November 13 2010 / Beijing, China

Holy moly this day today.  It was an epic adventure.  We were supposed to get a wake-up call at 6:45 but of course we most certainly did not.  Amy however apparently set 3 alarms and woke up at the last one and then woke me up around 7ish, so it was all good and we got ready and went down to breakfast.  Thank goodness mom bought me leggings before this trip so I could wear them under my jeans to deal with the 8-14 degrees C weather (and yes I know, I am a fashion disaster).  We ate some delicious eggs and dumplings and noodles, as one does at breakfast time, and then headed out around 8 to get into the buses to go off to the Forbidden City!  The bus ride was about a half hour or so away so we amused ourselves by looking outside, at people bundled up waiting in line for breakfasts at hole-in-the-wall kitchens and people doing "morning exercises" which I absolutely love.  Can all Americans do morning exercises too?  :D

 

We parked near where I think was the north end of the Forbidden City, which is great because the city faces south and most people come in from that way, so in the morning our exploration was almost quiet.  The Forbidden City is considered to be the biggest museum in the world, with apparently 9,999.5 rooms and stretches across 170 acres.  A wide moat surrounds it.  The architecture inside is so incredibly beautiful—I took about a hundred pictures of just different shots of the temple spires.  We learned about a few traditions—there are open doorway arches in the courtyards that connect the courtyards, and they're in a square, meaning that there is a short wall on the ground, too.  Women have to step over this with their right foot and men with their left.  If you step on it, the spirits come and take you away, being quite bothered by this.  I would feel grumpy if someone stepped on me too. 

 

Basically as opposed to Versailles or a castle or something like that, exploring the Forbidden City was done almost entirely outside, exploring the courtyards, wandering through hallways and up steps, admiring statues and gardens.  The ground was ingrained with rocks, which people would walk across barefoot to get a foot reflexology massage, which I thought was awesome.  There was even a stone bat in the ground, that if you jumped on gave you good luck!  Occasionally we would go inside to see little museum-type displays about how the concubines lived and things like that, which I'm happy to bring back to my WIHC class.  Man, I can't even really describe how it was out there.  We were there for three hours and we only saw about 20% of the palace (though granted some of the palace is still off-limits to common people).  But the central court area was so incredibly massive.  I loved being able to find places to take pictures from—I think in this case pictures really are going to be worth a thousand words. 

 

Exiting through the south, I turned around at one point to see my good friend Chairman Mao looking sternly southward.  I hadn't expected that to be part of the temple, so I kind of didn't believe it was "the real deal" at first.  But then as I looked around, I realized that across the street there was a MASSIVE open square—the largest public square in the world, Tiananmen Square.  We took a group picture, in front of the temple, but I didn't really want to spend 15 bucks on it—I think I'll try to get someone to scan it for me.  :P  But what I DID get was THE MOST INCREDIBLE THING EVER—a PANDA HAT.  EVERYONE was wearing them inside and I was excited to go and haggle with a vendor for them, while of course pretending to not be interested at all.  :B  I'm going to be so put out being in the United States and having fixed prices on things.  =/  So I ran around Tiananmen Square for a while in my panda hat and imagined being Tank Guy for a while.

 

We didn't get to stay very long, which I was sad about, but at this point we were pretty hungry so we walked a ways off to the buses.  We ran across the China Guide independent group, of which there are 200 students in, so that was kind of neat. 

 

Lunch was in the Silk Market building!!!  I was so freaking excited.  Someone had said in CSI that you can barter things down to about a fifth of their normal price there, so I was STOAKED.  Of course we didn't have any time to do any shopping—only an hour for lunch.  But I was ready to inhale it, and so I did.  Lunch was hilariously enough pizza, except it was pizza in the sense that there was also some spaghetti and the rest of the buffet dishes were chicken and eggrolls and things of that nature.  I have gotten kind of pro using chopsticks so I inhaled things within about fifteen minutes and then sprinted out the door!

 

The Silk Market was a big, tall rectangular building.  We ate on the 6^th floor but it definitely was at least 8.  But first we went down to the jewelry floors, where my magpie tendencies towards shiny things started going in FULL FORM.  Imagine—columns of tables and jewelry cases, all with approximately the same things, some differences, with sunglasses and electric appliances on the perimeter.  Downstairs are kid's toys, and clothing below that.  I didn't even really get through the jewelry and kid's stuff before I had to go!  But I was browsing around and found this really great leopard ring that I bargained down to a fourth of what it had been, and I really like it so no regrets :B  I was also browsing around in this cool tea store.  I really want a tea set, but I know that I shouldn't buy one in Beijing so I decided to not get anything.  I also saw thes great 3 in 1 tea cups, that have a lid, strainer (for loose tea) and cup that were beautiful.  However, as I was holding one of them up, the lid slipped out of my hand and smashed against the tile floor.  Good thing I was holding a cheap one, less than 4 USD—I bought it, of course, and the lady working there had the niceness to not look too happy about it. 

 

After exploring a couple of lower floors I sprinted out the door to the bus, and got inside five minutes before we left to this school we were visiting.  It was an hour drive through Beijing and out into the outskirts area, so I kind of curled up and dozed in the bus—not a lot of recharge time for a day of running around.  When we got there, it felt like fall in Seattle, kind of—nippy air, beautiful trees with yellowing leaves, everyone bundled up. 

