walls, and pictures of mutilated bodies haunting the rooms. Almost 30 years since the prison has been used, there are still blood stains on the floor. A list of rules is posted outside of the prison and includes things such as “Don’t be a fool for you are the chap to thwart the revolution” and “While getting lashes or electrocution you must not cry at all”. Eerie, would be an understatement. I could feel ghosts there.
Prisoners held at Toul Sleng were transported to the nearby Killing Fields. Today, besides a tall, narrow monument, all you will find on first inspection is a grassy field with pockmarks the size of kiddy pools. The monument is full of skulls, clothing, and other personal effects of the people who were found nearby. The pockmarks in the field are 30 year-old, partially sunken graves. Upon closer inspection, and especially after a good rain, you can see the clothing being burped up from the ground, tattered and bleached by time. Some of the graves are even labeled based on who or what was buried there: Headless bodies, women and children... Shockingly, this genocide, where upwards of 2 million people were systematically murdered, is very rarely discussed. Have you heard of it?
All right, so that’s kind of a big downer to end on. I’ll go on to say that after a day in Phnom Penh Lauren and I took off to Sihanoukville, a beach town about 5 hours from the capital. There we rented a bungalow overlooking the ocean for $12 a night (total) and feasted on fresh fish, octopus on a stick, and beer. After two days of down time at the beach, we returned to Phnom Penh to catch a boat down the Mekong River into Vietnam. We passed from the main river channel into smaller tributaries that make up the Mekong Delta. The smaller rivers were flanked by houses on stilts, farmers wearing conical hats, rice paddy fields, water buffalo, and bathing children. It was so idyllic and serene, it almost made you want to move to Vietnam. Almost.
All of my research on entering Cambodia stressed that it was much easier to fly from Bangkok. Complaints about cheating bus companies and shady border officials are supposed to deter travelers. I thought that made it sound exciting. So Lauren and I set off on a train from Bangkok to the Thai-Cambodian border. After being stamped to leave Thailand, we crossed through No Man’s Land and lined up at the Cambodian Visa booth. The sign over the booth read “Cambodian Visa: $25.” When I handed my passport and $25 to the visa agent he said “No, it’s $35.” Hmmm. I explained to him that the massive sign hanging outside of his office said $25. He threw my passport at me, slammed the window, and went back to playing cards with his 4 other uniformed friends. I asked someone next to me where I could find the police. Pity, it turns out that the men charging $10 extra for visas were the police. All of the other pushover Americans ahead of us had paid the extra money and so I wasn’t left with much bargaining power (I wanted to start a strike) and so I threw a tantrum until he eventually lowered the price to $30.
As far as first impressions go, Cambodia wasn’t doing so well.
After we eventually made it into Cambodia we stood at the border with 30 other foreigners who had been ditched by their unscrupulous bus company and were ride-less. Luckily, we had heard about that scam and had opted instead for the train and finding our own transport once inside Cambodia. A number of shady men who had been “helping” us with the visa process were now trying to “help” us on to “tourist busses.” I tracked down a few taxis but everyone that agreed to take me was then subject to harassment from the man “helping” us to find a bus. The entire racket was so frustrating that we finally hiked down the road with our backpacks, found an independent taxi that was using us as a cover to smuggle shoes through a checkpoint (he had over 50 pairs of shoes hidden under our backpacks in the trunk and under the mats in the car by our feet), and offered him a reasonable price to take us to Siem Reap.
Upon entering Cambodia, its most notable characteristic is schizophrenia. It accepts three currencies: the Thai Baht, the Cambodian Real, and the American Dollar. Dollars come out of the ATM machines, change is given in Real, and Baht are worth 30% less than in Thailand. They drive on the right side of the road. Or the left. It kind of depends on what is in front of you. Normally, you can try to determine which side of the road to drive on based on which side of the car is the driver’s side. However, in Cambodia, some cars had the driver’s side on the left, and some had it on the right. Our first stop within this befuddled country was Siem Reap.
Siem Reap’s fame comes from its proximity to the Angkor Wat ruins. It’s got a few streets full of trendy, touristy restaurants and bars (such as the clever “Angkor What?” bar) but right outside of that center is a pretty typical Cambodian town: Motorbikes, dust, street markets, and burning garbage. Lonely Planet and other guide books suggested spending anywhere from 3 to 7 days perusing the nearby Angkor Wat ruins. Lauren and I penciled in a day and were done by 1pm. The numerous ruins were laid out over several square miles and we had to hire a tuk-tuk (motorbike with a cart attached to the back) to take us from ruin to ruin. The crown jewel of the ruins, THE Angkor Wat temple, was where we went at 5am to watch the sunrise. After that we visited some other famous spots including Tha Prohm, left a ruin for so long that massive trees were growing out of it; Ta Keo which we were able to climb up for some great views; and Preah Kahn which had phallic symbols on everything including a little water spout shaped like a penis. At this point, Cambodia started to redeem itself.
After the world’s fastest tour of the Angkor Wat ruins, Lauren and I packed up our backpacks and climbed (backpacks and all) onto the back of a set of motor bikes and jetted off to the bus station. Holding a 40 pound backpack on your back while judging how tightly you should be hugging the little Cambodian man driving the motorcycle is always challenging. My case was especially challenging because I was also screaming at him to turn around as I had forgotten my sunglasses at the hostal. Once I finally communicated this message, which was unfortunately once we were already at the bus station, we turned around and returned to the hostal to search for my sunglasses. I guess hostals don’t really expect you to come back once you’ve checked out. If they did, they would probably go to more of an effort to make it at least look like they’ve changed the sheets and towels. How pleasant. Even more unfortunate was that my sunglasses weren’t even there and that I had left Lauren to stall the bus for me. After enduring 30 minutes of glaring stares from fellow passengers, Lauren was very happy to see me return with my sunglasses. Which had actually been in my purse the whole time. Oops.
The ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh allowed us to sample the culinary cuisine at each road side rest stop. Some people may think this is why I contract regular food-borne illnesses while traveling. I think there is no other way to really experience the country. On this trip I sampled boiled eggs, fresh corn on cob, and bananas stuffed with sweet rice, all without hazard. But occasionally, you do get burned. Lauren and I had opted to play it safe and skip the fried grasshoppers in favor of some packaged crackers. Perhaps a bit less protein, but what could be safer than packaged crackers? After holding them in her purse, on her lap, for at least 2 hours, Lauren opened the crackers and 3 little cockroaches crawled out. Playing it cool, Lauren started screaming at the top of her lungs and jumped up onto the seat while throwing the crackers halfway across the bus. I took my flip flop and frantically started squashing cockroaches. We had not made many friends by holding up the bus for 30 minutes. We lost our remaining allies with this little display. I suppose it is one thing to waste 30 minutes of your life, but another thing entirely to miss part of one of the most romantic Cambodian love song videos of all times, which just happened to be playing on the bus at that moment.
The bus ride led us into the pulsing heart of Phnom Penh. After the green rice paddies and wooden stilt houses of the country side, the tall dirty-white buildings and streets bustling with motorbikes was a change. Phnom Penh does have a very nice area full of restaurants and bars along the Mekong River and a Royal Palace to attract tourists. Unfortunately for Cambodia, the other main attractions are The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Prison.
For a quick history lesson on Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge came to power sometime after the French lost control. Their main goal was to create equality in society by returning Cambodia to its agrarian roots (sometimes called communism). To the Khmer Rouge, this meant exterminating and relocating anyone in society who qualified as educated, elite, or urban. This included everyone from teachers and doctors to people who wore glasses to people who had recently moved to cities from the countryside. They relocated thousands of people back into rural areas where they were forced to work side by side with, and hold a lower status than, their rural countrymen. Many people were forced into Tuol Sleng Prison and other “jails.” The jails and countryside became feeders for the mass extermination graves now referred to as The Killing Fields. It is estimated that anywhere from 1-3 million people were killed between the years of 1975-1979. Cambodia’s population was only about 7 million at the time.
Toul Sleng prison was a former high school whose rooms had been turned into mass holding cells where people were chained together by their feet. Other rooms had rudimentary wooden walls set up to create solitary confinement cells. Today it is a simple museum with metal bed frames and torture tools left in the cells, hundreds of prisoner mugshots posted on the walls, and pictures of mutilated bodies haunting the rooms. Almost 30 years since the prison has been used, there are still blood stains on the floor. A list of rules is posted outside of the prison and includes things such as “Don’t be a fool for you are the chap to thwart the revolution” and “While getting lashes or electrocution you must not cry at all”. Eerie, would be an understatement. I could feel ghosts there.
Prisoners held at Toul Sleng were transported to the nearby Killing Fields. Today, besides a tall, narrow monument, all you will find on first inspection is a grassy field with pockmarks the size of kiddy pools. The monument is full of skulls, clothing, and other personal effects of the people who were found nearby. The pockmarks in the field are 30 year-old, partially sunken graves. Upon closer inspection, and especially after a good rain, you can see the clothing being burped up from the ground, tattered and bleached by time. Some of the graves are even labeled based on who or what was buried there: Headless bodies, women and children... Shockingly, this genocide, where upwards of 2 million people were systematically murdered, is very rarely discussed. Have you heard of it?
