Oct 27: off to HCMC (aka Saigon), Vietnam
We paid our bill and hopped on a couple of motos to the bus station (pretty sure we greatly overpaid for the tickets, but whatever). We stop after about an hour and a half and everyone disembarks. It looks like we're at a bus station (even though we were told we'd be dropped off at our hostel) so we start chatting with the moto drivers who are insisting that we are at our destination and are trying to offer us rides. At this point, we decide to consult the bus driver, who was luckily still in the vicinity. He informed us we just needed to switch buses (apparently we were in HCMC, just in the outskirts). So we hop on our second bus and head into the city, grab a cab to the tourist mecca, find a hostel and head out to grab some food. We order some spring rolls (and finally get some fresh ones! Since we arrived in Vietnam we'd disappointingly been getting only fried ones), a Vietnamese crepe (amazing) and we splurged on some gnochies in butter and cheese (more on that later). While eating we were approached by a friendly guy offering cyclo tours of the city. A cyclo is pretty much a very small three wheeled carriage+ bicyle contraption. We agreed for a short 2 hour (and probably overpriced) tour of the city. We board the cyclo, which both of us are barely able to fit on (we are very tightly squished, and I am pretty much sitting right on top of Phil) and begin our extremely slow (and terrifying) tour of the city. HCMC has 7-8 million inhabitants, and approximately 4 million motos. Needless to say, we were in a sea of motos, and going about 1/4 their speed, which was terrifying. At one point we were literally headed directly towards the stream of oncoming traffic. Our first stop was the war remnants museum, an extremely sobering experience, where we saw thousands of pictures and even some agent orange-mutated fetuses in jars. We were almost in a state of shock--I guess neither of us fully comprehended the full extent of the war--when we re-boarded the cyclo. We quietly continued our tour, saw all the important buildings (Notre Dame Cathedral, old train station, where the GIs lived during the war, American Embassy, etc). And then it started to rain. So our dutiful cyclo driver pulled out his cyclo-cover, which only narrowed our field of vision to about 12 inches, made us even more squished and uncomfortable as well as hot and sweaty. Fabulous. Luckily, our tour was almost over, and we were dropped back off, having seen the sights and also almost peed our pants. We bought a knockoff Vietnam Rough Guides from one of the many vendors selling them on the streets, and headed for a beer. Five beers each later, we had made some new friends and not managed to plan any of our trip. At this point, we were desperately in need of some food, so we grabbed some, headed back to the hotel and passed out.
Oct 28: Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Temple
So we wake up bright and early and hop on a bus (gasp...our first organized tour!) and spend a ridiculously bumpy 2 hour ride to the Cao Dai Temple, which is very interesting, to say the least. (On the way we stopped at a workshop where war-disabled citizens make artwork out of eggshells, which was pretty cool...see pictures...) Anyway, back to the temple...its based on a religion that combines Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The temple itself was beautiful, and very light and airy (most of the walls have holes in them). There are columns with dragons carved all around them, and a globe (?) with the all seeing-eye. We even were able to see their daily ceremony, which consisted of the community (dressed in white robes), and other (probably more important) people (dressed in blue, red or yellow robes) praying while music was played, songs were sang, and the gong was rung. Next we spent another hour or two on our way to the Cu Chi tunnels, a main area that the Viet Cong hid out during the war. There are over 250km of tunnels, linking 6 villages. It can go up to 4 levels deep (the deepest one 10-12m) and they included kitchens, hospitals, living rooms, etc. They literally lived underground all day, and came out at night for missions or for fresh air. They set up lots of booby traps (we saw many), and so the tunnels pretty much were impenetrable by the US forces (also the tunnels were super small, most of the GIs couldn't fit, ha!). Tunnels could be as small as 80 cm wide and 80cm tall. We got a chance to crawl through one (which they have now widened for tourists) and it was still incredibly small, hot, humid, and our legs were burning after just a short 60m crawl/walk. The day finished, we headed back to HCMC during rush hour (which is absolutley crazy), and decided to check out some of the finer cuisine in HCMC (apparently the culinary capital of Vietnam). We chose a French restaurant quite above our budget (we figured it would be worth the splurge). Unfortunately, it was not worth the splurge; the only redeeming thing was the delicious passion fruit torte at the end. Otherwise, waste of money, sad day.
Oct 29: Last day in HCMC
Soooo we slept in till about noon (oops), then headed out to finish our tour of HCMC. We started at the Ben Thanh Market, which was simply amazing. The front is filled with the usual tourist-market kinda stuff, but in the back is a semi food-court area where mostly locals eat (also a few tourists). We started with a bun (cold rice noodles with veggies and pork and the typical vietnamese sauce) and some spring rolls and a coke ($2.50). At the next stall, we ate a plate of freshly grilled scallops on the shell ($1.50) and a plate of steamed flower snails ($1.50). We wandered a bit more (trying to work up our appetites again) and then stopped for a strawberry smoothie and some weird layered gelatin beverage (see picture). When I asked what it was, the guy told me white, red, yellow, coconut haha. Of course it was delicious. Next we had probably our favorite cups of coffee of the trip so far at a Trung Nguyen coffee shop (yum!). Then we headed to the Reunification Palace. This is where the North Vietnamese Army broke through the gate, the south surrendered, and Vietnam was reunited. We got a free tour (yay!) and then decided to go to the botanical gardens and zoo. By the time we got there, however, it was closed. So we headed for the Jade Emperor Pagoda, which our guide book said was open until 7. After some searching, we arrived at 6:30, to discover that for some reason (perhaps bc it is low season) it closes at 6. Rather upset, we decided it was time for dinner and headed for another splurge-restaurant (this time Vietnamese cuisine), hoping our splurge would be more successful this time. The place was pretty nice (white table cloths, etc) and although our guidebook said it was popular with tour groups, we certainly did not expect the 40+ white-haired tourists that entered about 15 mins after we sat down hehe. Either way, we enjoyed our meal, even though it was not quite worth the price. We had lotus salad, a Vietnamese crepe and fried soft shell crabs with passion fruit sauce. Semi-satisfied, we headed back to the hostel for a serious internet session (aka till 4 am or so). Our lack of sleep was almost certainly responsible for what happened the next day, when our bus for Da Lat left at 7:30 am...
Friday, October 29, 2010
Mekong Delta
Oct 22- Border Crossings and Motobikes (Journey from Kep, Cambodia to Can Tho, Vietnam)
This morning we get up and prepare for what we hope will be a smooth border crossing into Vietnam via a town called Ha Tien. First things first, we knew this could be a bad crossing site; we had read up on it before and learned of plenty of stories of people getting scammed at the border, either by motobike drivers or by bus drivers. Basically a scam goes like this: Get to the border, motobike driver picks you up. Motobike driver drives not to the bus station, but to random lot with bus in it. You either pay the outrageous price or you are stranded (well, 400,000 vnd ~$20, but its supposed to be a $3 ride!). Scam over. Knowing this, we took care to not be scammed and booked through our trusty travel agent in Kep named Anna (really nice girl, arranged a lot of stuff for us at mostly fair prices). So here it goes: From Kep we took about an hour bus drive to the border. Smooth as can be (well, the road was bumpy as shit, but we got there). We get off, load our things onto a moto that our driver arranged for us, and head towards the crossing. We cross and actually get off at what looks like a legit bus station. Our driver there meets us and informs us that he was called previously and has our tickets, so we board the bus. He did try to scam us slightly with a money exchange scam (rates are horrible at borders... ~2000 dong/$ less what it should be) but seemed like he was going to get us to Can Tho, our destination. The ride was fairly uneventful for the most part, other than the end of it. A note on buses in Vietnam: they always have two operators, the driver and the assistant. Driver drives, assistant gets passengers and money. Getting passengers involves hanging various amounts of his body out the window, usually his head and one arm, yelling at people on the side of the road and informing them how many seats are available on the bus. Getting money involves getting money. So about half an hour out Steph is asleep and I'm chillin, watchin the sites and soakin up the scenery. Assistant guy gets some money for the ride from the two gentlemen in front of us (we had the whole back seat to ourselves). I'm watching him, basically just to see the currency (we had no dong at this point, pseudo-mistake #1), when he turns around and looks at me. He stares at me pretty hard, so thinking this is when he'll ask for more money and knowing we've already paid once, I stare right back. He stares, I stare. Then he kind of does the "what-up" nod at me, so I just do it right back at him. At this point I'm hearing the Good, Bad and the Ugly whistle in my mind. After a good 20 second stare down (which seemed like ages), Assistant Dude turns around and I feel like I've won (probably mistake #2). 30 minutes later, we pull up in this dirt lot next to a gas station and both the driver and assistant get out. After some yelling, we understand that this is our stop and we need to get off. Our bags were removed and the bus immediately pulls away . I think its generous to say that it took about 5 seconds for us to realize we were not where we wanted to be (mistake #3- not asking our bus driver where the fuck we were and why it wasn't where we wanted to be). We had been dumped, essentially, in the middle of nowhere. After the fact, I can't help but wonder if it wasn't my wild west stare down that got us kicked off, but for my own sake I prefer to think not. Either way, we had to figure out first where we were and second how to get to Can Tho. We had gotten dropped off next to a whole bunch of relatively old ladies, which we went up to and asked "Can Tho? Can Tho?". This sparked all of them to start yelling and bickering amongst themselves and to call over two moto drivers. The lady held out about 40,000 dong, so Steph was like, "I think its only $2", so I hold out some USD. After repeating "Can Tho?" to the moto drivers, they grab our stuff, put some brain buckets (helmets) on our heads, and we hopped on the back of their bikes (mistake #4- never get on a moto without first setting a price, regardless if you don't know where you're going, which we pretty much didn't) Seeing some buses, we kind of thought that maybe we could catch a bus to Can Tho city, but something was definitely lost in translation there, because we drove right past. This is the beginning of what would be roughly an hour moto ride to Can Tho City, at least half of which Steph had to endure with her pack on her back (no easy feat when riding on the back of a moto. note from Steph: I thought I was going to die. I can't tell you how many times I almost fell off the back as the driver accelerated and the extra 30 pounds on my back pulled me backwards. my abs burned like fire from the depths of hell) (mistake #5- never get on a moto not knowing where you are going or how long it will take to get there or without putting your pack between the driver's knees). About 5 minutes in, our moto drivers did stop to let us exchange money (at over 20,100 vnd/$- a better rate than the ATMs here), which was probably only so they could get paid, but lucky for us anyways. So finally, we get to Can Tho City but have absolutely no clue where we wanted to stay (definitely no mistake, its kind of fun just showing up and seeing what you get, shopping around a little- there's always plenty of places open since its the low tourist season). This lady drives up to our moto and after Steph talks to her, we end up following her to a hostel priced at $6 a night. Turns out she arranges boat tours and wants us to hire her for the next day. After some food, we shop around a little and end up booking a ticket through her (best price for service for sure). Then we had some MUCH needed beers and explored the city around us a little, but ended up going to bed pretty early.
Lessons learned from our first day in Vietnam:
1). Never trust a bus driver from the border. Ever. We got handled in Cambodia (much less so) and again in Vietnam. Lesson learned.
2). Never stare down the bus driver's assistant.
3). Seemingly all old-ish Vietnamese woman wear pajamas. Matching pajamas. All the time. Seriously, thats all they wear.
4). Never get on a moto if you dont know where its going, how long it will take, or how much it will cost.
5). We now understand that we were technically dropped off in the province of Can Tho, just not the city. Apparently thats an important distinction. (I think this was mistake #6)
Oct 23- Boat Tour #1 (Can Tho, Vietnam)
Can Tho is all about the boat tours. So this morning we wake up at about 5 am to get ready for our boat tour which leaves at 5:30. So we get on our boat, and its slow. Really slow. Like, we probably could have walked along the river faster than the boat took us, but its all about the experience at this point. All the other tourists in their boats passed us. Several times. So floating markets... what to say what to say?.... They float. Basically the markets consist of many boats loaded with one to two different products which the sell to people on other boats. Its actually pretty cool because some of the boats are huge and have just tons of fruit but others are small and carry much less. We were also able to score some delicious Vietnamese coffee from a coffee boat vendor. The coolest thing we saw traded was probably 2 live ducks, which were grabbed by the neck and placed into a grocery bag so that their heads stuck out the holes. To advertise their goods, boats stick an item on a long bamboo pole sticking up in the air (the ducks were not advertised like this). Other than the two floating markets we visited, we also got to visit a factory where they produce rice noodles. It was awesome. Basically they cook huge portions of round rice paper and then dry it out in the sun. Pictures are probably better than words in this case, but just know it was awesome. At the factory also had a pig farm, which was amusing. The vast majority of our time was spent in our boat on the river though. Seriously, the vast majority (8 hours). Did I mention our boat was slow? Speed aside, it was pretty awesome floating through the different canals and whatnot that make up the Mekong delta. It was crazy to see people living along the river in shacks of all different varieties. Another thing to note: The mekong is dirty. People just throw their trash into it all the time (I saw this happen at least twice) and our propeller got jammed with trash at least half a dozen times. After our boat tour, we we're pretty tired so we went back to the hostel (where I took a nap and Steph read). That night we walked around and saw this street stall that had Pho (which we have discovered is correctly pronounced fur) so we quickly ordered 2 bowls. It was delicious, to say the least (probably the best pho in Vietnam so far, writing this on Oct 29, for only 10,000 dong (50 cents) a bowl). After that we wandered up this alley that we had read about online looking for a market, but it looked sketchy so we turned around. On our way back to a part of the city we recognized this man sitting with some friends grabs me by the arm and holds up this pitcher of a clear liquid. After briefly considering the consequences, both Steph and I take a shot of this stuff. I think now that it was rice liquor, although to be honest I'm still not completely sure of that either. Either way, it worked. I think the guys there offered to let us sit for some more drinking and some food, but we felt kind of awkward at this point and politely declined.