 

The school, which is kind of like an school for homeless children, is called Shi Qinghau.  About 100 boys and girls live there and play there.  When we arrived, they were clapping and singing and we gave them all high-fives.  Then we explored the area.  The girl's rooms were tiny—there was more than one big room, but eight girls fit onto four beds in one room—that's rough.  Me and four other girls also had to use the bathroom, which created the Worst Squatty Potty Experience Ever.  The girl's bathroom was awful—8 toilets in a room with no barriers, all of them overflowing with urine, shit, and sometimes blood.  No toilet paper.   Also, there were windows to the outside—dirty ones, but you could definitely see inside.  After awkwarding around, we finally settled on guarding the door while going inside one by  one—it was the only way we could get around it. I was really D: about the conditions, but I guess it's all they have.

 

Anyway, the buildings were all brick, a little old, with courtyards all around.  There was broken glass embedded into the brick fences, which was a little contradictory next to the murals.  All the kids wore army camouflage and red jackets.  After that nice bit of awkward, we went out and played Tug o' War with the kids.  At first many people were saying "oh, we should let them win, durp dur" and I was like NO WAY GUYS LOOK AT THEM THEY ARE TERRIFYING.  And they were!!! They beat us twice.  During that time a girl from my poetry class told me that on the day I was late to World Poetry, my professor said that my poems marked me as an "established poet" or something like that, was her words.  THIS MAKES ME GLOW INSIDE.   I love that class and have spent hours on these poems so I'm really glad my work is showing.  :)

 

Then we went to the wall where they had outlined the beginning of a great mural on this wall, that had LOVE and robots and panda bears and a boy and a girl dancing with a cat.  It was pretty Asian and pretty great, and we helped paint it!  I worked on the bird before noticing how enthusiastic the kids were getting with the paint, so I fled to talk to some other folks.  When we were leaving, the kids lined up and chanted, or something that sounded like that, it might have been singing—I was too busy being distracted by the line formation and the army clothes.  It was very military status.

 

Then we were off again.  I did enjoy my time there, but mostly I wish I had been told we would be painting so I could have dressed accordingly.  :<  I kind of looked outside at the Saturday traffic and buildings that went by.  After an hour and a half or so, we arrived at the Roast Duck  Restaurant—a restaurant on the 4^th story of a building.  We sat at circular tables, had free beer but no water (which sort of cancel each other out) and ate lots of stuff.  There was this weird gelatinous meat bar things that I was like NO DAY BUT TODAY to, which was a mistake.  Jellymeat never goes down well, even in China.  But other things were good—there was lemon tart chicken (it almost was candylike, it was so strange), an egg and beef mixture, some kung-pao chicken, fried rice, beef meatballs and finally peking duck, which was sliced and we ate it with little rice pancakes with plum sauce and onions.  OM NOM NOM.  I sat next to Ariel and this one girl whose name I always forget, and had a perfectly lovely time.

 

We eventually went back to the hotel.  Lots of people, including me, were talking about going out later tonight to that fun bar district, but I'm so exhausted now and I have no idea what that district is called, let alone how to get there.  Being as that tomorrow is another big day (GREAT WALL!) I think it might be better if I just get some sleep. 

 

Having an amazing adventure.  Love you guys!

November 12 2010 / Beijing, China

CHINAAAAA!  So I woke up this morning, all fresh and packed and went over to the Union.  I decided that maybe it would be a good idea to not wear my walking sandals and wear sneakers, so I changed that out.  I went up to the Union, where two groups were meeting for overnight trips.  One of them was the Beijing overnight trip that I was going on, and another one was the Hiking on the Great Wall.  Never have I ever been so happy to not be hiking the Great Wall—I hear it's less than 40 degrees out there at night!  But I was kind of bummed because all of my friends were going on that trip and not the Beijing trip.  :(  But whatever, I'm going to Beijing!!!!  :D

We left Hong Kong by bus, all herded out of the mall like a bunch of American cattle.  I'm definitely going to miss Hong Kong and how it was a total concrete jungle and was just… glorious.  I want to come back, definitely.  You couldn't do Hong Kong in a single day, you would go crazy!  But anyway, we hopped in our bus (I was Bus A) and set off.  Because there were lots of empty seats and I had no close friends, I got my own double bus seat—score!  I spent it all looking out at the scenery going by, at all the cranes and cargo ships.  The best part was that we went across a huge suspension bridge that is like… I think maybe the seventh longest suspension bridge in the world?  Something like that.  Eventually we got to the airport and we did the whole song and dance to get our tickets and everything.  We were flying Air China, and I had a great time wandering, completely by myself, up and down escalators, through a train, and up more stairs to get to my gate in my proper terminal!  It was a huuuuge airport.  While almost to my gate, Gate 45, I saw a familiar sight and gasped—a Starbucks, with the familiar red and white paint in the window.  CHRISTMAS FLAVORS WERE OUT!  I bolted inside and got a peppermint hot chocolate and half a croquet-monsieur.  SO GOOD.  I then sat down and, with the help of Julie's electrical adapter, worked on my paper for Anthropology of Tourism, which is due when I get back.  Ironically, my professor is on this trip with me, and I've already joked her about working on it here.  :D

 

After a little while of being on the non-banned Facebook (Hong Kong is so different from the communist mainland, it's so strange), we finally hopped on the plane.  Julie and I asked people if we could switch so we could sit together (both tour groups were on the same plane), so we did that and before taking off we finalized our Japan plans.  I think it's just going to be us two travelling together, and I really like our game plan.  Here it is:

 

Day I—Explore Kobe.  Steph goes to Kyoto spend the night, Julie stays in Kobe.

Day II—Julie and Steph meet at Kyoto Dry Zen Gardens and later explore Kyoto.  Spend night in Kyoto. 

Day III—Travel to Osaka.  Stay in Buddhist monastery Katelyn recommended for the night.

Day IV—Travel to Tokyo.  Harujuku district, karaoke, anime, and whatever else.  Meet up with Lorelei that night.