All right, so that’s kind of a big downer to end on. I’ll go on to say that after a day in Phnom Penh Lauren and I took off to Sihanoukville, a beach town about 5 hours from the capital. There we rented a bungalow overlooking the ocean for $12 a night (total) and feasted on fresh fish, octopus on a stick, and beer. After two days of down time at the beach, we returned to Phnom Penh to catch a boat down the Mekong River into Vietnam. We passed from the main river channel into smaller tributaries that make up the Mekong Delta. The smaller rivers were flanked by houses on stilts, farmers wearing conical hats, rice paddy fields, water buffalo, and bathing children. It was so idyllic and serene, it almost made you want to move to Vietnam. Almost.
Japan: You Can Tell a Lot From a Toilet
On Toilets
Stereotypes usually exist for a reason and I think Japan’s toilets just go to prove what people already assume about the Japanese: They are technological, orderly, smart, patient, and demure.
Japanese toilets are varied, ubiquitous, and complicated. They range from your standard “Asian squatter” to the “Porcelain Computer,” which takes longer to program than to piss in. The computer version comes with a control panel on the side which allows you to heat the seat, squirt water, and make funny noises among other things. The range of toilets shows the Japanese’s Asian roots and the distance they have come as a technological nation. The ever-presence of toilets is both cause and effect for Japan’s order and cleanliness. (It’s hard to be organized or clean when people are forced to pee on the street). Their complexity is yet another example that the Japanese are constantly looking for ways to challenge themselves intellectually, even in the bathroom.
Meanwhile, due to the complexity, the patience required to use a computer toilet in Japan says a lot about the Japanese psyche. When I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out what the button with the little pink butt is or how to stop the toilet seat heater from burning my ass, I get annoyed. From the land of road rage and fast food drive-throughs, I seriously doubt my countrymen would put up with this either.
As has been said about the culture before, the Japanese are also more demure than Americans (with the possible exception of some of my college roommates who would have loved this next invention). That is my explanation for why Japanese toilets have a flushing noise that you can turn on to mask the sounds that you are making in the bathroom. The “fake flush” button doesn’t actually flush the toilet, just makes a similar noise so that you can do your business without embarrassment. Would have saved you a few trips to the basement bathrooms in the dorm, hey girls?
On Being Cute
Beyond having an impressive array of toilets, I also think it is worth noting that Japan is extremely cute. First, the people there seem to think that other people can actually speak Japanese! Unlike my village in Peru, where people were legitimately not aware of other languages, the Japanese are a pretty educated group. Probably educated enough to surmise that a 5’9’’ Caucasian girl doesn’t speak very good Japanese. Despite this, policemen and 7-Eleven clerks had an especially long list of things to tell me. I would always nod politely and smile but I am still wondering what in the hell they were telling me.
Other cute things that Japanese people do include riding bikes while holding umbrellas, putting on slippers to go to the bathroom, wearing really weird outfits, and eating like they will once again see food in the foreseeable future. On this last note, my friend Jackie and I did all Americans proud at an All-You-Can-Eat conveyor belt Sushi restaurant in Osaka (you pull off as many plates of sushi as you want as they roll by). The all-you-can-eat price for women was somewhere around $18 (it was higher for men) and judging from the number of plates in front of Japanese women at the restaurant (I’d say an average of 7), this was probably a reasonable price. However, in an event that still causes my heart to swell with pride, Jackie and I honorably downed over 25 plates of sushi each. Being ill was a small price to pay for the ability to claim such a victory.
On Why Japan’s the Best
Besides impressive toilet facilities and a squeezable cuteness, the Japanese offer a lot of great options for tourists. Some of the highlights include Onsens, food, taxi cabs, and street signs. Onsens are bath houses with a number of pools of varying temperatures to clean yourself and relax in. They are perfect for a cold day or if you just feel like hanging out in a room with 20 other naked people. As for the food, it was the best I have eaten in the entire world. And now that I have been to 41 countries, I think that is a substantial claim. Try sushi at the fish market in Tokyo right after it comes off of the boat and eat Okanamiyaki which is a pancake-like omelet full of vegetables and meat that you cook yourself at your table. Speaking of food, feel free to eat it off of the floor of your taxi cab. Cleaner than your hotel sheets in Vietnam, taxi cabs also come with polite drivers and meters. And you actually know where they are going because streets are, gasp, clearly marked.
On Why It May Not Be For Long
As much as I love Japan, if they don’t start making babies, there aren’t going to be any of them left. Unfortunately, they might be too prude to do that. While in Kyoto my friends and I visited a trendy night club where the entertainment kicked off with a lounge band and finished with a DJ. Throw in a bit of alcohol, and any respectable Latin American night club would have already produced enough action to necessitate a few weddings in the next month. Not in Kyoto. But then again, how could you really put the moves on when you are all facing the same direction, looking at the DJ, and swaying to rap music by yourself? Talk about cultural birth control.
While in Japan I visited Hiroshima, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo, and the little known town of Atsumi-Onsen. Here’s a short synapses on each of them:
Hiroshima
My first trans-Japanese stop was in Hiroshima, made famous by its unfortunate status as the first city to have an atomic bomb dropped on it. The first place I visited was the A-bomb museum. Strangely, 24 hours prior to this visit, I had been perusing the Siloso Fort Museum in Singapore, in part dedicated to remembering the atrocities wreaked by the Japanese who invaded the Malay Peninsula during WWII. Once again, it appears that the bad guys are usually those who didn’t get to write the museum blurbs. In Singapore, the experiences of WWII included a scathing report of a brutal Japanese invasion and occupation. And while the atomic bomb museum did not deny any of these events, they were relegated to a single short sentence mentioning a minor foray into the Malay Peninsula, along with a passing comment noting that Japan had been a bit “unpeaceful” during WWII. (I suppose that is why the Chinese are still mad at you?). But despite the bias, the destruction wreaked by the atomic bomb was no doubt real, devastating, and horrific.
It would be comparably pleasant to think that the atomic bomb just killed a lot of people. In truth, people at the epicenter were mercifully vaporized, while those nearby were mutilated and tended to stay alive for long enough to reach home, see their families, and then die in excruciating pain, usually from horribly burned skin and damaged organs. Visuals of skin melting off of people’s bodies and skin that had been burned black, along with first hand accounts of people who watched their family members die while begging for water, were heart breaking and sickening. Many other people died in the weeks to come from the radiation, and many died years later from related cancers.
The museum leaves you wondering, was it better to drop a bomb to stop the war even though it killed thousands of Japanese civilians? Or would it have been better to sacrifice thousands of American and European military men, including our great uncles and grandpas, who were on the verge of shipping out to a virtual slaughter to attack Japan and Japanese-occupied South East Asia by land? I don’t think these are ever very easy questions to answer. The most you can hope is that the people we’ve elected into office are smart enough to make these tough decisions. Oh…shit.
Apart from its historical significance, I found the city of Hiroshima to be little more than a concrete jungle. This is likely because everything was built after 1945. Right outside of Hiroshima I visited the island of Miyajima, home to the Itsukushima Shrine and the famous Torii Gate, one of the most photographed sites in Japan. It was my first introduction to Japanese shrines and the over-use of wood, which I got a heck of a lot more of when I continued on my journey.
Osaka, Kyoto, Nara
Honestly, these three towns are a blur of temples, Zen Buddhism gardens, shrines, castles, old Japanese farm houses, an aquarium, some pagodas, conveyor belt sushi restaurants, and sake tasting. My pictures do them more justice than I ever could in words.
Tokyo
First, I would like thank my Hilton Honors American Express Card and a hectic work travel schedule last summer which allowed my friends and I to stay in the $485 a night Conrad Hilton in downtown Tokyo. I would also like to thank the Conrad for their slightly stupid slogan of “giving you the freedom to be yourself” which is surely why they politely looked the other way as we doubled the amount of people that were supposed to stay in the room and trekked through the lobby with oversized, smelly backpacks.
During my 24 hours in Tokyo I visited a number of different neighborhoods. I went from the red light district to the high-end shopping district of Ginza to the American night club district of Roppongi (which was oddly full of black ex-military Americans working as bouncers). The city was clean, the people were well dressed, there were lots of neon signs. No surprises there.
But the experience that blew me away was the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world that opens in the wee hours of the morning. I arrived at the fish market at 5am and wandered along the stalls full of fresh seafood that had just been brought off of the boats. In the freezer room, I saw tuna that fit into boxes the size of coffins and would set you back as much as a small car. Small restaurants along the perimeter of the market sell fresh sushi, and for $35 a plate at 6 am you can eat the best sushi of your life for breakfast. This only leaves you feeling mildly ill for the rest of the day.
Atsumi-Onsen
My main reason for traveling to Japan was to visit my friend Riley who I met while in the Peace Corps. In the 5 years that we have known each other, Riley and I have never actually met on American soil. Riley was in the JET (Japanese English Teaching) Program and teaching English to kids in his small Japanese town. At a height of 6’ 4” with long blonde hair, he was also probably terrifying them.
The train from Tokyo to Atsumi-Onsen heads straight north for about 4 hours and passes through bright green farm land nudged up against grey mountains that run down the center of the country. In the rainy season, which I believe runs from January to December, the dark sky and low clouds give the countryside a very cozy feel. Riley’s 12,000 person town is equally quaint. Atsumi-Onsen literally means “Hot Water Hot Springs” and their town mascot is the ever-intimidating Mighty Radish. Yes, their mascot is a radish. And there is a huge purple radish on top of a 20 foot high pedestal in the middle of town in case you forget.
