Paddle Your Canoe

the view from the end of noodletown road

2010-09-05T11:25:00.002+07:00

well, penpals -- this is it. after sixteen long months in asia, i'm shuffling through my last hot rainy weekend in paradise and packing my bags to come home. wednesday morning, to SFO, with a direct connection to a Barneys avocado cheddar cheeseburger.

so here's my last update and final reflections. since last we penpalled, i went to a national park and saw proboscis monkeys and the fabled beared pig -- a monstrous thing with facial hair like wookie (endearing) but fangs like a vampire bat (terrifying) -- a pair of flying lemurs, and a bright green pit viper curled up in a tree for a nap like it weren't no thing to be the second most poisonous snake in town. then i flew to the north of Sarawak for a night where all i did was listen to a toad of a hungarian talk about himself and how adventurous he was because he was traveling alone (HELLO), and then onto Brunei with the lion king soundtrack playing the whole bus ride. i stayed in the youth hostel with some schoolgirls and wandered the hot empty streets of bandar seri begawan for a couple of days, talking pictures of the giant golden mosque from every angle and at every time of day, and marveling at priceless crap that people have gifted the sultan over the years, and watching storms roll in from across the river and then out the other side. people in brunei were very nice to me, and i even got a boat ride from a man who had painted his vessel red white and blue with a big USA emblazoned on the side and took me through the water village talking about new york, a place he had never been but was very fond of. he told me he would come visit me there sometime, and i said that that was fine.

after brunei i took a bus back into malaysia, and, eight border crossings later, found myself in a hotel out by a bus station in kota kinabalu in desperate need of doing laundry. i mentioned this to the manager, who directed me to the one shop he was sure was still open but which was actually closed (at 7 pm), and when i came back in defeat he felt so invested in my plight that he drove me a half an hour away to another, hipper town where laundry joints stay open all night--despite my protests that i was actually totally happy being crusted in travel crud head to toe and he should go home at once to his mama's house where he still lived at age 38 (i'm not judging). but he wasn't having any of it. he waited with me for an hour, drinking sasparilla contentedly while i washed and dried and folded, and then, instead of dumping me back at the hotel and being rid of me as i would have expected, he took me on a night tour of kota kinabalu to see all the sights and markets and have a quick break to try some durian and tell me about the history of the area. incredible -- one of the nicest people i met on my whole trip, that dear old mohammed ariv.

the next morning, clean clothes in hand, i took another bus that was delayed five hours by an overturned lorry, turning a six hour trip into an eleven hour nightmare, but finally made my way to Sepilok, the jumping off point for trips up the Kinabatangan River. I went upriver with a great group of people (including more Barcelonians, who have quickly become among my favorite travelers to meet) and saw everything from an 18 foot crocodile sinking into the muddy depths to a mama gibbon teaching her baby how to swing in what's left of the surrounding jungle. I was also bitten roughly 4000 times by mosquitos which may or may not have been bursting with malaria (turned out not but you never know), so i was more than ready to leave the jungle and return to civilization. i went to melacca, which i loved, and then back to KL, where, after months of planning and anticipation of bank transfers back and forth, i finally met up with matt (georgetown matt) and embarked on the final hurrah.

which went something like this: we took a sleepless train ride north and stayed four days on Little Perhentian island, which displaced Gili Trawangan as my favorite tropical paradise, partly because a guy there had a pet otter that i got to play with but also because it is just stunning, and then, as if we hadn't had enough of turquoise water and white sand perfection, we flew back to borneo and spent five days diving in Mabul and Sipadan and could not have asked for anything better. Sharks and turtles and cuttlefish and things i've never even heard of like a Flying Gurnard and a sea moth, plus perfect clear blue water and another group of really fun people, this time mostly dutch but also norwegian and a couple more barcelonians just for good measure. We dove, we played cards, we lounged, we went to a chinese karaoke bar and tried to convince them to let us sing ABBA but were subtly yet unmistakeably rejected, we ate well and sunbathed and had just about the best time i have had on this whole extended trip. Asia, if ever i doubted you, i take it all back. you've been a wonderful host and i have grown quite fond of you indeed.

but now it's time to come home and i'm pretty happy about that too. goodbye noodles, hello sourdough baguette. it really has been too long.

see you all soon!
love molly

it's raining in borneo

2010-08-12T16:34:00.000+07:00

dear old penpals,

hello again, this time from borneo! i'm in kuching which means "cat" and it's raining -- cats. cats and more cats. but luckily it started in the late afternoon, just as i was finishing up at the orangutan sanctuary down the road where i saw my first ginger haired apes in the wild. well, kind of wild, it's sort of a reserve and sort of a park, not at all a zoo, but not quite wild either -- close enough. anyway i saw five very fine specimens, one with an itty baby clutching onto its chest as it --she -- smashed coconuts into tree trunks with impressive force and then tried to pour the juice out on the ranger below (pretty sure it was on purpose), and tomorrow i go to a really truly national park and look for hornbills and proboscis monkeys and maybe if i'm very lucky a civet cat! i spend two nights at the park headquarters and i'm really excited. to wake up to gibbon calls walk around with the flying squirrels and all their forest friends..how fun.

kuching is also lovely, though, surprisingly more developed and modern than most se asian cities (including phnom penh) but still incredibly colorful and charming with lots of colonial buildings, windy streets, sidewalk cafes...i'm really glad i came. after the national park i go on up the coast towards brunei, which i'll pass through and spend a night or two in, just to see what the sultan's up to, and then over to the other side of malaysian borneo to hopefully see more orangutans in more of a national park setting, along a river which you go up in a little boat and wear a safari hat. like the jungle ride at disneyland come to life! finally.

anyway so i know i haven't written much since i've been traveling because i've just been distracted and short of attention span for the internet after several months of spending so much quality time with my computer in phnom penh (phnom penh! seems like a lifetime ago), but a short rundown of the trip so far is as follows:

first, a week on gili trawangan, a little splotch of paradise near bali with the best white sand beach i've ever been to and so many turtles that the locals get annoyed at seeing them, where i met a friend from VIA and lounged a lot and watched the world cup with some swiss people. then, a four day "cruise" on a "boat" which nearly capsized whenever a gentle breeze rippled across the sea or a tiny wave lapped at our stern, but somehow survived to take us to lots of uninhabited island gems for waterfalls, hiking, and pink beaches (from the coral that washes up there) and then onto komodo to see the dragons, which are gigantic and look like they belong with the dinosaurs but don't do a whole lot more than lie flat on their stomachs with their legs sticking out and watch you watch them (occasional tongue flick), and then final port of call at Labuan Bajo, Flores, an island that kept making me think of the land before time: Impossibly green valleys, multi-colored ever changing opaque volcanic lakes, traditional cultures with temples made out of spiky rocks and offerings of vanilla and coffee beans, and castaway beaches with nothing to do but watch the tide come in and go out over a good book and a cold beer. i rented a car with a dutch family and drove all the way across, listening to Mr. Meijer talk about things that were "so idiot" while his wife and daughter made fun of his english and his yellow speedo. charming people, the dutch. next i flew to bali, met a spaniard and a chilean and drove around the island with them, just to make sure that Bali is really as pretty as people say it is (affirmed). And then I flew to east timor which is a really strange place that appears to have been invaded by an army of white UN trucks, but still has really good scuba diving and some sweeping scenery and complicated people who can be charming but mostly just seem wary -- even of little budget backpacker me, on the local bus with the chickens and the drooling infants, with no white UN vehicle in sight! i think they may have a bad impression of westerners at this point and i guess i don't blame them. but, there was a parrot at my hostel, and it was incredibly warm and friendly, so it all worked out just fine.

and then after a short stopover in singapore to refuel and reconnect, i came to Borneo and here I am. it's still raining but i'm getting hungry, and the food here so far is fantastic. i've had minced pork in two different forms, both excellent, and the best thing by far: stir fried fern leaf. crunchy yet delicate. what a treat. so i'll brave a warm shower and head out and i will talk to you all soon! one more month of this and then i'm back to the bay. i can already tell that i'm going to miss eating fern leaves.

love, molly

Nepal, but really mostly Delhi

2010-05-06T16:08:00.001+07:00

This last bit, much like the first bit, doesn't really deal too much with me being in Nepal, but never mind. I still want to write about it, mostly on the off-chance any of you were considering flying through Delhi any time soon -- you'll want to go ahead and reroute now. Try Dubai, they're very nice there and sometimes there are free buffets.

Here's the problem: You leave Kathmandu still glowing from your magical two weeks of mountains and hidden courtyards, and, though they grope you no fewer than four times while passing through security (one groping is actually conducted on the stairs leading up to the aircraft as your fellow passengers wait in an amorphous bottleneck crush on the steaming tarmac for their turn to undergo the same indignity -- does this strike anyone as a good idea?), you're still relatively happy about the place and glad that you slogged across three countries to get there. But then you land in India. And India, being it's usual charming self, makes you want to never leave your home ever again in your life.

You get off the plane and are funneled into a big open hall, which contains no signage whatsoever and gives you no hints as to which way you're supposed to proceed, and so you become confused. Then you notice that there's one guy standing in the middle of the hall, mumbling things that you can't understand unless you get closer, so everyone clogs around him only to find out that his instructions are simply "International passengers wait here" (aren't we all international passengers, having come from another country? Oh but let's not be difficult now). So everyone waits in a clump, bumping into each other, until the people who aren't connecting to other flights realize that they can actually go on through immigration, and the transit passengers, at least most of them, realize that by "wait here" he meant "proceed through this messy line and give all pertinent information to a representative who won't tell you what it's for". You have to be proactive, you see.

So we get through that, and then once they have compiled all the vital information of every single transit passenger onto hand-written sheets of paper, they take these sheets, stand in the middle of the room, and read them aloud as if we're being picked for the middle school volleyball team. You're supposed to listen for your name and the move from wherever you're standing to some other part of the room to show movement, which they note dutifully, and then they mush you all back into a group and march you up the stairs and into a waiting area. Your guardians disappear and you realize: you've been trapped. Trapped in transit. From the waiting area you can see the rest of the airport, the shops, the restaurants, the happy people drinking cappuccinos and waiting for their flights in the comfort of an easy chair at the Coffee Bean (or equivalent). But transit passengers are not allowed over there. They have to wait in the Transit Waiting Area, also known as Airport Purgatory, for the entire duration of their layover. Which, if you're the French people whose flight home got canceled because of that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, means up to and maybe exceeding four days. I watched these French people for awhile as I ate my cold french fries in the one Transit-approved restaurant -- at one point one of them had a breakdown and sobbed for a good twenty minutes on the stairs just outside A little later, once she had been brought back into the fold, someone took out a guitar and they held a sing-along of popular French diddies, everyone joining in. When one of their party got a flight and had to go, they all hugged and took pictures, exchanging email addresses and promising to get together soon. It was really quite touching. But then the restaurant called the police on them and had them unceremoniously removed, apparently for overstaying the secret unwritten hour limit imposed to keep people from getting too attached to that dimly-lit hellhole. Talk about adding insult to volcanic ash cloud.

Anyway, back downstairs in Transit purgatory, I sat in a hard blue chair from 4:30 to 11 pm, reading, cursing under my breath, and waiting to be granted my golden ticket to freedom, also known as a standard boarding pass. At 11 my airline representative appeared from his secret lair to announce that my boarding pass would be delivered "soon soon" but that in the meantime I was invited to a free dinner, courtesy of Jet Airlines. What? But ok. So I scarfed down as much dal curry as I could, which produced some really uncomfortable cramps, all the while suspicious of the bad news that such a bizarre gift must surely portend. I still don't get it. There was no bad news, except of course that I was there in the first place. I went back downstairs, witnessed an impromptu birthday party for a Chilean girl who had the singular misfortune of turning 26 in that dump -- no Mumbai slumber zone, I can assure you -- and waited. About 12:30, another representative materialized out of thin air to round up all of us Jet Airways passengers (I mean, we hope he got all of them, but one can never be sure), issue us boarding passes (by putting 25 boarding passes on a table and asking us to identify ours, all at once), and send us on a mad dash through the airport to make the last call for our flight -- which, miraculously, departed on time at 1:05 am. Go figure.

The most disturbing part of this whole charade is that this is normal procedure. I asked. I was assured. "Yes madam, standard standard. Yes Madam, every flight, every day, oh yes, very normal. Always this way it works." Um, no it doesn't, but tell yourself whatever you want. I hate you and I'm never coming back anyway.

And that's the end of the story! The takeaway, thirty four pages later: Go to Nepal, but by god do not fly through Delhi. Fly through Phnom Penh instead and then you can come visit me!

Congratulations to those of you who made it this far. More adventures to come.

Nepal (the part where I actually go to Nepal)

2010-05-04T15:23:00.002+07:00

So -- where were we? Ah yes. Early morning in the Mumbai airport, the chattering and squawking of my fellow Slumber Zone residents rising in tandem with a dull, dusty sun just barely visible through Gate 16's dirty windows, and there I am among them, blinking away sleep and gathering my things to board the plane out of there. It's finally hour 20, and time to go.

After a quick flight and a relatively painless immigration procedure I arrived in Kathmandu, took a long nap to make up for the mediocre slumber that occurred in the Slumber Zone, and then went out in the evening to explore. The city is really quite charming, even accounting for the mad crush of traffic which frequently stops dead and sits in a tangled mess for minutes at a time, and which, upon restarting in a flurry, threatens to flatten the unsuspecting tourist at every turn. (There were some close calls, and some terrified squeaking). Despite the chaos, though, it's a great place to wander, window shop, people watch, and pigeon feed. I couldn't believe how colorful it was, how much of the medieval city-state feel has survived to present day, and how many secret courtyard gardens you can find if you just wander down a dark alley and see what's at the other end. Whimsical, was what I kept thinking, like it could have been the setting for a fairy tale, and probably was at some point or another. I bought I shawl that I liked so much I slept with and a brass elephant door handle that my future house hunting will basically revolve around entirely, and was extremely satisfied with the whole experience.