Oct 24- A Museum and a Market (Can Tho, Vietnam)
Today was relatively uneventful. We went to a museum (most of which we didn't understand, being as it was in Vietnamese). The museum was our first look into the Vietnamese version of the "American War" or "War of American Aggression". I'll have to wait to really comment on this till we talk about Ho Chi Min City. After the museum, we wandered some more, found the bus station for the next day, and found this awesome market. I had read about the market but had no idea where it was, so it was pretty awesome that we just stumbled on it by complete accident. We got the opportunity to buy some Vietnamese coffee strainers here, at the extremely cheap price of 7000 dong each (found some today for 15-20k later in the trip). After a beer and some pretty bad eel, we ended up attempting to look for the market from the previous night once more. We found what I think the guy was talking about, but it was really just a collection of back alleys and houses with little stalls interspersed between them. Walking back towards the grocery store, we once again stumbled on some guys eating dinner who offered us more shots, which we quickly accepted. I'm about 80% certain that this was rum, but it definitely wasn't any brand I've had before. It was held in a juice bottle, which is kind of sketchy, but again, it worked. We did stick around this time briefly to try some of their food (yum!) but didn't stick around too long. We thought they maybe wanted us to sit with them (after last night's experience), but after many awkward seconds of us just standing there and not understanding what they were saying, we moved on (a bit disappointedly I might add). After picking up some goods from the grocery store, we headed to the waterfront for a beer. Tonight we were debating whether to go on this huge boat for dinner, because we thought it would be really cool to float and eat, but after getting on the boat we changed our minds. There were two levels of karaoke which was SUPER loud, so we decided 2 hours of hurting eardrums wasn't worth it.
Oct 25- Redemption and Boat Tour #2 (Ben Tre, Vietnam)
Today was a day for redemption. We knew the only way to get from Can Tho to Ben Tre was by bus, so we wanted to do it right this time. Here is our method: Step 1- get on moto, don't over pay. Step 2- find the right ticket vendor. Step 3- don't over pay the ticket vendor Step 4- make sure you are going to the right place. It is advised to ask at least 4-5 times. Step 5- Pay attention to whether you need to change buses before you leave (this happened). Step 6- Don't get too comfortable. Step 7- Dont stare at anyone. With this foolproof method, we actually made it to exactly where we wanted and expected to be dropped off. Redemption was ours. When we arrived, we got the usual barrage of moto drivers who were positive they knew the best guesthouse for us to stay at. We arranged transport to one of these, which randomly happened to be one recommended by our trusty travel guide (the 2nd time this happened randomly; the first was in Can Tho). (Sidenote: One horrible thing did happen- I saw a guy wreck his moto. It was terrifying, to say the least, since it happened while I was riding a moto. Always wear a helmet- its the law) At first glance, the place wasnt too promising. The rooms were more expensive than we were quoted (what did we expect?), the room was open air, meaning that one could easily climb over the top of the wall and nab our stuff and it was also far away from the actual town of Ben Tre. That said, it was still really cheap and the place looked like a really relaxing place to stay, far away from the hustle of the city (most big cities in the Mekong delta have 1 million plus people). We also arranged a boat tour of some islands on the Mekong for later that day. After some lunch, it was time for our boat tour. The boat was much faster this time and we both agreed that the canals were actually even more awesome than in Can Tho. Our first stop was to a place where they make candy from coconuts, which was amusing but not really all that great (even still, we ended up buying some). After that, we headed to a much bigger island. Here we got to taste some banana wine (ew), some honey, some honey tea, an assortment of fresh fruits, and take a canoe rowing down a canal back to the bigger river (these two ladies did the lions share of rowing). Our next stop was at this place called Coconut Island (although I've yet to remember its real name) where there is this weird pseudo-playground installation. We spent quite a lot of time walking around this island and found a crocodile farm (unexpectedly, since it was really dark. For the record, crocs moving in the dark are really really eerie looking). After getting back on our boat, we headed back towards where we came from, first stopping to watch fireflies along the river. The Mekong is full of mangrove trees which at dark are full of fireflies. It was a really amazing way to end our boat tour and was easily our favorite part of the whole day.
Oct 26- Bike Rides and Snake Blood (Ben Tre, Vietnam)
Our guesthouse was located kind of on the edge of Ben Tre province close to the river, where life is a lot different than in the cities. Today we decided to use the free bikes at our hostel to explore the area around it, since its not always what you see but often how you get to see it. Our original plan was to try and find a rice wine factory that our book had mentioned, but that ultimately failed. What did happen was about a 5 hour bike ride. Bikes in Vietnam are pretty outdated, mostly consisting of one speed beach cruisers with squeaky wheels and hard seats. My bike in particular was pretty horrible, having a non-adjustable seat (making the bike more than slightly too small for me) and an awfully crooked peddle. Our ride through the countryside, however, was amazing. Its weird how much different biking past a rice field is compared to driving past it. Its also amazing at how interested in us the local people were- almost half the people we saw on the path said hello to us and waved enthusiastically (probably all the children did). After some decent Pho, a much needed coffee break, an amazing biking tour of the countryside and some really sore butts, we made it back to our guesthouse around 4 in the afternoon. We relaxed for a while but eventually headed to the kitchen area for a beer and some hammock time. Around 530ish, it was time to start our adventure eating snake. The night before, we had been sitting around and this guy comes up to us and starts talking to us excitedly in Vietnamese. Being that no one around spoke English, we had absolutely no idea what the guy was saying. After some arm waving and reading some testimonies in their guest log, we figured out that this was the "Snake Guy". This conclusion was only further strengthened when the guy took us behind the kitchen to show us a barrel literally filled with snakes. The Snake Guy was awesome. I have no idea how he is related to the family running this guesthouse, but he was there both nights and apparently is semi-famous for preparing snake for the guests ("you no like, you no money") He has this super amazing laugh and only 9.5 fingers. Seriously, only 9.5. From what we learned, he had been bitten by one of the snakes and had to self-amputate half his finger off, after which he went to the hospital. Crazy or awesome? probably both. Anyways, having missed an opportunity in Can Tho for snake we both decided that tonight was the perfect night for some snake. Snake guy comes up to us and tells us that it is time to kill the snake and we could take pictures (luckily this time we had someone there who could translate for us). So he grabs the snake by the tail and holds it that way until steph could run and grab her spare battery (her camera ran out of batteries at the worst time), at which point he grabs a cleaver, puts the snakes head on the cutting board and cuts it off. After the snake is beheaded the blood is collected in a cup (Steph helped), which we would later drink with vinegar or alcohol of some sort and ginger (to prevent contamination or to help it go down- we may never know). Snake blood makes you strong, apparently. Then the snake is placed in a bowl and hot water is poured over it, at which point the snake (sans-head) starts convulsing (we think we remember them telling us the hot water is to help remove the skin). The show over, we went left for a while to allow them to prepare our meal. About an hour later, Snake Guy comes out with our food. He brings out this curry looking dish, three small shot glasses, and the glass of blood previously prepared. At first we thought he was going to drink a shot of the blood with us, but in fact we were wrong. The snake blood tasted like... blood. But diluted blood (bite your tongue really hard, take a shot of vodka and bite a piece of ginger- about the same as what we got I'd imagine). Next we moved on to the snake, which was delicious. It was basically just a curry, but with snake meat. Really really good. The texture was a little chewy but also light and tender. The skin was really good. The third shot glass (the one we thought was for Snake Guy) held an extra little surprise for me: a raw snake-heart in some sort of clear liquor. Apparently snake heart is "good for man, not good for woman- make you strong!" (at this point Steph was a bit disappointed, but also rather relieved) and also is good for erections (he told me this when Steph went to the bathroom: Snake Guy walks up, starts laughing, points to my crotch and then points up, then starts laughing even harder). To be blunt, snake heart is vile. It is definitely the worst thing I have eaten on this trip and the only thing that instantly made me want to hurl. I dont know what kind of alcohol they put it in, but it was really strong and absolutely disgusting. There's a video on the Shutterfly account. Never again.
This morning we get up and prepare for what we hope will be a smooth border crossing into Vietnam via a town called Ha Tien. First things first, we knew this could be a bad crossing site; we had read up on it before and learned of plenty of stories of people getting scammed at the border, either by motobike drivers or by bus drivers. Basically a scam goes like this: Get to the border, motobike driver picks you up. Motobike driver drives not to the bus station, but to random lot with bus in it. You either pay the outrageous price or you are stranded (well, 400,000 vnd ~$20, but its supposed to be a $3 ride!). Scam over. Knowing this, we took care to not be scammed and booked through our trusty travel agent in Kep named Anna (really nice girl, arranged a lot of stuff for us at mostly fair prices). So here it goes: From Kep we took about an hour bus drive to the border. Smooth as can be (well, the road was bumpy as shit, but we got there). We get off, load our things onto a moto that our driver arranged for us, and head towards the crossing. We cross and actually get off at what looks like a legit bus station. Our driver there meets us and informs us that he was called previously and has our tickets, so we board the bus. He did try to scam us slightly with a money exchange scam (rates are horrible at borders... ~2000 dong/$ less what it should be) but seemed like he was going to get us to Can Tho, our destination. The ride was fairly uneventful for the most part, other than the end of it. A note on buses in Vietnam: they always have two operators, the driver and the assistant. Driver drives, assistant gets passengers and money. Getting passengers involves hanging various amounts of his body out the window, usually his head and one arm, yelling at people on the side of the road and informing them how many seats are available on the bus. Getting money involves getting money. So about half an hour out Steph is asleep and I'm chillin, watchin the sites and soakin up the scenery. Assistant guy gets some money for the ride from the two gentlemen in front of us (we had the whole back seat to ourselves). I'm watching him, basically just to see the currency (we had no dong at this point, pseudo-mistake #1), when he turns around and looks at me. He stares at me pretty hard, so thinking this is when he'll ask for more money and knowing we've already paid once, I stare right back. He stares, I stare. Then he kind of does the "what-up" nod at me, so I just do it right back at him. At this point I'm hearing the Good, Bad and the Ugly whistle in my mind. After a good 20 second stare down (which seemed like ages), Assistant Dude turns around and I feel like I've won (probably mistake #2). 30 minutes later, we pull up in this dirt lot next to a gas station and both the driver and assistant get out. After some yelling, we understand that this is our stop and we need to get off. Our bags were removed and the bus immediately pulls away . I think its generous to say that it took about 5 seconds for us to realize we were not where we wanted to be (mistake #3- not asking our bus driver where the fuck we were and why it wasn't where we wanted to be). We had been dumped, essentially, in the middle of nowhere. After the fact, I can't help but wonder if it wasn't my wild west stare down that got us kicked off, but for my own sake I prefer to think not. Either way, we had to figure out first where we were and second how to get to Can Tho. We had gotten dropped off next to a whole bunch of relatively old ladies, which we went up to and asked "Can Tho? Can Tho?". This sparked all of them to start yelling and bickering amongst themselves and to call over two moto drivers. The lady held out about 40,000 dong, so Steph was like, "I think its only $2", so I hold out some USD. After repeating "Can Tho?" to the moto drivers, they grab our stuff, put some brain buckets (helmets) on our heads, and we hopped on the back of their bikes (mistake #4- never get on a moto without first setting a price, regardless if you don't know where you're going, which we pretty much didn't) Seeing some buses, we kind of thought that maybe we could catch a bus to Can Tho city, but something was definitely lost in translation there, because we drove right past. This is the beginning of what would be roughly an hour moto ride to Can Tho City, at least half of which Steph had to endure with her pack on her back (no easy feat when riding on the back of a moto. note from Steph: I thought I was going to die. I can't tell you how many times I almost fell off the back as the driver accelerated and the extra 30 pounds on my back pulled me backwards. my abs burned like fire from the depths of hell) (mistake #5- never get on a moto not knowing where you are going or how long it will take to get there or without putting your pack between the driver's knees). About 5 minutes in, our moto drivers did stop to let us exchange money (at over 20,100 vnd/$- a better rate than the ATMs here), which was probably only so they could get paid, but lucky for us anyways. So finally, we get to Can Tho City but have absolutely no clue where we wanted to stay (definitely no mistake, its kind of fun just showing up and seeing what you get, shopping around a little- there's always plenty of places open since its the low tourist season). This lady drives up to our moto and after Steph talks to her, we end up following her to a hostel priced at $6 a night. Turns out she arranges boat tours and wants us to hire her for the next day. After some food, we shop around a little and end up booking a ticket through her (best price for service for sure). Then we had some MUCH needed beers and explored the city around us a little, but ended up going to bed pretty early.
Lessons learned from our first day in Vietnam:
1). Never trust a bus driver from the border. Ever. We got handled in Cambodia (much less so) and again in Vietnam. Lesson learned.
2). Never stare down the bus driver's assistant.
3). Seemingly all old-ish Vietnamese woman wear pajamas. Matching pajamas. All the time. Seriously, thats all they wear.
4). Never get on a moto if you dont know where its going, how long it will take, or how much it will cost.
5). We now understand that we were technically dropped off in the province of Can Tho, just not the city. Apparently thats an important distinction. (I think this was mistake #6)
Oct 23- Boat Tour #1 (Can Tho, Vietnam)
Can Tho is all about the boat tours. So this morning we wake up at about 5 am to get ready for our boat tour which leaves at 5:30. So we get on our boat, and its slow. Really slow. Like, we probably could have walked along the river faster than the boat took us, but its all about the experience at this point. All the other tourists in their boats passed us. Several times. So floating markets... what to say what to say?.... They float. Basically the markets consist of many boats loaded with one to two different products which the sell to people on other boats. Its actually pretty cool because some of the boats are huge and have just tons of fruit but others are small and carry much less. We were also able to score some delicious Vietnamese coffee from a coffee boat vendor. The coolest thing we saw traded was probably 2 live ducks, which were grabbed by the neck and placed into a grocery bag so that their heads stuck out the holes. To advertise their goods, boats stick an item on a long bamboo pole sticking up in the air (the ducks were not advertised like this). Other than the two floating markets we visited, we also got to visit a factory where they produce rice noodles. It was awesome. Basically they cook huge portions of round rice paper and then dry it out in the sun. Pictures are probably better than words in this case, but just know it was awesome. At the factory also had a pig farm, which was amusing. The vast majority of our time was spent in our boat on the river though. Seriously, the vast majority (8 hours). Did I mention our boat was slow? Speed aside, it was pretty awesome floating through the different canals and whatnot that make up the Mekong delta. It was crazy to see people living along the river in shacks of all different varieties. Another thing to note: The mekong is dirty. People just throw their trash into it all the time (I saw this happen at least twice) and our propeller got jammed with trash at least half a dozen times. After our boat tour, we we're pretty tired so we went back to the hostel (where I took a nap and Steph read). That night we walked around and saw this street stall that had Pho (which we have discovered is correctly pronounced fur) so we quickly ordered 2 bowls. It was delicious, to say the least (probably the best pho in Vietnam so far, writing this on Oct 29, for only 10,000 dong (50 cents) a bowl). After that we wandered up this alley that we had read about online looking for a market, but it looked sketchy so we turned around. On our way back to a part of the city we recognized this man sitting with some friends grabs me by the arm and holds up this pitcher of a clear liquid. After briefly considering the consequences, both Steph and I take a shot of this stuff. I think now that it was rice liquor, although to be honest I'm still not completely sure of that either. Either way, it worked. I think the guys there offered to let us sit for some more drinking and some food, but we felt kind of awkward at this point and politely declined.