Atsumi-Onsen sits right on the ocean and all of the close-together houses have their own little gardens. The rural quietness of Atsumi-Onsen is a side of Japan that you rarely hear about. And, although small, Riley’s town does offer the conveniences of a bakery, a 7-Eleven, a foot onsen, and a tatami making factory. A foot onsen is a hot tub for your feet. You can sit and drink tea while soaking your tired treads in some warm water. Tatami mats are the straw mats that cover the floor in Japanese homes.
As if I haven’t made a big enough deal about how good the food is in Japan, I must mention one of my best meals in Japan was at I’s house, a friend of Riley’s. Her house is right on the ocean and her kitchen and living room windows look out across the sea, which she seemed to think is pretty normal. She served us sweet tofu stuffed with rice and noodles, hand rolls that we could fill with all sorts of vegetables and raw fish, raw tofu, and a spinach, egg, and sugar mix. It is no wonder that I liked Japan so much.
On Leaving
Alas, all good food orgies must come to an end, and thus I must take my leave of Japan. I took the night train from the town of the Mighty Radish and headed into the heart of Tokyo and on to the Narita airport. While Japan has made a name for itself in timeliness and efficiency, Malaysia Airlines seems to have slipped into the country undetected. Because they are incapable of calculating and hedging fuel costs, they arbitrarily decided to charge all passengers extra, on top of their ticket price, for fuel. Of course they wouldn’t have competitive prices if they did this up front, so they try and charge you extra when you are checking in at the counter. So, after a slight tantrum on my part and some re-booking I spent the next 12 hours at the Tokyo airport waiting for a flight on Northwest Airlines. With my faith in South East Asia no longer intact, I returned to the land of noodles and Buddhism for a month long tour of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Bangkok.
Stereotypes usually exist for a reason and I think Japan’s toilets just go to prove what people already assume about the Japanese: They are technological, orderly, smart, patient, and demure.
Japanese toilets are varied, ubiquitous, and complicated. They range from your standard “Asian squatter” to the “Porcelain Computer,” which takes longer to program than to piss in. The computer version comes with a control panel on the side which allows you to heat the seat, squirt water, and make funny noises among other things. The range of toilets shows the Japanese’s Asian roots and the distance they have come as a technological nation. The ever-presence of toilets is both cause and effect for Japan’s order and cleanliness. (It’s hard to be organized or clean when people are forced to pee on the street). Their complexity is yet another example that the Japanese are constantly looking for ways to challenge themselves intellectually, even in the bathroom.
Meanwhile, due to the complexity, the patience required to use a computer toilet in Japan says a lot about the Japanese psyche. When I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out what the button with the little pink butt is or how to stop the toilet seat heater from burning my ass, I get annoyed. From the land of road rage and fast food drive-throughs, I seriously doubt my countrymen would put up with this either.
As has been said about the culture before, the Japanese are also more demure than Americans (with the possible exception of some of my college roommates who would have loved this next invention). That is my explanation for why Japanese toilets have a flushing noise that you can turn on to mask the sounds that you are making in the bathroom. The “fake flush” button doesn’t actually flush the toilet, just makes a similar noise so that you can do your business without embarrassment. Would have saved you a few trips to the basement bathrooms in the dorm, hey girls?
On Being Cute
Beyond having an impressive array of toilets, I also think it is worth noting that Japan is extremely cute. First, the people there seem to think that other people can actually speak Japanese! Unlike my village in Peru, where people were legitimately not aware of other languages, the Japanese are a pretty educated group. Probably educated enough to surmise that a 5’9’’ Caucasian girl doesn’t speak very good Japanese. Despite this, policemen and 7-Eleven clerks had an especially long list of things to tell me. I would always nod politely and smile but I am still wondering what in the hell they were telling me.
Other cute things that Japanese people do include riding bikes while holding umbrellas, putting on slippers to go to the bathroom, wearing really weird outfits, and eating like they will once again see food in the foreseeable future. On this last note, my friend Jackie and I did all Americans proud at an All-You-Can-Eat conveyor belt Sushi restaurant in Osaka (you pull off as many plates of sushi as you want as they roll by). The all-you-can-eat price for women was somewhere around $18 (it was higher for men) and judging from the number of plates in front of Japanese women at the restaurant (I’d say an average of 7), this was probably a reasonable price. However, in an event that still causes my heart to swell with pride, Jackie and I honorably downed over 25 plates of sushi each. Being ill was a small price to pay for the ability to claim such a victory.
On Why Japan’s the Best
Besides impressive toilet facilities and a squeezable cuteness, the Japanese offer a lot of great options for tourists. Some of the highlights include Onsens, food, taxi cabs, and street signs. Onsens are bath houses with a number of pools of varying temperatures to clean yourself and relax in. They are perfect for a cold day or if you just feel like hanging out in a room with 20 other naked people. As for the food, it was the best I have eaten in the entire world. And now that I have been to 41 countries, I think that is a substantial claim. Try sushi at the fish market in Tokyo right after it comes off of the boat and eat Okanamiyaki which is a pancake-like omelet full of vegetables and meat that you cook yourself at your table. Speaking of food, feel free to eat it off of the floor of your taxi cab. Cleaner than your hotel sheets in Vietnam, taxi cabs also come with polite drivers and meters. And you actually know where they are going because streets are, gasp, clearly marked.
On Why It May Not Be For Long
As much as I love Japan, if they don’t start making babies, there aren’t going to be any of them left. Unfortunately, they might be too prude to do that. While in Kyoto my friends and I visited a trendy night club where the entertainment kicked off with a lounge band and finished with a DJ. Throw in a bit of alcohol, and any respectable Latin American night club would have already produced enough action to necessitate a few weddings in the next month. Not in Kyoto. But then again, how could you really put the moves on when you are all facing the same direction, looking at the DJ, and swaying to rap music by yourself? Talk about cultural birth control.
While in Japan I visited Hiroshima, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo, and the little known town of Atsumi-Onsen. Here’s a short synapses on each of them:
Hiroshima
My first trans-Japanese stop was in Hiroshima, made famous by its unfortunate status as the first city to have an atomic bomb dropped on it. The first place I visited was the A-bomb museum. Strangely, 24 hours prior to this visit, I had been perusing the Siloso Fort Museum in Singapore, in part dedicated to remembering the atrocities wreaked by the Japanese who invaded the Malay Peninsula during WWII. Once again, it appears that the bad guys are usually those who didn’t get to write the museum blurbs. In Singapore, the experiences of WWII included a scathing report of a brutal Japanese invasion and occupation. And while the atomic bomb museum did not deny any of these events, they were relegated to a single short sentence mentioning a minor foray into the Malay Peninsula, along with a passing comment noting that Japan had been a bit “unpeaceful” during WWII. (I suppose that is why the Chinese are still mad at you?). But despite the bias, the destruction wreaked by the atomic bomb was no doubt real, devastating, and horrific.
It would be comparably pleasant to think that the atomic bomb just killed a lot of people. In truth, people at the epicenter were mercifully vaporized, while those nearby were mutilated and tended to stay alive for long enough to reach home, see their families, and then die in excruciating pain, usually from horribly burned skin and damaged organs. Visuals of skin melting off of people’s bodies and skin that had been burned black, along with first hand accounts of people who watched their family members die while begging for water, were heart breaking and sickening. Many other people died in the weeks to come from the radiation, and many died years later from related cancers.
The museum leaves you wondering, was it better to drop a bomb to stop the war even though it killed thousands of Japanese civilians? Or would it have been better to sacrifice thousands of American and European military men, including our great uncles and grandpas, who were on the verge of shipping out to a virtual slaughter to attack Japan and Japanese-occupied South East Asia by land? I don’t think these are ever very easy questions to answer. The most you can hope is that the people we’ve elected into office are smart enough to make these tough decisions. Oh…shit.
Apart from its historical significance, I found the city of Hiroshima to be little more than a concrete jungle. This is likely because everything was built after 1945. Right outside of Hiroshima I visited the island of Miyajima, home to the Itsukushima Shrine and the famous Torii Gate, one of the most photographed sites in Japan. It was my first introduction to Japanese shrines and the over-use of wood, which I got a heck of a lot more of when I continued on my journey.
Osaka, Kyoto, Nara
Honestly, these three towns are a blur of temples, Zen Buddhism gardens, shrines, castles, old Japanese farm houses, an aquarium, some pagodas, conveyor belt sushi restaurants, and sake tasting. My pictures do them more justice than I ever could in words.
Tokyo
First, I would like thank my Hilton Honors American Express Card and a hectic work travel schedule last summer which allowed my friends and I to stay in the $485 a night Conrad Hilton in downtown Tokyo. I would also like to thank the Conrad for their slightly stupid slogan of “giving you the freedom to be yourself” which is surely why they politely looked the other way as we doubled the amount of people that were supposed to stay in the room and trekked through the lobby with oversized, smelly backpacks.
During my 24 hours in Tokyo I visited a number of different neighborhoods. I went from the red light district to the high-end shopping district of Ginza to the American night club district of Roppongi (which was oddly full of black ex-military Americans working as bouncers). The city was clean, the people were well dressed, there were lots of neon signs. No surprises there.
But the experience that blew me away was the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world that opens in the wee hours of the morning. I arrived at the fish market at 5am and wandered along the stalls full of fresh seafood that had just been brought off of the boats. In the freezer room, I saw tuna that fit into boxes the size of coffins and would set you back as much as a small car. Small restaurants along the perimeter of the market sell fresh sushi, and for $35 a plate at 6 am you can eat the best sushi of your life for breakfast. This only leaves you feeling mildly ill for the rest of the day.