After a few days I went to Pokhara, a city by a lake that I didn't find to be that interesting, but which serves as the jumping off point for most of the trekking that there is to be done. I have to admit I was a little intimidated by the idea of trekking, particularly because it seems to involve a lot of gear, and anything involving gear is usually a lot of work and kind of extreme (I'm thinking rock climbing and spelunking here, that kind of thing. Although actually I feel the same way about skiing, which I generally avoid, and scuba diving, which I do anyway because of the turtle factor.)

But apparently trekking is just glorified walking where you carry a water bottle and can get away with lots of extra pockets and safari hats, if you're into that sort of thing, and I was actually reasonably good at it, given that I've been walking on my own for nigh on 23 years now (even though at one point a Korean Super Trekker called me lazy for arriving at a 3,210 meter summit at 5:45 am, rather than the Standard Super Trekker Sunrise Hour of 5:30. I wanted to roll him into his neon green Super Trekker Super Lightweight Waterproof Super Jacket and push him down the mountain, but instead I told him to "shove it, Korea", which he didn't understand, and smiled politely, which confused him, and that was the end of that).

So I trekked for five days with a friend of a friend named Alice and a lady porter named Isu, who, as it turned out, actually hated walking and didn't really like tourists and kind of objected to sleeping alone and needed to share a room with us. Which was mildly uncomfortable since she didn't really like us, as mentioned, but not the end of the world. But it was incredible scenery and crisp mountain air, and I loved it. Almost every night it rained or hailed, we played Rummy 500 and drank hot chocolate, warmed our toes by the fire or read by flashlight in our sleeping bags until we fell asleep at the ripe old hour of 9 pm. There was tomato cheese soup daily, and hot springs on day four, and rhododendron forests almost the whole way. Glorious -- even the ascents, which were described as anything from "arduous" to "disheartening" and generally were just that.

Anyway, we've now trekked out way almost to the end of the trip and we probably deserve a hot chocolate break. I have a little bit more to tell you about the journey home, but I will save for part three, and another day.

Nepal, or close enough for a Part One anyway

2010-05-01T16:04:00.002+07:00

Hello all!

I'm back in Cambodia, the heat continues to be borderline unlivable, and I was (almost, basically, let's just say) attacked by a murderous centipede within two hours of returning. But it's ok. I also got my tax return, and the rains are on the way to wash away the sins of the hot season, and I'm mere minutes away from eating what's rumored to be the best cheeseburger in Phnom Penh. So I survive.

I'm also in a forgiving mood because I just returned from two weeks of soul-cleansing, high-altitude mountain gazing in Nepal and it had the intended effect of refilling my tanks for this last two month stretch in Cambodia. It's hard to believe my time here is almost over. I'll be so sad to leave the empire of the arthropod, of which my kitchen sink is surely the seat and capitol -- but then again also not.

Anyway: Nepal. It was gorgeous. And well worth the two and a half day odyssey it took me to get there, which included a 14 hour overland trip to Bangkok accompanied part way by washed up missionaries and the other part by news of what I think were the first actual deaths in the Bangkok protests, welcome to the city of angels! But somehow I avoided the bloodshed and ditched the missionaries and made it to Suvarnabhumi (silent "i", very tricky) airport for my flight no worse for the wear. And that airport is a real gem, in large part because it has a starbucks and I have a starbucks card, and you can see where that combination is going to take us. So I luxuriated in the warmth of a latte (and blessed my dear aunt debbie whose christmas gift it was that i was enjoying), and then had a nice conversation with a Thai lady who told me I was a good Buddhist for volunteering in Cambodia, and that I was going to heaven. This is always nice news to receive first thing in the morning.

Then I flew to Mumbai, but because I had elected not to get a new Indian visa (not so much because it's a rip off, which it is, as because then I would have had to revisit Mr. Indian Bureaucrat 2010 of the Phnom Penh embassy, who is easily my least favorite bureaucrat of recent times, aside from maybe the South African Airways guy who deported me from Johannesburg a few years back, but that's another story) I had to spend my entire 20 hour 30 minute layover in the airport. Good old Mumbai airport though, what a sweet place. It may be bordered on every side by the kind of astonishing slums India is famous for, but inside it is a haven of tranquility and friendly staff. We all got along great -- hour 2 i received a cup of coffee with a "Have a Safe Flight!" inscribed on the lid, which I know they don't do for everyone. Hour 3 a nice British man exchanged my dollars for rupees since the exchange counter OBVIOUSLY didn't take dollars, moron-- and he even threw in an extra 74 rupees, which was halfway to another cup of happy coffee for me. Hour 5 I watched the souvenir shop ladies push each other around in luggage carts because admittedly, things were a little slow, and hour 7 I was given a free order of vegetable dumplings so that I might compare them to the chicken (veg were infinitely superior.) Really, I haven't had this much fun in transit since the Queen Spa and Dining! Alas, no Living the Skin Almightiness Washes Noodles Milk, but let's give India a chance to develop a little more and then we'll check back.

And since it was nearly a full day that I spent there, you can imagine that a certain point I probably needed to sleep, which I did in the conveniently equipped "Slumber Zone", which, though some patrons misunderstood to be a "Shout Into Your Cell Phone Like There's No Tomorrow Section" or the "Chit Chat Boisterously With Your Neighbor Area", was still pretty pleasant. And thus did I turn 25 -- wrapped in a Jet Airways blanket and curled up in the Slumber Zone of the Mumbai International Airport with 75 Indian strangers who never shut up. I guess I've had better birthdays, but I've definitely had worse.

Oh dear, well I'm only to Mumbai hour 18, but I know how your attention spans are (worse than your "reply to sender" skills as far as can tell) But the cheeseburger calls and who am I to resist. I'll finish the part about where I actually go to Nepal soon. And I'll let you know about the cheeseburger too -- can it really taste just like America? We're about to find out.

Cambodian Easter

2010-04-30T19:55:00.005+07:00

Easter in Battambang, Cambodia, dying duck eggs out of the cut-off bottom of old water bottles because my friend Katie's house didn't have enough cups and Battambang didn't have enough chicken eggs. But they came out just as cute as ever and we used them to decorate Katie's balcony for passers-by. Except then she went to Indonesia and I think she forgot to throw them out...where is the egg-snarfling dog contingent when you need it.

When in doubt, compose a show tune

2010-04-05T10:16:00.005+07:00

Dad's response to living with geckos, to the tune of "Master of the House" from Les Miserables:

What's that on the wall?
Why does not it fall?
Here it scurries, there it scurries;
Not a sound at all.

Look, it's bright green;
Has a high sheen;
First it's still; then its chasing
Something not quite seen.

Now it's on the ceiling;
Upside down, not reeling;
Now got something, then again;
Death blows to bugs adealing

Insecty varmits it has smited;
With other things uninvited;
Roaches too, if with it they screw;
Its value you have slighted.

So welcome friend gecko;
Will disparage you no mo;
You may go far; even be a star,
And go work for GEICO!

Pouspous the gecko will be absolutely tickled.

On sharing your home with geckos

2010-03-28T13:25:00.008+07:00

I've been putting off writing for awhile, mostly for the following reason: Right now I want to talk about geckos more than you want to hear about them. It's a fact, and I respect it. That's why I've been holding my tongue, out of deference to your rights to not be deluged with stories about geckos, especially after all the cat emails you've already endured. But then this heat thing happened and I just had to let it all out.

According to weather.com, it is, currently, "99° F (feels like 104°)". Of course that can't possibly be right. If you ask me those weather.com people are too conservative or maybe just liars (not be redundant), and are any of them really here, anyway, to accurately report what it "feels like"? I don't think so. If they were, even for a minute, they would quickly revise their findings to read "maybe technically 99° according to these probably faulty age-old thermometers we're still using like the chumps we are, but what does it feel like? Well, now that you ask, it feels like somebody decided to preheat Cambodia to 350° and then forgot to turn off the oven. Like hell, a little bit? Oh alright I suppose you could put it that way." Because that's the reality. We're baking over here, and baking is never fun unless there's homemade blackberry pie at the end. I remember when I was little, the hottest place I'd ever been was Davis, California, where my mom told me that it sometimes got so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. Boy was I impressed. Here, you could roast a 20 lb.Thanksgiving turkey by putting it out on the balcony for a few minutes around noon (that's hardly an exaggeration) and somehow impressed is not the word I'm looking for. The egg thing was cute. This is just obscene.

Anyway, let's get on to the geckos. I don't have much of a story even, just kind of a funny scenario, but here it is: the other day I came home and opened my fridge only to find a live gecko scampering frantically around in the lettuce drawer, terrified of the giant monster who had discovered him and fighting wildly to escape capture at my hands. Naturally, I captured him promptly. And then what did I do? I showed him where the cockroaches live. I took him over to their little den of filth and whispered words of encouragement in his ear to embolden him for future battle. I could have scolded him for hiding out among the vegetables when he should have been fulfilling his god-given destiny as a cockroach-chomper, but I chose positive reinforcement instead in hopes that something good could still be salvaged from the wreckage of my romaine.

Unfortunately this particular gecko has turned out to be a huge disappointment. Lazy excuse of a lizard that he is, he has not caught or dismembered a single cockroach since I freed him over a week ago, even though he owes me big time for being so understanding of his invasion of my vegetables. Pssh. Call yourself a gecko. Why is that instead of getting all the macho carnivorous warrior geckos, I get stuck with the wussy ones who just want a little nibble of salad and a cool place to rests their heads? How did I end up surrounded by creatures that range from worthless to repulsive, all of us cooking in the "feels like 104" degree heat, when nary a year ago I lived a comfortable life with a charming chihuahua and temperatures which all reasonable people can agree are nothing but perfectly pleasant?

Maybe it's annoying of me to complain , since there are a lot of perks to living here too. Take for example the little jaunt to Singapore some friends and I I took last weekend to crash with a fellow volunteer and her parents at the Marriott Orchard Road. I could talk a lot about the free happy hours/goat cheese samplings that came with being guests of Executive Premier Marriott patrons, and also those avocado shakes they have in Singapore that I may or may not have already mentioned(hint: I did) and a few other things like a whole shop that sells nothing but cardigans (really!). It was a fun weekend getaway, and one I could not have easily pulled off from Oakland Ca. This is true. I've also recently been to Kampot, a riverside town in the south of Cambodia that's home to what was once considered the finest pepper in the world, and I got to see firsthand the rolling plantations upon which this pepper is nurtured along into full blown pepper glory. Kind of neat, yes. I also spent a lazy afternoon leaping into the river from a rope swing hanging from a swaying coconut palm, eating jackfruit off the vine, and later gorging on pizza and strawberry shakes with two of my favorite new people from this whole southeast asia gig. Those are lovely memories and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

I guess what I'm saying, though, is sometimes, as fun as it is to live here, I just want to go home to a refrigerator that does not contain geckos. A house that does not contain cockroaches. A country that does not make you feel like you're inhaling flames every time you breath in. Is that so much to ask? I watched a movie recently that at one point commented on how many days of our lives are simply not memorable --they come and go filled with routine pursuits, and there's nothing you can point to and say, that's a memory in the making right there. That's probably true in most cases, but it's not really true here. I'd say more of my days here are memorable than aren't, and while there is certainly something to be said for that, it's also, quite frankly, a lot of work. The gecko thing just reminds me of the cockroach thing which reminds me of the tropical climate thing, which reminds me that I'm sweaty and sticky and hot and tired and gross pretty much all the time. Which reminds me that I still have four months left of this. Oh and my water tank burst this weekend. Fantastic.

But then I got a package from my mom which included Peeps and an egg-dying kit, and Zsaleh came all the way out here to visit me and brought with her lots of good gossip and several trashy magazines -- and somehow that makes all the difference.

oops, one missing already…naughty gecko!

And let's be fair: at least it was a gecko in my fridge and not a cockroach. Right?

The misfits are missing a misfit

2010-03-09T14:30:00.007+07:00

Charlsea left this afternoon, bound for Texas and greener pastures – or you know, really, I think the pastures could be equally green as they are here, just as long as they aren’t covered in a thick layer of crusty brown dust that chokes the life out of everything it touches. And also not so hot. Maybe some pastures in the shade would be nice, with a good ocean breeze or some cool mountain air. Something like that. So anyway greener pastures, less dust-choked, sun-stroked pastures, whatever. She’s on her way. Hopped a flight to Kuala Lumpur and will be back in the heartland before we know it, canoodling with a bevy of canine companions both new and old, surrounded by a relieved yet adoring family who’ll ply her with beer and hide her passport while she munches on several pounds of well marinated steak and a handful of friend okra. Are we jealous, back here in the land of hot dusty chicken bones? Damn right we’re jealous. Did I mention it’s really hot and dusty here? And not a filet mignon in sight?

But in addition to the burning envy, there’s also some serious nostalgia already at work. I never expected to have this much in common with an ag nerd from the buffalo trails of rural, rural Texas -- but I do, and it’s worked out pretty well so far. So here’s to an unlikely friendship in an unlikely place, and all the adventures that ensued. There are, of course, more to come. Texas to grow and everywhere else to fly.

And now for a short photo tour:

Here is where we drive our moto into the homes of Vietnamese islanders.

This is where we while away the long Phnom Penh afternoons with a mugful of beer and just the right song.

In this one we defy recommendations of local Singaporean tattoo experts and sunburn our flesh off before letting someone poke at it vigorously with a needle.

This here is where we expect great things of historic Indian towns and end up just hanging out eating barfis.

And this is full circle: back in Thailand where I first burst into her room and broke that ice into a million little pieces with the sheer force of my obliviousness. Note to self: sobbing on the shoulders of unsentimental Texans who don't know you is likely not going to work a second time around. But then again, maybe once was all I needed.

Happy trails Charlsea! See you again soon.

Crocodile rock?