Oct 24- A Museum and a Market (Can Tho, Vietnam)
Today was relatively uneventful. We went to a museum (most of which we didn't understand, being as it was in Vietnamese). The museum was our first look into the Vietnamese version of the "American War" or "War of American Aggression". I'll have to wait to really comment on this till we talk about Ho Chi Min City. After the museum, we wandered some more, found the bus station for the next day, and found this awesome market. I had read about the market but had no idea where it was, so it was pretty awesome that we just stumbled on it by complete accident. We got the opportunity to buy some Vietnamese coffee strainers here, at the extremely cheap price of 7000 dong each (found some today for 15-20k later in the trip). After a beer and some pretty bad eel, we ended up attempting to look for the market from the previous night once more. We found what I think the guy was talking about, but it was really just a collection of back alleys and houses with little stalls interspersed between them. Walking back towards the grocery store, we once again stumbled on some guys eating dinner who offered us more shots, which we quickly accepted. I'm about 80% certain that this was rum, but it definitely wasn't any brand I've had before. It was held in a juice bottle, which is kind of sketchy, but again, it worked. We did stick around this time briefly to try some of their food (yum!) but didn't stick around too long. We thought they maybe wanted us to sit with them (after last night's experience), but after many awkward seconds of us just standing there and not understanding what they were saying, we moved on (a bit disappointedly I might add). After picking up some goods from the grocery store, we headed to the waterfront for a beer. Tonight we were debating whether to go on this huge boat for dinner, because we thought it would be really cool to float and eat, but after getting on the boat we changed our minds. There were two levels of karaoke which was SUPER loud, so we decided 2 hours of hurting eardrums wasn't worth it.
Oct 25- Redemption and Boat Tour #2 (Ben Tre, Vietnam)
Today was a day for redemption. We knew the only way to get from Can Tho to Ben Tre was by bus, so we wanted to do it right this time. Here is our method: Step 1- get on moto, don't over pay. Step 2- find the right ticket vendor. Step 3- don't over pay the ticket vendor Step 4- make sure you are going to the right place. It is advised to ask at least 4-5 times. Step 5- Pay attention to whether you need to change buses before you leave (this happened). Step 6- Don't get too comfortable. Step 7- Dont stare at anyone. With this foolproof method, we actually made it to exactly where we wanted and expected to be dropped off. Redemption was ours. When we arrived, we got the usual barrage of moto drivers who were positive they knew the best guesthouse for us to stay at. We arranged transport to one of these, which randomly happened to be one recommended by our trusty travel guide (the 2nd time this happened randomly; the first was in Can Tho). (Sidenote: One horrible thing did happen- I saw a guy wreck his moto. It was terrifying, to say the least, since it happened while I was riding a moto. Always wear a helmet- its the law) At first glance, the place wasnt too promising. The rooms were more expensive than we were quoted (what did we expect?), the room was open air, meaning that one could easily climb over the top of the wall and nab our stuff and it was also far away from the actual town of Ben Tre. That said, it was still really cheap and the place looked like a really relaxing place to stay, far away from the hustle of the city (most big cities in the Mekong delta have 1 million plus people). We also arranged a boat tour of some islands on the Mekong for later that day. After some lunch, it was time for our boat tour. The boat was much faster this time and we both agreed that the canals were actually even more awesome than in Can Tho. Our first stop was to a place where they make candy from coconuts, which was amusing but not really all that great (even still, we ended up buying some). After that, we headed to a much bigger island. Here we got to taste some banana wine (ew), some honey, some honey tea, an assortment of fresh fruits, and take a canoe rowing down a canal back to the bigger river (these two ladies did the lions share of rowing). Our next stop was at this place called Coconut Island (although I've yet to remember its real name) where there is this weird pseudo-playground installation. We spent quite a lot of time walking around this island and found a crocodile farm (unexpectedly, since it was really dark. For the record, crocs moving in the dark are really really eerie looking). After getting back on our boat, we headed back towards where we came from, first stopping to watch fireflies along the river. The Mekong is full of mangrove trees which at dark are full of fireflies. It was a really amazing way to end our boat tour and was easily our favorite part of the whole day.
Oct 26- Bike Rides and Snake Blood (Ben Tre, Vietnam)
Our guesthouse was located kind of on the edge of Ben Tre province close to the river, where life is a lot different than in the cities. Today we decided to use the free bikes at our hostel to explore the area around it, since its not always what you see but often how you get to see it. Our original plan was to try and find a rice wine factory that our book had mentioned, but that ultimately failed. What did happen was about a 5 hour bike ride. Bikes in Vietnam are pretty outdated, mostly consisting of one speed beach cruisers with squeaky wheels and hard seats. My bike in particular was pretty horrible, having a non-adjustable seat (making the bike more than slightly too small for me) and an awfully crooked peddle. Our ride through the countryside, however, was amazing. Its weird how much different biking past a rice field is compared to driving past it. Its also amazing at how interested in us the local people were- almost half the people we saw on the path said hello to us and waved enthusiastically (probably all the children did). After some decent Pho, a much needed coffee break, an amazing biking tour of the countryside and some really sore butts, we made it back to our guesthouse around 4 in the afternoon. We relaxed for a while but eventually headed to the kitchen area for a beer and some hammock time. Around 530ish, it was time to start our adventure eating snake. The night before, we had been sitting around and this guy comes up to us and starts talking to us excitedly in Vietnamese. Being that no one around spoke English, we had absolutely no idea what the guy was saying. After some arm waving and reading some testimonies in their guest log, we figured out that this was the "Snake Guy". This conclusion was only further strengthened when the guy took us behind the kitchen to show us a barrel literally filled with snakes. The Snake Guy was awesome. I have no idea how he is related to the family running this guesthouse, but he was there both nights and apparently is semi-famous for preparing snake for the guests ("you no like, you no money") He has this super amazing laugh and only 9.5 fingers. Seriously, only 9.5. From what we learned, he had been bitten by one of the snakes and had to self-amputate half his finger off, after which he went to the hospital. Crazy or awesome? probably both. Anyways, having missed an opportunity in Can Tho for snake we both decided that tonight was the perfect night for some snake. Snake guy comes up to us and tells us that it is time to kill the snake and we could take pictures (luckily this time we had someone there who could translate for us). So he grabs the snake by the tail and holds it that way until steph could run and grab her spare battery (her camera ran out of batteries at the worst time), at which point he grabs a cleaver, puts the snakes head on the cutting board and cuts it off. After the snake is beheaded the blood is collected in a cup (Steph helped), which we would later drink with vinegar or alcohol of some sort and ginger (to prevent contamination or to help it go down- we may never know). Snake blood makes you strong, apparently. Then the snake is placed in a bowl and hot water is poured over it, at which point the snake (sans-head) starts convulsing (we think we remember them telling us the hot water is to help remove the skin). The show over, we went left for a while to allow them to prepare our meal. About an hour later, Snake Guy comes out with our food. He brings out this curry looking dish, three small shot glasses, and the glass of blood previously prepared. At first we thought he was going to drink a shot of the blood with us, but in fact we were wrong. The snake blood tasted like... blood. But diluted blood (bite your tongue really hard, take a shot of vodka and bite a piece of ginger- about the same as what we got I'd imagine). Next we moved on to the snake, which was delicious. It was basically just a curry, but with snake meat. Really really good. The texture was a little chewy but also light and tender. The skin was really good. The third shot glass (the one we thought was for Snake Guy) held an extra little surprise for me: a raw snake-heart in some sort of clear liquor. Apparently snake heart is "good for man, not good for woman- make you strong!" (at this point Steph was a bit disappointed, but also rather relieved) and also is good for erections (he told me this when Steph went to the bathroom: Snake Guy walks up, starts laughing, points to my crotch and then points up, then starts laughing even harder). To be blunt, snake heart is vile. It is definitely the worst thing I have eaten on this trip and the only thing that instantly made me want to hurl. I dont know what kind of alcohol they put it in, but it was really strong and absolutely disgusting. There's a video on the Shutterfly account. Never again.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Kep, Cambodia
Oct 19: off to Kep
So we wake up, pack our bags, grab some breakfast and hop on our bus. It was a short, but rainy ride to the sleepy fishing village of Kep. Once we got there (aka a couple of tourist agencies and the beach), we started our search for accommodations. After several hours of shenanigans (including exploring the 'town' a bit) we dropped our bags and headed for the crab market (pretty much the reason we came to Kep). Kep is well known for its seafood, and its pretty much just a little fishing village, with a couple of hostels, and couple of tourist agencies, lots of hammocks strung up under large platforms, and the crab market. So, the crab market. A line of semi-shacks line the water, with freshly skewered and grilled squid and fish at the front of each shop. Most of the places looked pretty similar, so we just picked one, and grabbed some chairs facing the water (sigh, a bit too late to catch the sunset). We ordered a plate of fried crabs with fresh green pepper (from the nearby plantation), a grilled fish (really have no idea what kind, but it had teeth, so my guess is piranha! but that's probably wrong ha), some grilled squid, and of course noodles for good measure. The crabs were about hand-size, and absolutely delicious, especially when complemented with the pepper. The squid was, well, a bit chewy, but in a great sauce. It even came with the eyeballs, which we of course avoided. The fish was absolutley delicious--white, fatty, tender--and we ate it ravenously, crispy skin and all. Stuffed to the brim, we paid our $15 tab (yowzah) and headed back to our hostel. At first glance the room looked fine, but upon second glance it was rather disgusting. The floor wasn't even swept, there was a cockroach on the floor (we later killed a huge spider), the trashcan was full, the bathroom was super smelly and mildewy (most bathrooms around here are more like shower-rooms...there's a toilet, sink, a showerhead, and a drain in the floor. no bath, door or anything to separate the shower area). There was a chopstick in the drain that you had to wiggle around so the water would go down. And there were holes in the 'sheet'. Needless to say, it was the only night we were gonna stay there. We crawled into our sleepsacks, too grossed out to lie on the sheets, and passed out.
Oct 20: Pepper farm, caves and flat fucking tires
We started the morning with our first Vietnamese coffee of the trip (yes!) and some eggs and baguette (since Cambodia was a French colony, everything is served with baguette and the older generation speaks French). We rented a moto, filled her up with gas, and headed 25k down the highway to the caves. We drove to a little town outside Kep, where some large limestone formations could been seen slightly out of town. We assumed this is where the caves were, and despite the lack of signage, we decided to turn down a dirt road heading towards the formations. While driving towards them, we are pointed by several children in the right direction, who then began to follow us. We arrived with a posse of 3 children and a young woman, who introduced us to a tour guide. We followed the guide, along with our newly acquired posse, who showed us all the formations while speaking in almost unison (aka tongue of dragon, or elephant, or alligator, etc). We understood about 25% or so of what the guide was saying...haha. He showed us a few Buddhas, but unfortunately, most of the caves had too much water to walk around in. A bit disappointed, we decided to climb to the top of the formations, which we assumed would be a rather leisureley stroll. wrong. It was pretty much rock climbing through the jungle, and we were a teensy bit afraid of falling to our deaths before we made it to the top. Luckily, there was no falling to our deaths, and we made it to the top, completely sweaty and scratched up, enjoyed the view for a few mins, and then climbed down. Phil was literally drenched in sweat, so we decided it was a good time for a moto-ride to cool ourselves off. We stopped in the town for some lunch. We walked up to this lady's table (it had some dried noodles on it) and pointed to the noodles. She, in turn, pointed to her pots of boiling liquid and said something we didn't understand. So we hung around for a few minutes (after which she started setting up her food stand--pulling out display cabinets with more noodles, pulling some whole chickens out of her boiling water and chopping them up, etc.). Long story short, we had a couple of bowls of delicious noodle soup for $2 (our cheapest meal in Cambodia so far, jesus it's expensive here) and headed on our way to the pepper plantation. That's when DIASTER STRUCK. We got a flat tire. Luckily, we were very close to a repair shop (maybe 100 yards or so). Apparently moto tires are just like bike tires, so the guy just took out the inner tube, patched the whole for 50 cents and we were on our way (oh, and phil scared the shit out of the little cambodian baby hanging around--apparently they are not used to beards, so she was crying for a lot of the time we were there, poor thing). We headed down the dirt road to the pepper plantation, which was surprisingly small. There were maybe 50 or so pepper plants, growing about 15 feet tall on a pole. Apparently, this is some of the most famous pepper in the world (seriously, it just got it's own geographical indication, just like champage! http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0623/As-Champagne-is-to-France-Kampot-pepper-is-to-Cambodia) We sampled some green pepper straight off the vine (and after only 3 or 4 peppercorns, our throats were burning for 15 minutes!) and checked out some of the other fruit trees growing nearby. Then we decided to take another road back (we were informed that it should lead us back to the road we came from) and that's when DISASTER STRUCK AGAIN. Ugh, flat tires. We were much further this time--no buildings even in sight. Luckily, we were only 10-15 min pushing of the moto to the next repair shop (they actually pretty common i guess, like every 1-2 km on some roads), where the guy replaced our stupid inner tube for $3, and we were on our way again. We motoed our way back to Kep, and grabbed our bags so we could switch hostels. We found a suitable place, which was much closer to town, much cleaner, and since it is off season we even got hot water (!) for the cheap rate ($5 for both of us). Afterwards, headed back to the crab market for dinner, where we enjoyed almost the exact same meal (substituting the squid for some shrimp), and paid (holy jesus) $19, went back to the hostel and passed out.
