There are times when I wish (and it is often) my brother was here. For those of you who don't know him, he's an architect (a really great one) and also just about the best person that I know. So, given the latter statement, it's pretty obvious why I would want him around. But that's a constant feeling anywhere I find myself - whether it be in Vietnam, North Carolina, or Mississippi (he lives in Alabama).
A feeling that I don't have very often, though, is missing him because of his architectural expertise. I think everything he does is great, but I just don't think I've gotten to that age (quite yet) where I need stuff designed and built for me. Just give me a few years, Jack.
That said, I have found myself wishing that Jack could be here for the purpose of helping me appreciate the architecture in Saigon. I appreciate pleasing looking things, but truly I don't know what's good and what's bad - so I never really feel like I can take pleasure in something until I know about it.
To me, the architecture in Saigon is very soviet and severe. Large concrete buildings with barred windows. The colors are dull and the only thing that keeps me stimulated on my walks throughout the city often times are the low-hanging power lines - crammed and piled together like a package of dried spaghetti. Even the zoo - a bizarre (and depressing) green space in the middle of the city seemed severe and poorly designed.
Maybe I just wasn't seeing something - perhaps the configuration of the doors allow light in to maximize lighting and minimize power use. Perhaps the thin, narrow buildings are unique only to this area of the world. I just wasn't getting it, and ever so slowly I realized that I was getting tired of the city.
I needed a change. Needed to get out just for a bit. Take a break from the constant hustle and bustle of the city and get some fresh air. I needed to see something new - even the single block that we live on seemed eternally long and monotnous, and I started to feel trapped. I needed a break to revitalize me.
This break came in the form of a trip to the beach. Last Saturday, we boarded the bus to Mui Ne - a beach town just east of Saigon. On a map it looks like just a little hop, skip, and jump to Mui Ne from Saigon - maybe the width of my pinky fingernail. We boarded around 6 pm - bristling with excitement for the beach - and started our "little" journey, which turned out to be a 5 and a half hour oddyssey to the end of the world.
I was fine for the first hour or so, but then the singing began. First one voice and then many broke out into songs I had not heard since middle school - Backstreet Boys' entire repertoire, Celine Dion's "My Heart Will go On" and, of course, "Old McDonald," (who was "old" when I was about 6, and, by golly, is still alive).
Childhood insecurities and fears swirled around me and churned in my stomach as I became a timid third grader travelling to Twin Lakes day camp again. Given the darkness outside, I couldn't distract myself with views of the outside world, and instead my entire being became focused on the partial lyrics and flat pitches of such favorites as "Show Me The Meaning" and "Hotel California".
I should have taken dramamine...
Miraculously, we arrived to Mui Ne and found our guest house - a charming, little hotel pressed right against the sea. Almost as soon as we arrived, the rain began to pour and many folks sprinted outside to go play in the rain. I declined, as I had just been given a copy of the fifth Harry Potter, which had renewed my bristling excitement.
Slowly the complaints began to roll in. Someone noticed that the a/c didn't work, then the showers were broken, and I even discovered a large tuft of long black hair stuck behind our bathroom mirror.
We would switch hotels the next morning.
The next day was spent biking around the town through the rain, doing a project that had us talking with the locals about the effects of tourism on Mui Ne. It was quite interesting and we learned many things (including the fact that much of the fish sauce that is exported to China - and please God not the US - is preserved using shampoo and bleach...yum).
We spent about two or three hours biking around under the rainy, overcast skies, and then returned for lunch. It was then that we discovered that the sun, in fact, doesn't care if the skies are overcast or not, because it will still burn the crap out of you. I would admire the perfectly straight edge of tan, red skin along my arm that - without any warning - would suddenly surrender to the pale army of whiteness that was my shirt-covered skin.
The rest of the afternoon was spent taking cold showers, reading Harry Potter (which is fantastic), and blowing my arm whenever it felt like my arm hairs had burst into flames again.
We woke up the next morning and after a tour of the large sand dunes that loom over Mui Ne and an informal game of intertube basketball in the pool, we packed our belongings and boarded Charon's chariot (our bus) to cross the Styx back into Saigon.
Heavy walls of rain began to fall, and after being unable to fight my exhaustion with Harry Potter, I - along with EVERYONE - passed out on the bus.
I had hoped that I would sleep straight through the trip back, but after about an hour or so, I felt a numbness begin to creep over my butt and a stiffness begin to tingle in my neck. My eyes groaned, creaked open, and watched in horror as we thread our bus between a large 18-wheeler and the honking oncoming traffic (this was the first driver - though they've all been crazy - that I haven't liked).
Knowing that I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep because of the strain in my neck and numbeness of my butt (people would periodically stand up in their seats to punch their backsides to regain feeling), I concentrated on reading Harry Potter, which given my history of reading in cars (not good) was surprsingly successful.
I can't remember exactly what it was that drew my eyes to the window, but I found myself no longer reading and staring at the countryside - passing by our window - in awe. The rain was still falling and there was a grayness that had overtaken the land. Men and women crouched underneath their porches as the rain dripped in front of them and the mountains - usually so vivid - had become mysterious silhouettes in the distance. It was beautiful, for up until this point I had been slightly underwhelmed with the visual aspects of Vietnam (city and countryside, alike). Yet now, with much of my vision obscured, I became overwhelmed with the magical beauty of the land - a place where the distance, the land over the mountains, was no longer guaranteed. Perhaps it was that I was reading Harry Potter and in a bit of a magical mindset, but I felt something feel me up, and no sooner had I done so than I realized that - for the first time on this trip - I was craving pho (the unsatisfying and often unappetizing noodle soup).
We pulled back into the city and I felt like I was reuniting with an old friend. It was good to be back in the city. Things seemed familiar. We went to a restaurant that we had visited before, and it was delicious. I was glad to see the rats scurrying down along our guesthouse walls. I was even glad to see the smiling, waving woman who breaks into my room every morning to deliver me my water.
I woke up this morning, finally understanding that Saigon is like a difficult piece of music - most likely Jazz. I walked the the formerly eternal street block from our guesthouse to the internet cafe, where I sit typing right now, and started to see and hear some of those unique rhythms of this place.
I passed the cell phone company with the guy who uses an internet cliff notes site to find notes on the Scarlet Letter. I ducked my head as I passed under the low hanging covering of the fruit shop. I passed the little open-air panini place where the three workers always wave whenver I pass. I stared at the cardboard cutout of the Vietnamese movie star advertising choco-pies, and I wondered if they were any good. I weaved through the young boys breaking ice and parking motorcycles at Hong Hanh and held my nose as I passed through the perpetually urine-infested area of the woman who sells cigarettes and eats red fruit that makes it look like her teeth are bleeding. It was even nice to pass the man who laughs and counts money next to the cage with the graying chihuahua in it.
Saigon finally clicked - or at least began to. It's harmonies and rhythms - though discordant and off at times - made sense, and I was glad to lend my ear to them.
I don't know if I'll ever actually appreciate the buildings here - or if they even deserve appreciation. Jack only knows.
Regardless, it feels good to finally find that pattern, that rhythm, of this city or our single city block. So for now, I suppose, I'll just wish that you were here, Jack, not for your architectural expertise, but just so I could share this with you in person.
I miss and love you all. I might still be lost like I was in the last post, but I feel like this city has got a pretty mean jazz rhythm that I never heard before.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Lost and Found...and then Freaking Lost Again
A thought that I've been having quite frequently over the past few days is how glad I am that I was not born a car. It's an odd thought and one that I have definitely never had before, but I keep having this experience - like a bad recurring dream - of having my elbows knocked very hard by people here (I have a tendency to place my hands on my hips, which pokes my elbows out beyond the reach of my shoulders). This has never posed a problem for me in the past, but in Vietnam, I am constantly having my elbows run into by people passing me by. So, you see, if I had been born a car, I wouldn't have doors any more.
It's frustrating. Before, I would have been able to eloquently pirouette my way through these congested narrow settings, and yet now I can't even go to the bathroom without hitting my head on doorways. Even yesterday, maneuvering my way through a crowded supermarket with my roommate, I could only watch helplessly as he weaved seamlessly through the massive crowd of people, while I clumsily found myself running into dead ends and gridlock.
I'm almost inclined to use the image of literally being a big fish in a small pond, but that's not right. The pond is not small. Instead it's quite big and even spacious in comparison to places I have been before. I think it's just overcrowded.
This morning, Kelsey told me that she read my blog and said that I sounded unhappy - which was terrifying the more I thought about it. Am I unhappy? I hope that all of you with your wonderful comments (they're really great and I truly enjoy reading them so much...thank you thank you) will let me know if I start sinking into some mopey-toned memoir. That said, I don't think I'm unhappy. I just feel lost. A big fish, sure, but in an enormous ocean full of so many fish (and fish driving motorbikes) that I can hardly see my own nose when I'm making my way about the city.
In talking with the other folks on this trip with us, many have shown frustration with the time we're spending here. Some are afraid that their internships aren't worth anything and that their contributions are almost insignificant here. Some of us wish we had more time in the city or more time with our internships - time enough to make some type of ripple (or just a bubble) in this ocean. I've even had moments where I wonder if I REALLY have to go to Vietnamese class in the mornings if I'm only going to be here for a few weeks.
I guess my question is how do we make our time (short as it is) meaningful in a place (large as it is)? Beat our tails as hard as we can and hope that our little ripple will be distinguishable in the waves above?
I promise that most of my posts will not be like this, but it's been a question that's been on my mind since we arrived in Saigon and that finally boiled over yesterday when I was having coffee with my roommate.
The moment itself was rather ordinary. We had come to this neat coffee shop called Cafe Take (Japanese for "bamboo") and were sitting, innocently enjoying our coffee when the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" came on the speakers. It's a song I have never thought myself as having many emotional connections to - especially in comparison to the feelings of love and absolute hatred that my parents have for it. But nevertheless, I felt myself something stir around inside me and suddenly I was taken back to the first play I was ever in (surprisingly not the Wizard of Oz) where "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" would play right before the curtains opened and the lights came on. I can clearly remember sitting nervously on stage in complete darkness - speedily whispering through the monologue I was about to say.
Moments later, B.B. King came on the stereo, and I briefly snapped out of my flashback only to transfer into another moment brimming with emotion. I excitedly told Phat (my roommate) how the blues were born in Mississippi (my home) and was able to tell him about some of its history.
Then, finally, the song "Danny Boy" came on the stereo, and I was vaulted again back into a high school choir concert where we stood singing "Danny Boy" for the last time to our beloved choir director who was leaving us to go to another school. His name was Ben, and we should have sang "Benny Boy," but we didn't. That was all I could think of.
The combination of these three songs and the memories associated with them gave me this tingle at the bottom of my spine that slowly moved up my back into my neck (standing the hairs on end) and then finally concentrating itself in my eyes in the form of burning tears not of sadness - but of joy.
I've found myself on multiple occasions needing to listen to my iPod - listening to songs I haven't listened to in months (or in some cases, years). From time to time, I just get this urge where I feel as though I won't be able to move if I don't hear some familiar song to give me that sense of place - of home - that I need so desperately at times here.
One of those songs has been "Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent. I think we were in class the other day and were learning about how to say "Today," "Yesterday," and "Tomorrow."
I don't remember quite who it was, but someone started to sing "Yesterday" by the Beatles, and in turn we thought of what other songs we could sing that fit with these time words. Anyway, Rent came up with "Today" and then inevitably, "Seasons of Love" was sung. Ever since, I've been singing it non-stop...until last night, when it stopped.
We had been warned that we were going to have to sing a song, but somehow we had been able to put off the reality until an hour before we were to sing in front of a crowd of some 500 Vietnamese youth at a Party Youth meeting. At 5:30 - one hour before we were supposed to be ready to perform - we started practicing "Seasons of Love." When 6:30 came, we could only cross our fingers that we were in good shape.
As we filed into the enormous auditorium filled with Vietnamese students, we had the first inkling that we didn't want to sing. Our attitudes didn't improve when the Korean students, who came on just before us, performed a 3 song fully-coreographed dance show - full with lights and deafening bass beats. (We didn't know we could have requested the lights...or the techno backbeat).
Watching, with mouths slightly open and eyes full of bewilderment, we could only form one small thought into my mind.
"Well, shit."
We watched as the lights went out and the auditorium filled with crazy applause. We excused ourselves from our seats in the auditorium and began to shimmy through the aisles and then up onto the stage. Rob introduced us and with every shred of confidence that we had left, we sang our hearts out for the audience, who, thank God, really liked us.