2010-02-24T22:10:00.003+07:00

So I'm writing this email from a little cafe in Battambang where one minute ago I was sitting at a quiet corner table having a crepe and minding my own business and the next minute I was in the center of what can only have been an impromptu performance of some sort of traveling child circus. Suddenly, the hula hoops were just everywhere, and then as abruptly as it began the show was over and everyone acted like nothing happened. Is it normal here that ten year olds juggle apples after dessert? Maybe so. Battambang just might be that kind of town, and I'm actually perfectly ok with that.

Moving right along.

I went to a beach in Thailand for a week for a conference with all the volunteers in my region, plus four randos who aren't in our region at all and were not in any way required to present themselves at this conference but who just tagged along anyway because, well, what can I say, I guess my region is just that cool. Plus, Railay beach -- wow. So there was the white sand and turquoise water draw too, I guess, but I think it was mostly us. And I do feel that we rose to the occasion in a big way, for example by taking over an entire bar and leading everyone in a rousing chorus of a mostly a capella "Hey Jude" and then dancing our feet off til the wee hours -- and doing it all over again every night for the rest of the week. That is what you call a bender, I believe, and what followed I think is sometimes known as the ouchy head of the goddamn century. I'm over it now, but just barely.

Still recovering, I headed up to Bangkok to meet Mom in the train station and catch the night train to Vientiane along with two VIA friends and a box of See's chocolates -- it was Valentine's Day, after all, and I can't remember the last time Mom has failed to provide each of her chickadees with a box of See's on Valentine's day. And I don't care where you are in the world and how much fun you're having -- there is no journey that can't be improved by a couple of helpings of nuts and chews. Add a People magazine and you are fast approaching heaven.

In Vientiane we had a long lingering lunch and shopped for scarves --FINALLY-- and then headed to the airport to catch a flight to Luang Prabang. A sign posted above the toilets in the airport bathroom read "Do not to sanitary into the lavatory" and that's about all there is to report about the Vientiane domestic terminal. If you can believe it.
We arrived in the afternoon in Luang Prabang and spent two and a half very pleasant days wandering the narrow steets with monks of all shapes and sizes, shopping for scarves, cruising around on the river, and then also shopping for scarves. We went one day to a series of waterfalls just outside town, a lovely place that reminded me a lot of Krka and Plitvice in Croatia but instead of trout (really happy trout, man it would be nice to be one of those trout) there were lots and lots of butterflies. We spent probably a good hour sitting by one pool watching them flutter around until they got comfortable with us and started landing on my flowery sarong, poking their little probisci around and trying to pollinate me. I didn't resist. It was quite amazing, really, and there were so many of these exploratory landings taking place that at one point a Chinese tourist stationed herself at my feet and tried doggedly to capture the spectacle on film. Of course my little beauties were frightened by this intrusion and kept flying away, so I'm fairly confident that she ended up with nothing but a series of close-ups of my knees. But it just so happens that my knees are almost as pretty as a tropical butterfly, so maybe she won't be too disappointed.

And now as I mentioned I may have inadvertently joined the Battambang circus, so if I end up staying here and making my living riding a dancing Cambodian crocodile whom I've trained to sing show tunes, I expect you all to come and support me.

A tenuous truce and some long-awaited travel

2010-02-23T09:21:00.005+07:00

First and foremost, an update: the cockroaches (plural) are still there, alive and well -- thriving, you might say, despite my best efforts. The most damage I've done was to catch one crawling around in the sink befouling the dinner dishes, which I responded to by turning on the tap full blast in order to rough him up a little bit and maybe even drown him, if I was lucky. It didn't end up killing him (since I hadn't beheaded him first or mixed any kind of poisonous dish liquid into the water source), but I do think it might have reminded him of his place in my kitchen, and he and his cohort have been cowering respectfully under the sink ever since. And that's all I really wanted, at the end of the day: they get their territory and I get mine, and as long as we can both respect that and refrain from unlawful intrusions, well, maybe we can all get along after all. So I'm calling a truce, but under a strict three strikes framework which leaves the door open for me to reactivate my crusade at the first sign of a transgression. Watch yourselves, roaches of # 7ZE1 Street 360 (and yeah that's my real address, of course it has a Z and an E in it). You're on my list.

In other news, I've been traveling a bunch since I last wrote and have lots to say about all of it, but I probably won't be able to get through it in one sitting so be ready for installments. To begin: after five months of working here with 20% travel time stipulated in my contract and 0% travel time actually occurring, I finally got to take my first trip to the field. I went to three provinces, visited 5 villages, and met about 30 young indigenous villagers who will be participating in a photo project we're implementing to document and promote indigenous culture. I'm helping design the project as well as overseeing implementation, along with one other coworker, so it's probably the most substantive work I've done this whole time and I'm fairly excited to be part of it. But it was also great just to get out of Phnom Penh for awhile and see some of the countryside, which is currently bone-dry and caked in a thick layer of red dust, but still pretty. I rode a motorcycle on unpaved country roads by moonlight, visited a crater lake and watched with great amusement as my two workers conducted an impromptu calendar shoot of themselves in a variety of poses in front of the lake and surrounding vegetation, hung out in a village with pigs the size of cars and squawking chickens running up and down people's front stairs trying to get in the houses, and, most interestingly, attended the opening ceremonies at a new Buddhist temple way out in the middle of nowhere and got to accompany my coworkers as they performed a full ritual offering including incense, flowers, money, and packets of shaving cream and shampoo for the monks. Fascinating.

Somewhere in there I also attended a public forum on extractive industries in Cambodia, which a partner organization hosted in order to provide information to people who might not otherwise have much access to it on what the current situation is with respect to oil, gas, and mining. The forum was great to see, but it was also pretty great that it was held in a beach town and as soon as we were done we got to go snorkeling and eat banana fritters in the sand as the sun went down. And then lastly, when some fellow VIA volunteers were in town I took them to a place called Udong, which is supposed to be a former capital and site of some cool temples but which our taxi driver saw absolutely no reason whatsover to visit. He kept asking me, " Udong? Are you sure? Do you even know what Udong is?" I assured him we were interested in seeing the old temples on the hill, to which he responded, "All you want is to see a temple? Look there's a temple right there, want me to pull over? There's also lots of temples in Phnom Penh, should I just turn around now?" We remained adamant, though, and were glad we did. It's not all the much to see because apparently the US bombed the bejesus out of it during the war, but it's still something, and there were some kids selling snow cones at the top which you just don't get everyday, so all in all it was a trip well worth taking.

Ok that's about all I can cover at the moment, I'll get back to you on my conference in Krabi, Thailand and trip to Laos with Mom in the next edition. In the meantime, here's an article for your reading enjoyment about a badass lady politician trying to shake things up in Cambodia:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/world/asia/22cambowomen.html?ref=global-home

Go Mu Sochua, go!

A late entry

2010-02-04T20:50:00.003+07:00

From the ever-practical Ms. Carolyn Nash:

"Good lord Molly...all you need is a beer bottle and a bit of fearlessness. And some fortitude-- the actually killing-it-dead process can take some time. Oh fuck it, i will just come to Cambodia and kill the fucker myself."

She was kind enough to attach supporting visual evidence, either to assure me of her cockroach killing prowess, or else to motivate me to find my own. I don't know. It's kind of gross. Maybe the only thing more vile than a cockroach is a smushed cockroach...in which case...maybe I don't want to smush any cockroaches after all?

And discuss they did.

2010-01-31T15:36:00.006+07:00

The Campaign to Crush the Cockroach has taken my email list by storm. Here, a few sample responses from a group with stronger opinions on killing cockroaches than Rush Limbaugh on health care reform:
------------
Pat: As a celebrant of the miracle of life, this cockroach has a direct, unbroken cultural heritage tracing all the way back to the dinosaurs and the DinoRiders that may or may not have ridden / put lasers on their heads....please capture and remove, rather than killing. You can usually stun something with a swift hit to its head with a broom, so maybe try that and then it into a garbage bag. Or, at least get a cat so that the life of the cockroach can sustain another of God's creatures (plus I liked the cat emails).

Mel: Now I am split between loving the little bugger, or finding out if it could survive stale beer.

Kate: Pay no attention to the naysayers, Molly. They are like the Borg. The cockroaches have crawled into their ears and infiltrated their brains and are simply using them as mouthpieces to spread their vile message of multi-legged hissiness around the world...The solution is to dispatch them quickly and effortlessly in a convenient cloud of death-bearing chlorofluorocarbons. You don't have to get anywhere near the beasties, and after a short period of frantic leg-waving, skittering, and screeching, the deed is done and you can patter to the loo in complete safety and comfort.

Dad: I notice no mention of the two foot long, 35 pound giant green mutated cockroachis nevadicus, which crawled some years ago out of the caves where the US conducted many radioactive bomb tests. Not much has been written about this critter, appears to have been suppressed by the gvmt. Like Area 51in NM. Molly, be on lookout for those: they may have moved some to SE Asia, as a food source for the Cambodian crocodile.

And again, dear Mom: When we sent you off to Georgetown, to the School of Foreign Service, we thought you would be learning to promote peace and tolerance around the world. We thought you would learn that war was not the answer. We thought you would learn to love your enemy, not nuke him, and to teach others the wisdom of that path. How wrong we were. Confronted with difference, you respond not with respect, but with aggression. Live and let Live Molly. Can't we all just get along?? ( I spell checked) love eternally, Mom
-------------

Can I be convinced by these earnest voices to practice kindness and mercy instead of vindictive crush-and-destroy warfare? I'm really not sure. But I suppose I could think about it while I wait to see if my stale beer drowning traps work (no dead bodies yet, but I'll keep checking).

(It even has a ramp, for ease of uphill scuttling!)

Didn't I tell you?

2010-01-29T16:21:00.003+07:00

Not a day had passed since the official launch of my Campaign to Crush the Cockroach when I received the following email:

"Subject: I am deeply disappointed.

Body (after spell checking out the errors that naturally accompany any such impassioned appeal):

Mother Nature in her wisdom has created many cretaures great and small, among them the cockroach. Living in Cambodia, where mosquitos can kill you, you instead choose to focus your bile on the cockroach, which doesn't bite, sting or really do anything more than just exist. I thought you might admire that the cockroach is among the fastest of insects...it can run three miles an hour, and few insects can make noise...the hissing is probably a male looking for love, perhaps he loves YOU (I know I do, so I find it perfectly understandable). A Cockroach can live without its head for up to two weeks. It can survive being frozen. It can hold its breath for 40 minutes. It has been around for 200 million years. it is a SURVIVOR. Some people keep them as pets. I suggest you do the same. They are very clean animals, and are hard to kill. A six foot can of Raid may do you more harm than the poor arthropod. Love You Mom"

And didn't I tell you how I would respond? Ignore and deny, friends, ignore and deny. My next post will be a photograph of the do-it-yourself cockroach trap I've constructed, although taking in account the remarkable breath-holding prowess of our determined foe, I may consider replacing the central drowning chamber with some kind of guillotine-and-then-drown arrangement. I do seriously doubt that a cockroach can hold it's breath for 40 minutes if it no longer has a head, or, for that matter, live headless two weeks when submerged in a pool of stale beer -- don't you, Mom?

A short history of my loathing for the cockroach

2010-01-25T11:37:00.001+07:00

It's actually really unnecessarily long, but let me go ahead and reveal my thesis now, for those of you who like to cut to the chase: Cockroaches are the most disgusting mistake of a creature that the universe has ever spawned. (And here May and my mom both either stop reading or begin composition of a treatise outlining all the charming characteristics of the cockroach and enumerating their countless contributions to society and the animal kingdom. Which I will defiantly ignore.)

This is a simple absolute truth that abides no contention, and yet, mysteriously, it's taken me until last night to attain full clarity on the topic. Let me explain how I got here.

During my first extended stay in the tropics, while teaching English in rural Costa Rica after high school, I lived with a local host family who liked to spend the evenings watching a popular variety show to kill time before their beloved soap opera started. The variety show never failed to be an idiotic waste of time, but it had it's highlights. For example, one of the first nights in my new home, I witnessed the following programming: 8 or 9 grown men, dressed up in full body cockroach suits complete with however many hairy legs is appropriate sticking out at all angles and wiry antennae poking up out of their beady little cockroach heads, were dancing around a pool of what could easily have been mistaken for water by the untrained eye. Lucky contestants were chosen to come up to the stage and swing a 6 foot can of Raid, hung from the ceiling by a cable, at these dancing cockroaches with the ultimate goal of knocking them into a pool of -- not water, but Raid in liquid form (it was of course actually water, but we were encouraged to use our imaginations), upon which the cockroaches would wriggle and squirm and shriek until the Raid seeped into their little nooks and crannies and they died a horrible death. Congratulations! A month's supply of Raid to the winner!

I was amused, but also horrified. Was this what I was in for in the tropical paradise nation of Costa Rica? A cockroach problem of such daunting proportions that the local populace had rely on such grotesque humor just to be able to cope? That night I slept with the blankets up around my neck and a pillow over my head, impervious to the bewildered glances from my host sister roommate. She may have thought I was a freak right off the bat, but then I made it all night without having to shake a cockroach out of my ear, so what did I care.

Thankfully, though, it turned out that my initial fears were unfounded. The variety show must have just had a really good relationship with Raid, because in my entire four months of living in a wood and corrugated tin cabin with a leaky roof and very little separation of indoor and outdoor, I can't even remember ever seeing a cockroach. This must have been due in large part to the fastidious cleanliness of my hosts, but I think it also had to do with Goofy, the rat terrier mutt that the family usually kept on a chain outside, who never got as much attention in his whole life as he did during the time I was there, who adored me with all his heart and soul after I pet him for five minutes and snuck him some leftover chicken, and who must have chased them off in order to keep me around. Goofy and I loved each other and I know he would have done that for me.

At any rate, I wrapped up my first tropical foray without much of an opinion on the cockroach either way. Then a few years later I went to Senegal and lived with a 300 pound Wolof host mama who was the first of her husband's two wives, a woman who had learned that she couldn't control much in the world beyond the walls of her house and the ten children who lived within them, but she could sure as hell control that. She was a force to be reckoned with; I pity the cockroach that crossed her path, and its extended family. So I didn't really have a cockroach encounter there either, but I have to attribute that to the badass mamajama making sure her resident tubab had no reason to take her rent money elsewhere. Like Goofy before her, Mama kept the cockroaches out and the cash cow in (even if Goofy's was a different currency).