Oct 21- Rabbit Island
So we get up and eat some soup, then hit the boat for Rabbit Island around 9am (20 minute boat ride), a small island off the coast of Kep. Our companions on our trip are 2 other couples, one from Holland and one from Canada (Montreal- important to note that only the guy spoke English very well). We get to the island and hop off, rent some snorkeling masks and set off trekking around the island with our new Canadian friends. The scenery was pretty amazing, as we were generally walking along the beach and occasionally taking a shortcut past a long peninsula. There are fishing nets (which we found out later were not for fish but for seaweed, maybe) on just about every available beach, which made finding one worth stopping it fairly difficult. It was also quite rocky most of the time, so it was hard to find a good spot for snorkeling also. Eventually we did spot a nice peninsula off in the distance, and started to make our way there. We were walking along the beach until we were essentially wading through the ocean so we decided to cut a path ourselves. First we ran into some really spiky bushes that scratched our legs and attached to our shirts, but these were the lesser of dangers. At this point I (Phil) am bringing up the rear, so I'll tell my side of the story. I'm walking along and get caught on a bush with thorns, so am about 20 feet behind everyone. I walk up and see the Canadian girl and Steph walk up this step next to a tree. Steph (fairly calmly) comments, "Oh they're ants. There's ants on the tree. Oh I lost my flip flop. Babe can you get my flip flop?" About the time Steph asks me for her footwear, the Canadian girl starts screaming. It wasn't just ordinary screaming, it was the blood chilling variety. It was the kind that made me think there was some sort of bloodthirsty, half spider, half monkey, half zombie attacking this woman. But there wasn't, she was just covered by these ants, on her legs and under her shirt, biting the heck out of her. Steph was attacked too, but was FAR more composed. Ant attack out of the way, we made our way to the beach and Steph and I immediately set about getting our snorkeling under way. It was pretty bad. Mostly we just saw grass, although I think I saw one tinyfish also, but mostly just grass. Kind of boring. Eventually we went back and met up with the Canadian guy in the shallows. At about this time, our Holland friends came out and us five lounged in the shallow water for probably about 45 minutes. About this time, the Canadian's girfriend walked out and started yelling feverishly at her boyfriend in French. Now I don't speak a word of french, but I could definitely tell he was getting his ass chewed.* It was time for us to leave. The Canadians hired a boat around the island, but the Hollanders joined us to finish our trek around the island. Back at where we were dropped off (at this point around 2:30), we were hungry and desperately needed a beer. Beer in hand, we had fond memories of our beer on the Great Wall, since it was nearly as refreshing. For the next hour and a half, we sat, ate and chatted with the Hollanders and the Canadian guy (the girlfriend mostly just sat and looked pissed). We boarded the boat (with some pause as we forgot our tickets) and headed back to Kep. Sunburned, tired, and lacking electricity at our hostel, we decided it was the perfect time for some much needed hammock relaxation. After some blogging, a meal, and a shower, we are now off to bed. All in all, a good day on the island.*A footnote just to expand on why we think the Canadian girl was pissed. First, she had a horrible day the day before hiking on some mountain by Kampot, and got a dead fish put in her laundry (seriously) by the previous hostel owner that they chewed out for ripping them off. Second, she hates boats and was just forced to sit on a boat. Third, she had just been attacked by ants (or maybe an invisible half-spider-half-monkey-half-
So we wake up, pack our bags, grab some breakfast and hop on our bus. It was a short, but rainy ride to the sleepy fishing village of Kep. Once we got there (aka a couple of tourist agencies and the beach), we started our search for accommodations. After several hours of shenanigans (including exploring the 'town' a bit) we dropped our bags and headed for the crab market (pretty much the reason we came to Kep). Kep is well known for its seafood, and its pretty much just a little fishing village, with a couple of hostels, and couple of tourist agencies, lots of hammocks strung up under large platforms, and the crab market. So, the crab market. A line of semi-shacks line the water, with freshly skewered and grilled squid and fish at the front of each shop. Most of the places looked pretty similar, so we just picked one, and grabbed some chairs facing the water (sigh, a bit too late to catch the sunset). We ordered a plate of fried crabs with fresh green pepper (from the nearby plantation), a grilled fish (really have no idea what kind, but it had teeth, so my guess is piranha! but that's probably wrong ha), some grilled squid, and of course noodles for good measure. The crabs were about hand-size, and absolutely delicious, especially when complemented with the pepper. The squid was, well, a bit chewy, but in a great sauce. It even came with the eyeballs, which we of course avoided. The fish was absolutley delicious--white, fatty, tender--and we ate it ravenously, crispy skin and all. Stuffed to the brim, we paid our $15 tab (yowzah) and headed back to our hostel. At first glance the room looked fine, but upon second glance it was rather disgusting. The floor wasn't even swept, there was a cockroach on the floor (we later killed a huge spider), the trashcan was full, the bathroom was super smelly and mildewy (most bathrooms around here are more like shower-rooms...there's a toilet, sink, a showerhead, and a drain in the floor. no bath, door or anything to separate the shower area). There was a chopstick in the drain that you had to wiggle around so the water would go down. And there were holes in the 'sheet'. Needless to say, it was the only night we were gonna stay there. We crawled into our sleepsacks, too grossed out to lie on the sheets, and passed out.
Oct 20: Pepper farm, caves and flat fucking tires
We started the morning with our first Vietnamese coffee of the trip (yes!) and some eggs and baguette (since Cambodia was a French colony, everything is served with baguette and the older generation speaks French). We rented a moto, filled her up with gas, and headed 25k down the highway to the caves. We drove to a little town outside Kep, where some large limestone formations could been seen slightly out of town. We assumed this is where the caves were, and despite the lack of signage, we decided to turn down a dirt road heading towards the formations. While driving towards them, we are pointed by several children in the right direction, who then began to follow us. We arrived with a posse of 3 children and a young woman, who introduced us to a tour guide. We followed the guide, along with our newly acquired posse, who showed us all the formations while speaking in almost unison (aka tongue of dragon, or elephant, or alligator, etc). We understood about 25% or so of what the guide was saying...haha. He showed us a few Buddhas, but unfortunately, most of the caves had too much water to walk around in. A bit disappointed, we decided to climb to the top of the formations, which we assumed would be a rather leisureley stroll. wrong. It was pretty much rock climbing through the jungle, and we were a teensy bit afraid of falling to our deaths before we made it to the top. Luckily, there was no falling to our deaths, and we made it to the top, completely sweaty and scratched up, enjoyed the view for a few mins, and then climbed down. Phil was literally drenched in sweat, so we decided it was a good time for a moto-ride to cool ourselves off. We stopped in the town for some lunch. We walked up to this lady's table (it had some dried noodles on it) and pointed to the noodles. She, in turn, pointed to her pots of boiling liquid and said something we didn't understand. So we hung around for a few minutes (after which she started setting up her food stand--pulling out display cabinets with more noodles, pulling some whole chickens out of her boiling water and chopping them up, etc.). Long story short, we had a couple of bowls of delicious noodle soup for $2 (our cheapest meal in Cambodia so far, jesus it's expensive here) and headed on our way to the pepper plantation. That's when DIASTER STRUCK. We got a flat tire. Luckily, we were very close to a repair shop (maybe 100 yards or so). Apparently moto tires are just like bike tires, so the guy just took out the inner tube, patched the whole for 50 cents and we were on our way (oh, and phil scared the shit out of the little cambodian baby hanging around--apparently they are not used to beards, so she was crying for a lot of the time we were there, poor thing). We headed down the dirt road to the pepper plantation, which was surprisingly small. There were maybe 50 or so pepper plants, growing about 15 feet tall on a pole. Apparently, this is some of the most famous pepper in the world (seriously, it just got it's own geographical indication, just like champage! http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0623/As-Champagne-is-to-France-Kampot-pepper-is-to-Cambodia) We sampled some green pepper straight off the vine (and after only 3 or 4 peppercorns, our throats were burning for 15 minutes!) and checked out some of the other fruit trees growing nearby. Then we decided to take another road back (we were informed that it should lead us back to the road we came from) and that's when DISASTER STRUCK AGAIN. Ugh, flat tires. We were much further this time--no buildings even in sight. Luckily, we were only 10-15 min pushing of the moto to the next repair shop (they actually pretty common i guess, like every 1-2 km on some roads), where the guy replaced our stupid inner tube for $3, and we were on our way again. We motoed our way back to Kep, and grabbed our bags so we could switch hostels. We found a suitable place, which was much closer to town, much cleaner, and since it is off season we even got hot water (!) for the cheap rate ($5 for both of us). Afterwards, headed back to the crab market for dinner, where we enjoyed almost the exact same meal (substituting the squid for some shrimp), and paid (holy jesus) $19, went back to the hostel and passed out.
Oct 21- Rabbit Island
So we get up and eat some soup, then hit the boat for Rabbit Island around 9am (20 minute boat ride), a small island off the coast of Kep. Our companions on our trip are 2 other couples, one from Holland and one from Canada (Montreal- important to note that only the guy spoke English very well). We get to the island and hop off, rent some snorkeling masks and set off trekking around the island with our new Canadian friends. The scenery was pretty amazing, as we were generally walking along the beach and occasionally taking a shortcut past a long peninsula. There are fishing nets (which we found out later were not for fish but for seaweed, maybe) on just about every available beach, which made finding one worth stopping it fairly difficult. It was also quite rocky most of the time, so it was hard to find a good spot for snorkeling also. Eventually we did spot a nice peninsula off in the distance, and started to make our way there. We were walking along the beach until we were essentially wading through the ocean so we decided to cut a path ourselves. First we ran into some really spiky bushes that scratched our legs and attached to our shirts, but these were the lesser of dangers. At this point I (Phil) am bringing up the rear, so I'll tell my side of the story. I'm walking along and get caught on a bush with thorns, so am about 20 feet behind everyone. I walk up and see the Canadian girl and Steph walk up this step next to a tree. Steph (fairly calmly) comments, "Oh they're ants. There's ants on the tree. Oh I lost my flip flop. Babe can you get my flip flop?" About the time Steph asks me for her footwear, the Canadian girl starts screaming. It wasn't just ordinary screaming, it was the blood chilling variety. It was the kind that made me think there was some sort of bloodthirsty, half spider, half monkey, half zombie attacking this woman. But there wasn't, she was just covered by these ants, on her legs and under her shirt, biting the heck out of her. Steph was attacked too, but was FAR more composed. Ant attack out of the way, we made our way to the beach and Steph and I immediately set about getting our snorkeling under way. It was pretty bad. Mostly we just saw grass, although I think I saw one tinyfish also, but mostly just grass. Kind of boring. Eventually we went back and met up with the Canadian guy in the shallows. At about this time, our Holland friends came out and us five lounged in the shallow water for probably about 45 minutes. About this time, the Canadian's girfriend walked out and started yelling feverishly at her boyfriend in French. Now I don't speak a word of french, but I could definitely tell he was getting his ass chewed.* It was time for us to leave. The Canadians hired a boat around the island, but the Hollanders joined us to finish our trek around the island. Back at where we were dropped off (at this point around 2:30), we were hungry and desperately needed a beer. Beer in hand, we had fond memories of our beer on the Great Wall, since it was nearly as refreshing. For the next hour and a half, we sat, ate and chatted with the Hollanders and the Canadian guy (the girlfriend mostly just sat and looked pissed). We boarded the boat (with some pause as we forgot our tickets) and headed back to Kep. Sunburned, tired, and lacking electricity at our hostel, we decided it was the perfect time for some much needed hammock relaxation. After some blogging, a meal, and a shower, we are now off to bed. All in all, a good day on the island.*A footnote just to expand on why we think the Canadian girl was pissed. First, she had a horrible day the day before hiking on some mountain by Kampot, and got a dead fish put in her laundry (seriously) by the previous hostel owner that they chewed out for ripping them off. Second, she hates boats and was just forced to sit on a boat. Third, she had just been attacked by ants (or maybe an invisible half-spider-half-monkey-half-
Sihanoukville, Cambodia
Oct 16- Sihanoukville, Cambodia
So we thought it was a sleeper train, but the term is applied very loosely. In reality, it was like a refrigerator with slightly reclining seats (Stephs more than mine! grrrr broken chair!). Today we arrived in Phnom Penh at about 5am, an hour before we were supposed to, and had to wait till 7:45 for the next bus to Sihanoukville. Arriving on time, we boarded and awkwardly watched Khmer music videos and read for the ride. We got to Sihanoukville around 1 and immediately negotiated a tuk tuk to the Vietnamese Consulate to procure our visas. Sadly, Visas are only done till noon on Saturdays, so we are stuck waiting till Monday. We then went to our hostel, Mick and Craigs, which was a fairly nice place (meaning a reasonably comfortable mattress, fan, and mosquito net). After settling in for a bit, we walked down to the beach to check out the lay of the land. The beach we came to was called Serendipity, which was not nearly as nice as that sounds. There was trash and the water was just sort of brown, not to mention the 30 or so Khmer tourists there on a company retreat (beeline mobile, if you're interested). We decided to walk along it anyways, eventually making our way back to a restaurant to eat some barracuda and sip on a shake. Tonight we stopped back at the bar Cool Banana to watch a movie, which was the first time we'd seen a western movie in about a month.