Atsumi-Onsen
My main reason for traveling to Japan was to visit my friend Riley who I met while in the Peace Corps. In the 5 years that we have known each other, Riley and I have never actually met on American soil. Riley was in the JET (Japanese English Teaching) Program and teaching English to kids in his small Japanese town. At a height of 6’ 4” with long blonde hair, he was also probably terrifying them.
The train from Tokyo to Atsumi-Onsen heads straight north for about 4 hours and passes through bright green farm land nudged up against grey mountains that run down the center of the country. In the rainy season, which I believe runs from January to December, the dark sky and low clouds give the countryside a very cozy feel. Riley’s 12,000 person town is equally quaint. Atsumi-Onsen literally means “Hot Water Hot Springs” and their town mascot is the ever-intimidating Mighty Radish. Yes, their mascot is a radish. And there is a huge purple radish on top of a 20 foot high pedestal in the middle of town in case you forget.
Atsumi-Onsen sits right on the ocean and all of the close-together houses have their own little gardens. The rural quietness of Atsumi-Onsen is a side of Japan that you rarely hear about. And, although small, Riley’s town does offer the conveniences of a bakery, a 7-Eleven, a foot onsen, and a tatami making factory. A foot onsen is a hot tub for your feet. You can sit and drink tea while soaking your tired treads in some warm water. Tatami mats are the straw mats that cover the floor in Japanese homes.
As if I haven’t made a big enough deal about how good the food is in Japan, I must mention one of my best meals in Japan was at I’s house, a friend of Riley’s. Her house is right on the ocean and her kitchen and living room windows look out across the sea, which she seemed to think is pretty normal. She served us sweet tofu stuffed with rice and noodles, hand rolls that we could fill with all sorts of vegetables and raw fish, raw tofu, and a spinach, egg, and sugar mix. It is no wonder that I liked Japan so much.
On Leaving
Alas, all good food orgies must come to an end, and thus I must take my leave of Japan. I took the night train from the town of the Mighty Radish and headed into the heart of Tokyo and on to the Narita airport. While Japan has made a name for itself in timeliness and efficiency, Malaysia Airlines seems to have slipped into the country undetected. Because they are incapable of calculating and hedging fuel costs, they arbitrarily decided to charge all passengers extra, on top of their ticket price, for fuel. Of course they wouldn’t have competitive prices if they did this up front, so they try and charge you extra when you are checking in at the counter. So, after a slight tantrum on my part and some re-booking I spent the next 12 hours at the Tokyo airport waiting for a flight on Northwest Airlines. With my faith in South East Asia no longer intact, I returned to the land of noodles and Buddhism for a month long tour of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Bangkok.
Singapore: Asia on Rules
I get the feeling that Singapore was created by someone who found other Asian countries to be very annoying. Everything that could potentially annoy you about Asia is illegal in Singapore. You can’t stand on toilet seats, you can’t bike or use your motorcycle on the sidewalks, you can’t harass people to buy things on the street when they are eating at an outdoor kiosk, and you cannot ask for money at religious sites without having a legitimate offering box. You don’t like this, you can pay a fine. That’s Singapore: There are rules, there are signs, and there are fines.
After spending a day in Singapore, I got to thinking that all of this order, predictability, and price transparency shouldn’t go to waste. If only there were some way to export it…So here is what I was thinking: First, we bring in engineers, city planners, business people, and government officials to Singapore from across the globe. Then, we give them a list of things that they must accomplish throughout the day (such as visit a number of different sites using public transportation, seek medical care, go to the bathroom, and buy alcohol). Once they have accomplished all of these daily necessities, they will be required to do the same thing in their own country. I believe this could be enlightening. I don’t think we are going to get anything crazy out of it, like clean, air-conditioned buses throughout the developing world, but if we could even get a few more rolls of toilet paper in public bathrooms, I would be satisfied.
Despite Singapore’s lack of disorder, the country isn’t as sterile as you might think. There is a Chinatown where you can buy all of your name brand products at knock-off prices. There is a Little India that has bright Hindu temples and wonderful food. The downtown is full of shiny, high-rise buildings. There are colorful neighborhoods along the river that have cute, brightly colored, yet overpriced, bars and restaurants. There are some beautiful parks where you can see that Singapore is not all concrete. And throughout the country are food stalls and hawker stands offering cheap, and maybe even sanitary, eats.
So you’ve got the culture, the food, and the quaintness, but you don’t have to deal with a lot of the things that makes traveling in developing countries so difficult. Of course, all of this comes at a price and this means that Singapore is much more expensive than any other Southeast Asian country that I visited. So, while I do enjoy the toilet paper and kind of got excited about bus schedules, you can plan to see me in Thailand.
My last stop in Singapore, ironically as you will later see, was to Siloso Fort, a former military stronghold, on Sentosa Island, a tiny piece of land-turned-resort town right off of the coast of Singapore. The Fort is now a museum devoted to telling Singapore’s version of WWII, including their account of the Japanese invasion. This version was notably different from the version I got in my next stop, Hiroshima, Japan…
After spending a day in Singapore, I got to thinking that all of this order, predictability, and price transparency shouldn’t go to waste. If only there were some way to export it…So here is what I was thinking: First, we bring in engineers, city planners, business people, and government officials to Singapore from across the globe. Then, we give them a list of things that they must accomplish throughout the day (such as visit a number of different sites using public transportation, seek medical care, go to the bathroom, and buy alcohol). Once they have accomplished all of these daily necessities, they will be required to do the same thing in their own country. I believe this could be enlightening. I don’t think we are going to get anything crazy out of it, like clean, air-conditioned buses throughout the developing world, but if we could even get a few more rolls of toilet paper in public bathrooms, I would be satisfied.
Despite Singapore’s lack of disorder, the country isn’t as sterile as you might think. There is a Chinatown where you can buy all of your name brand products at knock-off prices. There is a Little India that has bright Hindu temples and wonderful food. The downtown is full of shiny, high-rise buildings. There are colorful neighborhoods along the river that have cute, brightly colored, yet overpriced, bars and restaurants. There are some beautiful parks where you can see that Singapore is not all concrete. And throughout the country are food stalls and hawker stands offering cheap, and maybe even sanitary, eats.
So you’ve got the culture, the food, and the quaintness, but you don’t have to deal with a lot of the things that makes traveling in developing countries so difficult. Of course, all of this comes at a price and this means that Singapore is much more expensive than any other Southeast Asian country that I visited. So, while I do enjoy the toilet paper and kind of got excited about bus schedules, you can plan to see me in Thailand.
My last stop in Singapore, ironically as you will later see, was to Siloso Fort, a former military stronghold, on Sentosa Island, a tiny piece of land-turned-resort town right off of the coast of Singapore. The Fort is now a museum devoted to telling Singapore’s version of WWII, including their account of the Japanese invasion. This version was notably different from the version I got in my next stop, Hiroshima, Japan…
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Indonesia: A land of Great Beauty and Unsolicited Friendships
More mysterious than the double buckets in every bathroom, were the number of unsolicited friendship approaches that I received in Indonesia. On the streets of Yogyakarta men would pop up and just start walking with me. They would talk to me about the weather, my nationality (which was usually Canadian if I knew I was going to be rude to them), and what I planned on doing that day. Then my new friend would guide me into some shop where he would get commission or he would tell me 5 fun facts about the city and then try to charge me for the “guide” services. Once, after turning down a taxi driver for a ride, I was standing on the street with a map open when I felt a presence over my right shoulder. It was the taxi driver, cuddling up to me, to peer at the map! Had my “No, I don’t need a ride” come out as “but I would love someone to snuggle with on a street corner??”
Unfortunately, I was not so popular at Immigration in the Jakarta airport where, instead of snuggling, they tried to deport me. I didn’t have any blank pages left in my passport to add the new Indonesian visa, which is apparently illegal. I was actually aware of this rule, but when in the hell did we start following rules in these countries? When the immigration agent told me he would need to deport me, I laughed at him and told him that I would sleep in the airport until my embassy came to rescue me (which I’m pretty sure they would NOT have done). He smiled. I took out a magazine and a sweatshirt and sat down in a corner. He stopped smiling. When he realized that I really was going to sleep there, and probably not even offer him any money, he somehow found a way to put that visa in my packed passport.
Jakarta
And that, led me into the jaws of Jakarta. Maybe I should have stayed in the airport…My dad was actually happy about the 6 inch long lizard we found waiting for us in our hostel room because he said they eat cockroaches. (Should this be a positive thing?) We then took the city up on its “Jakarta Heritage Walk.” Note to city Heritage Walk planners: If you are going to go to the trouble of making a professional map on expensive paper, maybe you should go to the trouble of picking up the trash around the decrepit old Dutch buildings and try to lead tourists away from the houses built on stilts atop a river filled with garbage. Whatever, just a thought.
Central Java
Besides new friends, unfriendly immigration agents, and riverside slums, I found some of my most-loved sites in Indonesia. In the central part of the island of Java, we visited both the Buddhist ruins of Borobudor and the volcano Gunung Bromo. We arrived to both sites before sunrise and watching the light slowly illuminate the intricately carved old ruins and the lines of smoking volcanoes was absolutely beautiful. I don’t even have anything sarcastic or rude to say about it.
But I do need to mention that everyone in the village surrounding the volcanos looked like an Andean Peruvian. The people were short and stocky in build and had darker skin and Asian features. We were at an altitude of some thousands of feet and so they wore clothes that reflected the cooler climate. In body type, face, and clothing, these people looked like the Peruvians I knew in the Andes. Sign me up for that land bridge theory.