I write all this, because I think it fits well with what I'm trying (in such a long-winded way) to say about finding meaning (and direction) in an overwhelming ocean that feels like it is swallowing you whole, because when the Korean dancers came on last night, we all looked at each other with that "oh shit" look and yet together, we were somehow able to get through their performance AND ours.
"Seasons of Love" goes, "525,00 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes, how do you measure a year in the life?"
The song suggests daylights, sunsets, midnights, and cups of coffee before finally settling on love as the best way to measure one's life, and truly it's hard to argue that the feeling we had right before going on stage last night or right before taking a bite into a piece of unknown meat at a dirty noodle shop, was and is not love. It might not be love in that conventional sense, but there was something about that shared humiliation and frustration that we share about the food or about our soggy toilet paper, that I hope - when this summer comes to an end - may serve as a true measure for what made this time truly extraordinary.
No more of these kind of posts, I promise. Just needed it out.
Hope y'all are doing great.
It's frustrating. Before, I would have been able to eloquently pirouette my way through these congested narrow settings, and yet now I can't even go to the bathroom without hitting my head on doorways. Even yesterday, maneuvering my way through a crowded supermarket with my roommate, I could only watch helplessly as he weaved seamlessly through the massive crowd of people, while I clumsily found myself running into dead ends and gridlock.
I'm almost inclined to use the image of literally being a big fish in a small pond, but that's not right. The pond is not small. Instead it's quite big and even spacious in comparison to places I have been before. I think it's just overcrowded.
This morning, Kelsey told me that she read my blog and said that I sounded unhappy - which was terrifying the more I thought about it. Am I unhappy? I hope that all of you with your wonderful comments (they're really great and I truly enjoy reading them so much...thank you thank you) will let me know if I start sinking into some mopey-toned memoir. That said, I don't think I'm unhappy. I just feel lost. A big fish, sure, but in an enormous ocean full of so many fish (and fish driving motorbikes) that I can hardly see my own nose when I'm making my way about the city.
In talking with the other folks on this trip with us, many have shown frustration with the time we're spending here. Some are afraid that their internships aren't worth anything and that their contributions are almost insignificant here. Some of us wish we had more time in the city or more time with our internships - time enough to make some type of ripple (or just a bubble) in this ocean. I've even had moments where I wonder if I REALLY have to go to Vietnamese class in the mornings if I'm only going to be here for a few weeks.
I guess my question is how do we make our time (short as it is) meaningful in a place (large as it is)? Beat our tails as hard as we can and hope that our little ripple will be distinguishable in the waves above?
I promise that most of my posts will not be like this, but it's been a question that's been on my mind since we arrived in Saigon and that finally boiled over yesterday when I was having coffee with my roommate.
The moment itself was rather ordinary. We had come to this neat coffee shop called Cafe Take (Japanese for "bamboo") and were sitting, innocently enjoying our coffee when the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" came on the speakers. It's a song I have never thought myself as having many emotional connections to - especially in comparison to the feelings of love and absolute hatred that my parents have for it. But nevertheless, I felt myself something stir around inside me and suddenly I was taken back to the first play I was ever in (surprisingly not the Wizard of Oz) where "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" would play right before the curtains opened and the lights came on. I can clearly remember sitting nervously on stage in complete darkness - speedily whispering through the monologue I was about to say.
Moments later, B.B. King came on the stereo, and I briefly snapped out of my flashback only to transfer into another moment brimming with emotion. I excitedly told Phat (my roommate) how the blues were born in Mississippi (my home) and was able to tell him about some of its history.
Then, finally, the song "Danny Boy" came on the stereo, and I was vaulted again back into a high school choir concert where we stood singing "Danny Boy" for the last time to our beloved choir director who was leaving us to go to another school. His name was Ben, and we should have sang "Benny Boy," but we didn't. That was all I could think of.
The combination of these three songs and the memories associated with them gave me this tingle at the bottom of my spine that slowly moved up my back into my neck (standing the hairs on end) and then finally concentrating itself in my eyes in the form of burning tears not of sadness - but of joy.
I've found myself on multiple occasions needing to listen to my iPod - listening to songs I haven't listened to in months (or in some cases, years). From time to time, I just get this urge where I feel as though I won't be able to move if I don't hear some familiar song to give me that sense of place - of home - that I need so desperately at times here.
One of those songs has been "Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent. I think we were in class the other day and were learning about how to say "Today," "Yesterday," and "Tomorrow."
I don't remember quite who it was, but someone started to sing "Yesterday" by the Beatles, and in turn we thought of what other songs we could sing that fit with these time words. Anyway, Rent came up with "Today" and then inevitably, "Seasons of Love" was sung. Ever since, I've been singing it non-stop...until last night, when it stopped.
We had been warned that we were going to have to sing a song, but somehow we had been able to put off the reality until an hour before we were to sing in front of a crowd of some 500 Vietnamese youth at a Party Youth meeting. At 5:30 - one hour before we were supposed to be ready to perform - we started practicing "Seasons of Love." When 6:30 came, we could only cross our fingers that we were in good shape.
As we filed into the enormous auditorium filled with Vietnamese students, we had the first inkling that we didn't want to sing. Our attitudes didn't improve when the Korean students, who came on just before us, performed a 3 song fully-coreographed dance show - full with lights and deafening bass beats. (We didn't know we could have requested the lights...or the techno backbeat).
Watching, with mouths slightly open and eyes full of bewilderment, we could only form one small thought into my mind.
"Well, shit."
We watched as the lights went out and the auditorium filled with crazy applause. We excused ourselves from our seats in the auditorium and began to shimmy through the aisles and then up onto the stage. Rob introduced us and with every shred of confidence that we had left, we sang our hearts out for the audience, who, thank God, really liked us.
I write all this, because I think it fits well with what I'm trying (in such a long-winded way) to say about finding meaning (and direction) in an overwhelming ocean that feels like it is swallowing you whole, because when the Korean dancers came on last night, we all looked at each other with that "oh shit" look and yet together, we were somehow able to get through their performance AND ours.
"Seasons of Love" goes, "525,00 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes, how do you measure a year in the life?"
The song suggests daylights, sunsets, midnights, and cups of coffee before finally settling on love as the best way to measure one's life, and truly it's hard to argue that the feeling we had right before going on stage last night or right before taking a bite into a piece of unknown meat at a dirty noodle shop, was and is not love. It might not be love in that conventional sense, but there was something about that shared humiliation and frustration that we share about the food or about our soggy toilet paper, that I hope - when this summer comes to an end - may serve as a true measure for what made this time truly extraordinary.
No more of these kind of posts, I promise. Just needed it out.
Hope y'all are doing great.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Morning Love
I have always considered myself - give or take a few days (or summers...) - a morning person. I think it's a good time to get stuff done. The air is still fresh. The sun is not too hot and is slanting at such an angle that it sort of speckles across the ground like drops of dew. It's the perfect time of day and like all great things, it seems to slip away too quickly.
None of this is true in Vietnam. In fact, I've found myself counting down to the end of the mornings.
I can't remember who wrote it (Thoreau or Emerson, I'm fairly certain), but the idea of "springing up from sleep in eager anticipation of the wonders of the coming day" does not apply. The only "springing up" comes from the heart-stopping sudddeness of the banging on our doors of the 6:45 cleaning ladies, whose highest end seems to be the delivery of hot water in thermoses to our rooms.
* I have yet to use the hot water once. In fact, I only assumed it was hot until the other day when - in my drunken pre-awakened exhaustion, I accidently kicked over the thermos, which unplugged itself upon contact with the ground, spilling its scalding contents onto our floor and my bare feet.
Also, for the past few days, the morning has been further soured by the series of stomach cramps that have slowly started to phase out the need for my alarm clock (my stomach, Jeffery - unbeknownst to me - seems to set his alarm for about 15 minutes before my cell phone alarm.).
Even still, there is still unfinished Vietnamese homework to do in preparation for our 8:30 class, in which we learn Vietnamese and make honking sounds like geese in our attempts to repeat the Vietnamese word for "old man". (Imagine English students saying "old man, old man, old man, old man, old man, etc....)
And yet despite all that is looked to with fear and uncertainty in our mornings, there is a shining oasis of everything that is good in the mornings.
David was the first to discover it, but it has slowly caught on as a staple (a foundation even...) of our morning food ritual. For just outside the gates of our building's complex, there is a little middle-aged lady in brown and white capris with a hat that looks like Gilligan would have worn. She pushes a comically rickety food cart, and yet she brings happiness to any who meet her. We do not know her name or where she comes from (she disappears after breakfast), but every morning, rounding the corner of our gate, we see her there, frying eggs in a small, dirty black skillet.
It is a unique breakfast dish - fried eggs in a soy-sauce soaked pickle stuffed French loaf wrapped in a sheet of paper torn out of a book (I've had sheets from a computer programming book and a scientific journal wrapped around my bread, while Rob - yesterday - had a shopping list embracing his delicious morsel.)
We cannot speak to her and can only point, but she smiles with an energizing enthusiasm, and shows me that she cooks with "cooking oil" and not peanut oil (I like her very much for this reason).
We then retreat from her stand and sit under the shade of the bushy patio where we order iced coffee (mmm....) and bite into the little flavorful explosions.
This morning, we talked about our regrets at not being able to communicate our true thanks for the food that brings us such joy each morning, and yet we knew somehow that there was a deeper connection between us and the egg-frying lady with the rickety cart. We sat for a minute, digesting our breakfast and sipping on our coffees, and Rob - having reflected for a moment - formed the words that perfectly captured the reason she knows that she brings us such joy morning after morning. Taking one more bite, he profoundly spoke,
"She speaks the language of love."
None of this is true in Vietnam. In fact, I've found myself counting down to the end of the mornings.
I can't remember who wrote it (Thoreau or Emerson, I'm fairly certain), but the idea of "springing up from sleep in eager anticipation of the wonders of the coming day" does not apply. The only "springing up" comes from the heart-stopping sudddeness of the banging on our doors of the 6:45 cleaning ladies, whose highest end seems to be the delivery of hot water in thermoses to our rooms.
* I have yet to use the hot water once. In fact, I only assumed it was hot until the other day when - in my drunken pre-awakened exhaustion, I accidently kicked over the thermos, which unplugged itself upon contact with the ground, spilling its scalding contents onto our floor and my bare feet.
Also, for the past few days, the morning has been further soured by the series of stomach cramps that have slowly started to phase out the need for my alarm clock (my stomach, Jeffery - unbeknownst to me - seems to set his alarm for about 15 minutes before my cell phone alarm.).
Even still, there is still unfinished Vietnamese homework to do in preparation for our 8:30 class, in which we learn Vietnamese and make honking sounds like geese in our attempts to repeat the Vietnamese word for "old man". (Imagine English students saying "old man, old man, old man, old man, old man, etc....)
And yet despite all that is looked to with fear and uncertainty in our mornings, there is a shining oasis of everything that is good in the mornings.
David was the first to discover it, but it has slowly caught on as a staple (a foundation even...) of our morning food ritual. For just outside the gates of our building's complex, there is a little middle-aged lady in brown and white capris with a hat that looks like Gilligan would have worn. She pushes a comically rickety food cart, and yet she brings happiness to any who meet her. We do not know her name or where she comes from (she disappears after breakfast), but every morning, rounding the corner of our gate, we see her there, frying eggs in a small, dirty black skillet.
It is a unique breakfast dish - fried eggs in a soy-sauce soaked pickle stuffed French loaf wrapped in a sheet of paper torn out of a book (I've had sheets from a computer programming book and a scientific journal wrapped around my bread, while Rob - yesterday - had a shopping list embracing his delicious morsel.)
We cannot speak to her and can only point, but she smiles with an energizing enthusiasm, and shows me that she cooks with "cooking oil" and not peanut oil (I like her very much for this reason).
We then retreat from her stand and sit under the shade of the bushy patio where we order iced coffee (mmm....) and bite into the little flavorful explosions.
This morning, we talked about our regrets at not being able to communicate our true thanks for the food that brings us such joy each morning, and yet we knew somehow that there was a deeper connection between us and the egg-frying lady with the rickety cart. We sat for a minute, digesting our breakfast and sipping on our coffees, and Rob - having reflected for a moment - formed the words that perfectly captured the reason she knows that she brings us such joy morning after morning. Taking one more bite, he profoundly spoke,
"She speaks the language of love."
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Just because I like pina coladas, and got caught in the rain...
In fairness to the drink, it wasn't a pina colada. It was something, I think, called a fruity fritter or something like that (mango, pineapple, strawberry, banana). Quite delicious but extremely unsatisfying in its fleeting nature (the cup though tall, is very thin with a an even thinner waist, making for few possible sips).