Oct 17- A day at the Beach
Western breakfast! It was awesome! We shared some fried eggs, a hashbrown, a baguette, banana pancakes and BACON!!! Oh wonderful, amazing, awesome BACON!!!! In other news, today we went to the beach. We rented a moto (aka scooter) (don't worry moms we had helmets) and headed out towards Otres beach, which had been highly recommended to us by our hostel in Siem Reap. It was largely deserted; we only saw about 10 other people the entire time we were there. It was awesome. Even still, the most interesting part of this beach was getting back to Sihanoukville. A note on driving in Cambodia: if you have a moto, just about anything is drivable. The roads, or at least a lot of them, are dirt (and right now mud) and largely uneven, filled with wonderful potholes and obstacles for you to nearly crash on. Seriously, it takes some amount of skill and a great backseat driver to navigate these roads. And bridges are shanty (seriously, several 2x4s nailed together), enough said. Anyways, we ended up on a backroad that took much longer than we thought, almost got us stuck or made us crash a couple times, but eventually led back to Sihanoukville. Our original plan (we left at ~2:15) was to try and make a brewery tour at the Cambrew Brewery at 3pm (they brew Angkor, really popular/famous in Cambodia), but that failed. We got the the brewery (lucky even to find it!) at around 3:15-3:30 but they told us that they only did tours on Wednesdays. Damn... Instead we traveled over to Independence Beach and ended up on a stretch of private beach of a pretty nice looking hotel (we probably weren't supposed to be there, but being white in Asia has its privileges). Wanting to check out another beach, we left and found Sohka beach, another private beach we definitely shouldn't have been at (they had a guard, we just walked right past). At Sohka beach we had some papaya salad with some really fishy tasting crab mashed into it. More on that later. We arrived back at our hotel and found some food, then settled down for some Iron Man 2 and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. We were really excited about Tomb Raider, as it was filmed at Ankor. As Lara kicked butt and took names, I imagined how different Ankor in the movies is from real life. "Hello Ladyyy. Hello Misterrr. Bracelet? One dollla. One dolllllaaaa. Ok, 20 for one dolllllaa." More about fishy crab. It gives you diarrhea. Or really, it gave me diarrhea, Steph was fine (iron-gut prevails! for now at least). But it wasn't that bad, mostly just a stomach ache and a couple more trips to the bathroom than I'd want. A really light case at best, but still, it ruined our perfect record so far.
Oct 18- Massive day of Internet
Wake up, breakfast, and off to the Consulate for our visa. Easiest visa ever. I go in, barely put my name on the application and a bit more info and the guy walks up and asks when I want to enter Vietnam. I tell him, then he says, "Forty- five dolla. One picta." So I give him the stuff, and start filling out Steph's form, writing her name and filling out about 1/3 of the application, he again says $45, takes her passport and picture. It was all done in about.... 7.5 minutes. Literally. I think I payed $45 for a guy to put a sticker on my passport. Hopefully it works (we'll find out in a few days). After passport, it started raining, so we decided to do some much needed internet catchup. This is when we made our new picture website which you can visit at philstephasia.shutterfly.com. It took a long time, so if you're interested I hope you can find time to browse through a few of our albums. We later went to Sohka beach, again feeling slightly out of place (it was deserted except for the people working the resort bar on the beach- $3 for a can of Ankor beer- outrageous! No way we were going to pay that much.). Pre-dinner cart food snack of dried frogs (which tasted like dried fish), escargo (with a black pepper and lime 'sauce'), and chicken wings. Dinner at Cool Banana and watching the Runaways and Robot Chicken.
So we thought it was a sleeper train, but the term is applied very loosely. In reality, it was like a refrigerator with slightly reclining seats (Stephs more than mine! grrrr broken chair!). Today we arrived in Phnom Penh at about 5am, an hour before we were supposed to, and had to wait till 7:45 for the next bus to Sihanoukville. Arriving on time, we boarded and awkwardly watched Khmer music videos and read for the ride. We got to Sihanoukville around 1 and immediately negotiated a tuk tuk to the Vietnamese Consulate to procure our visas. Sadly, Visas are only done till noon on Saturdays, so we are stuck waiting till Monday. We then went to our hostel, Mick and Craigs, which was a fairly nice place (meaning a reasonably comfortable mattress, fan, and mosquito net). After settling in for a bit, we walked down to the beach to check out the lay of the land. The beach we came to was called Serendipity, which was not nearly as nice as that sounds. There was trash and the water was just sort of brown, not to mention the 30 or so Khmer tourists there on a company retreat (beeline mobile, if you're interested). We decided to walk along it anyways, eventually making our way back to a restaurant to eat some barracuda and sip on a shake. Tonight we stopped back at the bar Cool Banana to watch a movie, which was the first time we'd seen a western movie in about a month.
Oct 17- A day at the Beach
Western breakfast! It was awesome! We shared some fried eggs, a hashbrown, a baguette, banana pancakes and BACON!!! Oh wonderful, amazing, awesome BACON!!!! In other news, today we went to the beach. We rented a moto (aka scooter) (don't worry moms we had helmets) and headed out towards Otres beach, which had been highly recommended to us by our hostel in Siem Reap. It was largely deserted; we only saw about 10 other people the entire time we were there. It was awesome. Even still, the most interesting part of this beach was getting back to Sihanoukville. A note on driving in Cambodia: if you have a moto, just about anything is drivable. The roads, or at least a lot of them, are dirt (and right now mud) and largely uneven, filled with wonderful potholes and obstacles for you to nearly crash on. Seriously, it takes some amount of skill and a great backseat driver to navigate these roads. And bridges are shanty (seriously, several 2x4s nailed together), enough said. Anyways, we ended up on a backroad that took much longer than we thought, almost got us stuck or made us crash a couple times, but eventually led back to Sihanoukville. Our original plan (we left at ~2:15) was to try and make a brewery tour at the Cambrew Brewery at 3pm (they brew Angkor, really popular/famous in Cambodia), but that failed. We got the the brewery (lucky even to find it!) at around 3:15-3:30 but they told us that they only did tours on Wednesdays. Damn... Instead we traveled over to Independence Beach and ended up on a stretch of private beach of a pretty nice looking hotel (we probably weren't supposed to be there, but being white in Asia has its privileges). Wanting to check out another beach, we left and found Sohka beach, another private beach we definitely shouldn't have been at (they had a guard, we just walked right past). At Sohka beach we had some papaya salad with some really fishy tasting crab mashed into it. More on that later. We arrived back at our hotel and found some food, then settled down for some Iron Man 2 and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. We were really excited about Tomb Raider, as it was filmed at Ankor. As Lara kicked butt and took names, I imagined how different Ankor in the movies is from real life. "Hello Ladyyy. Hello Misterrr. Bracelet? One dollla. One dolllllaaaa. Ok, 20 for one dolllllaa." More about fishy crab. It gives you diarrhea. Or really, it gave me diarrhea, Steph was fine (iron-gut prevails! for now at least). But it wasn't that bad, mostly just a stomach ache and a couple more trips to the bathroom than I'd want. A really light case at best, but still, it ruined our perfect record so far.
Oct 18- Massive day of Internet
Wake up, breakfast, and off to the Consulate for our visa. Easiest visa ever. I go in, barely put my name on the application and a bit more info and the guy walks up and asks when I want to enter Vietnam. I tell him, then he says, "Forty- five dolla. One picta." So I give him the stuff, and start filling out Steph's form, writing her name and filling out about 1/3 of the application, he again says $45, takes her passport and picture. It was all done in about.... 7.5 minutes. Literally. I think I payed $45 for a guy to put a sticker on my passport. Hopefully it works (we'll find out in a few days). After passport, it started raining, so we decided to do some much needed internet catchup. This is when we made our new picture website which you can visit at philstephasia.shutterfly.com. It took a long time, so if you're interested I hope you can find time to browse through a few of our albums. We later went to Sohka beach, again feeling slightly out of place (it was deserted except for the people working the resort bar on the beach- $3 for a can of Ankor beer- outrageous! No way we were going to pay that much.). Pre-dinner cart food snack of dried frogs (which tasted like dried fish), escargo (with a black pepper and lime 'sauce'), and chicken wings. Dinner at Cool Banana and watching the Runaways and Robot Chicken.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Siem Reap (Angkor Wat)
Oct 12:The trip to Siem Reap
We knew this was going to be an interesting journey from the stories we had read online. The journey started with a taxi ride to the train station...at 4 am. Turns out the taxi driver was lazy and it was too far of a journey, so he stopped and shuffled us between a few taxi drivers before we found one that was willing to take us all the way into Bangkok. We arrive at the train station, purchase our tickets and hop on the train. [Sidenote: Thai trains are nothing like Chinese trains. There was no getting to the station 2 hrs ahead of time, standing in a crazy line, and sprinting to get a seat. We just bought our tickets and hopped on the train. Awesome.] The train was pretty awesome. It was rather old, but it had these huge, amazing windows that everyone just left open for the whole ride. We slept for a good 3-4 hours and then just watched the beautiful country side for the rest of the time. A few hours before we got to the border, it started raining. Luckily for us, our side of the train wasn't getting hit by the rain (the other side got a bit more wet, to the dismay of the passengers...when they tried to close the windows, which you had to pull up, they just slid back open with a loud clank). We got to the border and before we even got off the train a tuk-tuk driver had spotted us and yelled through the window to get our business. We bargained the price down, and hopped in his tuk-tuk. Just like we were expecting, he took us to a over-priced and/or fake visa building, and we only had to tell the guy there for us 3 or 4 times "No, we don't want a visa from you, take us to the border" before the tuk-tuk driver obliged. Once at the border, we followed the large crowd of people toward the Thai border, passed through customs, and started searching for the visa office. After some meandering (and me tripping, falling, and dropping my passport in a gross smelly puddle) we found the passport office and only had to pay an extra 100 baht (~$3) "fee" on top of the $20 visa fee. Then, passport stamp, free shuttle bus and an almost unavoidable overpriced taxi ride to Siem Reap. We thoroughly enjoyed our 2-ish hour ride through the country side through the almost lime-green rice paddies. We watched lots of people wading through the fields fishing and saw our first of many water buffalo (no cows; their hooves rot). We also noticed the very high level of the river. After checking in to the hostel, we were infomed that it had rained for about 12 hours the night before and the entire bottom floor of the hostel had flooded. Luckily, our room was on the 2nd floor. We immediately checked the weather forecast and were disappointed to see the next many days forecasting lots of rain (not so good for temple-exploring), took our first cold shower of the trip and went to bed praying for sunshine.
Oct 13: First day in the temples
Angkor Geological Park pretty much contains a crap ton of temples. Based on advice from our friendly hostel lady, we decided to save the biggest and best for last, and started the day with the "grand tour," aka the circle of smaller temples around the big ones. We grabbed a tuk-tuk driver and headed out. Our first temple was simply breathtaking and we climbed to the very top and enjoyed the view for a few minutes. We also began to realize how freaking hot (and humid) it was, but I guess we shouldn't have been too surprised since we're in the middle of the jungle. Turns out the tuk-tuk is a great air-conditioner after you sweat so much at each temple (30 mins of sweating, 10 min cool off in the tuk-tuk, and repeat...hehe). We saw some pretty sweet temples--a funerary (cremation) temple, a temple encicled in water, some temples deep in the jungle with trees growing out of them, and a really huge temple. We also checked out some ruins further away from Siem Reap that are some of the oldest in the area. During our temple-to-temple excursions we discovered the not-so-nice part of the temples: all the vendors. As soon as you disembark from the tuk-tuk, you are immediately surrounded by a cloud of Cambodians, all asking to buy bracelets or scarfs or paintings or postcards. 'ladee, buy scarf from mee?' or 'mister, cold dreenk? only one dolla. one dolla for cold drink, you buy from meee?' The children are especially adept (one young girl counted to her 10 postcards in about 4 different languages before we cut her off; who know how many she actually knew). Anyway, we had a great mini-day exploring some of the smaller temples and were only hit with about 10 minutes of rain (yay!). We headed back to the hostel and passed out for about 2 hours and missed sunset (oops). Oh well, we decided to grab some dinner at a place recommended by our newest favorite website, chowhound.com. We had some delicious Amok (traditional Khmer stew/soup with coconut and curry), chicken and basil, and papaya salad. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel, did some laundry, and hung it on our make-shift zig-zag-across-the-room clothesline (yay for boyscouts).
Oct 14: Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat
We had planned to start the day with sunrise at Angkor Wat. Unfortunately, at about 2am or so it started pouring and had definitely not stopped by 5am. We waited a while for our tuk-tuk driver, but he didn't show up (we figured he had trouble getting to our hostel with all the water), so we went back to sleep and told the front desk guy to wake us if the tuk-tuk driver arrived. We got up around 9 (rain had stopped!), only to discover that our tuk-tuk driver had gotten there at 5:30 and no one came to get us (eeeeeeeeee). We grabbed some quick breakfast and headed off to Angkor Thom, a huge ancient city surrounded by a wall. First we stopped at Bayon, the temple right in the middle of the city. It had a bunch of towers, with faces on all four sides, and most of the carvings were very well preserved--it was simply amazing. Then we walked to a temple under construction, checked out terrace of the elephants (a sort of 'dock' where people used to get on their elephants!) and terrace of the leper king. Afterwards we went to Ta Prom , probably our favorite temple. It is a rather crumbly temple, and moss is growing everywhere. Many really large trees are growing out of the ruins, and you really feel like an explorer (and/or little kid) going through it. We snapped a bunch of pictures, but were kind of hurried because we wanted to have enough time at Angkor Wat. Approaching Angkor Wat is really cool. There is a huge moat and a giant walkway, and then of course, the beautiful 5 towers. Other than that, honestly, we were rather disappointed with the interior of Angkor Wat. It was definitely the largest temple, and probably in the best condition, but it just wasn't as exciting as the other temples. Maybe with a guide to explain all the carvings, it would have been better, but as it was, not our favorite. Rather bored, we headed out the back of Angkor Wat and were taking some pictures when it started to drizzle. Then the rain started to get really loud and we turned around and looked in semi-horror at the sheet of water quickly approaching. We ran, but got absolutely soaked anyway (once we got back into the temple, people gave us some pretty funny looks). The rain lasted maybe 20 mins, then we headed back outside to take some pictures of the sunset. Even though it was still a bit cloudy, the sun lit up the temples and they looked completely golden; it was beautiful. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel and got some recommendations from a German guy who had been living in Cambodia for 5 months (he made a documentary and then returned because he fell in love with a Cambodian woman...awww). He also informed us (to our horror) that the $40 entrance fee we paid did not go to park management or temple restoration or preservation or anything like that...it just lines the pocket of some wealthy guy (all the temple restorations are sponsored by individual organizations or countries). sad. Anyway, the restaurant he recommended was absolutely delicious! We ate some Khmer dumplings and spring rolls, some curry and a 'sweet potato in a pot' dish (with cheese!! our first cheese in like 3 weeks or so). Afterwards we headed to the Temple bar for a beer a traditional dance show, and back to the hostel for some sleep.