Day V—Finish up in Tokyo.  End in Yokohama.

 

GLORIOUS.  We really want to see the Miazaki Museum so hopefully that's en route, as well as a cat café in Tokyo.  :B  We'll see.

 

Anyway, so the plane ride was long and uneventful.  It's three hours from Hong Kong to Beijing, so Julie and I just talked about psychology and sociology (as we were studying these while flying) and I wrote a good two pages of my paper, which needs to be 5 pages, so I'm feeling good.  After three hours, we finally touched down in Beijing as the sun was beginning to set and the sky was glowing orange. 

 

The airport was HUGE.  We walked through 2 thermo-detectors (as if you're sick they don't let you into the country) and we were just saying something like "Man, I thought Beijing was supposed to be crowded" when BOOM.  We rounded a corner and there were thousands of people filling up this massive spot in front of Immigration Control in lines.  Good.  Lord.  Lauren, Julie, and I got into a line, but as soon as a security guard waved some people to the "Chinese Nationals" line instead of the "Foreigners," we basically bullrushed the line.  It still took a while to get to the desk though.  No one thinks that I am the same woman as in my passport.  They always look at it skeptically and go, "IS THIS YOU?"  But eh.

 

So we were like the first people through.  We hopped on another inter-airport train and were off to the exit, which was a long way away surprisingly.  The Beijing airport must be absolutely huge.  But we finally got there and found our guide, and I talked to my professor for a while, as well as her daughter.  We both really liked our time in Cambodia and were also talking about white privilege and Chapman and California.  It was awesome. 

 

By six we had everyone and were able to pile into our buses.  I said goodbye to Julie and was off.  Once again I had my own seat, so I didn't mind much.  :B  We got onto the freeway, which was packed with people, but I didn't mind—I just loved looking around at all the scenery, which was mostly big buildings with Chinese lettering in red.  Beijing is not as compact and tall as Hong Kong, but is smaller and more spread out—not every building is a skyscraper.  :P  But I still felt this intense love for the city already, and was just… in a constant state of disbelief.  I am in China.  I mean, wow.

 

We got to this district near a pool of water, surrounded by red Chinese lanterns.  All around us were bars lit up with neon lights, some blasting music, some with live bands in them!  It was the coolest little street I've ever seen, so alive!  Yet there weren't too many folks around, as it was still so early.  But then it was time for our little "drive" to a local family where we would be eating our meals—by trishaw!  A trishaw is a two-person cart that's pulled by a man in a bicycle, and it was EPIC!  We were freezing because the weather was so chilly, but he put a big blanket over me and Rebekah, and we were off.  It was the coolest thing ever.  I was getting really emotional, just looking around and being like, I'm in Beijing, I'm really here. 

 

Finally we stopped behind those bars to quieter, more residential areas.  We had split into three groups and we were eating at a little house where a woman welcomed us.  The room had plastic tile floors and beautiful paintings on the wall.  There were two tables, one of which I sat down at.  She also had a yellow beagle that had a face just like Rover's—getting a little white, but still puppylike.  :)  The food she brought out was OUTSTANDING.  There were chicken carrot, eggplant, tomato and egg, pepper and beef, mixed chopped vegetables, and white rice dishes.  They were all delicious but devoured ours quickly.  We actually got pretty grumpy at the other table because they left all their plates mostly full but wouldn't give them to us.  Then the lady showed some of her husband's artwork to us.  He won the 2007 National Painting award (or something like that) for this beautiful abstract picture of flowers.  I wish that I had had the money on hand for it, because I knew my parents would love it.  But I did buy a painting of this incredible autumn scene with birch trees and white cranes, and it was only a little over 30 dollars—totally worth it for the incredible twist of art styles and beauty of the piece.

 

Then we were saying goodbye and out the door again.  Our trishaw guy got competitive on the way back and would cycle hard and fast to pass other people.  He also was a dangerous driver—at one point the side of our cart hit the wall, and another time it ran into another cart!  But none of us were hurt and we were just cackling madly the whole time.  It was so great. 

 

Then we had a nice half hour bus ride back to the hotel—a Holiday Inn, lol.  However, this is the most ritzy Holiday Inn ever.  I'm rooming with a sophomore named Amy who seems very nice.  It's a small room with a "great view" (said Amy… when I opened the curtains, I saw a big air conditioning pipe in my face and a rooftop!) but it's so much bigger than the cabins on the ship that I absolutely love the size—both the beds are even against walls!  :P  Feels just like the ship, only without the rocking.  I forgot my doxy pill this morning, so Amy kindly gave me a granola bar because doxy just destroys my stomach.  I hate these dumb pills, but I'm sure I'd hate malaria even more. 

 

Lots of folks are going out to a karaoke bar across the way, but I'm staying in tonight.  That'll be for tomorrow night, when I have money from an ATM and don't want to rest.  For now, I need to sleep, write, and dream of the Forbidden Palace and Tiananmen Square.

 

…Just kidding.

 

As I wrote the above, which was truly my intention, my roommate came back in and told me that she was going to a little mini-mart around the corner with a couple other folks.  As a visit to the ATM was in order, I agreed!  We walked around the block and walked into a tiny, sketchy shop with street food roasting outside.  Inside were all sorts of snacks—there were white rabbit candies from elementary school! I bought them but they were stale.  :(  But still, pretty exciting to get them here.  I also found one dollar HELLO KITTY bright green kid's mittens.  They are awesome and no one can tell me otherwise.  A bowl of spicy ramen is also mine for when I get hungry.  All this stuff was less than four bucks, so I'm happy.  There was a creepy guy kind of creepin' though, so it was kind of weird.  He was kind of put off from hitting on my companions by the looming shaved head woman, though.  I'm such a fan of this haircut!  <3

PS:  Communist China does not like blogger.com, so I'm lucky I can email this in!!! 