I think I'm starting to understand this city. It's still very large and overwhelming, but I can point in general directions now and say that our guesthouse, for example, is in that direction. This is a good development since for the past few days I've been walking the city in an effort to find signs of life in the local art community (my main aim being the discovery of neat, original art galleries of which I have found two thus far).
We live in District 1, which you can say is the primary part of Saigon. If I was pressed to single out one district as being "downtown," District 1 would be it. It's also the area where most of the art galleries are.
Two days ago, I set out in search of an organization called Saigon Open City - a non-profit organization aimed at promoting contemporary art in Saigon. It is currently in the midst of a three part series that is looking at the ways art tells about three different periods of Vietnamese history (you can check out more at www.saigonopencity.org ... it's pretty cool).
Anyway, having found the address of a number of galleries around Saigon, I decided to just walk there - a task that sounds much more simple than it truly is.
For me, finding Saigon Open City's office - and really any place in Saigon for that matter - is a bit like trying to find Station 9 and 3/4 in Harry Potter. While it seems simple enough, odd numbers on one side of the street and even on the other, street numbers just disappear, get skipped, or even demolished. I walked up and down one street, trying to find address 2B, and seeing if there was some hidden doorway or passage between 2A and 2D. However, nothing of the sort was to be found.
Finally, rounding the street corner and following along, I was able to find a back alley and through a mixture of sign language and exaggerated motions, I was able to show my intense desire to find 2B, to which the solemn man would simply point towards the office, which was tucked down an alley that was already down the previously mentioned alley. Naturally, the next four galleries proved to be just as difficult to find - with no help from the constant requests by the motorbike drivers to "show me many things".
Exhausted, I finally ducked into a coffee shop to get a fruit smoothie (the fruity fritter or whatever it was called) and emerged, rejuventated. Of course, minutes later, dark clouds began to gather and little helicoptery leaves that resemble quidditch snitches (lots of Harry Potter references, I know) began to fall all around me. Minutes later, I would be soaked.
The reason that I name this post after the pina colada song is because the issue of eating here has come up constantly. Over the past few years, I've started to say that life, for me, is the stuff that happens between meals. Food (especially the good kind...I get depressed thinking about Two Sisters and Keifer's...you Jacksonians are lucky lucky people) has become one of my foundational pillars. It's something I like to talk about. It's something I'm constantly thinking about. And obviously something that - when it's good - brings me unspeakable joy.
I'm not saying the food here is not good. Far from it. It's just different. Here, it is completely normal to have beef soup (pho bo) for breakfast. The other day we even had a crab/shrimp soup at 7:30 in the morning with orange juice and coffee. I'm constantly having to ask about peanuts and peanut oil (the oil is surprisingly hard to ask about, and naturally leads to extra stress when I can't completely figure out what's in each dish). Obviously, my stomach is adjusting, and that once firmly grounded food pillar of mine has shaken just a bit.
The subject of food comes up constantly between my roommate, Phat (who is great), and myself. We are both hungry at all hours, and before he had arrived I had stocked up our bedroom with a few cereals, including Honey Bunches of Oats as well as All Bran.
I've offered Phat both of these cereals which he has enjoyed (I think), but, in the most literal sense of the word, we have different tastes. I love Honey Bunches of Oats, and I eat it by pouring it into my hand and shovelling it into my mouth many hands at a time, so the first day we had met, I offered Phat a bit of my beloved cereal and he ate it politely carefully picking up each little crisp one at a time and enjoying it on its own.
All Bran, for me, is a much more practical cereal. It does not exactly bring joy to my taste buds but rather to other parts of me that receive joy in very unique sorts of ways. Rob even made the comment, after seeing my horrifyingly large box of All Bran with the motto, "TAKE THE TWO WEEK CHALLENGE," that eating cereal should not be a "challenge". His point was well taken.
Despite this however, Phat exclaimed, when I hesitantly offered him the All Bran, that he enjoyed All Bran much more than "that other stuff." I wasn't hurt (I'm sort of glad to have more HBOO to myself), but interested in our differing tastes.
Another example of this came when a group of Robertsons and our roommates went out to grab a quick dinner at one of our roommates' favorite restaurants.
Ducking down another back alley, we came to an "open-air" restaurant (when I say open air, I mean that the front facade of the building is just not there). A few women stood outside, huddled under a canopy and around a gigantic boiling pot of water and noodles. On a table next to the pot, there sat these eerily neon orange pieces of something that I assumed would be added to the stew.
We proceeded into the restaurant, walking past groups of people sitting on tiny plastic chairs around tiny plastic tables. There were children, old men and women, pregnant women, business people, everything, yet, our group were obviously included the only non-locals. That was fine, and we were met with wonderful hospitality by everyone. We continued on up a set of narrow, rickety steps with only enough room for about half a person, and moved up onto the second level of the restaurant - which shook slightly with every step (and movement) that we took.
We sat down at our tiny plastic tables, and my and David's knees came up above our shoulders on account of the tiny-ness of the chairs. Some pale geckos scattered along the wall as we sat down - shaking the floor and the foundations of the building.
Moments later, our food was delivered with the same eery neon orange meat floating in a noodle soup.
*Just to give you a picture of this, imagine going to the supermarket and buying uncooked chicken from the frozen section. You know how pale and plastic it looks under its saran wrap? That's how this looked in our soup.
I tried to politely eat my noodles while attempting to drown the still-living meat in the bottom of my soup bowl so as not to seem completely ungrateful.
I looked for sympathy around the table, but found most everyone slurping up their bowls of the soup. It was aggravating that my stomach, whom I'm going to start calling Jeffery (I think I'm just projected this tempestuous, spoiled school boy image on him based on my own insecurities, but for now we'll just say Jeffery was why I didn't eat)couldn't be just a bit more daring.
So, I'm adjusting. It's a different place, and I hope that in the coming weeks, I (erm, I mean, Jeffery)will be a bit more open to trying some of the things that our roommates see as their own foundational pillars (we went the next day to the fast food place here and ordered double cheese burgers and strawberry shakes...they were magical.)
Anyway, we're working on it.
I think I'm starting to understand this city. It's still very large and overwhelming, but I can point in general directions now and say that our guesthouse, for example, is in that direction. This is a good development since for the past few days I've been walking the city in an effort to find signs of life in the local art community (my main aim being the discovery of neat, original art galleries of which I have found two thus far).
We live in District 1, which you can say is the primary part of Saigon. If I was pressed to single out one district as being "downtown," District 1 would be it. It's also the area where most of the art galleries are.
Two days ago, I set out in search of an organization called Saigon Open City - a non-profit organization aimed at promoting contemporary art in Saigon. It is currently in the midst of a three part series that is looking at the ways art tells about three different periods of Vietnamese history (you can check out more at www.saigonopencity.org ... it's pretty cool).
Anyway, having found the address of a number of galleries around Saigon, I decided to just walk there - a task that sounds much more simple than it truly is.
For me, finding Saigon Open City's office - and really any place in Saigon for that matter - is a bit like trying to find Station 9 and 3/4 in Harry Potter. While it seems simple enough, odd numbers on one side of the street and even on the other, street numbers just disappear, get skipped, or even demolished. I walked up and down one street, trying to find address 2B, and seeing if there was some hidden doorway or passage between 2A and 2D. However, nothing of the sort was to be found.
Finally, rounding the street corner and following along, I was able to find a back alley and through a mixture of sign language and exaggerated motions, I was able to show my intense desire to find 2B, to which the solemn man would simply point towards the office, which was tucked down an alley that was already down the previously mentioned alley. Naturally, the next four galleries proved to be just as difficult to find - with no help from the constant requests by the motorbike drivers to "show me many things".
Exhausted, I finally ducked into a coffee shop to get a fruit smoothie (the fruity fritter or whatever it was called) and emerged, rejuventated. Of course, minutes later, dark clouds began to gather and little helicoptery leaves that resemble quidditch snitches (lots of Harry Potter references, I know) began to fall all around me. Minutes later, I would be soaked.
The reason that I name this post after the pina colada song is because the issue of eating here has come up constantly. Over the past few years, I've started to say that life, for me, is the stuff that happens between meals. Food (especially the good kind...I get depressed thinking about Two Sisters and Keifer's...you Jacksonians are lucky lucky people) has become one of my foundational pillars. It's something I like to talk about. It's something I'm constantly thinking about. And obviously something that - when it's good - brings me unspeakable joy.
I'm not saying the food here is not good. Far from it. It's just different. Here, it is completely normal to have beef soup (pho bo) for breakfast. The other day we even had a crab/shrimp soup at 7:30 in the morning with orange juice and coffee. I'm constantly having to ask about peanuts and peanut oil (the oil is surprisingly hard to ask about, and naturally leads to extra stress when I can't completely figure out what's in each dish). Obviously, my stomach is adjusting, and that once firmly grounded food pillar of mine has shaken just a bit.
The subject of food comes up constantly between my roommate, Phat (who is great), and myself. We are both hungry at all hours, and before he had arrived I had stocked up our bedroom with a few cereals, including Honey Bunches of Oats as well as All Bran.
I've offered Phat both of these cereals which he has enjoyed (I think), but, in the most literal sense of the word, we have different tastes. I love Honey Bunches of Oats, and I eat it by pouring it into my hand and shovelling it into my mouth many hands at a time, so the first day we had met, I offered Phat a bit of my beloved cereal and he ate it politely carefully picking up each little crisp one at a time and enjoying it on its own.
All Bran, for me, is a much more practical cereal. It does not exactly bring joy to my taste buds but rather to other parts of me that receive joy in very unique sorts of ways. Rob even made the comment, after seeing my horrifyingly large box of All Bran with the motto, "TAKE THE TWO WEEK CHALLENGE," that eating cereal should not be a "challenge". His point was well taken.
Despite this however, Phat exclaimed, when I hesitantly offered him the All Bran, that he enjoyed All Bran much more than "that other stuff." I wasn't hurt (I'm sort of glad to have more HBOO to myself), but interested in our differing tastes.
Another example of this came when a group of Robertsons and our roommates went out to grab a quick dinner at one of our roommates' favorite restaurants.
Ducking down another back alley, we came to an "open-air" restaurant (when I say open air, I mean that the front facade of the building is just not there). A few women stood outside, huddled under a canopy and around a gigantic boiling pot of water and noodles. On a table next to the pot, there sat these eerily neon orange pieces of something that I assumed would be added to the stew.
We proceeded into the restaurant, walking past groups of people sitting on tiny plastic chairs around tiny plastic tables. There were children, old men and women, pregnant women, business people, everything, yet, our group were obviously included the only non-locals. That was fine, and we were met with wonderful hospitality by everyone. We continued on up a set of narrow, rickety steps with only enough room for about half a person, and moved up onto the second level of the restaurant - which shook slightly with every step (and movement) that we took.
We sat down at our tiny plastic tables, and my and David's knees came up above our shoulders on account of the tiny-ness of the chairs. Some pale geckos scattered along the wall as we sat down - shaking the floor and the foundations of the building.
Moments later, our food was delivered with the same eery neon orange meat floating in a noodle soup.
*Just to give you a picture of this, imagine going to the supermarket and buying uncooked chicken from the frozen section. You know how pale and plastic it looks under its saran wrap? That's how this looked in our soup.
I tried to politely eat my noodles while attempting to drown the still-living meat in the bottom of my soup bowl so as not to seem completely ungrateful.
I looked for sympathy around the table, but found most everyone slurping up their bowls of the soup. It was aggravating that my stomach, whom I'm going to start calling Jeffery (I think I'm just projected this tempestuous, spoiled school boy image on him based on my own insecurities, but for now we'll just say Jeffery was why I didn't eat)couldn't be just a bit more daring.
So, I'm adjusting. It's a different place, and I hope that in the coming weeks, I (erm, I mean, Jeffery)will be a bit more open to trying some of the things that our roommates see as their own foundational pillars (we went the next day to the fast food place here and ordered double cheese burgers and strawberry shakes...they were magical.)
Anyway, we're working on it.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Playing "Frogger" - Saigon Style
In Saigon, I am a frightened squirrel - a twitchy, frantic, frazzle-tailed, crazy-eyed rodent that plain and simply cannot cross streets.
I'm sitting in an open-air internet cafe in Saigon, sweating (as usual) while watching a woman right outside the door run sugar cane through an industrial looking roller (ideal for catching fingers) to make a drink of pure sugar. I have yet to try the drink yet, because, as I told you, I am a nervous squirrel.
For the past two weeks I have been yearning for a place to settle down, rest my head, call home - even for just a moment. Naturally, we have picked the craziest city, I think, in the world.
I think I wrote in the previous post that I had never seen more motorbikes in my entire life. That was an understatement.
Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) is home to some 8 million people - none of whom, as far as I can tell, work. From my 2 day observation, it seems to me that every single person in this city spends their entire day riding on their motorbike. Truly, there are moments when the group of motorbikes get hazy it stretches so far and seems to become a solid mass of steel and exhaust they are packed so tightly.
Here lies the problem. Despite the eternally long blocks here, the sidewalks all - inevitably - come to an end yielding to the street - almost liquidy in its concentration of motorbikes. Yet when the sidewalks come to an end, there is generally no signal to cross. The method here is much like frogger, or, in my case, squirreler, in which one has to slowly creep across the street while cars and motorbikes honk at (and yet miraculously bend around) you. Just as in Frogger, it's the first step that is the worst. Once you're on the lilypad, there's generally very little turning back, and instead you are basically committed to crossing. It's pretty horrifying to see a horde of maniacal motorbikes buzzing your way, and yet I cannot begin to tell you the rush I feel on the other side.
Really, the past two days have been a crash course in surviving the city. Though many of us are beginning to get the hang of the whole street crossing business, many (including myself) have yet to master the art of sleeping past about 6:30 A.M.
In my guesthouse, the man next door (whose every move I can hear perfectly through my wall) begins to hawk loogies around 6 every morning. About that same time, two very ill-tempered cats resume a war of which both have probably forgotten the origin. The cleaning ladies begin their rounds, knocking on doors to deliver hot water, whose purpose at 6:30 in the morning I have yet to determine. Additionally, a lady likes to sit outside my window and pick her new cell phone ring for the day, while the single parking spot a few feet away from our building becomes home to a honk-filled traffic jam.
I suppose that all the commotion does have its advantages in that it gets us up early enough that we can accomplish innumerable amounts of things (so far that list of "things" has included exploring the market - filled with everything from knock-off Lacoste shirts to cow brains - as well as finding the perfect coffee shop (Rob and I tried a place today that served a coffee mixed with sweet condensed milk...basically like drinking caramel)).
Just as in Frogger, while the day may be filled with crocodiles and large delivery trucks aimed at your destruction, we have started finding our lily pads and every night (somehow)seem to find our way across the other shore.
I'm sitting in an open-air internet cafe in Saigon, sweating (as usual) while watching a woman right outside the door run sugar cane through an industrial looking roller (ideal for catching fingers) to make a drink of pure sugar. I have yet to try the drink yet, because, as I told you, I am a nervous squirrel.
For the past two weeks I have been yearning for a place to settle down, rest my head, call home - even for just a moment. Naturally, we have picked the craziest city, I think, in the world.
I think I wrote in the previous post that I had never seen more motorbikes in my entire life. That was an understatement.
Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) is home to some 8 million people - none of whom, as far as I can tell, work. From my 2 day observation, it seems to me that every single person in this city spends their entire day riding on their motorbike. Truly, there are moments when the group of motorbikes get hazy it stretches so far and seems to become a solid mass of steel and exhaust they are packed so tightly.
Here lies the problem. Despite the eternally long blocks here, the sidewalks all - inevitably - come to an end yielding to the street - almost liquidy in its concentration of motorbikes. Yet when the sidewalks come to an end, there is generally no signal to cross. The method here is much like frogger, or, in my case, squirreler, in which one has to slowly creep across the street while cars and motorbikes honk at (and yet miraculously bend around) you. Just as in Frogger, it's the first step that is the worst. Once you're on the lilypad, there's generally very little turning back, and instead you are basically committed to crossing. It's pretty horrifying to see a horde of maniacal motorbikes buzzing your way, and yet I cannot begin to tell you the rush I feel on the other side.
Really, the past two days have been a crash course in surviving the city. Though many of us are beginning to get the hang of the whole street crossing business, many (including myself) have yet to master the art of sleeping past about 6:30 A.M.
In my guesthouse, the man next door (whose every move I can hear perfectly through my wall) begins to hawk loogies around 6 every morning. About that same time, two very ill-tempered cats resume a war of which both have probably forgotten the origin. The cleaning ladies begin their rounds, knocking on doors to deliver hot water, whose purpose at 6:30 in the morning I have yet to determine. Additionally, a lady likes to sit outside my window and pick her new cell phone ring for the day, while the single parking spot a few feet away from our building becomes home to a honk-filled traffic jam.
I suppose that all the commotion does have its advantages in that it gets us up early enough that we can accomplish innumerable amounts of things (so far that list of "things" has included exploring the market - filled with everything from knock-off Lacoste shirts to cow brains - as well as finding the perfect coffee shop (Rob and I tried a place today that served a coffee mixed with sweet condensed milk...basically like drinking caramel)).
Just as in Frogger, while the day may be filled with crocodiles and large delivery trucks aimed at your destruction, we have started finding our lily pads and every night (somehow)seem to find our way across the other shore.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Laying My Bus Life to Rest
I never planned on writing this particular post. I thought I had exhausted everything there was to write about transportation in Southeast Asia. Given that we're not exactly seeing sights or doing anything particularly exciting on buses, I would have thought that these posts would be intensely boring if I even decided to write about them in the first place! Nevertheless, I have discovered that I am completely incapable of sleeping on buses (and when I do begin to nod off, the bus drivers usually takes this as a sign to either stop the bus for a break or have his attendant collect tickets from passengers...both causes for me to wake up.)
So, given my handicap, I find myself with extraordinarily large chunks of time that I can use to admire the scenery or just think...no reading, as that makes me feel like crap.
We'll start with the obvious observations.
1. Bus drivers honk a lot.
I think I mentioned this a bit earlier when talking about our Camry ride between the Cambodian Border and Siem Reap, but bus drivers are much worse. They honk at everything - multiple times. They honk at people walking along the side of the road. They honk at houses for leaning too much. They honk at the sky for being blue.
I actually tried counting the number of times one of our drivers honked in one of our marathon trips and passed out from exhaustion and my complete bewilderment that there were numbers beyond trillions.
2. No bus ride here is complete without a movie ... or let me re-phrase, a video.
Calling what we watch a "movie" would be generous. Our trip from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was taken up with karaoke of depressed young men sitting in exotic locations (atop waterfalls, in grassy fields that look out over mountains, etc.) while longing for a girl they have lost. None of them are happy, but their insistence on isolating themselves into these remote places, I think, does not help much with their situation.
On that same trip, we watched two martial arts movies: one with Jet Li and one with Bruce Lee. As far as I can tell, despite different characters, both movies dealt with the exact same subject in which a karate prodigy (Li or Lee) leaves his school and returns after having learned about the death of their master - who dies under shady circumstances and thus leads the prodigy to retaliate in a fit of rage to reclaim the honor of his master.
Finally, on our last trip from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City, we watched a most puzzling selection of excerpts from action movies (Terminator, a random Van Dam, and a virtual reality something) while 80s love songs were played in the background. (Early in this viewing session, David turned to me with eyes full of bewilderment and we just hoped that the ride would be smooth).
Which it wasn't.
For the first half of the trip, I tried my absolute best to sleep. I had only had two pieces of toast earlier that morning (a recipe for disaster for my stomach) and I started violently struggling to pass out so I wouldn't have to confront the whims of my stomach. Regardless, our trip on the Cambodian side was spent jolting up and down (I feared my hair was being rubbed off by my head rest). We shifted, reclined, straightened, and stretched in an effort to find solace, but most of our time was spent looking at one another helplessly as we bounced up and down in our seats.
The Vietnamese portion of our trip was much better and there is very little to say of it. It felt like there was a lot less countryside before we entered the sprawling suburbs of HCMC.
Based on first impressions, it seems like a cool city. More motorbikes than I have seen in my entire life. We'll be here for five weeks...it's such a refreshing feeling to know that we are finally getting settled somewhere.
Will write again soon. Miss you all, and hope all is great where you are.
So, given my handicap, I find myself with extraordinarily large chunks of time that I can use to admire the scenery or just think...no reading, as that makes me feel like crap.
We'll start with the obvious observations.
1. Bus drivers honk a lot.
I think I mentioned this a bit earlier when talking about our Camry ride between the Cambodian Border and Siem Reap, but bus drivers are much worse. They honk at everything - multiple times. They honk at people walking along the side of the road. They honk at houses for leaning too much. They honk at the sky for being blue.
I actually tried counting the number of times one of our drivers honked in one of our marathon trips and passed out from exhaustion and my complete bewilderment that there were numbers beyond trillions.
2. No bus ride here is complete without a movie ... or let me re-phrase, a video.
Calling what we watch a "movie" would be generous. Our trip from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was taken up with karaoke of depressed young men sitting in exotic locations (atop waterfalls, in grassy fields that look out over mountains, etc.) while longing for a girl they have lost. None of them are happy, but their insistence on isolating themselves into these remote places, I think, does not help much with their situation.
On that same trip, we watched two martial arts movies: one with Jet Li and one with Bruce Lee. As far as I can tell, despite different characters, both movies dealt with the exact same subject in which a karate prodigy (Li or Lee) leaves his school and returns after having learned about the death of their master - who dies under shady circumstances and thus leads the prodigy to retaliate in a fit of rage to reclaim the honor of his master.
Finally, on our last trip from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City, we watched a most puzzling selection of excerpts from action movies (Terminator, a random Van Dam, and a virtual reality something) while 80s love songs were played in the background. (Early in this viewing session, David turned to me with eyes full of bewilderment and we just hoped that the ride would be smooth).
Which it wasn't.
For the first half of the trip, I tried my absolute best to sleep. I had only had two pieces of toast earlier that morning (a recipe for disaster for my stomach) and I started violently struggling to pass out so I wouldn't have to confront the whims of my stomach. Regardless, our trip on the Cambodian side was spent jolting up and down (I feared my hair was being rubbed off by my head rest). We shifted, reclined, straightened, and stretched in an effort to find solace, but most of our time was spent looking at one another helplessly as we bounced up and down in our seats.
The Vietnamese portion of our trip was much better and there is very little to say of it. It felt like there was a lot less countryside before we entered the sprawling suburbs of HCMC.
Based on first impressions, it seems like a cool city. More motorbikes than I have seen in my entire life. We'll be here for five weeks...it's such a refreshing feeling to know that we are finally getting settled somewhere.
Will write again soon. Miss you all, and hope all is great where you are.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Steep and Shallow
As we sat sweating in the lobby of our hotel on our last day in Phnom Penh (and last day before travelling to Vietnam), Rob captured our exprience in every place that we have visited. He said, "It seems like we do a whole lot the first day, sleep in and are worthless on the second, and then travel on the third." After some brief reflection, we all agreed that he was right. It was day 2 of Phnom Penh, and we - in true form - were moaning about the prospect of visiting the Royal Palace.
I promise, though, we were tired for a good reason.
We had arrived in Phnom Penh two days before in the late afternoon, had found a place to eat a late lunch, and then arranged a boat cruise down the river that our guest house lay next to.
As few boat cruises are complete without it, we bought some Angkor beer (a real gem for those of you who have never had it) and shimmied down the dirt-mud path that led to our boat where our hostess - a nice woman with an enormous white visor - met us.
We found out that we would be the only six people on the boat (not counting our hostess and the captain), and moments after this realization, the awkwardness began to settle like heavy snow upon us all.
We sat in little red plastic chairs (many left unoccupied) facing each other on the boat's main deck while our hostess - sweet as she was - tried to interest us in karaoke. We smiled graciously while trying to quietly decline her requests when we all decided to move up onto the smaller deck on top of the boat to enjoy our drinks.
Good move. The smaller setting with no roof eased some of the cramped openess of the deck below and we watched as the sky began to grow dull for a moment until it finally extinguished into darkness, leaving only our boat - green christmas lights lining its deck - as a tiny speck floating through the water.
Our first full day in Phnom Penh was much more eventful. We started out the day driving in a tuk-tuk 7 miles south of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Arts Academy to see traditional Cambodian dancers perform "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magical Flute".
Pulling off a dusty road filled with street vendors and "gas stations" consisting of men sitting under umbrellas with liter size coke bottles filled with a strange yellow liquid, we turned into a driveway with a sign with a drawing of a backwardly curved finger pointing right and the words "Khmer Arts Academy" written below.
Suddenly, the sun went out as we came under a cover of trees and to our left we beheld a massive pavillion theater with enormous stone heads looking over it - much like those we had seen at Angkor Wat.
Shortly after we would meet John and Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, the two directors of the Academy (John is American while Sophiline is Cambodian). After a few quick words, we were escorted under the pavillion to six white plastic chairs that lined the side of the main performance space, and minutes later, drums, xylophones, and oboes began in a cacophonous harmony, escorting a line of gracefully arched dancers across the stage in front of us.