Oct 15: Sunrise and other stuff
We actually made it to sunrise today! It was rather cloudy (still not sure if it was worth getting up at 5am for...) but we still got some nice pictures of the sun peeking through the clouds. Then we headed off to Banteay Srei, a really far away but beautiful temple. It's made of pink sandstone and all the carvings are in amazingly good condition. We grabbed a coffee with milk (condensed) and ice (eek) and then headed off to Kbal Spean. It's about a mile hike through the jungle to a river full of carvings. It's called the river of 1000 lingas, aka phalluses, which were worshipped. Although most of the carvings were eroded away, we caught a glimpse of a few, which were still quite impressive. On the way home we stopped at the Cambodian Landmine Museum and this little hut on the side of the road where our tuk-tuk driver showed us how palm sugar is made (and we even got to try it!). On the way home it started pouring rain (luckily our tuk-tuk has side-flaps so we didn't get too wet. unfortunately our driver got absolutely soaked despite his rain jacket). We made it back to the hostel and our currently awaiting our midnight sleeper train to Siahnookville.
We knew this was going to be an interesting journey from the stories we had read online. The journey started with a taxi ride to the train station...at 4 am. Turns out the taxi driver was lazy and it was too far of a journey, so he stopped and shuffled us between a few taxi drivers before we found one that was willing to take us all the way into Bangkok. We arrive at the train station, purchase our tickets and hop on the train. [Sidenote: Thai trains are nothing like Chinese trains. There was no getting to the station 2 hrs ahead of time, standing in a crazy line, and sprinting to get a seat. We just bought our tickets and hopped on the train. Awesome.] The train was pretty awesome. It was rather old, but it had these huge, amazing windows that everyone just left open for the whole ride. We slept for a good 3-4 hours and then just watched the beautiful country side for the rest of the time. A few hours before we got to the border, it started raining. Luckily for us, our side of the train wasn't getting hit by the rain (the other side got a bit more wet, to the dismay of the passengers...when they tried to close the windows, which you had to pull up, they just slid back open with a loud clank). We got to the border and before we even got off the train a tuk-tuk driver had spotted us and yelled through the window to get our business. We bargained the price down, and hopped in his tuk-tuk. Just like we were expecting, he took us to a over-priced and/or fake visa building, and we only had to tell the guy there for us 3 or 4 times "No, we don't want a visa from you, take us to the border" before the tuk-tuk driver obliged. Once at the border, we followed the large crowd of people toward the Thai border, passed through customs, and started searching for the visa office. After some meandering (and me tripping, falling, and dropping my passport in a gross smelly puddle) we found the passport office and only had to pay an extra 100 baht (~$3) "fee" on top of the $20 visa fee. Then, passport stamp, free shuttle bus and an almost unavoidable overpriced taxi ride to Siem Reap. We thoroughly enjoyed our 2-ish hour ride through the country side through the almost lime-green rice paddies. We watched lots of people wading through the fields fishing and saw our first of many water buffalo (no cows; their hooves rot). We also noticed the very high level of the river. After checking in to the hostel, we were infomed that it had rained for about 12 hours the night before and the entire bottom floor of the hostel had flooded. Luckily, our room was on the 2nd floor. We immediately checked the weather forecast and were disappointed to see the next many days forecasting lots of rain (not so good for temple-exploring), took our first cold shower of the trip and went to bed praying for sunshine.
Oct 13: First day in the temples
Angkor Geological Park pretty much contains a crap ton of temples. Based on advice from our friendly hostel lady, we decided to save the biggest and best for last, and started the day with the "grand tour," aka the circle of smaller temples around the big ones. We grabbed a tuk-tuk driver and headed out. Our first temple was simply breathtaking and we climbed to the very top and enjoyed the view for a few minutes. We also began to realize how freaking hot (and humid) it was, but I guess we shouldn't have been too surprised since we're in the middle of the jungle. Turns out the tuk-tuk is a great air-conditioner after you sweat so much at each temple (30 mins of sweating, 10 min cool off in the tuk-tuk, and repeat...hehe). We saw some pretty sweet temples--a funerary (cremation) temple, a temple encicled in water, some temples deep in the jungle with trees growing out of them, and a really huge temple. We also checked out some ruins further away from Siem Reap that are some of the oldest in the area. During our temple-to-temple excursions we discovered the not-so-nice part of the temples: all the vendors. As soon as you disembark from the tuk-tuk, you are immediately surrounded by a cloud of Cambodians, all asking to buy bracelets or scarfs or paintings or postcards. 'ladee, buy scarf from mee?' or 'mister, cold dreenk? only one dolla. one dolla for cold drink, you buy from meee?' The children are especially adept (one young girl counted to her 10 postcards in about 4 different languages before we cut her off; who know how many she actually knew). Anyway, we had a great mini-day exploring some of the smaller temples and were only hit with about 10 minutes of rain (yay!). We headed back to the hostel and passed out for about 2 hours and missed sunset (oops). Oh well, we decided to grab some dinner at a place recommended by our newest favorite website, chowhound.com. We had some delicious Amok (traditional Khmer stew/soup with coconut and curry), chicken and basil, and papaya salad. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel, did some laundry, and hung it on our make-shift zig-zag-across-the-room clothesline (yay for boyscouts).
Oct 14: Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat
We had planned to start the day with sunrise at Angkor Wat. Unfortunately, at about 2am or so it started pouring and had definitely not stopped by 5am. We waited a while for our tuk-tuk driver, but he didn't show up (we figured he had trouble getting to our hostel with all the water), so we went back to sleep and told the front desk guy to wake us if the tuk-tuk driver arrived. We got up around 9 (rain had stopped!), only to discover that our tuk-tuk driver had gotten there at 5:30 and no one came to get us (eeeeeeeeee). We grabbed some quick breakfast and headed off to Angkor Thom, a huge ancient city surrounded by a wall. First we stopped at Bayon, the temple right in the middle of the city. It had a bunch of towers, with faces on all four sides, and most of the carvings were very well preserved--it was simply amazing. Then we walked to a temple under construction, checked out terrace of the elephants (a sort of 'dock' where people used to get on their elephants!) and terrace of the leper king. Afterwards we went to Ta Prom , probably our favorite temple. It is a rather crumbly temple, and moss is growing everywhere. Many really large trees are growing out of the ruins, and you really feel like an explorer (and/or little kid) going through it. We snapped a bunch of pictures, but were kind of hurried because we wanted to have enough time at Angkor Wat. Approaching Angkor Wat is really cool. There is a huge moat and a giant walkway, and then of course, the beautiful 5 towers. Other than that, honestly, we were rather disappointed with the interior of Angkor Wat. It was definitely the largest temple, and probably in the best condition, but it just wasn't as exciting as the other temples. Maybe with a guide to explain all the carvings, it would have been better, but as it was, not our favorite. Rather bored, we headed out the back of Angkor Wat and were taking some pictures when it started to drizzle. Then the rain started to get really loud and we turned around and looked in semi-horror at the sheet of water quickly approaching. We ran, but got absolutely soaked anyway (once we got back into the temple, people gave us some pretty funny looks). The rain lasted maybe 20 mins, then we headed back outside to take some pictures of the sunset. Even though it was still a bit cloudy, the sun lit up the temples and they looked completely golden; it was beautiful. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel and got some recommendations from a German guy who had been living in Cambodia for 5 months (he made a documentary and then returned because he fell in love with a Cambodian woman...awww). He also informed us (to our horror) that the $40 entrance fee we paid did not go to park management or temple restoration or preservation or anything like that...it just lines the pocket of some wealthy guy (all the temple restorations are sponsored by individual organizations or countries). sad. Anyway, the restaurant he recommended was absolutely delicious! We ate some Khmer dumplings and spring rolls, some curry and a 'sweet potato in a pot' dish (with cheese!! our first cheese in like 3 weeks or so). Afterwards we headed to the Temple bar for a beer a traditional dance show, and back to the hostel for some sleep.
Oct 15: Sunrise and other stuff
We actually made it to sunrise today! It was rather cloudy (still not sure if it was worth getting up at 5am for...) but we still got some nice pictures of the sun peeking through the clouds. Then we headed off to Banteay Srei, a really far away but beautiful temple. It's made of pink sandstone and all the carvings are in amazingly good condition. We grabbed a coffee with milk (condensed) and ice (eek) and then headed off to Kbal Spean. It's about a mile hike through the jungle to a river full of carvings. It's called the river of 1000 lingas, aka phalluses, which were worshipped. Although most of the carvings were eroded away, we caught a glimpse of a few, which were still quite impressive. On the way home we stopped at the Cambodian Landmine Museum and this little hut on the side of the road where our tuk-tuk driver showed us how palm sugar is made (and we even got to try it!). On the way home it started pouring rain (luckily our tuk-tuk has side-flaps so we didn't get too wet. unfortunately our driver got absolutely soaked despite his rain jacket). We made it back to the hostel and our currently awaiting our midnight sleeper train to Siahnookville.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Shanghai, Hong Kong and Bangkok
Day 6--CHILL
We woke up at noon and spent the whole day on the Internet...hehe...off to dinner with Cindy soon...
So we get to the restaurant with Cindy, a really nice Sichuan restaurant. Our favorites had to be these really awesome ribs covered in fresh cumin seeds, some really tasty (and spicy!) tofu over some rice, and this really amazing tree fungus. Actually, just about everything was slightly spicy, but nothing that two New Mexicans couldn't handle. Also, we had the waiter take a picture of the three of us, and get this--he asks the guy sitting at the table behind us to get up so that there is nobody in the background of our picture. The Chinese are super serious about picture taking...it was crazy. After dinner we just headed home, tired, ready for bed.
Day 7- EXPO!!!
Today we woke up with business in mind- we needed to buy train tickets to Hong Kong. We really didn't want to have to repeat our epic voyage on the slow ghetto train, so we wanted to be sure to purchase tickets on a sleeper train. Trains to Hong Kong only run on odd days of the week, and we needed to get to Hong Kong on an even day (of course), plus they were sold out of Hong Kong tickets (since it was the Chinese National holiday), so we settled for a train ticket to Guanzhou (about 2 hours outside of Hong Kong). All that was left was buying a Guangzhou-Hong Kong ticket when we got there. After purchasing our tickets (and feeling amazing to have that out of the way), we decided it was about time to do something touristy in Shanghai and headed over to the Yuyuan Garden. Funny thing is, however, we never actually made it to the garden. We got off the metro stop and started following the signs, but instead of finding a garden found this really awesome market. If I ever wanted a watch, today would have been the day. "Watch, watch, do you want a watch? Purse? Iphone? You want Iphone?" Anyways, the market was really crazy and was where I saw my first little kid peeing in a drainage vent. Through the butt slot in his pants. Thats China. After Yu Market, we decided that it was about time to head over to the Expo, which we got free tickets for from Cindy. Expo was AWESOME!!! So a little bit of information about the World Expo. Basically, most all the countries in the world design and pay for these huge exhibits which show of some part of their culture and country. The theme for this expo is "Better city, better life". Some of the exhibits were really cool and some not so much. (mostly we didn't get to see the inside of any of the cool ones because the wait was ridiculously long: from 1 hr for Saudi Arabia to 2.5 for Japan). Here's a few thoughts:So we get to the restaurant with Cindy, a really nice Sichuan restaurant. Our favorites had to be these really awesome ribs covered in fresh cumin seeds, some really tasty (and spicy!) tofu over some rice, and this really amazing tree fungus. Actually, just about everything was slightly spicy, but nothing that two New Mexicans couldn't handle. Also, we had the waiter take a picture of the three of us, and get this--he asks the guy sitting at the table behind us to get up so that there is nobody in the background of our picture. The Chinese are super serious about picture taking...it was crazy. After dinner we just headed home, tired, ready for bed.
Day 7- EXPO!!!
Highlights:
- Denmark- Really cool. A huge, white circular building. You walk in and there's a large pool in the center with a mermaid statue sitting on top of it. Then you walk up and around the building till you're finally on top, with a really nice view of part of Expo Park. You can ride bikes around during the day, but we got there too late.
- Israel- Awesome theater experience outlining some of the major innovations Israel has come up with. It was a really neat experience.
Lowlights:
- Iraq- It was horrible. My 8th grade dance was more decorated than that. It was like... painted murals, a tiny gift counter, and a tacky motorized sculpture remanent of the "Its a small world ride", only worse. Horrible.
- UK- Initially on my top 5 most wanted exhibits, IT SHUTS DOWN AT 10pm!!!! ARGGGGG!!!! So I didn't get to see it... damn...
Exhausted, we leave the expo and take the long taxi cab home (subways shut down at like 10:30 or 11pm... whaaaat????)
Day 8- National Day (October 1st)
61 years ago, on this day, the Peoples Republic of China was founded in Tiananmen Square. Its a huge holiday for Chinese people; they get the entire week off. And when I say huge, I mean huge. But before we truly experienced it, we had a great day at another market. This morning we decided to go to this market called Tianzifang Market (recommended by Cindy), which is nice little market consisting of a series of side streets lined with small little shops. Its kind of like the Shanghai version of Nob Hill, but not really, but slightly. Way more shops, some nice stuff, some really nick-nacky touristy stuff, and a bunch of restaurants catering to the more business like attitude of Shanghai (meaning food thats not Chinese, like Italian or a sandwich shop). After finishing up at the market, we wandered around and found a nice little place for afternoon lunch. There weren't any white people in the restaurant, so it was perfect. We had a really nice soup there, and some so so soup dumplings. After lunch then headed over to a really famous place in Shanghai called "The Bund". The Bund is also called the "Wall Street of China", but from my experience at the actual Wall Street, is really stretched comparison. The Bund is now just a tourist attraction, consisting of a walk next to the river to look at the city skyline of Shanghai, which is really cool. Tonight, however, was probably different than most nights you might spend at the Bund. It was packed. But not just sold out stadium packed really packed concert packed, it was China packed. Seriously. I think there were probably close to half a million people who visited the Bund, if not more, on National Day. We should have been tipped off by the fact that the nearest subway station was closed, but we werent, so we walked out there with the other 499,998 people to see the lit up skyline of Shanghai. After we had our share of the sights, we then got in the mass of people trying to leave the Bund, which was equally as crazy. We were walking like packed sardines, on one side a wall and on the other a line of Chinese soldiers keeping the peace (they were stationed about every 30 feet or so). In order to take a break from the crowd, we luckily ran into a bar on the bund that had been recommended by Cindy. As we walked into the place, the atmosphere instantly changed around me. There was a string trio playing classics in the lobby and a small jazz band playing New Orleans style jazz in the bar (they sang Edelweiss!!!). After an Old Fashioned (me) and a Singapore Sling (Steph), we decided we were properly relaxed to face the crowds and headed back out, into the crowds, into the subway, and eventually back to Cindys.