Bali
After the island of Java we traveled to the infamous island of Bali. The island’s country side is a blinding, incandescent green. In America, people would ingest things to make the world look this pretty.
First stop, we visited the town of Ubud which is for “older people” (I loved it!) and has tons of cute restaurants and shops. (Ladies, this is also where the author of Eat, Pray, Love was stationed). On our second day in Ubud we decided to save $5 (this became a theme of our trip) and do a rice paddy tour by ourselves, sans guide. We were pretty confident in our map reading abilities and we thought our sign language skills, as they applied to Indonesian rice farmers, were pretty good as well. Thank god we are also in very good shape. Our 4 mile paddy walk turned into a 20 mile hike. “Where did we go wrong?” We kept asking ourselves. Should we have listened to the woman bathing in the river wearing only a bra that pointed in one direction and then started jumping up and down with her hands out? I thought that meant “danger” or “lots of uphill.” But perhaps it meant “there’s the trail you F-ing moron.” I guess we’ll never know…
After Ubud we visited the smaller island of Nesu Lembongan off of the coast of Bali. There was a local ferry that brought about 60 people plus cargo over to the island early in the morning. This ferry was staked in at the beach and was just far enough out in the ocean so that when you walked out to it (there was no pier) you had to be up to your waist in water. This was helpful because when you got halfway out in the water with your big backpack and realized that you might actually drown before reaching the ferry, there were men from the ferry boat company who were willing to carry your bags (or you) over their heads for the rest of the way, for a small fee. Clever little shits.
Once on the island dad and I signed up for a diving trip, which was great since neither of us had brought any certification and had no proof that we even knew what scuba diving was. They didn’t seem to care. One of our dives was a drift dive which occurs when the current is so strong that you basically just lay yourself out super-man style and let the water pull you as the scenery goes by, quickly. For a beginning diver like myself, “quickly” meant “fear of death from being sucked 10 miles off shore”.
After leaving the island we spent a few days in Kuta to soak in the party scene, surfing, and beach town full of hot, blonde Aussies. I know it sounds like it would be kind of lame, but my dad was just BEGGING me to go there, so we did. Unfortunately, Kuta was one of those places where you kind of feel bad about going out if you haven’t showered for a few days. I think showering is pretentious. But I suppose it was good practice for our next stop, Singapore!
Unfortunately, I was not so popular at Immigration in the Jakarta airport where, instead of snuggling, they tried to deport me. I didn’t have any blank pages left in my passport to add the new Indonesian visa, which is apparently illegal. I was actually aware of this rule, but when in the hell did we start following rules in these countries? When the immigration agent told me he would need to deport me, I laughed at him and told him that I would sleep in the airport until my embassy came to rescue me (which I’m pretty sure they would NOT have done). He smiled. I took out a magazine and a sweatshirt and sat down in a corner. He stopped smiling. When he realized that I really was going to sleep there, and probably not even offer him any money, he somehow found a way to put that visa in my packed passport.
Jakarta
And that, led me into the jaws of Jakarta. Maybe I should have stayed in the airport…My dad was actually happy about the 6 inch long lizard we found waiting for us in our hostel room because he said they eat cockroaches. (Should this be a positive thing?) We then took the city up on its “Jakarta Heritage Walk.” Note to city Heritage Walk planners: If you are going to go to the trouble of making a professional map on expensive paper, maybe you should go to the trouble of picking up the trash around the decrepit old Dutch buildings and try to lead tourists away from the houses built on stilts atop a river filled with garbage. Whatever, just a thought.
Central Java
Besides new friends, unfriendly immigration agents, and riverside slums, I found some of my most-loved sites in Indonesia. In the central part of the island of Java, we visited both the Buddhist ruins of Borobudor and the volcano Gunung Bromo. We arrived to both sites before sunrise and watching the light slowly illuminate the intricately carved old ruins and the lines of smoking volcanoes was absolutely beautiful. I don’t even have anything sarcastic or rude to say about it.
But I do need to mention that everyone in the village surrounding the volcanos looked like an Andean Peruvian. The people were short and stocky in build and had darker skin and Asian features. We were at an altitude of some thousands of feet and so they wore clothes that reflected the cooler climate. In body type, face, and clothing, these people looked like the Peruvians I knew in the Andes. Sign me up for that land bridge theory.
Bali
After the island of Java we traveled to the infamous island of Bali. The island’s country side is a blinding, incandescent green. In America, people would ingest things to make the world look this pretty.
First stop, we visited the town of Ubud which is for “older people” (I loved it!) and has tons of cute restaurants and shops. (Ladies, this is also where the author of Eat, Pray, Love was stationed). On our second day in Ubud we decided to save $5 (this became a theme of our trip) and do a rice paddy tour by ourselves, sans guide. We were pretty confident in our map reading abilities and we thought our sign language skills, as they applied to Indonesian rice farmers, were pretty good as well. Thank god we are also in very good shape. Our 4 mile paddy walk turned into a 20 mile hike. “Where did we go wrong?” We kept asking ourselves. Should we have listened to the woman bathing in the river wearing only a bra that pointed in one direction and then started jumping up and down with her hands out? I thought that meant “danger” or “lots of uphill.” But perhaps it meant “there’s the trail you F-ing moron.” I guess we’ll never know…
After Ubud we visited the smaller island of Nesu Lembongan off of the coast of Bali. There was a local ferry that brought about 60 people plus cargo over to the island early in the morning. This ferry was staked in at the beach and was just far enough out in the ocean so that when you walked out to it (there was no pier) you had to be up to your waist in water. This was helpful because when you got halfway out in the water with your big backpack and realized that you might actually drown before reaching the ferry, there were men from the ferry boat company who were willing to carry your bags (or you) over their heads for the rest of the way, for a small fee. Clever little shits.
Once on the island dad and I signed up for a diving trip, which was great since neither of us had brought any certification and had no proof that we even knew what scuba diving was. They didn’t seem to care. One of our dives was a drift dive which occurs when the current is so strong that you basically just lay yourself out super-man style and let the water pull you as the scenery goes by, quickly. For a beginning diver like myself, “quickly” meant “fear of death from being sucked 10 miles off shore”.
After leaving the island we spent a few days in Kuta to soak in the party scene, surfing, and beach town full of hot, blonde Aussies. I know it sounds like it would be kind of lame, but my dad was just BEGGING me to go there, so we did. Unfortunately, Kuta was one of those places where you kind of feel bad about going out if you haven’t showered for a few days. I think showering is pretentious. But I suppose it was good practice for our next stop, Singapore!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Malaysia. Making Your Country Look Bad Since 1990.
Honestly, I don't actually know what year Malaysia started making everyone else look bad. All I know is that when I scratch my skin my nails don't turn black, I made it through my first day without unsolicited touching, and there are street signs. Malaysia further sticks it to all other developing countries by offerring both garbage cans and price tags. The buildings are downright shiny and there is a coffee shop on every corner (usually Starbucks). The public transport in Kuala Lampur makes you want to hug someone, and you actually could, because its air conditioned.
The kicker is, now name 2 things you know about Malaysia. Even better, admit if you've ever even heard of Malaysia. While Americans aren't usually the brightest with international geography (no offense, friends) it does seem strange that clean, shiny Mayalsia really hasn't registered on our radar.
While in Mayalsia, we visited the capital, Kuala Lampur. Home to the Petronas Towers, or “those two really big towers that are connected” as most people probably know them. Our visit there pretty much explained why Malaysia has avoided being a complete shithole: Oil! Ahh, now it all makes more sense. In the same way that communism allows you to make decisions without having to listen to a lot of whining, having lots of money is also an effective way to do what you please.
Malaysia is a mix of ethnic Malays, Chinese, and Indians. (Oh my!). The three groups were pretty easy to distinguish from each other. The ethnic Malays are primarily Muslim and so most of the women wear headscarves. The Chinese and Indians look, well, Chinese and Indian. Islam is the state religion and so there were some really impressive mosques. There were also some really fun english brochures that I procured from these mosques, the most interesting entitled “Sex in Islam.” (Oh please, you know you were all wondering). Kuala Lampur also had two areas known as Chinatown and Little India. Chinatown was lots of cheap, knock-off goods and noodles while Little India had a lot of colorful fabrics and naan. No big surprises there.
In northern Malaysia we visited the island of Pulau Penang and stayed in the city of Georgetown. Obviously colonized by the British, it is now primarly Chinese from what I can tell. The streets are narrow and the colonial two story buildings that line them are quaint. There were tons of Chinese temples and family shrines which were decorated in bright red and gold and built in typical Chinese architectural styles. While there were no fun brochures in English that gave me any insights into their sex lives, they were still fairly intriguing.
Besides Chinese temples and numerous mosques, we also saw little Anglican churches, a colorful Hindu temple, and a massive Buddhist temple while in Pulau Penang. Visiting so many religious sites in Malaysia and India, watching devout people practice their faiths, and reading lots of brochures leads me to a few conclusions:
1.It seems highly unlikely that God came up with just one true religion and that this religion just happened to be the one that proliferated in Western Europe and America. I mean, we're lucky, but not that lucky.
2.All of these 2-3,000 year old stories are starting to sound suspiciously similar. Adam and Eve have some definite contenders for the man and woman that kicked off this big party.
3.Of all of the religions I have seen, Islam is, ironically, the closest thing you can find to Christianity. (Although, after those brochures I'm beginning to think us Christians are the prudes).