They told a story of love, one of following your heart in the midst of chaos - even when others may be telling you extreme ways of finding peace. It was a story of balance - one where both man and woman offer their own unique strengths to endure through seemingly hopeless situations. It was a story of home - one where a hopelessly lovesick birdcatcher finds that his true soulmate is the bird that he has carried on his back throughout his entire journey for love.
We all watched with amazement as the dancers would bend their bodies and fingers - like snakes, Sophiline explained - to tell this story. It was a performance of delicate details as we watched Sophiline move in to guide her dancers, carefully adjusting the curvature of their fingers.
It was beautiful.
Afterwards, we sat crosslegged on the dancefloor in our bare feet and spoke with Sophiline and some of the dancers. I recorded the conversation and will try to summarize it later at some point - I think I could fill a whole entire blog with it.
When we left, John told us a few places we needed to hit while we were still in Phnom Penh. One was the National Theater and the other was Tuol Sleng - one of the prisons used by the Khmer Rouge during their rule from 1975-1979.
We knew we had arrived at the National Theater when we saw the towering steel spire that Sophiline had told us to look for (it had carried the hammer and sickle previously but now spires with nothing atop it). We pulled up and saw children playing soccer in a dirt patch between some palm trees and some guys working on a broken down bus (one of many in the parking lot).
Truly, the parking lot is more like a junkyard - filled with broken down buses, motorbikes, and cars. There is no pavement for people to park primarily because the theater was destroyed by fire 12 years ago.
We decided to step inside to check out what was left within the shell of the pink brick building. Inside, we found water filling the lobby, cars parked beneath the grand stairway, grafitti written on the walls, men sleeping in hammocks held up by the doorways leading into the main performance hall, and beautiful leather shadow puppets hanging carelessly on a blackboard in the lobby. We passed a man watching a static-filled television in a plastic fold-out lawn chair and came into the main hall.
The hall itself has the sky as its roof. Plants grow out of the orchestra pit, and a woman sat cooking something in a steaming pot where the fifteenth row probably would have been. It is easy to imagine what a beautiful space it must have been; however, the building continues to lie in sleep, waiting for the plants to swallow it alive.
From there, we went to Tuol Sleng - a prison made from a school with barbed wire snaking jaggedly around its walls.
I don't have any facts or numbers to give regarding the horrors that went on within the walls of this prison; however, seeing the pictures of some of the two million people killed during the Khmer Rouge's reign, it grew sickening to learn more. I won't try to be cliched in my response to seeing the prison. It was terrible, and it is horrifying to think of what we have (and continue to) do to one another.
The rest of our day was spent resting and keeping inside from the sweltering weather until dinner when we went to a restaurant (also recommended by John) called Pop Cafe - an Italian place around the corner from our guest house. It was a sleek, modern narrow restaurant with few seats, white walls, and black furniture. I felt terribly underdressed.
The food came out (one of the best pizzas I've had in years) and we were having a good time until the power in the restaurant went out (something that supposedly happens from time to time in Phnom Penh).
We would end the night sharing food and stories over two candles in the cafe.
(and of course the next day, we rested.)
I promise, though, we were tired for a good reason.
We had arrived in Phnom Penh two days before in the late afternoon, had found a place to eat a late lunch, and then arranged a boat cruise down the river that our guest house lay next to.
As few boat cruises are complete without it, we bought some Angkor beer (a real gem for those of you who have never had it) and shimmied down the dirt-mud path that led to our boat where our hostess - a nice woman with an enormous white visor - met us.
We found out that we would be the only six people on the boat (not counting our hostess and the captain), and moments after this realization, the awkwardness began to settle like heavy snow upon us all.
We sat in little red plastic chairs (many left unoccupied) facing each other on the boat's main deck while our hostess - sweet as she was - tried to interest us in karaoke. We smiled graciously while trying to quietly decline her requests when we all decided to move up onto the smaller deck on top of the boat to enjoy our drinks.
Good move. The smaller setting with no roof eased some of the cramped openess of the deck below and we watched as the sky began to grow dull for a moment until it finally extinguished into darkness, leaving only our boat - green christmas lights lining its deck - as a tiny speck floating through the water.
Our first full day in Phnom Penh was much more eventful. We started out the day driving in a tuk-tuk 7 miles south of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Arts Academy to see traditional Cambodian dancers perform "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magical Flute".
Pulling off a dusty road filled with street vendors and "gas stations" consisting of men sitting under umbrellas with liter size coke bottles filled with a strange yellow liquid, we turned into a driveway with a sign with a drawing of a backwardly curved finger pointing right and the words "Khmer Arts Academy" written below.
Suddenly, the sun went out as we came under a cover of trees and to our left we beheld a massive pavillion theater with enormous stone heads looking over it - much like those we had seen at Angkor Wat.
Shortly after we would meet John and Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, the two directors of the Academy (John is American while Sophiline is Cambodian). After a few quick words, we were escorted under the pavillion to six white plastic chairs that lined the side of the main performance space, and minutes later, drums, xylophones, and oboes began in a cacophonous harmony, escorting a line of gracefully arched dancers across the stage in front of us.
They told a story of love, one of following your heart in the midst of chaos - even when others may be telling you extreme ways of finding peace. It was a story of balance - one where both man and woman offer their own unique strengths to endure through seemingly hopeless situations. It was a story of home - one where a hopelessly lovesick birdcatcher finds that his true soulmate is the bird that he has carried on his back throughout his entire journey for love.
We all watched with amazement as the dancers would bend their bodies and fingers - like snakes, Sophiline explained - to tell this story. It was a performance of delicate details as we watched Sophiline move in to guide her dancers, carefully adjusting the curvature of their fingers.
It was beautiful.
Afterwards, we sat crosslegged on the dancefloor in our bare feet and spoke with Sophiline and some of the dancers. I recorded the conversation and will try to summarize it later at some point - I think I could fill a whole entire blog with it.
When we left, John told us a few places we needed to hit while we were still in Phnom Penh. One was the National Theater and the other was Tuol Sleng - one of the prisons used by the Khmer Rouge during their rule from 1975-1979.
We knew we had arrived at the National Theater when we saw the towering steel spire that Sophiline had told us to look for (it had carried the hammer and sickle previously but now spires with nothing atop it). We pulled up and saw children playing soccer in a dirt patch between some palm trees and some guys working on a broken down bus (one of many in the parking lot).
Truly, the parking lot is more like a junkyard - filled with broken down buses, motorbikes, and cars. There is no pavement for people to park primarily because the theater was destroyed by fire 12 years ago.
We decided to step inside to check out what was left within the shell of the pink brick building. Inside, we found water filling the lobby, cars parked beneath the grand stairway, grafitti written on the walls, men sleeping in hammocks held up by the doorways leading into the main performance hall, and beautiful leather shadow puppets hanging carelessly on a blackboard in the lobby. We passed a man watching a static-filled television in a plastic fold-out lawn chair and came into the main hall.
The hall itself has the sky as its roof. Plants grow out of the orchestra pit, and a woman sat cooking something in a steaming pot where the fifteenth row probably would have been. It is easy to imagine what a beautiful space it must have been; however, the building continues to lie in sleep, waiting for the plants to swallow it alive.
From there, we went to Tuol Sleng - a prison made from a school with barbed wire snaking jaggedly around its walls.
I don't have any facts or numbers to give regarding the horrors that went on within the walls of this prison; however, seeing the pictures of some of the two million people killed during the Khmer Rouge's reign, it grew sickening to learn more. I won't try to be cliched in my response to seeing the prison. It was terrible, and it is horrifying to think of what we have (and continue to) do to one another.
The rest of our day was spent resting and keeping inside from the sweltering weather until dinner when we went to a restaurant (also recommended by John) called Pop Cafe - an Italian place around the corner from our guest house. It was a sleek, modern narrow restaurant with few seats, white walls, and black furniture. I felt terribly underdressed.
The food came out (one of the best pizzas I've had in years) and we were having a good time until the power in the restaurant went out (something that supposedly happens from time to time in Phnom Penh).
We would end the night sharing food and stories over two candles in the cafe.
(and of course the next day, we rested.)
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
How many are going to Phnom Penh?
Quick post, I swear. Sorry to have been going on a bit in the last few.
I can remember my grandfather telling me a riddle over dinner one night that went something along these lines.
"As I was walking to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, and each wife had seven cats, and each cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, wives, how many are going to St. Ives?"
What I did, of course, was to add up all everyone and then blurt out some huge number, when the answer is actually one, since "I" am the only one going to St. Ives.
If we tweaked this riddle a bit and assumed that we saw a Cambodian man on his motorbike outside our bus window who was also going to Phnom Penh, we would say that he had seven wives (no polygamy here, but just bear with me) and that each wife had seven baskets and each basket had seven pigs (large ones). And the question would be - assuming that he is also going to Phnom Penh - how many motorbikes are going to Phnom Penh?
The answer, like the previous question, would be one.
I wish I had had my camera so that I could have grabbed a picture of these people that we passed in our grimy bus. From the dust up ahead, a stack of chairs would seem to be floating down the road to Phnom Penh, but as we passed, there would be a little man (often with another person with him) tucked underneath these towering walls of furniture/animals on a motorbike! (Their balance is truly incredible).
All for now, I'm blogged out for a bit...couldn't sleep this morning so I decided to do a few. Hope everyone is doing great. Miss everyone very much.
I can remember my grandfather telling me a riddle over dinner one night that went something along these lines.
"As I was walking to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, and each wife had seven cats, and each cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, wives, how many are going to St. Ives?"
What I did, of course, was to add up all everyone and then blurt out some huge number, when the answer is actually one, since "I" am the only one going to St. Ives.
If we tweaked this riddle a bit and assumed that we saw a Cambodian man on his motorbike outside our bus window who was also going to Phnom Penh, we would say that he had seven wives (no polygamy here, but just bear with me) and that each wife had seven baskets and each basket had seven pigs (large ones). And the question would be - assuming that he is also going to Phnom Penh - how many motorbikes are going to Phnom Penh?
The answer, like the previous question, would be one.
I wish I had had my camera so that I could have grabbed a picture of these people that we passed in our grimy bus. From the dust up ahead, a stack of chairs would seem to be floating down the road to Phnom Penh, but as we passed, there would be a little man (often with another person with him) tucked underneath these towering walls of furniture/animals on a motorbike! (Their balance is truly incredible).
All for now, I'm blogged out for a bit...couldn't sleep this morning so I decided to do a few. Hope everyone is doing great. Miss everyone very much.
Re-examining French Impressionists, Re-Uniting with Childhood Loves, and Re-Playing Geography Bees in Siem Re-ap
I've been trying to figure out how exactly to approach this particular posting. I've asked different people in my group about what they took most from our visit to Siem Reap, and I've tried to think about what made this particular portion of our trip unique.
For those of you who don't know about Siem Reap (I didn't until about a month ago), it is the home of Angkor Wat, a temple that Wikipedia explains much better than I ever could...
There. I am truly glad that I saw it, but I'll go on and check it off my to-do list.
My problem with visiting Angkor Wat was two-fold. For one, I had no idea about any of this. And second, anyone with less than a double PhD in archeology and anthropology, will have trouble being stimulated by these temples for more than about I'd say four hours (I think we stayed for about 7). I will say that it was slightly comforting when I ran into a man after our tour who asked if we were all "templed-out" - a similar malady to that of spending the day at the ruins of Pompeii when people who don't know enough about/don't have enough of an appreciation for a place lose all ability to distinguish between things as simple as doors and wallpaper.
Granted, Angkor Wat did have monkeys (which were incredible), the steepest set of steps I have ever attempted to climb in my life (requiring the use of both hands and feet to ascend...as well as size 2 shoes to even begin to fit onto these short steps), and the single most unsuccessful rooftop garden I have ever seen in which the roots of the trees that I suppose once sat nicely upon the top of these temples have now taken on the qualities of the squid from 20,000 leagues under the sea - monstrous roots melting like candle wax on top of entire walls and busting their way between large chunks of rocks.
The highlight of our day for me, however, came in sitting in the back of our tuk-tuk (much better than our Thailand experience) talking with our driver, Monet.
*I asked Kelsey (our resident art scholar) if Monet was a French impressionist. She replied that she wasn't sure because she always got Manet and Monet mixed up and could never tell them apart. After another moment, she replied, "All I know is that one had syphilis and one cut off his ear." So forgive me if Monet is not indeed a French Impressionist...I will willingly change the title of this post if he's not.