November 11 2010 / Hong Kong, China

Imagine a city made of a sea of skyscrapers, jutting out of the ground with only barren ocean between them.  Neon lights roll over them like waves.  There are no small buildings that are stores, just massive mall complexes, bank towers, technology centers reaching to the sky.  Roads twist over one another, some flying through the air, others settled on the ground, creeping between the buildings.  Where roads are not, forests are—little pathways enter, allowing to see a glimpse of a flying squirrel, or perhaps some finches.  The air is smoggy and thick.  Everyone is well dressed, professional , and poised, and every place is Chinatown.  This is Hong Kong. 

Hong Kong is the most intimidating yet epic place I’ve ever been.  It literally is like stepping into the future, with streets all over each other and a balance of nature and city.  Julie, Ellie and I went out to go explore this wonderful place.  We were docked in Kowloon, which is just across the bay from it—it’s still Hong Kong, but just kind of in its own district, and we wanted to go to Central Hong Kong.  So we hopped aboard a boat called a Star Ferry and sailed ten minutes over there.  I couldn’t help but giggle as people stumbled over the rockiness of the ship—I’d gotten my sea legs long ago.  A ferry terminal was before us like the one in San Francisco, with a big old clock tower, and as we walked through it, we asked a lady what the best place we could go get dim sum was.  She gave us some fractured directions to a place called Mah-Seim’s (or so we thought) and we set off again.  Finally, through a memorial site, a government building, and a street, we found the “City Center” building—and dim sum at Maxim’s was on the top floor.  It was a HUGE room, crowded with, to my delight, Asian people.  There was only a speckled SASer here or there. 

We had to wait for about a half hour outside, but when we got in it was incredibly worth it.  We grabbed our corner table and were soon flagging down anyone and everyone.  It was Julie and Ellie’s first time at dim sum, so I felt all puffed up like a pro.  We ordered shrimp on peppers, BBQ pork buns, shrimp balls, those delicious things I can never remember the name of that have all that delicious juice in them, something called a taro roll, and fried tofu that was the best tofu I have ever eaten in my life.  In the process I scalded my tongue on my tea, but that was the only bad part of it.  The bill was bigger than my usual SAS meals, but you can only have dim sum in China so many times, right?

After paying we went down the stairs to go find Victoria Peak, which is the highest peak in Hong Kong and apparently gives an absolutely amazing view of the entire city.  After walking around through banks and under roadways through the subways, we found the terminal for the cable car that led us up the mountain.  THIS WAS THE SCARIEST CABLE CAR RIDE OF MY LIFE.  Despite the beautiful nature scenery, I couldn’t be distracted from the fact that we were practically going STRAIGHT UP.  It was a VERY sharp incline, and what’s worse, we would stop on the way for other people getting on, and when we stopped the cable car rolled backwards a bit.  It freaked out everyone.  But it was still a great time, and the view from the top was COMPLETELY worth it!  Stretched out below us was all of central Hong Kong, and across the sea from that was Kowloon.  To the sides were boats and more cityscape.  It was absolutely incredible, to see such a large amount of skyscrapers. 

When we got off the cable car, we were taken into a place that was essentially a shopping mall.  None of us minded and browsed to our hearts’ content.  I found a great pair of $12 sunglasses, as my other two have broken at this point, and a little cheap Chinese fish that I grew really attached to—Christmas ornament!  There were lots of other cute things, but you kind of had to pick and choose what was too expensive.   I also found these GREAT earrings that are the male symbol and the female symbol—perfect for a gender studies minor!

We went outside after a while and admired the view, munching some gelato with freshly made, hot waffle cones.   After a while we decided to walk back down the mountain, because it seemed so nice and relaxing and scenic.  And it was—there were houses speckled here and there but otherwise it reminded me of the fireroad we used to walk our dogs on—very foresty and quiet, with just other dog walkers going by.  We even walked through the Zoo and Botanical Garden, seeing ring-tailed lemurs, an orangutan, and a python.  I was surprised that we were never hassled to pay an entrance fee, but it was almost like the zoo was just in the path itself. 

It took us a while but we finally made it back to the ferry and to Kowloon.  We kept getting mixed directions from everyone we saw and it was only when we recognized certain buildings (the ferry clocktower) that we found our way back.  We were hungry at this point, and Ellie was craving pizza.  I felt like being cheap for this meal so we wandered through our waterfront mall.  The only pizza place was a very classy Pizza Hut, but nothing can make that classy enough for me to want to eat there.  So we settled in the middle—a place called BLT Burger, which had DELICIOUS BURGERS OH MY GOODNESS.  I didn’t even feel bad eating it because I haven’t had American food ever in a port so far.  I finished the burger but could not finish the fries.  It was so great.  om nom nom.

Ellie was feeling tired and a little sick, so she went back to the ship, but me and Julie wanted to get some postcards because we were all leaving tomorrow and had bought unholy amounts of international stamps.  So we went back out.  There is the greatest Christmas display outside the mall with Christmas caroles playing and lots of people taking pictures in front of snowmen or frosted Christmas trees.  NOW THESE ARE MY KINDS OF PEOPLE!  I love Christmas and the fact that I can hear Christmas music here is SO EXCITING.  But anyway, the only place open at this point was a little shop near the ferry building.  I bought a great pack of post cards of all these Hong Kong skylines—they’re really beautiful.  Because she couldn’t charge my card unless I bought a certain amount of stuff, I decided on two other epic purchases.  The first was a Hong Kong panda coffee mug, because I’ve been needing one for tea and coffee during late nights here on the ship.  And the other.  THE OTHER IS MY PROUDEST PURCHASE YET.