4.At the end of the day, EVERYONE, at different points in history and divided by land masses, oceans, and language decided to build monstruous buildings to someone/something that they don't really have any proof exists or ever existed. They then decided to enter these big buildings and talk to someone that we're not even sure is there. I don't really know what that means, I just think its weird.
I would love to expound more about my religious thoughts as I have a lot more to say, but that's probably offensive enough for one day.
I encourage you all to come to Malaysia (and bring an Indian congressman!)
The kicker is, now name 2 things you know about Malaysia. Even better, admit if you've ever even heard of Malaysia. While Americans aren't usually the brightest with international geography (no offense, friends) it does seem strange that clean, shiny Mayalsia really hasn't registered on our radar.
While in Mayalsia, we visited the capital, Kuala Lampur. Home to the Petronas Towers, or “those two really big towers that are connected” as most people probably know them. Our visit there pretty much explained why Malaysia has avoided being a complete shithole: Oil! Ahh, now it all makes more sense. In the same way that communism allows you to make decisions without having to listen to a lot of whining, having lots of money is also an effective way to do what you please.
Malaysia is a mix of ethnic Malays, Chinese, and Indians. (Oh my!). The three groups were pretty easy to distinguish from each other. The ethnic Malays are primarily Muslim and so most of the women wear headscarves. The Chinese and Indians look, well, Chinese and Indian. Islam is the state religion and so there were some really impressive mosques. There were also some really fun english brochures that I procured from these mosques, the most interesting entitled “Sex in Islam.” (Oh please, you know you were all wondering). Kuala Lampur also had two areas known as Chinatown and Little India. Chinatown was lots of cheap, knock-off goods and noodles while Little India had a lot of colorful fabrics and naan. No big surprises there.
In northern Malaysia we visited the island of Pulau Penang and stayed in the city of Georgetown. Obviously colonized by the British, it is now primarly Chinese from what I can tell. The streets are narrow and the colonial two story buildings that line them are quaint. There were tons of Chinese temples and family shrines which were decorated in bright red and gold and built in typical Chinese architectural styles. While there were no fun brochures in English that gave me any insights into their sex lives, they were still fairly intriguing.
Besides Chinese temples and numerous mosques, we also saw little Anglican churches, a colorful Hindu temple, and a massive Buddhist temple while in Pulau Penang. Visiting so many religious sites in Malaysia and India, watching devout people practice their faiths, and reading lots of brochures leads me to a few conclusions:
1.It seems highly unlikely that God came up with just one true religion and that this religion just happened to be the one that proliferated in Western Europe and America. I mean, we're lucky, but not that lucky.
2.All of these 2-3,000 year old stories are starting to sound suspiciously similar. Adam and Eve have some definite contenders for the man and woman that kicked off this big party.
3.Of all of the religions I have seen, Islam is, ironically, the closest thing you can find to Christianity. (Although, after those brochures I'm beginning to think us Christians are the prudes).
4.At the end of the day, EVERYONE, at different points in history and divided by land masses, oceans, and language decided to build monstruous buildings to someone/something that they don't really have any proof exists or ever existed. They then decided to enter these big buildings and talk to someone that we're not even sure is there. I don't really know what that means, I just think its weird.
I would love to expound more about my religious thoughts as I have a lot more to say, but that's probably offensive enough for one day.
I encourage you all to come to Malaysia (and bring an Indian congressman!)
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
India. It's not all English and Curry.
India has taken me a long time to write about. If I had sent out my first draft of my thoughts on India, I don't think it would have been particularly polite. But I also would not have done the country justice. India has a lot to offer, but you have to give yourself a few days to get over the “Get me the hell out of here. I hate you” feeling that develops over a few weeks. Kind of like a bad break up, you should probably give yourself a little time to really reflect upon the situation before sending an email to all of your friends about it. So after sufficient time, reflection, and a few other country visits, I am able to look back a bit more subjectively on India and remember what was so intriguing about it, what made me want to visit in the first place, and why you just can't stop thinking about it even 5 countries later.
India is a place more entertaining and intense than anywhere I have ever visited. At the same time, it is one of the most trying places to travel. From massive forts in the middle of the desert to chaotic religious shrines, the sites are inspiring. The impressive temples, crowded markets, eerie calls to prayer, and confusing religious rituals means constat fascination. Yet the crumbling infrastructure, crazy driving habits, putrid street smells, and cheating taxi drivers keeps you from ever having a (much-needed) dull moment. I experienced all of this in 100 degree heat and high humidity as a 5'9'' white girl, which added to the challenges. My dad and I spent 4 weeks in the country, two of which we were accompanied by my MBA friend Joseph. We finsihed every day fascinated, annoyed, enlightened, cheated, humbled, sweat-soaked, exhausted, and with the slight urge to murder someone (usually a taxi driver).
India is best described as an assalut on all of the senses. While you can look at the pictures, you do not “get” India until you can also smell the urine wafting from the street, feel the sweat pouring off of your back, hear the deafening horns in the background, and taste the grit of pollution in your mouth. I know, how pleasant, you're thinking. Sign me up! But there really is a lot more too it...
Smell. The smells of wonderful Indian spices and deep fried everything mixed with the smell of trash (fresh and burning—a big thanks to Peru for helping me identify that one), motor oil, and urine.
Site. Amazing or depressing yet always overwhelming. There were massive temples, mosques, forts, and palaces. The streets were filled with taxi's, bikes, tuk-tuks, rick shaws, and ox carts. Women in bright sarees and massive markets, selling everything from fish to underwear, kept it hard to pay attention to the gaggle of traffic that was always just about to run you over. The big, shiny multinational coporatation (MNC) buildings of Gurgaon (near Delhi) spoke to the massive growth that is taking place in India. And the sidewalks of Calcutta, filled nightly with sleeping people and during the day with beggars, spoke to the fact that the growth isn't exactly getting to everyone.
Taste. Indian spices and fresh chipatti bread or burnt corn on the cob from a street vendor made eating in India a real treat. But the true treat came about 12-24 hours later when you realized that the meal would not require Cipro.
Touch. As I walked down the streets, an obvious foreigner, I got pulled at to buy this trinket and grabbed at to give this begger money. I was squeezed in by people when I took part in their group photos (which I did on at least 30 requested occassions). With temperatures and humidity high, and most clothing soaked with sweat, touching people was especially enjoyable.
Sound. At any one time the road could be filled with a taxi, a tuk-tuk, a camel, and an ox cart (yes, even in Mumbai), along with hundreds of cars that were challenging the theories I learned in Operations class. The back of the colorful, long haul Tata trucks that fill the highways read "Please honk horn Please." For once, people here follow instructions. They used the horns to speak. “Here I am!” or “Hey, coming around this here curve in your lane, hope you're not on the other side!” The noise from the blaring horns and gunning cars is deafening and kept me constantly unnerved.
Our tour included 5 different parts of India from urban to rural, north to south, east to west, and rich to poor.
Delhi and Rajistan:
We spent about 1 week in Delhi and the northern state of Rajistan and saw enough city palaces and forts to have flashbacks of visiting cathedrals in Europe. I was really surprised at how much Arab influence had seeped down into northern India. There was awesome architecture, beautiful mosques, and a lot of Islamic culture. Mixed into this were colorful Hindu temples, sacred cows wandering the streets, and women in bright and colorful sarees. The Taj Mahal was great. The loss of the ability to use my lungs due to air pollution, was not.
We had the chance to visit Gurgaon, the "business district" outside of Delhi and visit some US companies stationed there, including the colorful offices of Google. India is growing at warp speed but they do not seem to have the infrastructure to keep up. When you walked out of the expensive, shining, MNC buildings you saw dirt, trash, stray cows, slums, and hanging power lines. The Google office has their own power and water supply as the infrastructure is so unreliable.
Mumbai:
After Rajistan and Dellhi in northern India, we travelled to Mumbai. One evening while walking down the street amidst blaring horns, wandering stray dogs, and chaotic hoards of people rushing in every direction, I was stepping over piles of garbage, trying not to get hit by the 5 lanes of traffic on this two lane road, and avoiding puddles that looked suspiciously like urine...When I decided that Mumbai looked a bit like what you would expect the world to look like after the Apocalpyse hits. It kind of smelled like it too. The area right around the bay was quite pretty but the water has been so polluted that the "fresh ocean breeze" was anything but. In their defense, they do have a law that keeps cows from roaming freely on the streets (unlike Delhi) and it would be hard to keep a city smelling fresh when 50% of the population doesn't have a bathroom (that is a cited figure).
While in Mumbai, we visited Dharavi, the biggest slum town in Asia. There we saw recycling on a whole new level. Men carried massive bags full of aluminum cans, plastic bottles, computers, etc; people were sorting through all of the garbage and separating it out; and then all of these things were being melted down (including the aluminum--by some guys wearing flip flops in a shack with no ventilation, who were pouring molten aluminum from a fire pit into molds), repackaged, and sold.
Southern-ish India:
In the more southern part of India, we visited the states of Goa and Kerala. Goa was colonized by the Portuguese from about 1500 to 1960 and being there felt like I was in a Brazilian beach town with a bunch of Indians. The Portuguese influence was noticeable in the local language (which, although closer to Hindi, sounded suspiciously Portuguese), in the colorful architecture full of Moorish arches, and in the presense of some of the only liqour stores I found in India. Their may not be many great things to say about the Portuguese (they were shitty colonizers) but as far as I could see this was the only place with valid liqour stores in India and that's enough to earn my respect.