Regardless, our driver Monet made up for all the misdeeds of his predecessors. First, he had an extra-sensory knowledge of our every movement within the winding mazes of these temples, and though he never went into the temples with us, if we ever strayed from our path down some wrong road out of the temple, he would race up in his tuk-tuk and tell us that we were going the wrong way but that he would take us to where we needed to go. He also - when I, as usual, had difficulty communicating the the peanut oil aspect of my allergy - swooped in to translate for me and ordered me a bowl of scorching vegetable-rich, peanut-free soup.
Monet is 25 years old - hardly older than us - and yet he, because he cannot afford to go to the university in Siem Reap ($400/semester) has to drive a tuk-tuk. His English is nearly perfect after relatively few years of learning and his personality is wonderful with constant laughter.
At the end of our day at Angkor Wat (and other temples), he took us to the base of this mountain where he told us we could climb to watch the sunset over Cambodia. It had already started to cloud up and the wind was really starting to pick up (Rob noted how the children selling books and little trinkets would stop their selling to chase the leaves whenever they would fall with the wind). Nevertheless, we decided to climb and hope that it wouldn't rain too hard on top of us.
Coming to the top of the mountain, there is another temple, which we also climbed, to behold the vast Cambodian countryside. Pictures nor words would ever do it justice, so I won't even try (I also didn't stay on top of the mountain long enough to take in enough mental description...there were very dark, very large clouds moving quickly toward us). Despite Rob's insistence that we stay to watch the sunset, we decided to go back down the mountain.
Driving our tuk-tuk back along the road - wind flapping in our hair, a nice feeling compared to the absurdly hot weather of most of the day - we turned to our right to behold a sunset made of orange, purple, pink, and yellow. It covered the sky and was so magnificent that the eastern sky began to take on some of its other-worldly colors. Rob gave us the "I told you so" look and we all tried to believe (unsuccessfully) that we had gotten the better view. Still, it was incredible.
Two last quick side thoughts (and co-titles of this post) that I forgot to mention were this.
1. Siem Reap had a quick mart right next door to our hotel that sells strawberry frosted pop-tarts that were just about the best tasting things that I can remember tasting since the first time I ate strawberry frosted pop-tarts. They became my breakfast for the rest of our time in Siem Reap and would be what I nursed on during our drive to Phnom Penh.
2. While eating lunch at Angkor Wat, we were approached by a little girl selling flutes. We had already bought a flute from a similar little girl earlier that day, but our showing her the flute did little to dissuade her from attempting to sell. As it naturally happens, Matt is usually the one to have the hardest sell job put on him by these children. For one, he likes to talk to them and thus gets roped in to buying their products.
In this case, the girl (talking to Matt) made an interesting propostition. She said, "I tell you capital of Russia, you buy three dollar."
You can understand our hesitancy. We could hardly believe that she would know the capital of Russia, but what if she did and we had to buy another flute that we could not play? We figured Russia might be a bit too easy, when she upped the ante to asking US what the capital of Madagascar was.
Now, my history with geography questions has been a streaky one. In eighth grade, I had won our school's geography bee, only to arrive at the state bee to be soundly defeated (the one kid that didn't get a single question right), so I have a bit of a sore spot for geography questions. Generally, capitals come easy to me, but I absolutely couldn't remember the capital of Madagascar.
Hoping that if we ignored her she would go away, we were dismayed to see her still pressing the question. Surely she didn't know that capital too!?
Yet after a few minutes of us all sitting around, I felt the word "Antananarivo" slip out of my mouth and run right into the furious eyes of the girl who obviously HAD known the capital of Madagascar.
Moments later, she finally left.
Having been "Templed-out" by Angkor Wat, we all passed out that night after a meal at one of Angelina Jolie's favorite Tomb Raider haunts, The Red Piano, and slept til noon the next day, preparing for our trip to Phnom Penh for the rest.
For those of you who don't know about Siem Reap (I didn't until about a month ago), it is the home of Angkor Wat, a temple that Wikipedia explains much better than I ever could...
Angkor Wat (or Angkor Vat) is a temple at Angkor, Cambodia, built for King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. The largest and best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre — first Hindu, dedicated to Vishnu, then Buddhist — since its foundation. The temple is the epitome of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors.
Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple mountain and the later galleried temples. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 km (2.2 miles) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls.
There. I am truly glad that I saw it, but I'll go on and check it off my to-do list.
My problem with visiting Angkor Wat was two-fold. For one, I had no idea about any of this. And second, anyone with less than a double PhD in archeology and anthropology, will have trouble being stimulated by these temples for more than about I'd say four hours (I think we stayed for about 7). I will say that it was slightly comforting when I ran into a man after our tour who asked if we were all "templed-out" - a similar malady to that of spending the day at the ruins of Pompeii when people who don't know enough about/don't have enough of an appreciation for a place lose all ability to distinguish between things as simple as doors and wallpaper.
Granted, Angkor Wat did have monkeys (which were incredible), the steepest set of steps I have ever attempted to climb in my life (requiring the use of both hands and feet to ascend...as well as size 2 shoes to even begin to fit onto these short steps), and the single most unsuccessful rooftop garden I have ever seen in which the roots of the trees that I suppose once sat nicely upon the top of these temples have now taken on the qualities of the squid from 20,000 leagues under the sea - monstrous roots melting like candle wax on top of entire walls and busting their way between large chunks of rocks.
The highlight of our day for me, however, came in sitting in the back of our tuk-tuk (much better than our Thailand experience) talking with our driver, Monet.
*I asked Kelsey (our resident art scholar) if Monet was a French impressionist. She replied that she wasn't sure because she always got Manet and Monet mixed up and could never tell them apart. After another moment, she replied, "All I know is that one had syphilis and one cut off his ear." So forgive me if Monet is not indeed a French Impressionist...I will willingly change the title of this post if he's not.
Regardless, our driver Monet made up for all the misdeeds of his predecessors. First, he had an extra-sensory knowledge of our every movement within the winding mazes of these temples, and though he never went into the temples with us, if we ever strayed from our path down some wrong road out of the temple, he would race up in his tuk-tuk and tell us that we were going the wrong way but that he would take us to where we needed to go. He also - when I, as usual, had difficulty communicating the the peanut oil aspect of my allergy - swooped in to translate for me and ordered me a bowl of scorching vegetable-rich, peanut-free soup.
Monet is 25 years old - hardly older than us - and yet he, because he cannot afford to go to the university in Siem Reap ($400/semester) has to drive a tuk-tuk. His English is nearly perfect after relatively few years of learning and his personality is wonderful with constant laughter.
At the end of our day at Angkor Wat (and other temples), he took us to the base of this mountain where he told us we could climb to watch the sunset over Cambodia. It had already started to cloud up and the wind was really starting to pick up (Rob noted how the children selling books and little trinkets would stop their selling to chase the leaves whenever they would fall with the wind). Nevertheless, we decided to climb and hope that it wouldn't rain too hard on top of us.
Coming to the top of the mountain, there is another temple, which we also climbed, to behold the vast Cambodian countryside. Pictures nor words would ever do it justice, so I won't even try (I also didn't stay on top of the mountain long enough to take in enough mental description...there were very dark, very large clouds moving quickly toward us). Despite Rob's insistence that we stay to watch the sunset, we decided to go back down the mountain.
Driving our tuk-tuk back along the road - wind flapping in our hair, a nice feeling compared to the absurdly hot weather of most of the day - we turned to our right to behold a sunset made of orange, purple, pink, and yellow. It covered the sky and was so magnificent that the eastern sky began to take on some of its other-worldly colors. Rob gave us the "I told you so" look and we all tried to believe (unsuccessfully) that we had gotten the better view. Still, it was incredible.
Two last quick side thoughts (and co-titles of this post) that I forgot to mention were this.
1. Siem Reap had a quick mart right next door to our hotel that sells strawberry frosted pop-tarts that were just about the best tasting things that I can remember tasting since the first time I ate strawberry frosted pop-tarts. They became my breakfast for the rest of our time in Siem Reap and would be what I nursed on during our drive to Phnom Penh.
2. While eating lunch at Angkor Wat, we were approached by a little girl selling flutes. We had already bought a flute from a similar little girl earlier that day, but our showing her the flute did little to dissuade her from attempting to sell. As it naturally happens, Matt is usually the one to have the hardest sell job put on him by these children. For one, he likes to talk to them and thus gets roped in to buying their products.
In this case, the girl (talking to Matt) made an interesting propostition. She said, "I tell you capital of Russia, you buy three dollar."
You can understand our hesitancy. We could hardly believe that she would know the capital of Russia, but what if she did and we had to buy another flute that we could not play? We figured Russia might be a bit too easy, when she upped the ante to asking US what the capital of Madagascar was.
Now, my history with geography questions has been a streaky one. In eighth grade, I had won our school's geography bee, only to arrive at the state bee to be soundly defeated (the one kid that didn't get a single question right), so I have a bit of a sore spot for geography questions. Generally, capitals come easy to me, but I absolutely couldn't remember the capital of Madagascar.
Hoping that if we ignored her she would go away, we were dismayed to see her still pressing the question. Surely she didn't know that capital too!?
Yet after a few minutes of us all sitting around, I felt the word "Antananarivo" slip out of my mouth and run right into the furious eyes of the girl who obviously HAD known the capital of Madagascar.
Moments later, she finally left.
Having been "Templed-out" by Angkor Wat, we all passed out that night after a meal at one of Angelina Jolie's favorite Tomb Raider haunts, The Red Piano, and slept til noon the next day, preparing for our trip to Phnom Penh for the rest.
If Kerouac Had Driven A Camry
I'll just let you know that we made it fine from Bangkok to the Cambodian border. That was never our concern. Even with the possibility of a state of emergency being instituted after the now-former PM was found guilty for a ruling that we didn't even stay in Thailand long enough to learn about, we were never worried about whether we would get out of Thailand or not. It was a given. What was not a given was getting from Poipet (the Cambodian town at the Thailand-Cambodia border) to Siem Reap (the home of Angkor Wat).
According to David, the road between Poipet and Siem Reap is kept in complete shambles by the man who owns the airport in Siem Reap. The idea is that travellers will be more likely to bypass the road (if we are so nice to even call it that) and instead fly comfortably into the airport with a nice aerial view of the monumental temples below.
Needless to say, we took the low road.
My fears had been growing steadily of this notorious road. I tried to visualize what it would look like. Surely it couldn't be as bad as people make it out to be. Truly, all we had ever heard was simply that it was "bad," which can lead to all sorts of conclusions. Did "bad" mean no signs? Did "bad" mean they were unpaved? Did "bad" mean it would be ineffable pandimonium?
It turned out that "bad" would mean all three, but we didn't know that as we sat sweating - our bags hugged tightly to our chests for fear of the notorious Cambodian border thiefs - under a little tin covered shelter, waiting for our visas to process.
We would hiss at anyone who approached us (an unfortunate side effect of travelling around here is that you assume everyone is scamming you) to help with our bags, help take us to the station, help with visas, etc. Finally, I reluctantly struck up a conversation with a semi-official looking guy that looked my age sitting with us under the canopy. He seemed to understand the border and its many potential pitfalls and was offering to bus us to another bus station in Poipet where we could get the Toyota Camrys that we were supposed to take to Siem Reap. After a good checking by David (unofficial expert on all things Asia travel), the guy was deemed ok.
We arrived to the station which was a mile or so in town and began to negotiate our fares for the four hour ride to Siem Reap. Agreeing on a price and what not, we split ourselves into two camrys. Rob, Matt, and Kiley opted for the hubcapped one with black leather interior while David, Kelsey, and I chose the one without hubcaps with the tan leather interior. Neither exterior would serve a very good guide as to just how crazy our drivers would be.
The first Camry shot off down the road, while ours had a few things to clear up. Our driver was constantly shouting (couldn't tell if it was meant nice or not...Khmer can sound a bit harsh to virgin ears) at other people at the station and finally after splashing his feet in a standing pool of brown water, we lurched into hyperdrive through a road that quickly deteriorated into a pot-holed, dirt-covered, animal-filled "passage".
The single comfort for about the first hour and a half came in the first three minutes of our drive when we were stopped by the authorities who seemed to approve the permit our driver had - at least he was certified.
From there (with a laugh by him...and the security officer...a laugh that caused Kelsey and myself to look at each other with terrified doe eyes), we sped at about 120 KMpH down the road - bodies jiggling from the constant assault of bumps.