Fast forward to the present. Here I am in the tropics again -- only this time, I'm on my own. No Goofy to regulate, no Mama to lay down the law. It's me against the cockroaches and no 6 foot can of Raid in sight. And so only now does the full horror of the cockroach really become apparent; only now do I realize what I'm up against.

There are two or three of them living in the kitchen. They come out at night and scurry around, sometimes squeaking, sometimes going about their foul business in silence. This really wouldn't be that much of a problem for me if I could pretend it's not happening, but to get to my bathroom, I have to walk through the kitchen. Sometimes in the dead of night. Alone. In the dark. And barefoot.

Usually, I just deal. I slap my feet loudly against the tile floor on approach, and the cockroaches have the decency to pretend to fear me. They scuttle under the cabinets and hide until I pass. We eye each other warily, but nobody makes a move. I relinquish this territory to them, and they offer me safe passage. We have our boundaries. Nobody gets hurt.

This, at least, is how I understood our fragile coexistence. But last night this delicate balance was rudely upset when, upon returning my midnight trip to the loo, one of these mangy pests refused to cede passage to me, crouching insolently in my path as I tried to leave the kitchen. I foot-slapped. He hissed. I clapped my hands. He hissed. I made a shoo-ing noise. One more hiss. And then, the unthinkable: he LEFT the kitchen, TURNED the corner, and ENTERED MY ROOM. Where he promptly hid under my armoire and hissed at me smugly from the safety of his dark abode.

All rules of interspecial etiquette thus abandoned, I went to look for something deadly to spray at him. Even a 1 foot can of Raid would have sufficed, but of course we didn't have any. All we had was fabric softener, so I tried that. Spray spray! Hiss hiss! Nothing. Then I tried to chase him out with a broomstick shoved blindly under the armoire and flung around in desperate search of a target. Poke poke! Hiss hiss! But still, no movement. I tried to move the armoire, hoping somehow to crush him in the process, but it was too heavy. I had nothing. He was firmly esconced in his hideyhole and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I had been outfoxed by a three inch insect, and I was pissed.

Naturally there would be no sleeping under these circumstances, with such a monster so close at hand, so I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, blanket up to my ears despite the heat, one eye open and ears attuned to the tell tale sound of the cockroach scuttle. I kept thinking of the night not long ago that Charlsea woke up to a cockroach crawling across her arm...oh the horror...Anyway the scuttling sound of escape never came, or maybe I did doze off for a minute or two and he made a break for it, who knows. All I can say is that a war has been declared, my homeland has been invaded, and it is my sacred right to defend myself to the death. There's just no going back. This cockroach and his little cockroach clan are toast.

Trouble is, these buggers are really hard to kill, and I feel like spraying Raid indiscriminately throughout my kitchen is probably kind of a lose-lose situation. So I have to be creative and I'm eagerly accepting suggestions. How to kill the cockroach? Discuss.

Bring on the Tiger

2010-01-05T14:19:00.006+07:00

Sua sadai jol chnam thmei! Or something like, Hello to Entering Year of New! Year of the Tiger, what what!

I got back to Phnom Penh just in time to ring in the new year Khmer style, which I did by eating at a Moroccon restaurant with a few American friends and then going to an expat bar for mojitos and drunk boys jumping in the pool. So, not Khmer style at all, it turns out. I wanted to do the Cambodian thing, but unfortunately what that entailed was loitering around a temple, covering my ears to protect them from acute Khmer music poisoning, and posing with my fascinating white friends for the endless barrage of camera phone portraits that naturally occur when barangs wander off the barang track and into the wild Khmer yonder. Not to say I'm opposed to that sort of local charm, but I just needed a little time to ease my way back into it. Or maybe I am opposed to that sort of local charm. So what.

At any rate, the night ended with a half showing of the timeless classic film Baby Mama and people passed out in crooked positions, so all in all I'd say it was a success.

What was not a success, however, was our trip to the market the following day to introduce our friend Katie, who just moved to Cambodia from rural Indonesia, to the joys of the clothes-stolen-from-the-GAP-factory section (so many cotton basics!). I guess we got carried away in all the crew necks, though, because the next thing we know, we're over at the pirated DVD counter about to buy some really quality stuff, kind of in the same genre as Baby Mama, and Katie no longer has a wallet. Nor does she have a purse without a gaping slit cut into it. In fact, she has a purse with a gaping slit cut into it, through which said wallet was extracted expertly by some sticky fingered market rat. Panic ensues for a minute as we piece together what happened, but it doesn't last very long. We cancel the cards and deal with all the details, and after a few minutes realize that it's really not that bad, and that it's kind of what's supposed to happen in sleazy markets, at least once or twice, in order to pay your dues to the traveling gods (it hasn't happened to me yet, but I'm expecting it any day now). It's funny how surprising and disorienting it is though, even when you know it's out there, and even when it actually happens to your friend and not to you -- you're still a victim and you still need to recover by going to get your second of three massages for the weekend, that's just a given.

Anyway, as good as it was to be home, to be spoiled, to have a little Cricket to snuggle with, and to see most of you folks, I'm happy to be back and really looking forward to the new year. I'm going to travel just a little wee bit more, drink my weight in passion fruit smoothies at least every week, if not every day, and blissfully blow my entire savings on coin purses and scarves. Hooha!

And then by this time next year, if all goes according to plan, I'll be well on my way to being the next Barbara Lee -- and I promise to remember all the little people who penpalled me along the way.

Happy 2010! May 2009 rot in hell.

Running: not so boring after all!

2009-12-08T09:14:00.006+07:00

I ran my first 10k! Or race of any kind, really. I thought I really didn't like running, but it turns out that if I have something to run for, like my dignity and not finishing last, then I can actually kind of get into it (and finish in a respectable 55 minutes 20 seconds! Without stopping even once!). There were I think 8 of us who ran it and then a handful more who were in town to partake of the reunion party that the weekend turned into, seeing as we had friends come from the faraway lands of Vietnam, Indonesia, and even Clear Lake, California for the big event. The race atmosphere is lot of fun-- I loved getting up at 5 and eating power bars in the hotel room and then heading to the race site to jump around and stretch and be nervous with 3,000 other people waiting for things to kick off. The setting for this one was also pretty incredible: we ran past Angkor Wat and a few other temples, through the jungley woods that surround them, through an open field with ruins scattered hither and tither, and all this as the sun was rising in the early morning sky. Not a bad way to start a day! And from there to a well-deserved mid-morning massage, a nap, some celebratory food and drink, and dancing our sore legs til the wee hours of the morning. Great weekend -- and we are already planning our next race, hopefully in March, along the coast. I could seriously get into this.

And then I open the New York Times this morning and find that the whole thing has been featured on the front page, since it's actually a big fundraiser for landmine victims and other disabled Cambodians who need prostheses and can't afford them. Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/sports/08iht-cambo.html?ref=global-home

All in all, a good way to end my fall "semester" in Cambodia. And now I'm ready for some Barney's and Croatian wine, not necessarily together, but if it works out that way I'm not complaining.

India Vol 2

2009-12-03T10:17:00.009+07:00

Picking up:

We departed Gangtok for Darjeeling in the afternoon on Wednesday, leaving just in time to hit the blinding fog on the ridge-top road that wound into town later that night--a good thing, though, as it not only added to the romanticism of the journey into tea country, it also stopped our driver from taking the the curves at 100 k per hour as was his habit in less foggy moments. This same speed demon driver also at one point made a 25 minute stop for a carwash, which is a move that no taxi driver has pulled on me before, but one which was not unwelcome as it allowed us to have a well deserved tea and dumpling break.

Once in Darjeeling, we checked into a cozy wood-paneled hotel with a fire place, had another cup of tea, and then headed from this colonial-era delight to the next: Glenary's, the restaurant where we ate pretty much every meal, very little of it Indian, in a classy and comfortable Victorian train station kind of setting.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and a memorable one. We spent sunrise on Tiger Hill trying to catch a glimpse of Everest, which I think we did but honestly couldn't really tell for sure, then napped, then headedover to the train station for our ride on the fabled Toy Train of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. Well, whoever spread the malicious rumor that that train is fun, quaint, or anything else other than a big waste of time should be shot. Seriously, and this is coming from someone who lists trains in the interests section of her facebook profile. The train crawled along at a snail's pace, along side the dirty road we had already driven on several times, belching smoke so black and billowing that little children started crying and dogs hid under cars and mothers just looked at us and shook their heads, like "Did you have to?". BJ called it "purgatorial", and he was right. We got off at the halfway point, in a town aptly named Ghoom, also sometimes called hell, and walked most of the way back in the haze of exhaust that still lingered over everything in our path.

After the train fiasco we definitely needed a little pick me up, so we went and had afternoon tea and scones at the Windamere, followed by afternoon brandys at the Windamere, followed by befriending a soft-spoken stranger to be our token pilgrim at Thanksgiving dinner, which we ate at, you guessed it, Glenary's. There was no cranberry orange relish -- and there were monkeys. I think that proves conclusively that it takes more than a monkey to make that fine dish, thank you very much.

And that was Darjeeling. Delhi was next, and it was as much chaos as
they say it is -- plus a pig stomach in a handcart -- and their animal
shelter is the saddest sight I've seen in a long time. But they did
have some adorable puppies, one of which Dana and BJ rescued and who is, as we speak, probably curled up in one of their armpits grunting like the little piglet she is. So that was a nice note to end on.

And also the coffee shop Dana goes to has a Winter 09 collection ("Layers" -- like, foam and coffee, or syrup and foam and coffee, for example) that they did a slide show of on their flatscreen TV and I enjoyed that a whole lot.

Anyway, so that was my introduction to India. Now I'm back in Cambodia and getting ready to run a 10 k race this weekend and then come home next Thursday, so hopefully I will be seeing a lot of you
soon! And eating a lot of cheeseburgers!

India Vol 1

2009-12-01T13:59:00.003+07:00

The punchline: India was fabulous and I'd like to go back...now.

The details: Even though the trip ended on a decidedly low note of me waking up at 2 am with food poisoning that didn't abate until somewhere over Burma (the only upside being that while I was confined to Dana's bathroom in the wee hours of the Delhi morning, huddled on the cold tile floor with my head resting gingerly on the toilet seat, I got to enjoy a few extra hours snuggling with the newest addition to Dana and BJ's life of bohemian chic mid-twentidom: Lalu the most adorable puppy east or west of Oakland California), on balance, it was wonderful.

The trip began in earnest in the Bangkok airport, where, waiting to board our flight to Calcutta, we heard the following announcements:

"Now boarding rows 17-35". Ok, we're row 2, we'll wait. 7 minutes pass.
"Now boarding rows 16-35". Ok, that's only one more row, why did you even bother. We wait. 2 minutes pass.
"LAST CALL FOR CALCUTTA IF YOU'RE NOT ON THIS BLOODY PLANE IN TEN SECONDS WE WILL LEAVE YOUR SORRY ASS BEHIND"

Welcome to India, a land so supremely confident in its god-given right to be as illogical as it wants whenever it wants, thank you sir madam please enjoy some tea, that you really just can't argue.

So we hurry onto the plane, fly to Calcutta, make our way to the train station (after our taxi driver took us somewhere else entirely, no matter that our destination was actually printed out in bold letters right in front of him on the pre-paid receipt, clear as day--it was our fault and we were shit-for-brains tourist louts who should obviously fork over a hefty tip to make up for the trouble we'd caused), and there, amidst the swarming sea of Indians and stray dogs, we miraculously collided right into Dana and Co. Thus united, the five of us -- yours truly, Charlsea, Dana, Dana's boyfriend BJ, and a delightful Spanish girl named Clara who(m?) Dana had never met but decided to invite along for the week anyway because it was rumored she had Andrew Byrd on her Ipod -- set off to board our train. It would take too long to explain just how complicated that process was, having something to do with a wait list and a check-in sheet, two people booked into one bunk, all of us in different cars, and so on and so forth, but somehow we ended up all finding beds together (except for the man of the trip who graciously took the loner bed some ten cars away), and off we zoomed through the night accompanied by only a few wayward cockroaches per bunk, en route to Gangtok, capital of Sikkim state, where our free hotel awaited us.We procured said free hotel through a random VIA connection, and, other than a faulty hot water heater which necessitated nightly bucket showers, the set up was fantastic. We stayed in Gangtok three nights, made friends with local street dogs, sampled all nature of Indian sweets, and browsed through each and every moss-green painted shawl-and-blanket shop that lined the streets of this quaint little mountain town. It was clean, the air was fresh, and there were signs here and there reminding us not to pluck the flowers. In short, not the India we were expecting, but one we were happy to explore.
Other than stroll and drink tea, we did take one day trip to a high altitude lake called Tsomgo, which was fun partly because our "guide" was a 12 year old mostly-mute who's only contribution to the trip was to ask me, upon arrival: "You want to yak now?" which at least served some amusement value -- he meant did I want to ride a yak, of course, but his version wasn't too far off appropriate either. It turned out I did not want to do either, and he seemed disappointed, but he couldn't actually say so since that sentence did not involve the verb "to yak", and so we let it be.So that's about halfway and a good place to stop, and I'll tell you about Darjeeling and Delhi in the next installment. Did I mention it involves a puppy?

Work

2009-11-13T17:31:00.003+07:00

A lot of you have been asking what I do and have been unsatisfied with my short parenthetical replies, so I thought I'd write a little more about it for whosoever might be interested.

I work at a Cambodian NGO called Development and Partnership in Action in their Development Education and Advocacy Unit. The organization works on rural development issues, and the unit I work for does mostly capacity building, awareness-raising, and government lobbying on issues on natural resource management (communal forestry and fisheries as well as illegal logging and encroachment) and extractive industries (oil, gas, and mining, both mitigating the impacts of and transparently managing the revenue from). My title has just this week been revealed to be "Communications Advisor." Who knew? So apparently that's my focus, and I'm getting business cards to confirm it.