Day 9- Zhouzhuang
So today we wake up, cleverly having loaded the Mandarin characters of the bus stop we're heading towards on my iTouch, and catch a cab. The cab driver takes us to the Shanghai Stadium and drops us off, since this is where we need to catch the bus to Zhouzhuang. Everything was going great, but then... tragedy strikes. Steph had left my itouch in the cab (FAIL). Holy shit- this is bad. Not only was that our only source of internet, but it was our alarm clock, regular clock, music device and had my favorite game Tubes on it!! (it was especially annoying because without a source of time, we now had to try to buy a watch from the super annoying vendors). Well, we let ourselves feel bad and pissed off during the entire bus ride to Zhouzhuang, but then, after deciding nothing could be done about it decided to just keep going (its hard enough getting anything back from a cab in the States, let alone Shanghai). Now, enough sad stuff, now about Zhouzhuang. It was awesome. Its called the "Venice of China", which having never been to Venice, still seems like a pretty appropriate title. Its filled with little shops all along a neat little river system. We could have taken a little ride around the river, but we ran out of time shopping and exploring the sites of the town. We did have this absolutely disgusting tofu there; it was like... a spongy... gross... squishy.... juicy.... gross.... it was just gross tofu. After getting back to Shanghai from Zhouzhuang, we decided to hit up one of the really tall buildings there and chose the Park Hyatt Shanghai, a really famous building in China. We were zipped up to the 87th floor to the bar there where you can enjoy the view and a drink at the same time. I had some Japanese Whiskey and Steph enjoyed some really nice tea. The perfect ending to our stay in Shanghai.
Day 10- Preparing for Hong Kong
Today we woke up and prepared for our travels to Hong Kong (via Guangzhou). We pretty much just sat in Cindy's living room looking for things to do in Hong Kong, went to the quick-e-mart to get our plastic bag full of dinner/snacks (we were a bit more prepared this time), then boarded the train at about 6pm. This train was freaking awesome compared to the Beijing-Shanghai excursion. It was a 'hard sleeper', which was just as hard as any other bed in Asia, so not a big deal. There are 6 beds in each cabin--3 beds high on each side. We had both settled in on a bottom and middle bunk until we got exiled to the very top-most bunks by an old man and a lady with a baby. Sleeping up top was kind of cool, although climbing down was always rather awkward...hehe... Highlights of the train were some bad sausage things, cup of noodles, a couple croissants, meeting this Finish woman (who hadn't spoken English in 2 days), and SLEEPING!!!!! And then....
Day 11: Hong Kong (via Guangzhou)
We get into Guangzhou, and spend forever looking for the place where we can buy train tickets to Hong Kong. Finally we found it, and only had to wait a couple of hours before we hopped on our train, which had super comfortable seats and they even gave us a bottle of water (gasp!). Once in HK, we cleared customs rather quickly and hopped on the subway to our hostel, or should I say mansion. We stayed in a place called Chungking Mansions, which is rather difficult to explain, so it might be better to just read the wikipedia page about it haha: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungking_Mansions . Anyway, we checked in, took a shower, and headed out on the town. Turns out, we were pretty well located, and after wandering for food for a while, we found a little side street with several restaurants. To our dismay, many of them were not chinese food (Indian, Irish, etc) but after a bit of searching we found one! And enjoyed some delicious noodle soup and warm almond milk (which was good, but a bit strange). Then we headed to the waterfront and checked out the Avenue of Stars--something similar to Holywood Blvd, where all the famous Chinese movie stars put their handprints. We enjoyed a beer and then headed back to the water front for the AMAZING HK light show. This show happens every night (MWF it's in English), and although it holds a Guiness World Record for longest running light show, it is probably the lamest thing either of us have ever seen. Thoroughly disappointed, we headed back to the hostel to get some much needed facebook time (ah, nearly 10 days without fb!) and sleep.
Day 12: Hong Kong
We started out the day in Central. First, with the mid-level escalators, the largest set of escalators in the world, designed to help commuters in that area get to work. Then we got some delicious dim sum at a place that Phil looked up (Anthony Bourdain went there). This place was really crazy--once you find it, you walk up a giant staircase and end up in this huge room, maybe 150-200 people. You basically just wander the room until a couple of seats open up, and then sit down with a bunch of strangers. The guy brings you tea and a bowl and plate and a stamp card, and then you just go around to all the different carts and get whatever you want. We had a whole bunch of dumplings, some little buns that we thought we pork buns, but turned out to be ?turnip and peanut butter? buns (or at least that's what they tasted like). Then we got this weird cabbage wrap which contained 3 long sticks of random meat-stuff and a mushroom...turns out it was pretty delicious. By this time, we are getting ridiculously stuffed, but I see the cart go by with real pork buns, so we had to grab a couple of those. We barely finished the buns along with our third pot of tea when some people came around searching for a table and we decided it was time to roll out. We finished going up the escalators (which I thought was a circular system, but turns out you just go to the top and then, well, you're at the top. So we just kind of wandered for a while and ended up at the HK Botanical Gardens, which was free admission and with a bunch of cages with some sweet birds, some weird mammals and some orangutans. It's a really cool layout--on the side of a steep hill (HK is pretty hilly, kinda like SF but maybe not as bad) with lots of trees; it feels like a secret park. Afterwards, we just walked down the huge hill we escalator-ed up and wandered around some more, saw some sweet markets with lots of weird meats and fish. We were trying to identify all the organs we saw, but were only successful with a few, such as heart, liver, and intestines. Then we caught the subway and took a bus to Stanley, which is a little village on the waterfront on the opposite (southern) side of HK island. We did some shopping and had a coffee while it was raining, then headed back to the northern part of the island where we began our ritual food search. After searching for a while, we both decided we really had to pee and were excited about the "Traditional Chinese Noodle" restaurant. Turns out it was one of the worst meals we had--the soup broth was so disgustingly fishy that we could barely eat it. In order to redeem ourselves, we decided to get some skewered meat from this stand, which was maybe one of the most delicious things we had eaten. They were famous for their chicken and beef, so we got a skewer of chicken, duck and octopus, and ate it around the corner like two kids who had just stolen candy from a store. soooooo good. Feeling appropriately redeemed, we headed back to the hostel. Our roommates knocked on the door around 5am (apparently there is only one key for the room we were staying in) and we had a good 10-15 minute discussion about girls, dancing, and buying drugs in HK, and then finally we went back to sleep.
Day 13: the Big Buddha and Mongkok
We took a cable car up to the very top of Lantau Island, where the world's biggest seated bronze buddha is located. Rather touristy, but still pretty sweet, especially the cable car ride over the bay and up through the mountains. Afterwards we headed to Mongkok, a bunch of markets. We found the goldfish market, which is basically a whole street selling lots of tropical fish (which I'm pretty sure is illegal, but it was still cool). We wandered, but couldn't find the bird market, and we ended up at the Ladies Market. I don't even know why it's called Ladies Market, but its just a bunch of stalls selling all the same stuff that all the other stalls are selling. Bored with Ladies Market, we grabbed some cart food and headed to the Night Market, which we hoped would be a bit more exciting, but turns out it was the same thing except at night (and also a section with dildoes). So...we ate some more food and headed home for the night.
Day 14: off to Bangkok!
Slept in pretty late, packed our stuff and headed to grab some food and a last shot of the pier. Enjoyed some amaaazing singapore noodles and some dumpling soup. Satisfied with our final meal in "China" (I guess HK doesn't really count), we headed to the pier to enjoy a coffee and the view, then headed back to our hostel to grab our stuff. Grabbed the subway to the airport (an agonizingly expensive $6 ticket for a ride that was no further than any of the other stations--arg) and hopped on our Sri Lankan flight. Sri Lankan airlines was awesome. We were a bit worried at first boarding, since everyone looked very Indian and for a sec we weren't sure we were on the right plane. Turns out Bangkok was just a stopover on the way to Sri Lanka (duh), and so we felt better. Just a short 2 hr 20 min flight and delicious chicken curry later, we hopped off the plane, on to a couple of different skytrain lines to meet Nathan, where he was definitely not waiting for us (ha). We borrowed someone's cell phone and discovered he was on his way (phew). We took a taxi to his place (in Rangsit, about an hour or two outside of Bangkok) and all three snuggled up on his bed for some good sleep.
Oct 8-11: Bangkok and around
And the laziness sets in...summary of the few days we spent in Bangkok. (8th) We hung out in Rangsit, saw Nathan's University, ate delicious food for about $1. (9th) Took the 2-ish hour journey to Bangkok to check out the Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha, a 45 cm tall Buddha made out of jade and on this huge stack of golden shrines a few stories tall. It is the most venerated Buddha in Thailand. Afterwards, we found a market where we found a GIANT pot of curry, and Phil decided he needed some of it (rightfully so; it smelled delicious). We ate some delicious curry and pad see ew, and it started to downpour, so we waited for a 20 mins or so and then headed to Ko San Road, which is the ridiculous tourist spot full of backpackers, over-priced food (psh, $2), and lots of places offering massages or 'ping pong shows.' We ended up having a couple of beers and then heading over to Chayani's parent's house. Chayani's mom prepared a myriad of amazingly delicious dishes. We ate until we couldn't eat anymore, and then we ate some more. For dessert we had unripe mango (surprisingly good), apples, and rice cakies. We went to bed and then (10th) had a comparably amazing breakfast including pumpkin with fried eggs, coconut curry, delicious soup and more. Then we headed out to the Vimanmek Mansion and surrounding areas. It's the largest teakwood mansion in the world, was built without any nails, and is where King Rama V lived for 5 years...it's now been turned into a museum of sorts. For all the museums and temples we've visited in Thailand, you always have to take off your shoes. I find it rather awesome--all the tour guides and everyone walks around for like an hour without shoes...Then we headed over to the Siem Museum but were kicked out early due to a red shirt protest. We headed over to Wat Pho, to see the world's largest reclining Buddha (46m long and 15m high). Here we actually got to witness monks chanting together, which was a really interesting and worthwhile experience. Afterwards, we hung out on the river front, enjoying the early evening twilight, took a 2-min water taxi ride to the next station (totally worth it) and grabbed a bus to some random part of town, ate some so-so food, and grabbed a taxi home. (11th) Mostly a lazy day, consisting of us sleeping in, reading/interneting, getting food, getting a haircut (which was rather interesting since I speak no Thai and the hairdresser spoke no English, but it was only $5), more interneting, and then heading to dinner with Chayani. She took us to this awesome place kind of in the boonies near her university that her foodie friend had told her about. The restaurant, which was actually someone's house, was sort of on a river, and we had to cross this rickety make-shift bridge to get to the building. We had the most amazing food--a whole fish, deliciously fried with a spicy/sour salsa-like concoction made of unripe mangoes, onions, garlic and chilies on top. We also had some coconut curry, pepper shrimp and squid, and sauteed morning glories. Supremely satisfied, we headed for some dessert at the university and found some delicious waffles and ice-cream. Then we grabbed a cab, and some beers and started packing. Off to Siem Reap at 4am tomorrow!
Beijing, a bit of Shanghai
SIGH...sorry for the delay, but just like facebook, china blocks blogspot...
Day 1: Beijing
So we grab a map, some dumplings from a random cart for about one dollar, and hop on a bus (which luckily was headed in the right direction) to Tiannaman Square. It's pretty big and amazing, and filled with lots of Chinese tour groups with the same bright colored hats (or, my favorite, matching jumpsuits). Across the street we discovered the Forbidden City, aka where all the emperors lived for thousands of years. This place is ridiculously huge (not surprising) and there are throngs of Chinese people everywhere. Every now and then, we were able to make it into a less-crowded alley way. We were amazed at how many building were listed as residences for concubines (Phil was pretty excited by these) until we found out there were about 10,000 concubines (at least during one emperor's reign, not sure about the rest of them), all of them with bound feet. We also got to see the emperor's throne, and his bed. (yay!) We also encountered our first scam (after being in China for less than 24hrs), where a lady told us there was an art exhibit, took us to a back room and tried to sell us 'authentic paintings by Chinese art students' for about 300 yuan (50 bucks). We politely declined and the next day saw the exact same paintings at the great wall for about 20 yuan. Next, we headed to Jinguan park, which is a giant artificial hill made from the excavations of the moat. Its also where one of the emperors hung himself after a resistance movement broke into the forbidden city. Next, we wandered into an alleyway on our way to another park and had our first authentic Chinese meal. There was trash all over the floor, it was pretty dirty, and we could see the cook cooking in the back. No menu, so we just pointed to a couple of bowls that looked appetizing, and a few minutes later we had some dumpling soup and some type of noodle bowl. The ladies sitting across from us were super nice and indicated that we should add some of the random sauces sitting on the table to our meals and also that i was using my chopsticks upside down (wow, embarassing). Total, we paid 10 yuan for the meal, less that two dollars. It was one of our best meals yet. Next, we headed over to Beihai park, which has a bunch of beautiful lakes, boats, and some more temples. We snap some pictures in a kimono for a nominal fee, and head back to the entrance of the forbidden city so we can check out this shopping street and hop on the subway back to the hostel. We walk down this shopping street, and duck into a little hutong next to it to find some food. We grabbed a couple of meat skewers and a squishy white thing with sweet green stuff inside and walk back to the subway (which was also surprisingly easy to navigate). Man, we were exhausted. We managed to stay awake long enough to arrange a ride to the great wall the next day and book our train ticket to Shangahi. Turns out, Beijing-Shanghai is a relatively popular route, so there are no more sleeper trains available. And there are no more fast trains either. So, instead of a 15 hour overnight train in a bed, we ended up with a 22 hour ride on a "hard seat". yay!