We cringed at each bus that we would narrowly slip by. We covered our ears, trying to figure out why our driver used his horn so much (It's a polite Cambodian way of saying, "Pardon, but I shall be passing you in just a wee bit and would you mind just schooching over a tad so I can slip by?"). We nibbled on bread and sipped on water to calm our frightened stomachs. And then after only an hour had passed, I - in an effort to comfort myself - started to think about what things came in three hour chunks...besides the rest of our car ride. (In case you were curious, I came up with Forrest Gump, The Sound of Music, certain wedding receptions of people you don't know very well, flights from Houston to LA, exams ... minus Forrest Gump, you can see how morbid I was getting). I couldn't even close my eyes, because without the sight of the horrifying speed with which we were passing everything, I only became more aware of the declining state of my stomach and the decreasing capacity of my bladder.
But finally, just as I was hitting the depths of my moods, my body began to habituate to the constant rattle. I turned my thoughts and vision outside of my own internal suffering and beheld the magnificent Cambodian countryside we were blazing through. Just as Thailand had been, Cambodia is like the Delta (the Mississippi one) only with mountains, wet rice fields, and palm trees. But what made this country especially beautiful was the sky. It seemed enormous - with these tremendous cloud creatures swimming through it. It became funny that we were driving with our right blinker on a straight road and it even became a little joke how there were "road construction" signs on this road that didn't look like it had ever been built. Our driver even laughed from time to time when a little girl would wave at us from her roadside house.
Things were looking up until - admiring the sky again - I noticed that they had darkened into a near black wall - a concern because a) we were driving on a dirt road that when mixed with rain would become a mud road and b) the "road" we were driving on was a tiny levee cutting between the two stretches of rice fields on both of our sides.
Minutes later our car was covered in rain and the fields - just as I had feared - began laking up. Nevertheless, children still rode serenly on their bikes through the torrents of rain and chickens still chased the curious puppies that decided to sniff too close. Life seemed to continue on outside, and our driver continued to joke from the front seat. Even Kelsey somehow was able to sleep (imagine falling asleep on a trampoline full of 8 year olds...impressive). I reached into by plastic bag and pulled out another piece of white bread and began to suck on it - telling my stomach everything was going to be ok.
And it was. Two long hours later, the constant rumbling sound of the ride suddenly ceased to a smooth swooshing - a sound signalling the arrival of pavement beneath our wheels. We looked up and knew that we were close to Siem Reap as the buildings began to grow (you would not believe how many nice hotels are here) and traffic (of the ordinary sort) began to fill up the roads - thankfully slowing down our driver in the process.
According to David, the road between Poipet and Siem Reap is kept in complete shambles by the man who owns the airport in Siem Reap. The idea is that travellers will be more likely to bypass the road (if we are so nice to even call it that) and instead fly comfortably into the airport with a nice aerial view of the monumental temples below.
Needless to say, we took the low road.
My fears had been growing steadily of this notorious road. I tried to visualize what it would look like. Surely it couldn't be as bad as people make it out to be. Truly, all we had ever heard was simply that it was "bad," which can lead to all sorts of conclusions. Did "bad" mean no signs? Did "bad" mean they were unpaved? Did "bad" mean it would be ineffable pandimonium?
It turned out that "bad" would mean all three, but we didn't know that as we sat sweating - our bags hugged tightly to our chests for fear of the notorious Cambodian border thiefs - under a little tin covered shelter, waiting for our visas to process.
We would hiss at anyone who approached us (an unfortunate side effect of travelling around here is that you assume everyone is scamming you) to help with our bags, help take us to the station, help with visas, etc. Finally, I reluctantly struck up a conversation with a semi-official looking guy that looked my age sitting with us under the canopy. He seemed to understand the border and its many potential pitfalls and was offering to bus us to another bus station in Poipet where we could get the Toyota Camrys that we were supposed to take to Siem Reap. After a good checking by David (unofficial expert on all things Asia travel), the guy was deemed ok.
We arrived to the station which was a mile or so in town and began to negotiate our fares for the four hour ride to Siem Reap. Agreeing on a price and what not, we split ourselves into two camrys. Rob, Matt, and Kiley opted for the hubcapped one with black leather interior while David, Kelsey, and I chose the one without hubcaps with the tan leather interior. Neither exterior would serve a very good guide as to just how crazy our drivers would be.
The first Camry shot off down the road, while ours had a few things to clear up. Our driver was constantly shouting (couldn't tell if it was meant nice or not...Khmer can sound a bit harsh to virgin ears) at other people at the station and finally after splashing his feet in a standing pool of brown water, we lurched into hyperdrive through a road that quickly deteriorated into a pot-holed, dirt-covered, animal-filled "passage".
The single comfort for about the first hour and a half came in the first three minutes of our drive when we were stopped by the authorities who seemed to approve the permit our driver had - at least he was certified.
From there (with a laugh by him...and the security officer...a laugh that caused Kelsey and myself to look at each other with terrified doe eyes), we sped at about 120 KMpH down the road - bodies jiggling from the constant assault of bumps.
We cringed at each bus that we would narrowly slip by. We covered our ears, trying to figure out why our driver used his horn so much (It's a polite Cambodian way of saying, "Pardon, but I shall be passing you in just a wee bit and would you mind just schooching over a tad so I can slip by?"). We nibbled on bread and sipped on water to calm our frightened stomachs. And then after only an hour had passed, I - in an effort to comfort myself - started to think about what things came in three hour chunks...besides the rest of our car ride. (In case you were curious, I came up with Forrest Gump, The Sound of Music, certain wedding receptions of people you don't know very well, flights from Houston to LA, exams ... minus Forrest Gump, you can see how morbid I was getting). I couldn't even close my eyes, because without the sight of the horrifying speed with which we were passing everything, I only became more aware of the declining state of my stomach and the decreasing capacity of my bladder.
But finally, just as I was hitting the depths of my moods, my body began to habituate to the constant rattle. I turned my thoughts and vision outside of my own internal suffering and beheld the magnificent Cambodian countryside we were blazing through. Just as Thailand had been, Cambodia is like the Delta (the Mississippi one) only with mountains, wet rice fields, and palm trees. But what made this country especially beautiful was the sky. It seemed enormous - with these tremendous cloud creatures swimming through it. It became funny that we were driving with our right blinker on a straight road and it even became a little joke how there were "road construction" signs on this road that didn't look like it had ever been built. Our driver even laughed from time to time when a little girl would wave at us from her roadside house.
Things were looking up until - admiring the sky again - I noticed that they had darkened into a near black wall - a concern because a) we were driving on a dirt road that when mixed with rain would become a mud road and b) the "road" we were driving on was a tiny levee cutting between the two stretches of rice fields on both of our sides.
Minutes later our car was covered in rain and the fields - just as I had feared - began laking up. Nevertheless, children still rode serenly on their bikes through the torrents of rain and chickens still chased the curious puppies that decided to sniff too close. Life seemed to continue on outside, and our driver continued to joke from the front seat. Even Kelsey somehow was able to sleep (imagine falling asleep on a trampoline full of 8 year olds...impressive). I reached into by plastic bag and pulled out another piece of white bread and began to suck on it - telling my stomach everything was going to be ok.
And it was. Two long hours later, the constant rumbling sound of the ride suddenly ceased to a smooth swooshing - a sound signalling the arrival of pavement beneath our wheels. We looked up and knew that we were close to Siem Reap as the buildings began to grow (you would not believe how many nice hotels are here) and traffic (of the ordinary sort) began to fill up the roads - thankfully slowing down our driver in the process.
To Be Fair to Hua Hin...
I completely forgot to include this in the last post. It's a little poem/song that was framed behind the counter at the guesthouse we stayed in...pretty great for you romantics out there.
"In Budda's Garden
On the Coast of Siam Bay,
You have to stay til the Southeast Passat comes
and blows your leaves away.
That day you'll be free.
LAN TOM
Lee La Wa Dee"
Perhaps we didn't wait long enough for the Passat...
"In Budda's Garden
On the Coast of Siam Bay,
You have to stay til the Southeast Passat comes
and blows your leaves away.
That day you'll be free.
LAN TOM
Lee La Wa Dee"
Perhaps we didn't wait long enough for the Passat...
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Hua Hin: Land of Sad Karaoke
Despite everything that was terrible about it, the train ride from Bangkok to Hua Hin, we all agreed, gave us a great sense of the country. It took us, right out of Bangkok, directly through an unseen part of Bangkok filled with terrible houses made of aluminum siding as the roofs and mid-90s movie posters as window coverings. Once out of the city, we passed through breathtaking farmland - something i've described as looking like the Mississippi Delta with palm trees, wet rice fields, and mountains.
The trip itself is very long spent being unable to sleep, playing sudoku, and eating white bread from time to time. Once we actually arrived to Hua Hin, many of us had developed something that we called "wood-ass" which is a most terrible condition that one's butt gets from sitting on a flat wooden board on a train for five to six hours (I recovered just in time for the train back to Bangkok...gah).
Hua Hin was rather shocking to most of us because it was so westernized. With both Burger Kings and pizza joints (with menus in English) it was hard to convince ourselves that we were in Thailand and not in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (the comparison goes deeper, but i'll leave it here for now).
We spent marvelling for the first part of the day at how quaint a little town it was, and the charm lingered for me until our dinner that night when we tried to actually order the western food we had started to crave so much after countless meals of curry and pad thai.
The first sign came, for me, with the two Thai women singing mid-90s karaoke to a whining synthesizer. This depressed me very much, partially because I don't like many of those songs (especially when it sounds like it is being played on a keyboard we own as children...which it was in this case) but also because I had started having those little feelings of being in Myrtle Beach rather than a coastal Thai town. The second sign came with the delivery of our food. I, in a typical moment of craving, had ordered pizza margherita (tomato, basil, and cheese) and had been given bread with cheese melted on top of it. David and Matt ordered hamburgers and were given these grey slimy toad-looking specimens that puffed between the buns.
After our meal, we were shocked to find how empty the streets were - especially despite the seemingly lively city life that had been around earlier that day. We decided to explore the beach and ended up finding a rock that looked out over the sea - dotted with green dots all around its coast. Men played cards under dimly lit tents, while the eternal sea ebbed and flowed. It was quite nice and relaxing - despite the fact that sitting on a rock with a bad case of wood-ass generally does not work incredibly well.
We also noticed that we were in the shadows of a twenty-something story Hilton resort hotel. Only a few of the lights were on, and we could only wonder where all the people were.
The next day was spent relaxing at the beach and reading (Matt is currently thoroughly enjoying Wuthering Heights while Kelsey decided to swap her May issue of Vogue for an autobiography of Gandhi at our guest house's book exchange).
We also enjoyed two much better meals today - one of them being at a really cool restaurant called Monsoon. After dinner, we decided to go check out the bars - most of which were filled with older white men and very young thai women (often times, together...). We found an "Irish Pub" (didn't even sell guiness) and were quickly approached by two 13 year old girls selling flowers. While Matt initially refused to buy any, he decided to play the girl in connect-four and was soundly beaten 3 times (he would distribute his surplus roses - all of them - around the bar) while I was completely destroyed by her in a game of pool (i'm beginning to wonder if everyone here (especially the women) are professionals at pool).
We leave the next day - ready to leave the beach ("it's the low season) and even more so Thailand. We catch the train back to Bangkok (these time with cushioned seats!) and barring a few minor uncomforts, we return home and pass out.
Cambodia soon...
hope y'all are great
tom
The trip itself is very long spent being unable to sleep, playing sudoku, and eating white bread from time to time. Once we actually arrived to Hua Hin, many of us had developed something that we called "wood-ass" which is a most terrible condition that one's butt gets from sitting on a flat wooden board on a train for five to six hours (I recovered just in time for the train back to Bangkok...gah).
Hua Hin was rather shocking to most of us because it was so westernized. With both Burger Kings and pizza joints (with menus in English) it was hard to convince ourselves that we were in Thailand and not in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (the comparison goes deeper, but i'll leave it here for now).
We spent marvelling for the first part of the day at how quaint a little town it was, and the charm lingered for me until our dinner that night when we tried to actually order the western food we had started to crave so much after countless meals of curry and pad thai.
The first sign came, for me, with the two Thai women singing mid-90s karaoke to a whining synthesizer. This depressed me very much, partially because I don't like many of those songs (especially when it sounds like it is being played on a keyboard we own as children...which it was in this case) but also because I had started having those little feelings of being in Myrtle Beach rather than a coastal Thai town. The second sign came with the delivery of our food. I, in a typical moment of craving, had ordered pizza margherita (tomato, basil, and cheese) and had been given bread with cheese melted on top of it. David and Matt ordered hamburgers and were given these grey slimy toad-looking specimens that puffed between the buns.