What I actually do in that capacity is a little bit less clear, and I don't detect much of an overarching theme in my assignments, but recently it's been a lot of power point action. My boss will appear at my desk, on, say, Tuesday morning to inform me that he's been invited to speak say, Friday afternoon at (insert very important conference or other event here) and he wants me to prepare his statement. Upon further questioning, I usually learn that "statement" means power point presentation, and "Friday afternoon" means Thursday morning. It's hard to communicate those things on round one, I understand.

Anyway so then he will summarize the content of said statement/power point as, for example: "responsible mining in Cambodia", or maybe, "Chinese investments in the Mekong region". The topics are always interesting, but for someone with absolutely no background in responsible mining, Cambodia, Chinese investment, or the Mekong region, it usually takes me a while to figure out what exactly he wants to say. He's not great at deciding that himself, or maybe he is and he just won't tell me, so we stick to the tried and true method of guess and check: I research a little bit and put something together, he looks it over and it helps him realize what he actually wanted, and I make the necessary changes/start from scratch from a whole different angle. Inefficient? Oh, alright, I guess you could say that. But at least my work involves playing a guessing game a daily basis, which I bet yours doesn't.

Other than reading my boss' mind and translating his thoughts into power point form, I also edit documents that my coworkers have written in their best English, which, though very good, often involves sentences so awkward and nonsensical that they just make me giggle. I'll send some examples next time they come around. And other tasks include (I'm consulting my work plan to make sure I don't miss anything): taking minutes and preparing reports of English language meetings, editing and updating the content of the website (dpacambodia.org -- really needs to be updated), writing articles for the newsletter, attending conferences and bringing back copies of the reports presented and a handful of free pens, and, at some undisclosed point, conducting a training for my coworkers on "Media Protocol", my long-time area of expertise. That should be interesting.

So I think that covers it. Overall, it's a good gig, and I love that this organization is trying to play a role in pressuring the government to behave itself, to stop awarding land concessions of land that people already own, to resist siphoning off all the revenue from extractive industries for themselves, and to maybe not bulldoze every tree in Cambodia and build a dam on every river, and then poison the fish just for good measure. It's good work, even if I sometimes get lost in the shuffle.

On that note, it's 5:30 on a Friday. What am I still doing here?

Singapore, hold the Sling

2009-11-09T17:50:00.005+07:00

I'm back from Singapore and here's what I have to report:

We got in Saturday morning and headed to Little India, where we checked into an overpriced but funky room over an Australian pub, specially designed for people who don't like to sleep, ever. We spent our first day wandering about--mostly in metro stations trying to find our way out of the giant malls that seem to surround every single exit, and seem to have no exits of their own, much like a Las Vegas Casino with an exclusive clientele of teenyboppers and hipsters--eventually working our way to the one and only Raffles Hotel, where we were hoping to enjoy a Singapore Sling in style at the Long Bar from whence it sprung. Turns out, though, you have to basically sign away your kidneys at the door to be able to afford those things, so we elected instead to nibble a few free peanuts surreptitiously, soaking up the lazy colonial ambiance the place is so famous for, and then retreated out the door before the waitstaff was put in the awkward position of having to explain the traditional practice of actually purchasing something from the establishment you're in. Oh well. I'll drink a Singapore Sling someday when it doesn't cost 27.05 in any currency, and I'm sure I will enjoy it just as much.
From there we recommenced wandering and got a pretty good tour of the city on foot, down to the Asian Civ Museum (we didn't go in, though. very bad tourists, i know), over to the Merlion statue, who looks out on a massively ugly contstruction site across the river which seems little insulting for the poor guy, and then down to Lau Pasat, a recommendation from our very own local expert Fred (thanks Fred!) We had the best satay the world has to offer and about six other things between the two of us, just so we didn't feel like we had missed anything. This quickly became a pattern for the weekend--eat at food stalls, eat often, eat a lot, go back later and eat some more, eat something on the road between food stalls, and then plan the next time we were going to eat in a food stall. The food options alone made the trip worthwhile. I can now completely understand why one of my fellow VIA volunteers actually named her blog after an avocado milkshake. Right on, alpokatshake, you are so justified.

On Saturday night we wanted to save a little money on beer (alcohol being taxed at what must be a record rate of 100%), so we went into the 7-11 to pick up a few cans. I asked the clerk if we were allowed to drink on the street in Singapore, a country well known for it's high standards of public cleanliness and thus one which I expected would frown upon such debauchery, but the clerk replied,surpisingly, that I could. "As long as you do not disturb two persons."

"I'm sorry?"

"Drinking on public sidewalk is permitted provided you do not disturb two fellow persons."

"How do I know if I'm disturbing 2 fellow persons?"

"Some foreign official will decide."

"Is that so?"

"Indeed yes. Foreign official will decide your case, madam, if suspected of disturbing two persons or more."

I can generally smell illogical circles of nonsense explanations a mile away, thanks to all the practice I got in Senegal, but I really couldn't tell if my clerk friend was being serious and if so, what in the blazes he was possibly trying to convey. Undercover foreign officials roaming the streets of Little Inida recording instances of suspected drunken fellow-person disturbing? I just don't see how that would work. But just to be safe, we took our beers and sat under a dark overhang with a bunch of Indian guys who were doing the same thing, banking on the fact that none of them would be bothered. Certainly not two of them, anyway. And bothered they were not.

Anyway so that's just day one of the fun, and I'm leaving out the part where we went back to the Australian pub and got smashed for no real reason except that you don't really have a choice in an Australian pub, and we wouldn't have been able to sleep if we hadn't, right? So we started day two with a wee bit of an oucheyhead, but a few blissful hours lounging on the beach at Sentosa Island made everything better. Plus Charlsea won the sunburn of the year award by applying zero sunscreen whatsoever and then swimming to her heart's content under the blazing equatorial sun. Couldn't be prouder of you, there, Charlsea.

And that was that! A great weekend. Singapore is really a grand old town, even with all the new stuff. It's a town where monks and weathered old British ladies in sun dresses walk down the same sidewalk and seem to both feel completely at home, like each one owns the version of the city they happen to inhabit and doesn't realize or mind that scores of people who are nothing like them feel the exact same way. Everyone's got a niche. And it's clean, and things work. And you realize just how much you miss that when you get back to a country, like, say Cambodia, after getting up somewhere in the neighborhood of 3:30 am to catch your flight, and you ask your moto driver to take you to your home near Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum/Prison, one of the biggest landmarks in the entire city, and your moto driver happens to be a little fuzzy on his Khmer Rouge war memorials and instead tries to take you to Choueng Ek, the killing fields, located some 15 kilometers in the opposite direction. At least I got a tour of the prime trash burning locations of the greater Phnom Penh area, which I have duly noted for future reference.

Singapore 1, Phnom Penh -5.

Chasing Fame and an Indian Visa

2009-11-04T14:25:00.003+07:00

Hello all and here are some recent updates:

As some of you avid facebook users may already know, the most exciting thing to happen of late is that Charlsea and I were tapped to audition for a Cambodian beer commercial through Charlsea's new Khmer tutor, whose day job at an ad agency occasionally requires her to round up foreigners from around the city to pose as scientists, volleyball players, skateboarders, and any other personalities they think foreigners might embody convincingly. Of course all of these roles require enjoying a nice cold (insert Cambodian beer client here), so I guess our end result will be something like a lab technician with a vial of blood in one hand and a brewsky in the other, which is only believable, it seems, if that lab technician is a skinny white guy with a beard (which they're still looking for, by the way, if anyone's interested). As far as my role, I myself am envisioning some kind of beach volleyball scene, for which travel to Fiji and a generous per diem will most likely be required. For now, though, they're still in the early stages, shanghaing barangs (can you guess?) wherever they can find them, transporting them to an unmarked building somewhere in Phnom Penh and taking pictures with a 12 year old digital camera that they borrowed from someone's little brother (I suggested the audition would be more useful if we were allowed to demonstrate our beer-drinking techniques with a live performance, but received only giggles in response). The whole thing was wildly professional and I feel confident that my beer modeling career is about to take off. I will keep you posted but you'll probably see me on TV before I have a chance to write again anyway.

In other news, I've been planning a trip to India for the last few weeks and have finally gotten to the stage where I have to interact with Indians, and let me tell you, it has not been going well. First was the trip to the Indian Embassy, located in the middle of nowhere, Phnom Penh, where to obtain a visa you must present not only your passport and endless forms and extortionist fees, but also a photocopy of your passport for good measure. Why, you ask, would they need a photocopy when they a) have the real thing and b) very likely have access to a photocopy machine themselves? Well, why not. And you'd think if they were going to have that bizarre policy wherein they require you to bring your own copies, they might have thought of offering a copy service right there in the office to make a little extra chump change off all of us chumps. But no--we had to go out walking to look for one, and since we were in the middle of nowhere as mentioned above, you can probably guess that there were not a whole lot of photocopy shops set up to receive us. Charlsea and I must have walked a full mile down a hot dusty road lined with pretty much nothing, until we came to a gas station and decided to scrap the embassy thing and sit in the air conditioned mini mart eating chips and ice cream for breakfast. So all in all I guess it was still a successful outing.

Anyway we went back a few days later with photocopies galore, only to meet with the same surly official who had sent us on a wild photocopy chase the last time, and lo and behold he had another trick up his sleeve. On no grounds whatsoever he decided to deny us the 1 year multiple entry visa that you're supposed to be able to get even if you're Osama, and gave us a measly two month single entry instead. Blast him. This means I can't go to Delhi again in February to house/dog sit in a mansion with Dana...but then maybe that's for the best, given that I do, technically, have a job to be doing here (more on that later, really, I promise).

And then third strike against India is this: I bought a domestic ticket from Bagdogra in the north back to Delhi on an Indian travel website, and, after a little maneuvering with the credit card verification system, finally received that wonderfully thrilling "Trip Confirmed" email that always makes my world go round. Things were looking good. Today, however, things have ceased to be looking good. I got a follow up email saying, "Thank you for canceling your flight. You will receive your partial refund within 3-14 business days." This might make sense had I actually canceld my flight, but I assure you, I had not. And upon spending all my phone credit calling the customer service center in India to complain, all I learned was that my best bet would be to send an email to customer service.....with whom I was already speaking. If this is a sign of things to come, I think I may just do some extra beer commercials on Fijian beaches and leave India to wallow in its own bureaucratic misery.

Lastly, as I see this email is fast becoming a Homerian epic, I wanted to tell you all a little bit about the Water Festival which was held here in Phnom Penh this past weekend. The festival celebrates some confusing tidal behavior that takes place at the end of the rainy season, involving a river suddenly turning around and flowing in the opposite direction, a process which remains completely baffling to me and probably everyone else even if they won't admit it.

Anyway all the people from the provinces come in to town to wander about, experience the joys of an escalator, and cheer at the boat races, which they have to watch from the street or the riverbank but which foreigners watch from a plush yellow tent right at the finish line, cordoned off with police tape and a metal detector and numerous signs warning "Tourist Only Zone." Talk about uncomfortable preferential treatment--very double hawk. We spent most of our time instead trying to be part of a team huddle or receive a racing T-shirt off the back of some adoring young Khmer man. No luck there but I think we came close.

And your moment of cross cultural zen: the last ice cream I ate came in a fancy package with a sophisticated logo and the following label: "Ais Kreeme". Needless to say it was delicious.

This weekend I go to Singapore. Stay tuned.

Proudest Moments

2009-10-14T20:26:00.002+07:00

This week we are having our annual Staff Reflection Retreat in a town on the southern coast, and this is what it's included so far: two hours of introductions with a 30 minute tea, coffee, and friend banana break; a day of debauchery at the beach where people got so hammered that the receptionist bit the executive director on the shoulder (apparently her father was a friend of his so it's really no big deal); a night of song and dance torture where I was called up to participate in a pre-programmed dance competition that no one had told me about (it was traditional khmer dancing, which looks like salsa dancing in slow motion and with a lot more wrist action, and at which i am completley inept), and a singing contest whose proceedings easily constitute the most embarrassing moment of my recent life.

What happened was that Jude asked me to sing a song with him (and he can actually sing, which he conveniently did not mention) so we settled on Journey "Don't Stop Believing" because all the karaoke places here have it so we figured if a live band (we had a live band to accompany us) was going to know any American song, it would probably be that one. I asked beforehand to make sure they knew the music, and was assured that all was in order. Well of course it wasn't. We got up there and they asked us to sing the music to the keyboardists so that they could "improvise". So we tried, frantically, for a few minutes, before the Team Building Coordinator/MC got impatient and shooed us onstage, where we belted out a version of the song that was half a capella and half to the tune of plinkity-plink the Khmer piano song, and Jude didn't even really sing because he had the good sense to be too self conscious, so it was pretty much me soloing to an audience of 50 or 60 coworkers who just met me and think, with good reason, that I am a complete and total freak. The worst part is when they did the scoring, jude and i received an X (which is not even a real score, in case anyone was confused, in fact it is the exact opposite of a score--that's how bad it was). And when everyone went to claim their prizes, which included fancy soaps and lotions and the like, they decided not to give us one, until at the last minute the lady judge felt bad and gave us each a bottle of iced tea. As if that were less humiliating than nothing.

Needless to say, I escaped at the first possible moment to hide in my room and watch CNN in shame, and today no one has mentioned the incident at all. That's how you know you have really embarrassed yourself, when people are too embarrassed for you to even bring it up in jest. So it's not like a funny icebreaker that we can all chuckle about and bond over, it really is just an utterly humiliating moment with no redeeming qualities.

Next time I think I will elect to get drunk and bite my boss, as that appears to be more acceptable party behavior than anything I can come up with. Oh, the joys of cultural exchange.

Siem Riep. And the cat.