The state of Kerala in southern India is most notable for its quiet, jungle backwaters. The backwaters are salt water rivers, large and small, that snake through the jungle. We took a houseboat down the river and then a canoe back into some of the smaller channels to see "everyday village life." (On our authentic tour this meant a guy climbed up a palm tree and then handed me a coconut with a straw). There are no roads leading to many of these towns, but every house had a canoe. This was a welcome oasis of fresh air and quietness. A huge contrast from the overpowering cities that surrounded it. I could breathe. I could hear myself speak. I could smell nothing. It was amazing.
Calcutta:
Calcutta had some interesting sites and a lot of poverty, although it is not as bad as its reputation alludes to. Or, at least its really no worse than the rest of India. My memories of Calcutta are eclipsed by two women that I met on the street. One night I planned to get picked up by my Michigan friend, Abhishek, who is from Calcutta. I went outside to wait for him on a corner near my hotel at around 10:30pm as the streets were shutting down. People were closing their vegetable stands, putting up their cots on the sidewalk to sleep for the night. Kids were playing cricket in the street and I was standing on the side of the road looking a bit like a prostitute.
I was getting stares and starting to get uncomfortable until two women who "work" begging on the tourist block walked up to me. They decided to befriend me and I ended up promising to get a henna tatoo from them the next day. My henna tatoo turned into a 3 hour event: Me sitting on the sidewalk with two women; hand out, covered in henna; watching Ita's bare-bottomed little boy rub his bum all over the dirty sidewalk; drinking milk tea; and listening to these women talk about their 10 children (collectively), sleeping outside the train station on the sidewalk(not inside, or the police beat you), the aspiration to buy a tarp to cover a piece of sidewalk to call home, and a life of begging in the tourist distrcit (arguably, not the worst job from what I saw). The women were dealing with bum husbands, collecting firewood on the streets to cook on makeshift fires they burned on their patches of sidewalk. I saw a lot of this while travelling and so the story, true or not, wasn't that hard to grasp. Ironically, we were all 27 years old. My what a difference a birthplace and birth control makes.
The real highlights of my trip, though, were meeting friends from Michigan on their home turf in India. In Delhi, my friend Kartik played host by accompanying us on some tourist jaunts and invited us to his home to meet his family and have some awesome Indian food. In Mumbai, Kunal introduced us to his family who also invited us for a great dinner. Meeting their families and being invited into their homes was such a welcome “reality check” from the hotels and restaurants we frequented as tourists. It was also nice to have someone else negotiating our taxi fares!
We also were able to meet my friend Karan for lunch in Mumbai and my friend Abhishek toured us around Calcutta. Abhishek took us to a really nice country club in the city where I'm pretty sure my dad, myself, and our backpacks were sites previously unseen. We also got a tour of the Ganges on a boat and I learned how cricket is not like baseball. Thanks guys!
So while there were some very positive notes about my trip, I should also mention the reasons India made me want to pull my hair out by the roots.
One, was crumbling infrastructure. Literally, a piece of a bridge actually fell on us when were driving under it in Mumbai. Imagine our taxi driver's surprise when we heard a loud crash and saw crumbling concrete come down the windshield! The power went out a lot, streets were full of garbage, buildings were old and run down (even in the nicer parts of Mumbai). Museums were unkept or un-updated meaning most facts referred to the late 1970's.
Second, was the level of "persistence" that people had. Walking down the street in India was exhausting. We were constantly being harassed to take this taxi, get in this rickshaw, give that person money, let this person carry our luggage, come into this restaurant, buy this shoddy knick-knack. When I refused to give a beggar woman on the street ay money, she screamed at me that I was a “heartless bitch.” Honey, if your english is good enough to know "heartless" and "bitch" you could probably find a better line of work.
Third, the public restroom is... the public. On any given day in India I saw at least 5 people go to the bathroom in public. This was irrespective of whether I was driving down a village road in Rajistan or on the busy streets of Calcutta. It was mostly men and it was mostly #1, but there were exceptions to that. (I know that Im not exactly the person to be acting holier than though on this one, but I'm just stating the facts).
Fourth, "lack of price transparency" aka "if you look foreign I'm going to quote you 12 times more than usual and see what you do." If you want to pay anywhere close to normal prices for anything in India, you have to be on your guard constantly Or take your Indian friends with you. Everyone, with the possible exception of 3 or 4 people in the entire country, is trying to extract money from you at inflated prices for a good or service you usually don't even want. Taxi drivers are especially creative.
Fifth, religion India style. While Hindus and Muslims spend a lot of time looking for their differences, I seemed to note nothing but similarities between the two. The main similarity being that a religious guy would offer to bless you and then he would start harassing your for money. When you told him you would put it in the charity box at the mosque, temple, or shrine you were visiting, he would insist that putting it in the box was bad and that you should give it directly to him. Besides, he was poor, he would say. Then, when you wouldn't give him money he would get really mad and yell at you. I have been respectively blessed and damned a lot a in the last few weeks.
Sixth, its hard to be the constant center of attention, even for me. While I admit to taking pictures of people when they are not looking, I pride myself on my subtlety. In India, I would catch people following me with their cell phones held up to get a photo. People approached my dad asking him to hold their babies and I was asked to be in professional family photos in front of the Taj Mahal. It's nice to be special, but its exhausting to cause necks to snap on the sidewalk merely because people think you look like a freak.
So, after 4 weeks and countless observatons, what is my take on India?
India left me quite confused. The people are amazing but the country is falling apart. If you listen to all of the chatter, India is supposed to take over the world: It will suffocate us with call centers, overpower us with engineers, and wear us down with tons of cheap labor. But after 4 weeks in India my prediction is a little less rosy: India is more likely to suffocate us with air pollution, overpower us with beggars, and slowly wear us down with frightening driving habits. If India really wants to take over the world, I think that 3,000-person congress better get their act together. And if they do, I'd still probably opt for Mars.
I also could not help but compare India to the other supposed up and coming superpower, China, which I visited last year. While Shanghai has effectively blotted out the sun with pollution, the streets, buildings, and infrastructure of Shanghai and Bejing were fairly well kept (or, in contrast to India, existent). There were shacks, but not rampant, obvious poverty. It looks like China has actually reinvested some of its money into public works projects to spread the wealth around a bit, provide even poor citizens with basic amenities. However, I do realize that China has a slight "edge" in that no one is allowed to disagree with them. Making decisions is always easier when you get the first and last vote. Or if you have oil. More on Malaysia in my next posting.
India is a place more entertaining and intense than anywhere I have ever visited. At the same time, it is one of the most trying places to travel. From massive forts in the middle of the desert to chaotic religious shrines, the sites are inspiring. The impressive temples, crowded markets, eerie calls to prayer, and confusing religious rituals means constat fascination. Yet the crumbling infrastructure, crazy driving habits, putrid street smells, and cheating taxi drivers keeps you from ever having a (much-needed) dull moment. I experienced all of this in 100 degree heat and high humidity as a 5'9'' white girl, which added to the challenges. My dad and I spent 4 weeks in the country, two of which we were accompanied by my MBA friend Joseph. We finsihed every day fascinated, annoyed, enlightened, cheated, humbled, sweat-soaked, exhausted, and with the slight urge to murder someone (usually a taxi driver).
India is best described as an assalut on all of the senses. While you can look at the pictures, you do not “get” India until you can also smell the urine wafting from the street, feel the sweat pouring off of your back, hear the deafening horns in the background, and taste the grit of pollution in your mouth. I know, how pleasant, you're thinking. Sign me up! But there really is a lot more too it...
Smell. The smells of wonderful Indian spices and deep fried everything mixed with the smell of trash (fresh and burning—a big thanks to Peru for helping me identify that one), motor oil, and urine.
Site. Amazing or depressing yet always overwhelming. There were massive temples, mosques, forts, and palaces. The streets were filled with taxi's, bikes, tuk-tuks, rick shaws, and ox carts. Women in bright sarees and massive markets, selling everything from fish to underwear, kept it hard to pay attention to the gaggle of traffic that was always just about to run you over. The big, shiny multinational coporatation (MNC) buildings of Gurgaon (near Delhi) spoke to the massive growth that is taking place in India. And the sidewalks of Calcutta, filled nightly with sleeping people and during the day with beggars, spoke to the fact that the growth isn't exactly getting to everyone.
Taste. Indian spices and fresh chipatti bread or burnt corn on the cob from a street vendor made eating in India a real treat. But the true treat came about 12-24 hours later when you realized that the meal would not require Cipro.
Touch. As I walked down the streets, an obvious foreigner, I got pulled at to buy this trinket and grabbed at to give this begger money. I was squeezed in by people when I took part in their group photos (which I did on at least 30 requested occassions). With temperatures and humidity high, and most clothing soaked with sweat, touching people was especially enjoyable.
Sound. At any one time the road could be filled with a taxi, a tuk-tuk, a camel, and an ox cart (yes, even in Mumbai), along with hundreds of cars that were challenging the theories I learned in Operations class. The back of the colorful, long haul Tata trucks that fill the highways read "Please honk horn Please." For once, people here follow instructions. They used the horns to speak. “Here I am!” or “Hey, coming around this here curve in your lane, hope you're not on the other side!” The noise from the blaring horns and gunning cars is deafening and kept me constantly unnerved.
Our tour included 5 different parts of India from urban to rural, north to south, east to west, and rich to poor.