A Chairman Mao shotglass.  Classy, yet powerful.  Jealous?  I know I’d be.  I think it’s pretty much the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, and even though there were “prettier” glasses to choose from, I knew as soon as I saw it that that glass was for me.  It still makes me laugh to think about. 

When we got back, Julie, Ellie and I hung out on Deck 7, admiring the skyline and finishing up writing postcards, which for me included a couple of my Cambodia postcards.  SO GET READY FOR SOME POSTCARDS.  Ellie also wrote me a postcard, which is being sent to the Burrow, so you guys will just have to hold onto it for me.  :D

Then it was off to bed, to pack and to shower!  I loved Hong Kong, and wish I could have stayed here longer, but don’t for a second regret our day of gently moseying around this beautiful city!

Sorry if this post was brief.  I’m off to Beijing tomorrow and I want to do as much here as I can.  I haven’t given up on blogging yet!  :)

In Case of Death

I guess since I haven’t blogged since midway through Cambodia, we should probably start there.   On the plane back from Cambodia I sat next to this guy, Andre Ramadan.  He admired the fact that I had bought dinner at the airport instead of waiting for the crappy ship food, and asked if my beer was any good.  I offered him a sip, and he declined, saying “I don’t drink beer.”  He then put on his iPod and drifted off to sleep. 

The next day, Andre was found dead in his cabin.  No one is quite sure what happened—the only thing I know is that he seemed very tired during the Cambodia trip, and that he slept a lot on the bus.  But we were all tired, so I didn’t think anything of it.  When I realized who it had been, this guy I barely knew who I’d sat next to on the plane… the only word that comes to mind is devastated. 

Today was the memorial service for Andre.  They were playing Deadmau5, a band I adore—he seemed like he would be a dubstep fan.  He had great taste in music.  There were readings from the Quran, the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament.  His friends got up and talked about his life, how he had a great hyena laugh that was so infectious, how he knew five languages, how he was so giving. There was a slideshow.  I hadn’t realized I’d taken two of the pictures that were on there, during the Cambodia trip.  I lost it at the very end, where they started playing a song with a ukulele that was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and started crying.  We took flowers and, in tradition, threw them off the ship into the ocean.

If I die, and I don’t have any intentions of doing so anytime soon, I don’t want there to be a big dumb funeral where people wear black and veils and sing depressing hymns.  I want people to throw me a gigantic party, where people can dance and sing and talk about my life and (hopefully) how I was a great person.  I don’t want to be mourned, I want to be celebrated.  I want everyone to wear bright colors.  I want them to play dubstep at my funeral.  I want them to play Piano Man.  I want them to play Free Bird.  I want them to play Imagine.  More than anything, I want them to play Don’t Stop Me Now.  I want there to be a dance floor.  I want jokes.  I want comedy.  I want people to hold each other and laugh and kiss and hug.

I want my ashes scattered into this ocean that I’ve come to love so much, so that I can keep sailing all over the world.

Rest in peace, Andre Ramadan.  You're in all our thoughts.

November 4 2010 / Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, Cambodia

We got a phonecall wake up at 0630 this morning, thirty minutes late—we had to leave the hotel by 7am.  So I kind of rushed around to get ready and then headed downstairs to the hotel lobby to grab some breakfast.  I have missed having good breakfasts—the ship’s are pretty dreadful, but here I had an orange juice, croissant, some noodles with egg in them, a piece of bacon, and an omlette.  The noodles especially were sooo good.  Then we hopped out to the bus and headed off to the Toul Sleng Museum, which isn’t so much a museum as it was the actual buildings S-21 where people were detained, interrogated, tortured and killed during the genocide in the late 1970s.  We  drove off there and finally reached a compound of four buildings that had barbed wire all over the outer walls.  We were given strict instruction—absolutely no laughing, and you must be quiet.  We walked out into the courtyard of the place, and our guide pointed out the buildings to us.  The one on the very far left was where People were tortured and detained, the second two had pictures of some of the victims, and another was divided into brick cells.  The last one had paintings that some of the prisoners had painted during their detainment. 

Out of the 20,000 people who had been taken there, said our guide, only seven survived, and out of those seven, only three remained alive today.  “One of them,” said our guide, “is the man who is sitting over there.”  We looked, expecting to see a statue—instead, there was a short, old man wearing a green hat and a tattered coat sitting on a park bench, watching the people as they went by.  “If you want to support him, please buy his book,” said our guide.  I walked over to the old man and he smiled—it didn’t look like he spoke English.  I gestured to the little paperback books besides him, and he took one, signed it, and handed it to me with a bow, which I returned.  I’ve only read a little of it on the bus, but it’s fascinating so far.

The first building, apparently bodies had been found in those very cells when the place had been liberated.  There was a big picture on the wall of the crumpled body on an iron bed, and in the room, only the bed and a gasoline can remained.  My stomach churned as I stared at it, and in each of the other rooms I saw the same thing—a picture of the body, the same bed, sometimes ankle shackles or a crowbar.  It was so eerie.  Next I went and looked through all the pictures of the victims—it was horrifying to look at all these kids and realize they were the soldiers, and all the men and women and realize they’d all been tortured and killed.  Further along were tiny cells that were brick and mortar in large rooms.  On the upper levels, there was barbed wire striped across the air in front of the fence—a suicide barrier.  By the time I hit the paintings, my stomach was kind of rolling.  You can’t help but hit a place like that and just feel the death in the air, and how it chills your bones.  By the time I got all the way over to the area where there were paintings that the survivors had done, I was just feeling ill.  I couldn’t help but notice how red the grass was, though it was irrational to think that it was from the blood in the soil. 