2009-10-09T14:48:00.008+07:00

So first of all, since clearly this is a pressing issue: the cat did not get to stay. I was on board with this cat, but one of my roommates wasn't at all and the other was only selectively, like when the cat was being cute or pitiful, and that was just not going to work. I couldn't handle the idea of taking the cat back in and nurturing and loving her, only to have to put her out again as soon as she inconvenienced someone or shat in their sink or whatever. Which, honestly, was probably bound to happen, given the vindictive and slightly unbalanced nature of this particular sorry creature. So I'm 1-1 on impulsive adoptions, batting 500 if you will, down but not out, still standing by the Cricket adoption as one of my (and my mom's) finest moments as any of you who have met her can attest, but at the same time ready to admit defeat and maybe just buy a stuffed animal.

In other news, this weekend I took the Angkor Wat plunge, which just means I finally went to see these damned temples that everyone keeps raving about. The fact that I'd been in the country nearly two months and hadn't paid homage to Cambodia's crowing religious and architectural achievement was kind of blasphemy as far as most people were concerned, so I said fine, took a few more days off work (and speaking of work, i know i never talk about it, but it's just not the mass-email worthy, unlike my never ending supply of cat stories: i write little snippets about extractive industries in cambodia or how the global financial downturn has affected my NGO, pretending i know about these things enough to keep getting assignments from my boss, and i edit reports that my coworkers write in broken but amusing English, and i try to be helpful in various other ways but the truth is it just doesn't take up all that much time and probably doesn't merit a whole lot more parenthesis space here either so...) and headed up to Siem Riep, the town in the center of Templeland.

Siem Riep is a cute place, and although we arrived in the midst of some of the worst flooding it's seen in a long time, it somehow managed to retain much of its charm. You would think that a couple of feet of standing floodwater might be a little gross, and I guess objectively it was, but it was also a lot of fun watching everyone trudge along through the river of a main road, splashing and horsing around and falling over on each other like it was some kind of planned event. Everyone came out to watch these splashy proceedings, so the town felt lively and busy and generally celebratory. And they had Mexican food there, and Mexican food means margaritas, and margaritas means a party no matter what flooded country you're in. So a good time was had by all. Oh, and the temples were magnificent, of course.

And then yesterday I came across the Cambodian version of old people dancing in the park, and let me tell you, if I thought that Chinese 70 year olds waltzing was the pinnacle of delightfulness, I really underestimated what the Cambodians are capable of. This was something altogether beyond my expectations: hundreds, literally hundreds of people of all ages, from wobbly infants to wobbly senior citizens, but mostly (surprisingly!) really hip teenagers, engaging in mass jazzercise after work, or school, or daycare, or whatever. Where we have happy hours and soccer practice and bingo, they have communal dance aerobics...this country just keeps getting better and better! I'm definitely planning on joining in, but I need to buy a couple sweatbands and some one-shoulder neon workout shirts, and maybe a scrunchy, before I will really be presentable. I will make sure to take pictures.

The cat came back

2009-10-01T14:05:00.001+07:00

So remember how I mentioned a cat? Having to get rid of a cat? Psycho cat? Maybe I didn't mention getting the cat, so let me back up and start there.

I wanted to get a kitten in Cambodia, since I was going to be staying a year or two and wanted to settle in and feel like a normal resident in a normal city, with something warm and furry to keep me company in my new environment. And I love adopting things impulsively, as we all know, so I thought getting a kitten would be a satisfying endeavor. But when I set out to procure said kitten, it turned out that all the kittens in this town were taken. I guess every wandering expat who breezes through Phnom Penh for a year had about the same idea as I did, and were a little quicker on the draw to boot. So anyway, there were no kittens up for grabs, but there was a cat. A mama cat, who had been found living in the garage of this family's house, had had kittens who all got snatched up by all the more proactive expats, and was left neglected in the garage, waiting for someone to claim her (the family couldn't keep her because of some allergic child or something). I went over and met the cat one drizzly Sunday afternoon and we got along fine, so I put her in a box and hopped on a tuk tuk and brought her home. My roommates had been supportive of the idea, and when I got home, they seemed excited.

And they were, for awhile. But then while I was gone to the haven of Rainbow Lodge, the cat made some rather foul messes that they had to clean up and they decided it wasn't going to work--the cat had to go. Which I was upset about, but it was 2 against 1 and their concerns were valid, so I didn't argue. The trouble was, the lady who gave me the cat wouldn't take her back, and no one I knew wanted a cat, let alone one who made a habit of doing dirty things to people's sinks and pillows. The only alternative was to take the cat to a temple about 12 blocks away, drop her there with all her food, and entrust her to the charity of the monks. Like a Cambodian SPCA, I guess. Not ideal, but workable, and so with a heavy heart I got on my bicycle and rode her, in my bike basket, over to her new home.

With that taken care of, I thought that unfortunate experiment was over. How wrong I was: Last night, ten days after this fateful cat-drop, I woke up in a haze at 2 in the morning to find the cat, the very same cat, sitting on my bed meowing her little head off, totally randomly and for no reason I could possible fathom. I had to be dreaming. But then she tried to bite me on the face and I was pretty sure it was real.

It turns out my roommate was walking home from near the temple, the cat spotted her and ran over in delight, purring and rubbing and demanding to be taken home, and my roommate didn't have the heart to leave her. Seriously, what are the chances?! So this roommate brought her home and dumped her on my bed in the middle of the night so she could yowl at me (I think i understood a few words of Khmer in there) and demand cat food that we didn't have til the wee hours of the morning, and that is what I woke up to at two oclock in great confusion. I was, and remain, bewildered.

So I guess what I'm getting at is, does anyone want a dysfunctional mama cat from Cambodia? Free shipping?

Rainbow Lodge and other activities

2009-09-27T10:39:00.007+07:00

So here's what's been going on:
I played hooky for a day from work and took a long weekend at a place called the Rainbow Lodge, a little cluster of rustic bungalows situated at the edge of the South Cardamom Mountains Protected Reserve, about 5 hours from Phnom Penh. The lodge itself doesn't offer much more than delicious home cooking and board games aplenty, but right down the hill there's a big wide river to swim in, and kayaks and innertubes to play with, and there are two really nice dogs and a kooky british lady running the whole thing so it's a generally good atmosphere. A few miles up the river there's also a really impressive waterfall, and to get there you can either take a
leisurely half hour boat trip or, if you're a moron, you can choose to trek two hours overland, uphill, through leech-infested pools of mucky water with no trail to speak of and nothing to look at except the low hanging branches that keep hitting you in the face. Both are fun options. Anyway so we spent our days playing in the river and our nights playing scrabble with the other guests, who were for the most part other young people living in Phnom Penh and escaping for the weekend, and had a lovely time. Also we won at Scrabble. Just for the record.

Then I came back to Phnom Penh, found out that the new cat had gone completely crazy and had to be returned, got a flat tire on my bike while returning said pyscho cat, came back home and dropped a dozen eggs on my foot and discovered that my computer wouldn't play DVDs anymore. Basically I should never have left Rainbow Lodge.

But this weekend has been a little calmer. Friday night I went to a free "networking party" where all the fancy young things in the city get dressed up and flock to the Intercontinental Hotel for free Indian food and booze and exchange business cards like grown ups, and then go drink more and sing karaoke into the wee hours of the morning, also just like grown ups. A real professional event. I don't have business cards, though, so there was an awkward moment when I arrived at the door and the check in guy asked me to drop my business card in the business card bowl, and I just looked at the bowl and looked at him and smiled like I didn't speak English and walked on in. Professional.

And today I came to visit my friend Charlsea at her place on the outskirts on Phnom Penh, which is a cool spot because it's right where the city melts into the country, so there are buildings and stores on one side of her house (by buildings and stores i mean brothels and karaoke joints) and then rice fields and lotus ponds on the other. And floodwaters all around, so it's like she has her own private moat. Which means, of course, that once you get all the way out there, over the moat and through the woods and all that, you are pretty much forced to order pizza and sit on the roof and watch grey's anatomy and not leave for any reason, which is fine by me.
And that's really all that's happened in the last few weeks. Oh, and the other day one of my fellow volunteers passed an 8 inch pink worm. Alive. So I think that's probably a good note to end on.

Newest housemate

2009-09-13T16:53:00.001+07:00

House Shots

2009-09-08T08:40:00.013+07:00

A few shots from the new pteah-- it ain't no Springroll but it will have to do.

<-- Kim and Julie admiring our neighbor's lovely ornamental roof. If only he didn't ferment shrimp paste in his backyard, I think we could be friends.

Vietnam, Completed

2009-09-06T19:46:00.004+07:00

To wrap it up:

We departed Phu Quoc in the pouring rain on a boat filled with young Vietnamese men in green uniforms. Maybe army? I don't know. They were a funny bunch, whoever they were. The boat attendants (like flight attendants, similarly sassy uniforms) decided to grace us with three full hours of screeching Vietnamese pop singers over the loudspeakers, and I can tell you that the acoustics in that rickety old skiff did not do those pop singers any favors, and that it was an acute form of torture, but the green soldiers were all merrily screeching along. At least the stewards handed out biscuits, otherwise I would have opted nstead for a long swim in the plastic bag-dark sea.

Anyway from there we headed up to a delta city called Can Tho where we have two VIA friends stationed for the year. Can Tho is unremarkable but for the sheer volume of blinking neon lights hung from trees, streetlights, fountains, buildings, and any other protruding objects (it's lit up like a christmas tree every night, just for festivity's sake I gather) and for the flags. I don't know if it was patriotism or aesthetics but there were single city blocks containing upwards of ten vietnamese flags--multiple flags per building. And even the massive Ho Chin Minh statue was draped in a giant flag to protect him from dust while they did construction around his ankles. So it's blinky bright and flag-dotted but otherwise unremarkable. While there we visited a deserted amusement park island, which was as creepy as it sounds, spent a night lost in the city driving in circles, and that was about it.

The last stop on the trip was definitely the highlight: Hoi An, described to me as "an old world charmer" and absolutely all I hoped for. It's colorful French colonial architechture and bundles and bundles of bougainvillea and breezy sidewalk cafes and a beach just down the road and a World Heritage Site of ancient Cham ruins just outside the city, and it's the tailoring capital of the country and it is just adorable. We had clothes made, we had long leisurely lunches, we saw the ancient ruins at sunrise, we walked around taking pictures, we took naps, and we were utterly content. I didn't want to leave.

But here I am in Phnom Penh, writing to you from an old mansion turned hip cafe with the rain pittering on the roof, and I am actually completely happy to be back. I really like it here. We started work this week and moved out of our guesthouse (the Spring Guest House, which we affectionately refer to as The Springroll) into our new apartment, which is delightfuI. I also picked up Khmer class again, lest my yoweling skills get rusty, and I think Sopip missed me.

Other than that, nothing to report, so I'll leave you all to your labor fay festivities and venture out into the rain to get some Indian food for dinner, then go home and luxuriate on my new silk cushions with a cup of jasmine tea and think about how bohemian I am.

By Popular Demand: Phu Quoc Dog Photos

2009-09-04T09:46:00.004+07:00

First, some background from Wikipedia:

"Phu Quoc ridgeback dogs are a breed of dog from Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam’s southern Kien Giang Province. According to Le Hoang Tam, Director of Vuong Trung Son Company, they are one of the world’s three rarest dogs with whorls on their backs, in addition to dogs from Thailand and Africa, as recorded by the International Association for Rare Dogs. According to old people on Phu Quoc Island, the dog was traditionally four main colours: spotted, black, yellow, and striped; however now the colours have become more varied."

(I like how they have cited the real experts: some guy named Le Hoang Tam who's head of a company no one's ever heard of, and, of course, old people. Such scholarship.)

Anyway here are a few photos. The first one I found online because it gives a good view of an entire dog, which is key. The second two are the ones I took of my favorite dog on the island, who liked to sleep under my chaise lounge with me, and who clearly proves that old people are living in the past when it comes to native dog coloration.

camera one camera two

Vietnam Continued

2009-09-04T09:45:00.001+07:00

To pick up where I left off:

We bade goodbye to the minibus scam artists in the town of Rach Gia, an unremarkable port city that serves as a launching pad for our next destination, the island of Phu Quoc. While overnighting in Rach Gia we ate barbequed pork chops on the street that rivaled the ones at Le Cheval, and didn't do much else (we had an airconditioned room with cable, what do you expect). People were nice to us though: in the morning before boarding the ferry, I was standing outside a restaurant while Charlsea ducked in to get a bottle of water. The ferry ticket-taker saw me idling and rushed over, indicating with enthusiastic gestures and pantomines that the ferry wasn't leaving for another twenty minutes, and why didn't i head on into the restaurant and grab a quick bite to eat first--I deserved a little pre-departure rice bowl as much as the next passenger! I didn't want to be late, but he was right: I did deserve a rice bowl. So we went in and had some rice and pork, breakfast of champions, and when I came back he gave me a little aren't-you-glad-you-got-some-

rice-and-pork-before-the-journey smile, and off we went.

We got to the island early afternoon and settled into our private bungalow, a tile and palm-frond delight set amid a garden of eden:hibiscus and plumeria everywhere, geckos shimmying around the palm trees and the tropical sea mere steps from our door. It sounds idyllic and it was, except for the unfortunate vietnamese practice of disposing of trash by placing it gently onto the ocean waves and trusting nature to do the rest (they must have heard from the Senegalese how trash actually prevents encroaching seas from flooding low-lying houses when it rains a lot--thank god word is spreading).

Anyway, while on Phu Qouc we decided to rent a motorbike and scoot around the island for a day, beach hopping like the fabulous beach hoppers we are. Of course, being a fabulous beach hopper is never quite as simple as it sounds, especially with a motorbike driver like yours truly. We spent all day getting lost, driving into people's front yards, trying to turn left and taking it a little wide and causing pedestrians to scatter in terror until we corrected ourselves and got back on the road (which we did, of COURSE), and generally not spending much time at all at any beaches. We also got held hostage by an 8 year old cowherd, who refused to move his dumb beasts off the public highway unless we bribed him. Naturally I flatly refused, and, indignant, honked at the cows until they parted and sped past, wobbling a little but generally maintaining my moral superiority.