Delhi and Rajistan:
We spent about 1 week in Delhi and the northern state of Rajistan and saw enough city palaces and forts to have flashbacks of visiting cathedrals in Europe. I was really surprised at how much Arab influence had seeped down into northern India. There was awesome architecture, beautiful mosques, and a lot of Islamic culture. Mixed into this were colorful Hindu temples, sacred cows wandering the streets, and women in bright and colorful sarees. The Taj Mahal was great. The loss of the ability to use my lungs due to air pollution, was not.
We had the chance to visit Gurgaon, the "business district" outside of Delhi and visit some US companies stationed there, including the colorful offices of Google. India is growing at warp speed but they do not seem to have the infrastructure to keep up. When you walked out of the expensive, shining, MNC buildings you saw dirt, trash, stray cows, slums, and hanging power lines. The Google office has their own power and water supply as the infrastructure is so unreliable.
Mumbai:
After Rajistan and Dellhi in northern India, we travelled to Mumbai. One evening while walking down the street amidst blaring horns, wandering stray dogs, and chaotic hoards of people rushing in every direction, I was stepping over piles of garbage, trying not to get hit by the 5 lanes of traffic on this two lane road, and avoiding puddles that looked suspiciously like urine...When I decided that Mumbai looked a bit like what you would expect the world to look like after the Apocalpyse hits. It kind of smelled like it too. The area right around the bay was quite pretty but the water has been so polluted that the "fresh ocean breeze" was anything but. In their defense, they do have a law that keeps cows from roaming freely on the streets (unlike Delhi) and it would be hard to keep a city smelling fresh when 50% of the population doesn't have a bathroom (that is a cited figure).
While in Mumbai, we visited Dharavi, the biggest slum town in Asia. There we saw recycling on a whole new level. Men carried massive bags full of aluminum cans, plastic bottles, computers, etc; people were sorting through all of the garbage and separating it out; and then all of these things were being melted down (including the aluminum--by some guys wearing flip flops in a shack with no ventilation, who were pouring molten aluminum from a fire pit into molds), repackaged, and sold.
Southern-ish India:
In the more southern part of India, we visited the states of Goa and Kerala. Goa was colonized by the Portuguese from about 1500 to 1960 and being there felt like I was in a Brazilian beach town with a bunch of Indians. The Portuguese influence was noticeable in the local language (which, although closer to Hindi, sounded suspiciously Portuguese), in the colorful architecture full of Moorish arches, and in the presense of some of the only liqour stores I found in India. Their may not be many great things to say about the Portuguese (they were shitty colonizers) but as far as I could see this was the only place with valid liqour stores in India and that's enough to earn my respect.
The state of Kerala in southern India is most notable for its quiet, jungle backwaters. The backwaters are salt water rivers, large and small, that snake through the jungle. We took a houseboat down the river and then a canoe back into some of the smaller channels to see "everyday village life." (On our authentic tour this meant a guy climbed up a palm tree and then handed me a coconut with a straw). There are no roads leading to many of these towns, but every house had a canoe. This was a welcome oasis of fresh air and quietness. A huge contrast from the overpowering cities that surrounded it. I could breathe. I could hear myself speak. I could smell nothing. It was amazing.
Calcutta:
Calcutta had some interesting sites and a lot of poverty, although it is not as bad as its reputation alludes to. Or, at least its really no worse than the rest of India. My memories of Calcutta are eclipsed by two women that I met on the street. One night I planned to get picked up by my Michigan friend, Abhishek, who is from Calcutta. I went outside to wait for him on a corner near my hotel at around 10:30pm as the streets were shutting down. People were closing their vegetable stands, putting up their cots on the sidewalk to sleep for the night. Kids were playing cricket in the street and I was standing on the side of the road looking a bit like a prostitute.
I was getting stares and starting to get uncomfortable until two women who "work" begging on the tourist block walked up to me. They decided to befriend me and I ended up promising to get a henna tatoo from them the next day. My henna tatoo turned into a 3 hour event: Me sitting on the sidewalk with two women; hand out, covered in henna; watching Ita's bare-bottomed little boy rub his bum all over the dirty sidewalk; drinking milk tea; and listening to these women talk about their 10 children (collectively), sleeping outside the train station on the sidewalk(not inside, or the police beat you), the aspiration to buy a tarp to cover a piece of sidewalk to call home, and a life of begging in the tourist distrcit (arguably, not the worst job from what I saw). The women were dealing with bum husbands, collecting firewood on the streets to cook on makeshift fires they burned on their patches of sidewalk. I saw a lot of this while travelling and so the story, true or not, wasn't that hard to grasp. Ironically, we were all 27 years old. My what a difference a birthplace and birth control makes.
The real highlights of my trip, though, were meeting friends from Michigan on their home turf in India. In Delhi, my friend Kartik played host by accompanying us on some tourist jaunts and invited us to his home to meet his family and have some awesome Indian food. In Mumbai, Kunal introduced us to his family who also invited us for a great dinner. Meeting their families and being invited into their homes was such a welcome “reality check” from the hotels and restaurants we frequented as tourists. It was also nice to have someone else negotiating our taxi fares!
We also were able to meet my friend Karan for lunch in Mumbai and my friend Abhishek toured us around Calcutta. Abhishek took us to a really nice country club in the city where I'm pretty sure my dad, myself, and our backpacks were sites previously unseen. We also got a tour of the Ganges on a boat and I learned how cricket is not like baseball. Thanks guys!
So while there were some very positive notes about my trip, I should also mention the reasons India made me want to pull my hair out by the roots.
One, was crumbling infrastructure. Literally, a piece of a bridge actually fell on us when were driving under it in Mumbai. Imagine our taxi driver's surprise when we heard a loud crash and saw crumbling concrete come down the windshield! The power went out a lot, streets were full of garbage, buildings were old and run down (even in the nicer parts of Mumbai). Museums were unkept or un-updated meaning most facts referred to the late 1970's.
Second, was the level of "persistence" that people had. Walking down the street in India was exhausting. We were constantly being harassed to take this taxi, get in this rickshaw, give that person money, let this person carry our luggage, come into this restaurant, buy this shoddy knick-knack. When I refused to give a beggar woman on the street ay money, she screamed at me that I was a “heartless bitch.” Honey, if your english is good enough to know "heartless" and "bitch" you could probably find a better line of work.
Third, the public restroom is... the public. On any given day in India I saw at least 5 people go to the bathroom in public. This was irrespective of whether I was driving down a village road in Rajistan or on the busy streets of Calcutta. It was mostly men and it was mostly #1, but there were exceptions to that. (I know that Im not exactly the person to be acting holier than though on this one, but I'm just stating the facts).
Fourth, "lack of price transparency" aka "if you look foreign I'm going to quote you 12 times more than usual and see what you do." If you want to pay anywhere close to normal prices for anything in India, you have to be on your guard constantly Or take your Indian friends with you. Everyone, with the possible exception of 3 or 4 people in the entire country, is trying to extract money from you at inflated prices for a good or service you usually don't even want. Taxi drivers are especially creative.
Fifth, religion India style. While Hindus and Muslims spend a lot of time looking for their differences, I seemed to note nothing but similarities between the two. The main similarity being that a religious guy would offer to bless you and then he would start harassing your for money. When you told him you would put it in the charity box at the mosque, temple, or shrine you were visiting, he would insist that putting it in the box was bad and that you should give it directly to him. Besides, he was poor, he would say. Then, when you wouldn't give him money he would get really mad and yell at you. I have been respectively blessed and damned a lot a in the last few weeks.
Sixth, its hard to be the constant center of attention, even for me. While I admit to taking pictures of people when they are not looking, I pride myself on my subtlety. In India, I would catch people following me with their cell phones held up to get a photo. People approached my dad asking him to hold their babies and I was asked to be in professional family photos in front of the Taj Mahal. It's nice to be special, but its exhausting to cause necks to snap on the sidewalk merely because people think you look like a freak.
So, after 4 weeks and countless observatons, what is my take on India?
India left me quite confused. The people are amazing but the country is falling apart. If you listen to all of the chatter, India is supposed to take over the world: It will suffocate us with call centers, overpower us with engineers, and wear us down with tons of cheap labor. But after 4 weeks in India my prediction is a little less rosy: India is more likely to suffocate us with air pollution, overpower us with beggars, and slowly wear us down with frightening driving habits. If India really wants to take over the world, I think that 3,000-person congress better get their act together. And if they do, I'd still probably opt for Mars.
I also could not help but compare India to the other supposed up and coming superpower, China, which I visited last year. While Shanghai has effectively blotted out the sun with pollution, the streets, buildings, and infrastructure of Shanghai and Bejing were fairly well kept (or, in contrast to India, existent). There were shacks, but not rampant, obvious poverty. It looks like China has actually reinvested some of its money into public works projects to spread the wealth around a bit, provide even poor citizens with basic amenities. However, I do realize that China has a slight "edge" in that no one is allowed to disagree with them. Making decisions is always easier when you get the first and last vote. Or if you have oil. More on Malaysia in my next posting.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Around the World in 120 days, Or So
On May 4th, 2008 I set off from California for Delhi, India to begin 4 months of travelling in Asia and Africa. I had just finished graduate school and a 1/2 Ironman triathlon and I suppose I was ready for a change. That, and I had had the foresight to tell McKinsey that I wouldn't be available for work until the end of October. Thus, the stage was set for my around the world travels....Well, once I was able to find the passport I left behind at the triathlon campsite, reschedule my flight due to the originally lost passport, and then make the 3 hour drive to San Jose in 1 hour (which included running out of gas on a deserted road at 3am). But I digress, this blog is about my travels. And those travels start with India...
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