We went next to the Killing Fields, which was the site of over sixty mass graves that prisoners of the Khmer Rouge had to dig themselves and then were executed brutally.  We saw a tree that they would beat babies to death on, and even the sugar palm tree that they used the wood to slit the throats of their prisoners.  There was a trail all along the deeply pockmarked soil.  Apparently not even all of them have been excavated.  All over the trail were little flecks of white, pieces of teeth, the circle of a skull, even a femur bone just laying out on the trail that I moved to the side, so it wouldn’t be stepped on.  Clothing was still scattered everywhere, most times half-buried and in tatters.  In the center was a tower, filled with skulls that they’d found and put on display—they’d cremated most of the bodies, but the skulls were still there.  I took a flower and some incense and gave the man at the front a donation, and put the flowers in the vase and the incense in the sand jar, and then I just knelt there, on my knees, and thought.  …I think the most incredible thing was the amount of life that was there… swarms of butterflies and dragonflies everywhere, a mother hen and her chicks, nesting on one of the dips of the mass graves…..

Jeanette and I noticed the gift store.  We were sort of torn between horror and curiosity, and realized that we needed to go inside—it would be too good to talk about for our Anthropology of Tourism class.  Strangely enough, it had absolutely nothing in it about the killing fields or even about the genocide, which I couldn’t figure out was more or less horrible.  =/

After that we changed gears pretty rapidly.  We went off to the Royal Palace to see the outer courtyard and also see a special building called the Silver Pagoda.  Really we only saw kind of the outer courtyard and glimpse inside a couple of buildings, but they were such beautifully ornate palaces!  They were big golden and red buildings, in Chinese pavilion style.  Inside the Silver Pagoda was all of these beautiful religious treasures—a full-sized golden Buddha with gigantic diamonds, smaller silver and bronze statues, lots of jade treasures.  It was pretty overwhelming—couldn’t help but think how many people this amount of riches could feed.  It was a delicate balance between protecting pieces of history and being insensitive to current needs…

Because we had gotten in so late due to the airplane being delayed, our guide decided to let us take a stop at the National Museum.  I was kind of exhausted by this point, and the last thing I wanted to do was go into a museum and look around, so Jeanette and I decided to wander around the streets for a half hour.  It was actually really neat.  I crossed the road the first time on my own and almost wet my pants—you just have to not look at any of the cars a a very low price.  Well, we found a bootleg DVD STORE.  I got Iron Man I and II, Inglorious Basterds, Glee Season I, AND The COMPLETE BOX SET of James Bond movies for—get this—23 dollars.  AND, the absolute BEST part is, when I opened the little baggies up, they’re actually legitimate DVDs—there was just no box.  I AM EXCITE.  I have been craving James Bond movies SO MUCH LATELY!

So now I’m basically out of money for Cambodia.  Cambodia likes the USD even more than its own currency, and I didn’t bring enough USD.  But I found it to be totally worth it.  :D  I actually wish I had bought more, but you never want to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to places like those.  Anyway, we had a grand ol’ time at the mall, but after an hour we had to go to the airport and get on our flight to Siem Reap!  Cambodia had really mellow airport security, which was pretty awesome.  It also had free WiFi, though I couldn’t take advantage of it due to my computer being silly.  >(  But aside from that, a perfectly okay flight.  I wrapped my head with my plaid hipster button up and dozed off.  It was another short flight, and soon we touched down.  Our hotel was the Allson Angor Paradise, which is a big hotel on a street with other big hotels on it.  We kind of freshened up a little bit before going off to dinner in the coolest building I’ve ever seen. 

Imagine a huge warehouse, open air with a tin roof, with red Chinese lanterns hanging down from the ceiling.  The floor is filled with TONS of long tables, taking all the space, and in the back where there were dozens of tables of different kinds of food, served buffet style.  In the front was a stage with a big statue Angkor Wat head in the middle, with doors on either side for a cultural dance performance—besides it, the cats from the neighborhood lurked on a nearby roof.  This was the Kulen II Restaurant.  It is kind of an adventure to get food—I don’t think anyone came back to their seats before spending 20 minutes trying to find everything.  I got delicious fried rice and even better noodles, as well as spring rolls, egg rolls, a sort of cheesey-egg thing, and lots of pineapple.  After a little while, the cultural dance show started up.  They would do lots of dances between men and women, women and “gods” or maybe demons, I wasn’t sure.  Either way it was a good lot of fun, because Lauren and I were making up the storylines together and putting in dialogue to the body motions.  Lots of women were “simply not havin’ it.”  Still, for all we joked, I really enjoyed it.  Lots of people split  for the night market instead, but as I was broke anyway, I was happy to watch all the way though, especially for the gorgeous costumes!  Lots of demon masks, beautiful dresses and headdresses, and just the movements were so cool. 

After that was over we got ready to go, but as I was walking by, Steven called me over—he was on a different Cambodia SAS trip.  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.  As I didn’t know, he kind of laughed and said “You wanna try some snake wine?  We bought a bottle and are looking for some people to share it with!” 

…Well, it looked as though The Someone Up There had given me something to do instead of going to the night market.