We got back at the end of the day hot, sweaty, exhausted, covered in a thick crust of red dirt and mildly traumatized, but then we went swimming at the perfectly lovely beach that we had abandoned all day long in search of other, harder to find beaches, maybe beaches that didn't even exist, and then had a massage (i had a lot of those while we were there--at one point i asked for an hour long and instead i had two ladies massage me simultaneously for half an hour--vietnamese effeciency?) and paradise was restored.
The other interesting thing to note about Phu Quoc is that they have a native dog found only on the island that look like a cross between a dingo and a fruit bat. I have pictures if anyone's interested.

Our next stop will be my next email. These are getting longer...

Vietnam will deserve at least two...

2009-09-03T14:37:00.001+07:00

..because so far it's been overflowing with ridiculous, and I've only been here a four days. But it's been an adventure since the moment we left Phnom Penh in a shared taxi, and actually, even that was an adventure: After sitting in the parking lot with the engine running for a full hour while we waited for our car to fill up (and then for all of our passengers to return to said car after some of them decided this was actually the time to go out and take care of a little last minute fruit-shopping, no matter that everyone else was waiting in the suffocating stickiness of an overcrowded compact vehicle in the 90 degree heat) we finally set off. And by "we" I mean me, Charlsea, and 7 Cambodians. In a four-door sedan. So that would be 9 people in a car made for 5, and the only way that works is when the driver actually shares his seat with the pregnant lady, so that he's leaning sideways into the center console and craning his foot to even reach the brakes and just ignoring the sideview mirror concept altogether. There's potential for a harrowing journey here, but don't worry: we stopped so many times for no apparent reason, we actually got lapped by an oxcart.

After Mr Cambodian Toad's Wild Ride for 4 hours, we got out and stood twenty feet apart from each other just to remember what personal space feels like, and then we had lunch and hopped on a couple of motorbikes headed for the Vietnamese border. The ride was one of the highlights of my trip thus far, it was just such a stunning rice paddy wonderland (rice, as it happens, is one of the greenest plants I've ever seen--who knew?). Add that to the cinnamon-colored dirt roads and the women in bright dresses walking buffalos down the path, and perfect clouds and wind in your hair, and it makes for quite an enjoyable journey.

Anyway we crossed the border (they made a big fuss about us putting our measley luggage through the X-Ray machine, but then they realized that the X-Ray machine didn't actually work, so they let us take it off and go around. Oh, the satisfaction of the petty bureacrat thwarted in his pettiness!) and caught our next ride: a minibus to a port town 3 hours away. They charged us a lot more than everybody else and did so blatantly, like it was just the obvious thing to do. As soon as we realized this, we decided we would not go silently into the night, and so proceeded to make a fuss for about the next two hours, which we did using our phrasebook to compose the following hate letter in my journal:

"Hello. This bus price 100,000 Dong. We pay 400,000 Dong. We like our 300,000 Dong back please. We like a refund now. Thank you."

I showed it to the bus assistant lady, thieving extortionist that she was, and I know she knew I was right by the way she giggled and wagged her fingernails at me, but she clearly had no reason to care. I didn't give up. I tried reading my letter outloud to shame her, but the tones in Vietnamese are tricky and I don't think I made myself understood at all. I was about to stand up and ask if anyone spoke English and would come to our rescue when the bus driver (who had remained neutral thus far) reached back over his shoulder and earnestly thrust a bottle of water into my hands. A small one, like the kind they give you on airplanes. "Here," he seemed to be saying in his scratchy Vietnamese way, "I know you overpaid by the equivalent of 17 or 18 dollars, but take this 25 cent bottle of water, and let's just call it even." And, inexplicably, it seemed like a reasonable enough solution at the time. I drank my two swallows of tainted bribe water gladly and took a little nap until we arrived, and that was that. Vietnam one, Molly zero--but then who's really keeping score?So that gets me to the end of that day, and that's where I'm going to stop for now. Play by play of my subsequent transport adventures to follow shortly.

PP, second helping

2009-09-03T14:30:00.001+07:00

Jum reep sua, friends!

A few more tidbits from my city by the fluvial reservoir basin:

...though I must admit that there's really nothing too exciting to report. I haven't hugged a single ursine, I haven’t been party to a high altitude donkey massacre or resulting forced relocation scandal, and I haven’t even come close to bathing naked with the locals (though god knows I’m trying). The settled life just doesn't yield the kind of weird adventures that the peripatetic one did, but then I suppose that’s to be expected.

That’s not to say it hasn’t been interesting, though. Aside from the daily round of Russian roulette on my trusty maroon city cruiser stead (still officially unnamed, but I'm leaning towards Niak Krong: Dragon of the City), there are also the ongoing joys of language lessons with our devoted instructor Sopip (<---) , a real gem of a teacher and my favorite (only) local friend so far. And I like her so much partially because I just relish the absurdity of the Khmer language, with with she will always be associated. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that Khmer has the longest alphabet in the world (I think, it sure feels like it anyway)—56 letters, 23 of which are vowels. 23 VOWELS. Now I know we have our own challenges in the English language, what with that whole schizophrenic "y" situation muddling up our vowel harmony, but I’m fairly confident that this is harder. Twenty-three vowels! the vast majority of which I’ve only heard produced by cats in heat or maybe sea lions. So you can imagine the scene that unfolds as we try to master these nonsense sounds, the five of us in there with Sopip yowling and aaarping like a bunch of tortured circus animals straining against our own anatomy to make our jaws contort in unnatural and unsightly ways. We have no dignity left to speak of, but we persevere.

In other news, I found an apartment and signed a lease this week, so I’m now an official resident of this madhouse of a city, a real Pnompenoise if you will. Our apartment is great, a little haven of cross breezes and natural light set back away from the street in a quiet alley next to a coconut tree. I’ll be living with another volunteer, Kim, who most recently hails from Idaho but grew up in Indonesia and Thailand, went to high school in DC, worked at the SAME grassroots campaigns office I did in LA for the Kerry campaign, and is a firm believer in the power of pet psychics. How could we not get along! We’re planning to get a kitten and I want to name it Sopip after my language teacher but I still have to feel her out on that one. I mean it as a compliment but I’m not sure if that sentiment translates well.

And then there's the rest of the crew, shown above, who are all characters in their own right but good people for sure.

So that’s really the scoop. I’m planning a trip to Vietnam next week with Tex Mex Charlsea and then I start work September first. In the meantime I’m drinking lots of cat-orange-water and occasionally indulging in a passion fruit smoothie when the mood strikes. I’m sweaty literally all the time, but life is good.

I want to hear about labor day plans and whatever else is going on back there in the land of the reasonable vowel sounds.

love, maaaowwwlly

First Dispatch from PP

2009-09-03T14:26:00.001+07:00

So, I'm here in this crazy city that I'm going to be calling home for the next year or so, and I have a lot to say about it and most of it good, but first let me just touch on the rest of July and training in Thailand. There's not a whole lot to tell, because if training was boring for me to sit through one can only imagine how it would be for you all to hear about it, but it was memorable in a few ways. First and foremost, I made some friends. A good handful,actually, one of whom is a dyed-in-the-wool rural conservative Christian Texan (who as you might guess has provided me with more of a cross cultural learning experience than any of the Asians I've met) and all of whom are going to be posted to cool places around SE Asia that I can go visit this year. Burma 2k9, get the party started.

Anyway so that's really all I wanted to point out about training. Friends. Oh and I bathed a baby elephant, and for some reason the guides referred to that activity as "mutual play." Mm, alright then.

And now I'm in Cambodia and it's been wild. I traveled here from Chiang Mai with my post-mate Jude, my Texan friend Charlsea (like Chelsea but Texified), and my program director Daniel on an overnight train conveniently lit by fluorescent all night long. (Actually just a quick digression for those of you who are still kind of wondering what I'm doing in Cambodia: I'm here with an organization called VIA which is kind of like a mini peace corps that places volunteers all over Asia teaching english or working with local NGOs. I'll be doing the latter at a place called Development and Partnership in Action Cambodia, but don't ask me what they actually do because all I can really gather is that it's developing something in partnership with someone in a pretty active kind of way).

So anyway I don't have reliable internet here so I will make this quick, but basically I'm really enjoying it here and settling in well, even though we spent our first two nights in a love hotel (by accident) where the staff thought our Cambodian in country representative was a prostitute (woops, so sorry Miss Watana). I got a bicycle--well actually VIA got me a bicycle-- a maroon city cruiser with a basket in front. it's very pretty and I wear a little lemon-yellow helmet and ding my bell at every corner to warn the zippy motorbikers of my happy presence. So far I have not been maimed, but every day is a new adventure on these roads (just kidding mom it's just like Dipsea road don't worry about it).

OH I almost forgot: in Khmer (as in the language they speak here) the word for lemon is cat-orange. That's right, kroyach-chmaa. And lemonaide is Cat Orange Water so you can guess what my favorite refreshing drink has become...I think I'll go have one now.

Backlog 3: Pratet Thai

2009-08-18T17:37:00.001+07:00

So I'm here in Thailand, and for all the emotional baggage I associate with this little slice of Asia and the anxiety I harbored about finally arriving here, it's been great. I went first to Koh Tao, which lures you in with promises of whale sharks and then does not produce a single one (not even a small one or an old slow one or anything) but which does boast some really pretty little bays in ten thousand shades of blue and quite a few exotic marine fauna, such as the blue-spotted ray and the black-tipped reef shark. I saw the latter while snorkeling by myself, and, perhaps preditably, was completely and totally terrified. Whoever thought snorkeling alone with sharks would be a fun game plan has probably not snorkeled alone with a shark. I repeat: terrifying. Kind of like when I was 8 and I saw my first needle fish in Hawaii and screamed at the top of my lungs right into my mom's ear because I thought it was a murderous moray eel or something equally nefarious (I've since been told that no one else alive is actually scared of needle fish but I just don't see how that can be true).

I also learned how to night dive, which got off to a rocky start because we went out in a windstorm with giant waves crashing over the boat and panicky scuba divers throwing up left and right, and our instructor decided the proper course of action would be to jump right into the rollicking darkness and descend before any of us were ready so that we promptly lost him in a dark, churning sea of chaos and didn't all catch up until we were all 10 meters under water.... kind of unnecessary stress for your first time breathing underwater in the pitch black, if you ask me, but what do I know. We finally got organized, though, and then it was incredible. We got to watch 4-foot long barracuda hunt rabbit fish by the light of our dive torches, which made me feel a little guilty because the rabbit fish are pretty outmatched as it is without our help, but then again it's not really my fault that the barracuda is an awesome natural born killer who knows how to work an advantage. So there was some carnage, but I guess that's life.

From Koh Tao we took an overnight bus to Bangkok which arrived at the delightful hour of 4:15 am, a fine time to be introduced to an overwhelming new place when you haven't slept all night, but then we checked into the nicest hotel I can ever imagine myself paying for (we got an amazing deal on late stays and it was still more than I've ever spent on lodging, Dana you would have disowned me) and cruised around Bangkok for a couple days, visiting Buddhas and indulging in all kinds grilled meats on sticks. We also got to go to the weekend market which is just too fabulous to explain. I mean any place that devotes 47 different shops to displaying all the varieties of elephant themed coin purses on the market can't be anything less than paradise, really, can it? I don't think so.

Next I took the overnight train to Chiang Mai, hurtling through a blurry green landscape at top speeds of almost 20 or maybe even 25 miles per hour, surrounded by 19 year old British backpackers all wearing the same crappy Thai beer t-shirts, and found my way to the YMCA International Hotel from where I write you tonight. This is where I've met my Volunteers in Asia group and begun the neverending fun of group training exercises, always my favorite. But that's a topic for another edition, because it's getting late and tomorrow I have to lie by the pool all day and watch butterflies play in the sunshine so I should try to be well rested for that.

Love to you all.

Backlog 2: Japan Gozaimas

2009-08-15T12:25:00.001+07:00

Ｈｅｌｌｏ，　ｍａｎｙ　ｋｏｎｉｃｈｉｗａｓ　ｔｏ　ｙｏｕ　ａｌｌ　ａｎｄ　ｇｏｚａｉｍａｓ　ｉｎｄｅｅｄ．　

We're in Japan, for those of you who didnt recognize my fluent Japanese greeting, and it appears to be quite a lovely place. We spent about a day in the giant hive of humanity that is Tokyo and then whisked ourselves off to Hokkaido and spent a few days cruising around through national parks in hunt of Higumi, "the most fierce brown bear on Hokkaido", whose picture we see everywhere with little to no explanation of who this predator is and why he's so famous. I think he's like a mascot, but maybe he's a real bear and a real killer. Who knows. We tried to find out about Higumi , but nobody really spoke English, although people did try very hard to explain things to us in Japanese long after it became clear that we didnt understand a damn thing they were saying and just wanted to be left in peace with our quiet confusion. Kind of like Kate talking to Wookie; really no comprehension taking place, but a fun activity nonetheless.