After our meal, we were shocked to find how empty the streets were - especially despite the seemingly lively city life that had been around earlier that day. We decided to explore the beach and ended up finding a rock that looked out over the sea - dotted with green dots all around its coast. Men played cards under dimly lit tents, while the eternal sea ebbed and flowed. It was quite nice and relaxing - despite the fact that sitting on a rock with a bad case of wood-ass generally does not work incredibly well.
We also noticed that we were in the shadows of a twenty-something story Hilton resort hotel. Only a few of the lights were on, and we could only wonder where all the people were.
The next day was spent relaxing at the beach and reading (Matt is currently thoroughly enjoying Wuthering Heights while Kelsey decided to swap her May issue of Vogue for an autobiography of Gandhi at our guest house's book exchange).
We also enjoyed two much better meals today - one of them being at a really cool restaurant called Monsoon. After dinner, we decided to go check out the bars - most of which were filled with older white men and very young thai women (often times, together...). We found an "Irish Pub" (didn't even sell guiness) and were quickly approached by two 13 year old girls selling flowers. While Matt initially refused to buy any, he decided to play the girl in connect-four and was soundly beaten 3 times (he would distribute his surplus roses - all of them - around the bar) while I was completely destroyed by her in a game of pool (i'm beginning to wonder if everyone here (especially the women) are professionals at pool).
We leave the next day - ready to leave the beach ("it's the low season) and even more so Thailand. We catch the train back to Bangkok (these time with cushioned seats!) and barring a few minor uncomforts, we return home and pass out.
Cambodia soon...
hope y'all are great
tom
Two and Out in Bangkok
So sorry for not keeping this thing up better recently...it's been a crazy trip thus far, and if we're not sweating outside we're passed out inside. Regardless, here's a recap of our time in Bangkok.
The only two things I had ever heard about Bangkok, Thailand's capital city, was that it was filled with temples and traffic, two very good nouns to use when describing the place. It is a living, breathing creature with motorbikes, taxis, tuk-tuks, buses, skytrains, and boats, running through its veins - which I should mention are constantly clogged.
The city has a very distinctive smell - somewhere between urine and exhaust - that i was never quite able to habituate to, but truly the city doesn't allow for much habituation in any sense.
Our first day was spent commenting on how hot the weather was. David and I ate at a restaurant where the chef cooked soup in a rolling trolly on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, while the actual seats of the place were deep within interior of the building. I flashed him my peanut card (for those of you who don't know, i have a wretched peanut allergy that should make this entire trip a most interesting experience) and he, with a nod, responded, "soup," to which I said ok.
From there we visited the Jim Thompson house - a traditional Thai house built by an American (hmmm) in the center of Bangkok. We spent some time touring the house in our socks, stepping over doorways with high hurdles over which you have to step into a room (these are spirit-guards according to our guide...you'll be glad to know also, that our bathrooms in every guesthouse we have stayed thus far, have had "spirit-guard" doors, preventing any bathroom bewitchings).
In the middle of our tour, we heard a loud roar from behind the house and discovered that there was a canal with a river taxi speeding through it...after some research by David (a truly masterful navigator, guide, and person in general) we found that we could take a river taxi to the Old City - the section of town where most of the temples and things are.
The taxi was pretty neat - but it was my first exposure to a now-familiar side of these cities: the slums. As we sped down these narrow corridors, we passed terrible houses leaning over the water with clothes and trashes strewn along their sides. I also noticed that, while the water felt nice when it would splash across your face, the locals sitting next to me had their heads tucked into their shirts to blog themselves from the water. After a quick smell of the air and water, I, too, tucked myself behind the tarp tied to the boat.
We arrived at the edge of the Old City and were immediately met by a group of smooth-talking tuk tuk drivers.
*It should be noted that tuk tuks are three wheeled taxi cabs - sort of like modern rickshaws - in which the driver straddles his gear shift (discouraging against quick stops for his sake) and two (or three) people crowd into a covered seat that is open on its sides. Tuk tuks are tricky characters, as they are notorious for scamming foreign travellers by telling them that temples are closed and that they will give them a good deal by sneaking them into some "really good" temples for a good price. Truly, after spending the day with them, i felt as though Homer had received his inspiration for the sirens or lotus-eaters on one of his visits to Thailand. While they took us to two pretty impressive temples, most of our afternoon was spent driving to various cheap suit shops, where the tuk tuk driver receives a commission for his services of delivering unknowing foreigners into their clutches. Finally after much pleading and promising to actually stay in one of the suit shops for more than ten minutes, our drivers finally agreed to take us back to our hotel. Sweaty, jet-lagged, and exhausted, we passed out.
The next day, we spent the day at the Royal Palace of the king of Thailand (who, it should be noted, just celebrated 60 years of rule, and as a result has a variety of unsmiling pictures prominently displayed throughout the nation. His pictures range from him looking pensive on his throne, looking pensive with his wife, looking uncertain with his camera, looking uncertain as a child in his regalia, looking pensive (again) on a jetski, and beginning to smile (surprise!) for some reason.) The palace was pretty incredible. Incredibly ornate with much gold and gold paint. The highlight of the palace for us came in this incredibly long series of connected paintings that completely covered the walls of the interior of one of the courtyards...although we didn't know exactly what the paintings meant (they looked to be the story of the creation of thailand), we found a few favorite characters who avoided getting eaten by eight-armed monsters that would suddenly emerge from the hills (very shocking the first time you see it). Rob found one particular character who lasted a good twenty steps along the wall and named him Jebediah.
From the palace, we decided that Thai massages were in good order. We had heard how famous they were and we figured that we couldn't leave Bangkok without getting one. Our Taxi driver told us he would take us to a famous massage place.
We arrived at a place tucked down a side alley, and were greeted by a line of pink-shirted Thai women waiting to deliver our massages. We arranged a one hour massage (they are usually two) and were escorted into a room where we took off our shoes and were given foot-washings. From there, we were moved upstairs to rooms with three or four beds in them. Matt and I were put into one room and told to change into these white pajama-looking clothes. While doing so, we noticed the little green signs with "no prostitution" written on them and could only give a collective sigh of relief.
I was paired with a small woman, while Matt was paired with a man, who, while holding Matt in certain submission positions, would reach over a stroke my eyebrows and laugh (...). Thai massages are basically a form of soft-core wrestling - in which, as i said earlier, the massagee is put into various submission positions while having toes, backs, fingers popped.
The most difficult moments come when the massagers fingers begin to probe a bit closer to upper thigh/torso area. I, for one, am ticklish in these places, which leads to much laughter, but additionally, Matt and I were both received laughs whenever our massagers would get close enough to our "areas".
The rest of the massage consisted of Matt getting body slammed around the room while he groaned and exclaimed his hurt, while my masseus (no idea if you say masseus or massager) would look at me with frustration as she tried to stretch my legs (i was later named "big thighs" by her and Matt's).
We left our massages, no more relaxed than we had arrived and definitely feeling more violated than before. Regardless, we were glad to have had the experience. As we stepped outside it began to rain and David, Kiley, and Kelsey went to Thai boxing while Rob, Matt, and I decided to go get dinner and a beer to make ourselves feel better.
At the end of the night, we all decided that we had had enough of Bangkok and that is was time to go somewhere else. Finally, we decided that Hua Hin, a beach town on the Gulf of Thailand, would be nice.
The only two things I had ever heard about Bangkok, Thailand's capital city, was that it was filled with temples and traffic, two very good nouns to use when describing the place. It is a living, breathing creature with motorbikes, taxis, tuk-tuks, buses, skytrains, and boats, running through its veins - which I should mention are constantly clogged.
The city has a very distinctive smell - somewhere between urine and exhaust - that i was never quite able to habituate to, but truly the city doesn't allow for much habituation in any sense.
Our first day was spent commenting on how hot the weather was. David and I ate at a restaurant where the chef cooked soup in a rolling trolly on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, while the actual seats of the place were deep within interior of the building. I flashed him my peanut card (for those of you who don't know, i have a wretched peanut allergy that should make this entire trip a most interesting experience) and he, with a nod, responded, "soup," to which I said ok.
From there we visited the Jim Thompson house - a traditional Thai house built by an American (hmmm) in the center of Bangkok. We spent some time touring the house in our socks, stepping over doorways with high hurdles over which you have to step into a room (these are spirit-guards according to our guide...you'll be glad to know also, that our bathrooms in every guesthouse we have stayed thus far, have had "spirit-guard" doors, preventing any bathroom bewitchings).
In the middle of our tour, we heard a loud roar from behind the house and discovered that there was a canal with a river taxi speeding through it...after some research by David (a truly masterful navigator, guide, and person in general) we found that we could take a river taxi to the Old City - the section of town where most of the temples and things are.
The taxi was pretty neat - but it was my first exposure to a now-familiar side of these cities: the slums. As we sped down these narrow corridors, we passed terrible houses leaning over the water with clothes and trashes strewn along their sides. I also noticed that, while the water felt nice when it would splash across your face, the locals sitting next to me had their heads tucked into their shirts to blog themselves from the water. After a quick smell of the air and water, I, too, tucked myself behind the tarp tied to the boat.
We arrived at the edge of the Old City and were immediately met by a group of smooth-talking tuk tuk drivers.
*It should be noted that tuk tuks are three wheeled taxi cabs - sort of like modern rickshaws - in which the driver straddles his gear shift (discouraging against quick stops for his sake) and two (or three) people crowd into a covered seat that is open on its sides. Tuk tuks are tricky characters, as they are notorious for scamming foreign travellers by telling them that temples are closed and that they will give them a good deal by sneaking them into some "really good" temples for a good price. Truly, after spending the day with them, i felt as though Homer had received his inspiration for the sirens or lotus-eaters on one of his visits to Thailand. While they took us to two pretty impressive temples, most of our afternoon was spent driving to various cheap suit shops, where the tuk tuk driver receives a commission for his services of delivering unknowing foreigners into their clutches. Finally after much pleading and promising to actually stay in one of the suit shops for more than ten minutes, our drivers finally agreed to take us back to our hotel. Sweaty, jet-lagged, and exhausted, we passed out.
The next day, we spent the day at the Royal Palace of the king of Thailand (who, it should be noted, just celebrated 60 years of rule, and as a result has a variety of unsmiling pictures prominently displayed throughout the nation. His pictures range from him looking pensive on his throne, looking pensive with his wife, looking uncertain with his camera, looking uncertain as a child in his regalia, looking pensive (again) on a jetski, and beginning to smile (surprise!) for some reason.) The palace was pretty incredible. Incredibly ornate with much gold and gold paint. The highlight of the palace for us came in this incredibly long series of connected paintings that completely covered the walls of the interior of one of the courtyards...although we didn't know exactly what the paintings meant (they looked to be the story of the creation of thailand), we found a few favorite characters who avoided getting eaten by eight-armed monsters that would suddenly emerge from the hills (very shocking the first time you see it). Rob found one particular character who lasted a good twenty steps along the wall and named him Jebediah.
From the palace, we decided that Thai massages were in good order. We had heard how famous they were and we figured that we couldn't leave Bangkok without getting one. Our Taxi driver told us he would take us to a famous massage place.
We arrived at a place tucked down a side alley, and were greeted by a line of pink-shirted Thai women waiting to deliver our massages. We arranged a one hour massage (they are usually two) and were escorted into a room where we took off our shoes and were given foot-washings. From there, we were moved upstairs to rooms with three or four beds in them. Matt and I were put into one room and told to change into these white pajama-looking clothes. While doing so, we noticed the little green signs with "no prostitution" written on them and could only give a collective sigh of relief.
I was paired with a small woman, while Matt was paired with a man, who, while holding Matt in certain submission positions, would reach over a stroke my eyebrows and laugh (...). Thai massages are basically a form of soft-core wrestling - in which, as i said earlier, the massagee is put into various submission positions while having toes, backs, fingers popped.
The most difficult moments come when the massagers fingers begin to probe a bit closer to upper thigh/torso area. I, for one, am ticklish in these places, which leads to much laughter, but additionally, Matt and I were both received laughs whenever our massagers would get close enough to our "areas".
The rest of the massage consisted of Matt getting body slammed around the room while he groaned and exclaimed his hurt, while my masseus (no idea if you say masseus or massager) would look at me with frustration as she tried to stretch my legs (i was later named "big thighs" by her and Matt's).
We left our massages, no more relaxed than we had arrived and definitely feeling more violated than before. Regardless, we were glad to have had the experience. As we stepped outside it began to rain and David, Kiley, and Kelsey went to Thai boxing while Rob, Matt, and I decided to go get dinner and a beer to make ourselves feel better.
At the end of the night, we all decided that we had had enough of Bangkok and that is was time to go somewhere else. Finally, we decided that Hua Hin, a beach town on the Gulf of Thailand, would be nice.
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