When I got back to the hotel, I went off to find Steven and found him at the lobby.  I let him use my computer for a while to check his email while I goofed off looking at Indian soap operas on TV.  We also tried to see if any traveler blogs from Cambodia said that people died from snake whiskey (or, as the label said, “Sank Whiskey”), but it looked like everyone just said it was really freaking terrible.  In fact, it looked really freaking terrible.  Inside the bottle was a yellowish liquid, and in that was a rearing cobra.  In its mouth was the tail of a full-sized scorpion.  They were both propped up by some kind of herbs.  A couple more people came by on his Temples of Angkor trip, including a girl from my Anthropology of Tourism class.  After a while, though, it became inevitable—we had to drink this stuff and then go bed, as it was growing late and we had to wake up at 4:30am to take a sunrise tour of Angkor Wat.  We clustered near the mini bar, and Steven popped off the cap.  I took a whiff of it—it smelled like death, literally.  Or maybe fermentation.  Either way I shuddered and began to have intense second thoughts.  But after Steven and his friend took theirs like champs, I realized that you can’t pick and choose when you have a motto like GO BIG OR GO HOME. I poured the smallest amount of alcohol imaginable and took the shot.

It tasted so fucking bad.  I almost threw up twice.  It tasted, quite frankly, like dead animal soaked in alcohol (which is exactly what it was), and what’s worse at first it didn’t taste too bad and then the aftertaste hit and hit HARD.  It feels like a snake is in your belly all coiled up.  An hour later I’m still feeling it in my stomach, so I bummed a Pepto-Bismal from Steven before I headed back to my room to reflect on the day.  NEVER AGAIN.  =|  Am I glad I did it?  To be honest, I’m not sure.  Usually when I’m way past the event I’m glad I tried it, but every once in a while I think about the taste and just shudder.  UGH!  Never ever ever again.  Disgusting. 

This trip abruptly feels like it’s going by so fast.  At the beginning, in Spain and Morocco and Ghana, everything was going so slowly because there were classes to balance out port.  Now I want to just dig in my claws and say, SLOW DOWN!  I don’t want this to ever be over.

November 3 2010 / Phnom Pehn, Cambodia

GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!

I woke up this morning to the voice of God roaring something about how the Caribbean Sea should go and collect their passports.  Being as that I didn’t fall asleep until maybe three AM last night because I was busy catching up on blogging.  Finally, though, when they called for everyone else who hadn’t gotten their passport yet, I rolled out of bed and collected my temporary visa pass that would allow me to leave the port.  Then I answered a couple of emails, and double checked my backpack—a couple of days ago I learned that I was NOT on the Group B Cambodia trip, but was leaving on the very first day!  So I was super excited and ready for that.  I attempted then to take a nap, but had forgotten that I told Jared that he should hang out with me because we both had to leave around 11am, so we hung out and talked for a while.  Then I was off to the Union with my outrageously heavy backpack. 

Vietnam is not as terribly hot as India was, but it’s just as humid and the air has a grainy feel to it, as though you’re sucking up the jungle through your nose.  As soon as the wall of heat hit me, The End by The Doors started playing in my mind, and it hasn’t left since.  I have a massive urge to watch Apocalypse Now now.  :o  But anyway, we walked a while through the port gate and to the buses—it’s nice that it takes no time to get from the ship to the city for once.  Lauren (my buddy from WIHC) and I hopped onto Bus 2, and soon we took off.  As I munched on my typical sketchy ship food (at this point I’ve learned to just ignore the shady bright pink meat), I looked outside and took in my surroundings.  There were lots of people wearing medical masks and tons more on motorcycles, bikes and scooters.  I’ve heard that motorcycle collisions are a big problem for SAS students and that the way to cross traffic is to keep your head down, not look around, and just walk into the street quickly and steadily, and let the cyclists do the rest—otherwise you’ll freak out!  It has me a little nervous but I’m sure I can handle it.  I loved looking out at all the shops around.  It reminded me of India a little bit, though much cleaner and there were lots more upper-class stores around, which surprised me. 

We got to the airport and got our passports, and then went and checked in for our flights and went through security.  We actually got in really fast and had two hours to spare (which I guess for an international flight is probably a good idea).  So Lauren and I went and sat down at Gate 9 and kind of idly watched this HBO movie playing across the way.  We had no idea what was going on, but it was about a jungle in Hawaii and murderers or something.  We got pretty emotionally invested and were bummed when we had to move to a different gate, though luckily it was still playing there!  As time went by we realized that our flight was delayed, and as another movie (called “Tin Man” or something like that… it had Kevin Costner and was dreadful) started up, I wandered out to grab something at a little café I’d seen.  There were things that looked like steamed pork buns like you get in Dim Sum, so I got one as well as a beer called 333 (lots of people were grabbing beers at that point, don’t look at me like that!) and sat down to eat.  The bun was great—it had a kind of meatball in the center, as well as a bit of hardboiled egg or something like that.  The beer was not as great—too dark and bitter. 

Finally, as another Kevin Costner movie started up (called “The Postman” or something), we FINALLY left after being delayed for two hours.  We were freaking out because our day’s schedule had been so packed and we had already missed two things we were supposed to do, which were seeing the National Museum and having a Sunset Cruise on the Mekong River (which was actually super disappointing for me… :().  We got on board and as soon as I closed my eyes we were landing.  I honestly think that we waited four hours for a half-hour flight, which was both hilarious and terrible at the same time!  :)

Then we had to get our visas when we got off the plane at the Cambodian airport.  I had my passport, twenty dollars, and photos at the ready, but there was a MASSIVE line.  We were kind of despairing at this point and hoping that we were still going to be able to make even dinner, as by now it was like 6 at night or something.  Then an official told us that if we paid 22 dollars instead of 20 dollars each, we could bypass the pictures step of the process and get our visas right away in bulk.  Ooookay.  It was pretty much a hardcore bribe, but we all did it immediately because we just wanted to get out of there at that point.   So now I have two new sparkly visas (Vietnam and Cambodia) in my passport, which is beginning to look more and more formidable! 