Anyway the national parks were beautiful but not in any particularly noteworthy way. The really cool part about the trip so far has been the glorious little ritual of the japanese bath, of which we have partaken on several occasions in several different spots. It's fun: you put on a kimono provided by your hotel and some little slippers and you go up the 13th floor or whatever floor is bath floor, and you take off your kimono (and slippers. so you could say that we're seeing a lot of japan, while at the same time japan is also seeing quite a lot of us) and sit on little plastic stools and clean yourself thoroughly with a hand held shower head, and then you and a bunch of nice japanese ladies soak in hot thermal baths ranging in temperature and mucky mineral content until you're body overheats and you start to get dizzy, and then you go back and dry off and put on your kimono and leave. but the greatest part is that you don't actually have to put real clothes on again after that--they let you walk around town in your bath kimono! so after dinner and bathtime, the whole town prances around in their various kimonos and the shops stay open late and it feels kind of like summer camp or a costume party, maybe a little of both. there's a bond created there, that's for sure.

after hokkaido we took a horrible smoky overnight train back to tokyo and met aunt debbie, rejuvenated in the calming haven of the hilton, and then set off south. We spent a night in a gorgeous old historic hotel where john lennon liked to go and then made our way to Kyoto, where we find ourselves now, just back in after a night wandering around in the rain in the geisha quarter and serendipitously stumbling into the most adorable restaurant in japan (someone in our party, could have been anyone, just absolutely could not go a step further without a nice glass of white wine, which is how we found ourselves plunging blindly into an alleyway where a sign that said "BAR" may or may not have been pointing) it was a french place where we sat at the counter and made friends with the four japanese chefs who made magic happen with prosciutto and chocolate cake, which is obviously what we had for dinner. one order of prosciutto, six glasses of wine, and two orders of chocolate cake. oh and a mango mousse for our fruit/vegetable course. for a healthy and balanced diet.now we're back in our traditional japanese inn, where we sleep on futons arranged on the tatami mats on the floor like a trio of sardines wrapped in tissue paper and stuffed into a cardboard box. like a slumber party, kind of.

and tomorrow: buddhas.

that s all, time for bed.

Backlog 1: The China Chronicles

2009-08-08T20:46:00.002+07:00

China

Part 1

hi everyone,

i'm in china and it's been absolutely weird since the moment i entered. but in a good way. i took the subway from hong kong to Shenzhen, which is a Special Economic Zone that borders hong kong, so i went through customs in a subway station and they took my temperature with a little temperature wand that they pointed at my ear (i passed....no swine flu) and i got out the other side and it was chaos. chinese and chinese people everywhere, which i suppose could have been predicted, but after hong kong it was insane. and i had been advised to spend the night in something called the Queen Spa and Dining, so i went around looking for a cab to get there and no one could understand me and then some cops came and all the taxis scattered, so that was slightly unsettling. then finally i found a friend who helped me find a free shuttle to the queen spa and dining, and then the real fun began.

the queen spa and dining is the most surreal place on the planet. it's five stories and lit up like a casino and there are at least 500 poeple on duty at any one time to cater to your every whim. you pay about $16 to get in and they funnel you into these plush locker rooms where you take a shower, using a body wash called 'Living Skin Almightiness Washes Noodle Milk" which I think is obviously a quality product, and then they outfit you with really cool stripey pajamas and you wander around the five floors eating free fresh fruit and ice cream and coffee and swimming in the hold, cold, and lukewarm pools and there are saunas and steam rooms and rest areas and a sleeping section and it's just nuts. i had a 90 minute full body massage and dinner and spent the night in a sleeping room and i paid $40 total for the whole experience. highly recommended.

then i flew literally all day, first to zhengzhou which was a surprise stop along the way, and then to the destination I was actually scheduled for, urumqi (the city whose main distinction is that it's farther from the ocean than any other real city in the world) where i met my friend and the two other people i'm traveling with and now we're in kashgar, silk road stop, where it gets dark at 11 pm because beijing won't let them have the time change they deserve being 2000 miles west of the capital. anyway the plan for here involves horses, camels, yurts (YURTS!), the karakoram highway, a sunday market, and lots of little men with mustaches (like his).

more on all that once it occurs. miss everyone and talk to you all soon!

China Part 2

hey team,

so here's what i've been doing the last few days (and for those of you who weren't in on china part 1, it was weird):

we got to kashgar friday night and spent saturday wandering around the city, part of which is going to be razed by the chinese government any minute now and replaced by basically plastic houses made to look like the old ones, and that was cool. the people here are Uigher (weeeee-ghur) which is fun to say, and they're really un-chinese and more turkish than asian anyway. they also make some pretty good noodles which chicken and garlic, so they come out on top in my book.

anyway from kashgar we took a day trip to the desert to ride a dune buggy (and I DROVE IT across some dunes and anyone who remembers the days of bumper cars at disneyland is probably glad they didn't have to witness that) and then we went to a livestock market to watch Uigher men bargaining over how much a donkey costs (which actually comes back into the story later in such a bizarre twist of fate), and then the famous Kashgar sunday market where i wanted to buy carpets but couldn't fit them into my backpack. sorry pat i guess the twelve you have in your matchbox house will have to do for now :)

then the real fun begins. we get a driver to take us for a three day trip up the karakoram highway (highest in the world, goes up to 5000 meters) all the way to the border with pakistan. the day begins well except for the small detail that i vomit three times before breakfast and we're about to spend six hours in a 1914 honda crackerbox which won't turn on the first 7 times the driver tries. we end up pushing it, a lot. and apparently i had food poisoning that day so i don't remember much except the periodic pulling over to let me jump out of the car right on time to throw up and then get back in and curl up into a ball and wince, but they tell me it was nice.

we spent that first night in a hotel in a town called Tashkorgan and then the next day drove to pakistan. seriously. we just put our feet in and took pictures and came back, but even just putting your toe in you start to grow a beard and feel like a rebel. it's wild and wooly over there.

the best night was the second night. we wanted to stay in a yurt, so our driver took us to some friends of his who had some yurts on the shores of a lake. we arrived, they took us in, made us yak tea and noodles from scratch (as in, from flour and water and eggs all the way into hot steaming noodle deliciousness) and then sent us off to bed in another yurt down yonder. we were just dozing off to sleep when we heard a commotion, someone came in and told us to hide and be silent, and then moments later our driver, our entire yurt family and 6 chinese police men with guns barged into the yurt in one big heap and informed us we had to leave. apparently we were staying in an illegal homestay and had to move to the chinese hotel down the road.....ok, fine, what’s a little forced relocation between friends. but how the chinese police found us there at 2 in the morning anyway? well, our driver had gone on a little joyride to buy cigarettes and, while trying to answer his cell phone and drive and smoke a cigarette, had collided with a donkey in the road and killed the poor thing. so the family of this unfortunate donkey woke up and demanded compensation, which our driver didn't have, so he had to come get us to ask us to lend him money (and we knew exactly how much to give! 1500 kwai not a penny more!) and because it was taking so long the family called the police and reported both the donkey-slaying and the illegal foreigner-hiding. overall, just completely absurd.

but we got back fine and now we're in Turpan where you sit under grape leaves and drink fresh watermelon juice and life is sweet.

that's all for now, more soon from normal china. love molly

China Part 3

Friends:

I´m finally in a quiet, civilized place long enough to create a proper email group list so I can send these updates to everyone I mean to. The last two were written on the run, my recipient list was a little spotty, and some people got them late or not at all. But the chaos is all over now: you guys are my email group and you will be bombarded with random stories from Asia for awhile. I hope everyone´s ok with that.

So we finished our tour through the wild west of China, and although there really will is not much to tell compared to the Night of the Slain Donkey and Shamed Cherfu (which means either driver or master, which to me seem more opposite than the same, but what do I know), we did have an interesting time in Turpan, too. The attractions there are legitimate but not mind-blowing: we visited a traditional village with some kind of special life-giving tree (perhaps the fruit of which is used to make Living the Skin Almightiness Noodles Washes Milk?), some mediocre ruins that we elected to ignore in favor of tasty noodles in a nearby roadside shack, the Flaming Mountains (who earn their title I guess for being sort of red? I don´t know, I thought they were boring), a pretty mosque and minerat that really could have just been a bigger version of your standard islamic-influenced sand castle, something called a Karez that has to do with irrigation technology but looks suspiciously like a dirty stream by the side of the road, and then finally some actually real cool ruins on top of a plateau that used to guard....the surrounding sand? Something.

Anyway so that was a fun tour, but it was actually not exactly what we had agreed upon with the nice man loitering around our hotel who had arranged it for us. He promised special back roads to avoid entrance fees (the chinese simply adore entrance fees and charge them everywhere from pretty neighborhoods to photo spots along the side of the road) with special vistas, and English. We got neither. So when our non-English speaking, non-backroad knowing driver brought us back to the hotel and requested the second half of our payment, we asked instead to speak with his boss, the man who had arranged the tour. And then it was really a funny scene: the guy came along with his boss, who is some kind of local tourist-lord, and the two of them, the driver, and the three of us took seats around the lobby and calmly discussed our concerns, in inside voices, until the tourist-lords graciously accepted our offer to pay only half of what we still owed since we had been slightly dissatisfied with the service rendered. I mean, I was expecting an angry commotion, at the very least some impassioned arm gestures, maybe even some "death to these stingy infidels!"s. But these guys, for all their sleaze and sketchiness, were totally rational and reasonable. They just wanted us to be happy. So we paid $3 less each and we absolutely were.

Now I´m in Shanghai which is all smog and high heels and grimy old buildings and ostentatious new ones, and I´m hoping to leave soon. Next stop: into the bamboo forests and the open arms of a Giant Panda. Yes, I will receive a Panda Hug in this country, and no, no one will tell me otherwise.

Love to everyone and I will talk to you all from Pandaland.

China Part 4

Hey there,

I haven't had a chance to write in awhile, but not because I was mauled by a giant panda. I only clarify that point because, amazingly, some people seemed to be genuinely worried. And really I'm touched by those who felt compelled to send warnings of panda brutality my way, just in case I was in serious danger of hopping the panda fence and going on a hugging rampage that would leave several furry friends feeling violated and me a heap of bloody panda-bitten sadness on the bamboo floor. But no---I read about Gugu. I read about Knut (who is not strictly a panda bear, but seems to share their hatred of hugs and cuddling), and I wanted nothing to do with it, mostly because (let's be honest) I'm not really in an emotional position to suffer any more rejection at this moment in time. So I actually didn't even hug a giant panda, I hugged a red one, because they look like fox-cat-chihuahua-racoons and they're much, much easier to hold.

For this I received a Certification of Love for the Red Panda, which I will treasure to my dying day.

From there, armed with this confirmation of my enduring love for the panda race, I took a day trip a few hours south to see the largest carved buddha in the world, which was, predictably, gigantic, and I felt satisfied that it probably really is the biggest buddha out there. I was ready to move on.

My next stop (via a lovely overnight train whose loveliness was only slightly marred by the huge snoring chinese man who shared my sleeping cabin) was Xian and the roughly 10,000 terracotta warriors and horses that a chinese peasant found buried next to his well one day--hello, giant army of angry soldiers hiding under my tomato plants, what are you doing here? But there they are, and they're really unbelievable. More unbelievable though was the fact that the chinese government felt compelled to create a 30 foot marionette of a terracotta warrior to display in the exhibition hall, holding hands with a 20 foot marionette of a creepy chinese girl. I know you can't automatically picture how funny that is, but try.

I have to go because the classic film Ghosts of Exgirlfriends past has just been put on and there's not a lot I can do to resist. I'll finish this later, maybe from Beijing which is my next stop.

Certification of Love for all of You,

Molly

China last one I promise

Hi friends,

Sorry I left you for a really bad Matthew McConaghauy movie (I''m not going to pretend I know how to spell McConaghauy, not for second), but I'm back now. I'm in Beijing and I have a few things to report.

The first is a scene from Xi'an that I didn't have time to get to the other day, and this is it: One night while in Xi'an, we go out to a Belgian beer bar that a friend of my host's is opening with his Fulbright money while in Xi'an (thank you taxpayers, you've funded a very nice little joint in the dust belt of China. Fine work). Anyway we get there and realize we're starving, so we take the guy's five-month old bull terrier puppy, Ricky, and we head out in search of what most people in the world are searching for: dumplings. We find a late-night dumpling joint and saunter in with bull terrier puppy in tow, which no one seems particularly concerned by, because after all, there just are no health standards in this country except when it comes to swine flu, in which case there are lots, so why not invite a puppy into the meat-grilling area? The waiter does mention something about a cat also being in attendance that night, but the dog's owner, the Fulbrighter, Pierre, waves him off with the assurance that Ricky is totally ok with cats.

If only it were that simple. Within seconds of us entering this restaurant--literally about 8 seconds--there is a flying, hissing, spitting mess of a cat throwing itself all over Pierre and Ricky, evidently because said psycho cat also had a kitten stashed away in her corner of the dumpling restaurant, and anyone who hasn't been in a cave for their entire lives could have predicted how a mother cat would react to a big dumb bull terrier invading her kitten-zone, and so it happened. The cat tore into Pierre's corduroys pants and the leg underneath, Pierre snatched Ricky up and clutched him to his chest while shouting at the top of his lungs "I will kick this fucking cat! I will totally kick this fucking cat right now!" and the poor unfortunate waiter scurried around his feet wielding a stool and trying to either hit the cat with it or maybe trap it under the stools legs, unclear. And finally some other waiter grabs the mama cat by the scruff and throws it out the front door, which she obviously would not settle for only partially because it means separation from her kitten, and the scene just goes on and on for probably a full five minutes of kicking, hissing, biting, and general panic and frenzy. So, because I was apparently the only member of this shitshow who had actually been exposed to the wonders of the domestic cat before, I finally go over and pick up the kitten, take the kitten outside, and lure the mama cat down the street to be reunited with her terrified offspring. Those two traumatized little beings promptly scurry under some lumber, Pierre and his dumb dog keep jumping around for a few minutes and screaming vengeance, and the thirty or so chinese dumpling-eaters who witnessed the extravaganza sit in quiet, pertifried awe which I have to assume was followed by copious tears moments later. Needless to say, we left in disgrace, dumpling-less and humiliated.

Anyway, then I came to Beijing and I don't really like it but I'll tell you what might be the one redeeming factor: old people dancing in the park. After the obligatory Forbidden city/Temple of heaven circuit today, I found myself sitting in a park watching these old people get down and wondering why I had ever bothered to do anything else with my time. Seriously, the degree of sweetness involved in this dance spectacle cannot be overstated. If anyone can think of a cuter scene than 50 old people dancing with each other in a park on a Saturday afternoon, please let me know and I will seek it out.

I notice that this email has become very long and slightly pointless, so I'll stop. And remember that you're all free to unsubscribe at any time should you not wish to hear more stories about old people or cats.

But unless I hear back, get ready for the next installment of rambling stories from my next destination: Japan!

I look forward to it.

Love, Molly.