Then we got out of the airport FINALLY and climbed into one of the two buses.  Our tour guide’s name is Smey and he told us we were still going to go to the orphanage for a little while.  I was kind of bummed out because I hadn’t realized that we were going to an orphanage, otherwise I would have brought my stuffed animals, but was still ready to get out and do things finally.  As we travelled along a busy road, we finally slowed down and got out to walk down a seemingly mixed residential-business street.  Motorcycles came up and down the street, and many people were still out selling food and their wares.  Small children especially enjoyed shouting HELLO! from the backs of motorcycles as they went by the herd of college students tromping by.  And even though the neighborhood was a bit run down, I never once felt like it was sketchy or that I was in an uncomfortable situation.  The people were all smiling and acknowledging us, or were just continuing to hang out with their family and friends.  I really like the environment here in Cambodia so far.  :D

Finally we got to Palm Tree Orphanage.  There was a big courtyard filled with students and the kids, and already some kids had their arms wrapped around their “chosen.”  Immediately I felt awkward—I don’t really have a way with kids.  I kind of treat them like I would any adult, and feel strange just going up to one and talking down.  But then, out of nowhere, a little girl in a bright red shirt and a blue skirt ran up to me and asked me my name.  I asked her what hers was and she said her name was Socheat.  She laughed at my pronunciation and told me it was nice to meet me, and then wrapped her arm around mine and led me off to show me her home.  She showed me a large collection of ancient pottery that the orphanage sells in order to get donations to help the children, the second main courtyard, and a couple of the classrooms that were upstairs.  She was in the fifth grade and had lots of drawings up on the wall to show me—one of them was a brown animal marked PIG.  :)  Her little sister was also leading a girl around.  I met three of her sisters in all over that time.  Their rooms were super small and didn’t seem to have very many beds—they probably mostly had to sleep on the floor.  But all of them were just so happy and loving, and Socheat was always taking my hand to race off and show me new things.  My favorite part was in the courtyard, when we got into a rousing circle of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and then into another one of everyone’s favorite, “Chicka-licka-boom-boom” which was a little dance game.  We were always squealing laughter.  There was also a banana game that where it ended you had to freeze and the first person who smiled lost.  IT WAS SO MUCH FUN.  I was basically loving it the entire time and was just dying laughing.  I can’t believe the amount of joy all these kids had. 

But far too soon it was time to go.  Socheat wrapped her arms around my waist and gave me the hardest hug she could muster.  “You don’t get back on the bus,” she said.  “You sleep here tonight!” 

I must admit, my stone cold heart melted just a little.  I hugged her and twirled her around, and gave her a piggy back ride.  I also wrote my email address on her hand, as I saw lots of other people doing that, so hopefully she emails me from their email address and I can talk to her about how our travels have been going.  She was such a sweet girl and now I know why Kenzie told me not to adopt any kids while I was over here in Cambodia—their spirits are just absolutely amazing.

So that made up for the hard start to our trips, as we all came back on the bus so incredibly happy.  Turns out that 30% of Cambodia live in poverty because of the war (the Khmer Rouge and all that) and the main reason why these kids are orphans are because their parents cannot support them.  Then we were off to our dinner restaurant, Khmer Surin.  Khmer is the local food so I was pretty excited to try it.  The drive over to the restaurant was pretty incredible—I was actually surprised at the amount of technology around.  There were lots of neon lights announcing restaurants and bars and things, and it was really clean—I mean, there were still piles of trash near trees, but they were neat piles, unlike in India where many things were scattered.  I really love it here, basically.  :B 

The restaurant was in a nicer little street—it was bathed in red, and had three stories.  I don’t think I saw anyone eating there that wasn’t white, which is kind of =/ but I guess here it means that it’s just high quality food.  We sat down at a long table in the third floor.  Nearby was a man playing the sitar, and lizards crawled over our heads on the ceiling.  Besides us was open air and we could look down onto the street if we were close enough.  The meal was family-style and delicious—springrolls and sauce with cucumber, rice cakes with a peanut sauce, cashew chicken, stir-fry vegetables, steamed rice, soup—it was all there and ALL DELICIOUS!  I ordered a local beer, as per usual, the Angkor—they brought out a bottle that was HUGE!  I was like D: how can I finish this, but the table helped me by tasting it quite a bit.  :)  It was delicious, there was just a lot of it!  For desert there were assorted fruits, like mango,  papaya (which I feel like I ate when I was a baby or something, the taste is just so familiar but I don’t eat papaya), watermelon and banana.  It was great.  I basically stuffed myself and it was all just incredible.  When we got back on the bus my tour guide said, “You liked Angkor?”  We all cheered, and he said “Today Angkor comes and visits you, in a few days, we go visit Angkor!” as Angkor Wat is the famous temple we’re visiting.  I thought this was hilarious for some reason and laughed really hard. 

We drove then to our hotel, the Sunway.  We passed a couple of temple shrines that I hope I’ll be able to check out tomorrow if we have time.  There are lots of pictures of the past king everywhere, especially on government buildings.  I must say though, I’m super impressed with Cambodia so far.  The people are incredibly friendly, and I loved the kids at the orphanage, and the city is absolutely fascinating and just feels safe (within reason, of course).  We stopped at this massive hotel and got inside, where they gave us lemonades that tasted a bit like Shirley Temples  and showed us to our rooms.  No free internet here, but perhaps next time.  It’s fancy and lacks lizards, and that’s good enough for me.

Tomorrow, the Killing Fields.  I’m a little nervous—I hear it’s pretty gruesome.  But it’s something important to see so I’m looking forward to it.