Day 2: Beijing
Great Wall day! Van left at 7am. We are accompanied by several Chinese tourists, a Canadian, a New Yorker, and an Argentinian who lives in Belgium. It was about a 1.5 ride through the country side and on lots of windy roads. When we got there, we rode a ski-lift to the top and hiked around for several hours. Both Phil and I were discussing how we always imagined the great wall as a nice and flat walkway. It is not. There are lots and lots of stairs, so needless to say, after about 4 hours of hiking (we made it through about 14 towers) we were exhausted and decided to haggle with one of the vendors for some beer. We climbed to the top of tower and enjoyed our delicious TsingTaos on top of the Great Wall (pictures of Phil are priceless). Then, on the way down, we took a stainless steel slide thing. We sat on a cart of sorts with wheels, and push a lever to go faster and pull it back to stop. It was rather enjoyable. Next, we at a rather Westernized Chinese restaurant, which was still delicious. All of our plates, bowls, cups, etc came plastic-wrapped which we thought was pretty funny. Then--back to the hostel. After an hour or two of resting, we decide we need some Peking duck, and after the suggestion of our Canadian friend, we try to find the DaDong Restaurant, which, according to him, is "right outside the Metro station". Long story short, it was not. After a 3.5 hour search, including accidentally ending up outside a soccer (we think) stadium and walking through the streets with thousands of fans (and accompanying soldiers in riot gear) we made some new friends who were also looking for the same restaurant. Our powers combined, we found the restaurant. Turns out, we had been there about an hour ago, but the giant neon fluorescent sign said "Chef Dong's Fried Sea Cucumber". Written on the window, in very small letters, we saw "DaDong". Anyway, we were exhausted, and minus the pushy waiter who insisted that we order more than one duck and several sides, we had ridiculously delicious duck with our new friends. By this time, its 10pm, and we were more than ready for bed.
Day 3: more Beijing
Other cool stuff! We started off at the Summer Palace, which is where the emperors/empresses lived during the summer (most notoriously, the evil Empress Dowager Cixi). It's huge, set on a man-made lake of sorts, and has lots of temples and buildings with ridiculous awesome names (like all the palaces do), such as the 'Temple of Timely Rain and Everlasting Moisture' or 'Hall of Dispelling Clouds'. We took a sweet boat across the lake and explored for a several hours and lost track of time. Then we raced like crazy people to make it to the Lama Temple before it closed at 4:30. We made it 5 minutes before it closed, phew! Lama temple is this gorgeous Tibetan Buddhist Temple with so many Buddahs! One of them was 3 stories tall and carved out of a single tree, earning it a Guinness World Record. Afterwards, we headed back on to the street, ate some soup for 8 yuan (right around 1 dollar) and then grabbed some freshly made pork dumplings. Unfortunately, they were a bit too freshly made (a bit pink) so we opted to stay on the safe side and toss them (which was rather difficult for me as I'm sure some of you may know). Afterwards, we tried to find an acrobatics show, but failed, and headed back to the hostel with sore feet.
Day 4: off to Shanghai
We got up bright and early because we wanted to make it to Temple of Heaven before we get on our ridiculously long train ride. So we pack up our bags and head to the train station (so we can drop off our bags and figure out where the hell we need to go to get on this train). We got some good advice from one of our roommates the night before, like to get there about 2 hours early and get your own food. We get to the train station and are looking for lockers (also, for some internet because somehow both of us forgot to write down Cindy's number and address. Also, we have no idea where we are going to arrive in Shangahi. great planning on our part hehe) Anyway, we find some lockers to store our stuff and race back to the subway so we can be at the Temple of Heaven for at least an hour or so before we have to come back to the train station. Temple of Heaven was awesome--its just this huge park in the middle of the city where lots of locals go to practice tai chi. So pretty much there's just a bunch of old Chinese people doing tai chi (with swords or with a paddle and ball or with nothing) or playing cards or strolling around. so cute. i also bought this cool little hacki-sack kind of thing, which isn't really a sack, but just a rubber thing with feathers. It reminds me of a badminton kind of. So cool. Anyway, we strolled through the park and then headed back to the train. We bought some noodles in a cup for the ride (which, btw are amazingly delicious, and come with a folding fork!) and found our station without too much trouble and sat and waited in line. Almost right after we sat down, they put up the sign for our train and everyone rushed to get in line. They opened the gates, we gave our tickets and it was a mad rush to the train (literally people were running). Luckily we were at the front of the line, so we got some overhead space for our luggage, and now we just wait an hour for the train to start moving. sigh. So, about the train. It was crazy. This is seriously the ghetto-est of ghetto trains. We were probably going like 40-50 miles per hour. ugh. and we stopped at a bunch of stops for 10-15 mins. And it was super crowded. A bunch of people standing and everyone is switching all the time. And people just throw their trash on the ground (seriously?) and every now and then a guy comes through and sweeps it up. And of course, we were the center of attention--everyone's entertainment. We had secret pictures taken of us (which were not so secret because her phone made a loud 'click' noise, then we all looked at each other and had a good laugh), they tried to teach us a bit of Mandarin and also gave us some food (some special harvest festival cakes, and yogurt, and a breadstick thing, and a huge thing of ham). We read some books (they were fascinated of course). Then some eating of noodle bowls (yum). I had to walk to the front of the cabin to get hot water. I discovered people sleeping on the really gross floor, in these side-cabin things, and lots of people standing. Also, some smoking. After noodles, sleeping (or should I say, not sleeping). At about 4am, the train took an hour stop, I don't know why, maybe so the train driver could sleep? And then we kept going...
Day 5: arriving in Shanghai
So we get to Shangahi, sweaty, gross, tired and without Cindy's contact info. So we grab a map and our packs and go in search of some internet. Luckily, the railway station is located in a relatively central area, so we were able to find a hotel with a business center, and get cindy's number and address. Our shitty map indicated that there were two stops for Cindy's street, so we choose one and decide to walk around a bit. We quickly decided that our packs were heavy and grabbed a cab to Cindy's (which was ridiculously cheap). We arrive at Cindy's office and she is super busy at work (understandably so) so she sends us out down the street where we accidentally end up at the Museum for the Second Meeting of the Communist Party of China (haha), hide from the rain under an awning at a park with a bunch of asians, and check out another sweet temple. We head back to Cindy's office, and go grab dinner at this amazing dumpling place (rated one of the top 10 restaurants in the world in 1993) and head home for a much much much needed shower, a glass of wine (or two) and some sleep.
other notes on China--there are definitely some interesting smells here. mostly bad, but near buddas it always smells good, either because of flowers or incense. Also, it is generally clean (although in some of the back alleys or hutongs not so much). We are always seeing people sweeping things up or picking up trash (seriously they are everywere). And people are very nice (for the most part) and help us when we ask for it. Also, people stare. A lot. And not the I-glance-away-when-you-catch-me-looking-at-you-stare. they just straight up stare. and snap pictures of you. some ask, others just try to do it secretly, which is very amusing. Oh, and the driving is absolutely crazy. Everyone is always honking, and not just for people to move out of the way. a lot of times it's a "hey, I'm here" kind of honk. There are so many bikes, both pedal-kind and motorized. People just merge whenever they want to. Streets lights are casually followed. And no one wears a seatbelt ahhhh. Also, in case any of you were wondering, no diarrhea yet, just very dense poop :-)
Anyway, hope you all enjoyed. This took FOREVER to write, so don't expect this much detail in all of our next posts, but we'll try :-)
Pictures coming soon!
Love Steph and Phil
Day 1: Beijing
So we grab a map, some dumplings from a random cart for about one dollar, and hop on a bus (which luckily was headed in the right direction) to Tiannaman Square. It's pretty big and amazing, and filled with lots of Chinese tour groups with the same bright colored hats (or, my favorite, matching jumpsuits). Across the street we discovered the Forbidden City, aka where all the emperors lived for thousands of years. This place is ridiculously huge (not surprising) and there are throngs of Chinese people everywhere. Every now and then, we were able to make it into a less-crowded alley way. We were amazed at how many building were listed as residences for concubines (Phil was pretty excited by these) until we found out there were about 10,000 concubines (at least during one emperor's reign, not sure about the rest of them), all of them with bound feet. We also got to see the emperor's throne, and his bed. (yay!) We also encountered our first scam (after being in China for less than 24hrs), where a lady told us there was an art exhibit, took us to a back room and tried to sell us 'authentic paintings by Chinese art students' for about 300 yuan (50 bucks). We politely declined and the next day saw the exact same paintings at the great wall for about 20 yuan. Next, we headed to Jinguan park, which is a giant artificial hill made from the excavations of the moat. Its also where one of the emperors hung himself after a resistance movement broke into the forbidden city. Next, we wandered into an alleyway on our way to another park and had our first authentic Chinese meal. There was trash all over the floor, it was pretty dirty, and we could see the cook cooking in the back. No menu, so we just pointed to a couple of bowls that looked appetizing, and a few minutes later we had some dumpling soup and some type of noodle bowl. The ladies sitting across from us were super nice and indicated that we should add some of the random sauces sitting on the table to our meals and also that i was using my chopsticks upside down (wow, embarassing). Total, we paid 10 yuan for the meal, less that two dollars. It was one of our best meals yet. Next, we headed over to Beihai park, which has a bunch of beautiful lakes, boats, and some more temples. We snap some pictures in a kimono for a nominal fee, and head back to the entrance of the forbidden city so we can check out this shopping street and hop on the subway back to the hostel. We walk down this shopping street, and duck into a little hutong next to it to find some food. We grabbed a couple of meat skewers and a squishy white thing with sweet green stuff inside and walk back to the subway (which was also surprisingly easy to navigate). Man, we were exhausted. We managed to stay awake long enough to arrange a ride to the great wall the next day and book our train ticket to Shangahi. Turns out, Beijing-Shanghai is a relatively popular route, so there are no more sleeper trains available. And there are no more fast trains either. So, instead of a 15 hour overnight train in a bed, we ended up with a 22 hour ride on a "hard seat". yay!
Day 2: Beijing
Great Wall day! Van left at 7am. We are accompanied by several Chinese tourists, a Canadian, a New Yorker, and an Argentinian who lives in Belgium. It was about a 1.5 ride through the country side and on lots of windy roads. When we got there, we rode a ski-lift to the top and hiked around for several hours. Both Phil and I were discussing how we always imagined the great wall as a nice and flat walkway. It is not. There are lots and lots of stairs, so needless to say, after about 4 hours of hiking (we made it through about 14 towers) we were exhausted and decided to haggle with one of the vendors for some beer. We climbed to the top of tower and enjoyed our delicious TsingTaos on top of the Great Wall (pictures of Phil are priceless). Then, on the way down, we took a stainless steel slide thing. We sat on a cart of sorts with wheels, and push a lever to go faster and pull it back to stop. It was rather enjoyable. Next, we at a rather Westernized Chinese restaurant, which was still delicious. All of our plates, bowls, cups, etc came plastic-wrapped which we thought was pretty funny. Then--back to the hostel. After an hour or two of resting, we decide we need some Peking duck, and after the suggestion of our Canadian friend, we try to find the DaDong Restaurant, which, according to him, is "right outside the Metro station". Long story short, it was not. After a 3.5 hour search, including accidentally ending up outside a soccer (we think) stadium and walking through the streets with thousands of fans (and accompanying soldiers in riot gear) we made some new friends who were also looking for the same restaurant. Our powers combined, we found the restaurant. Turns out, we had been there about an hour ago, but the giant neon fluorescent sign said "Chef Dong's Fried Sea Cucumber". Written on the window, in very small letters, we saw "DaDong". Anyway, we were exhausted, and minus the pushy waiter who insisted that we order more than one duck and several sides, we had ridiculously delicious duck with our new friends. By this time, its 10pm, and we were more than ready for bed.
Day 3: more Beijing
Other cool stuff! We started off at the Summer Palace, which is where the emperors/empresses lived during the summer (most notoriously, the evil Empress Dowager Cixi). It's huge, set on a man-made lake of sorts, and has lots of temples and buildings with ridiculous awesome names (like all the palaces do), such as the 'Temple of Timely Rain and Everlasting Moisture' or 'Hall of Dispelling Clouds'. We took a sweet boat across the lake and explored for a several hours and lost track of time. Then we raced like crazy people to make it to the Lama Temple before it closed at 4:30. We made it 5 minutes before it closed, phew! Lama temple is this gorgeous Tibetan Buddhist Temple with so many Buddahs! One of them was 3 stories tall and carved out of a single tree, earning it a Guinness World Record. Afterwards, we headed back on to the street, ate some soup for 8 yuan (right around 1 dollar) and then grabbed some freshly made pork dumplings. Unfortunately, they were a bit too freshly made (a bit pink) so we opted to stay on the safe side and toss them (which was rather difficult for me as I'm sure some of you may know). Afterwards, we tried to find an acrobatics show, but failed, and headed back to the hostel with sore feet.
Day 4: off to Shanghai
We got up bright and early because we wanted to make it to Temple of Heaven before we get on our ridiculously long train ride. So we pack up our bags and head to the train station (so we can drop off our bags and figure out where the hell we need to go to get on this train). We got some good advice from one of our roommates the night before, like to get there about 2 hours early and get your own food. We get to the train station and are looking for lockers (also, for some internet because somehow both of us forgot to write down Cindy's number and address. Also, we have no idea where we are going to arrive in Shangahi. great planning on our part hehe) Anyway, we find some lockers to store our stuff and race back to the subway so we can be at the Temple of Heaven for at least an hour or so before we have to come back to the train station. Temple of Heaven was awesome--its just this huge park in the middle of the city where lots of locals go to practice tai chi. So pretty much there's just a bunch of old Chinese people doing tai chi (with swords or with a paddle and ball or with nothing) or playing cards or strolling around. so cute. i also bought this cool little hacki-sack kind of thing, which isn't really a sack, but just a rubber thing with feathers. It reminds me of a badminton kind of. So cool. Anyway, we strolled through the park and then headed back to the train. We bought some noodles in a cup for the ride (which, btw are amazingly delicious, and come with a folding fork!) and found our station without too much trouble and sat and waited in line. Almost right after we sat down, they put up the sign for our train and everyone rushed to get in line. They opened the gates, we gave our tickets and it was a mad rush to the train (literally people were running). Luckily we were at the front of the line, so we got some overhead space for our luggage, and now we just wait an hour for the train to start moving. sigh. So, about the train. It was crazy. This is seriously the ghetto-est of ghetto trains. We were probably going like 40-50 miles per hour. ugh. and we stopped at a bunch of stops for 10-15 mins. And it was super crowded. A bunch of people standing and everyone is switching all the time. And people just throw their trash on the ground (seriously?) and every now and then a guy comes through and sweeps it up. And of course, we were the center of attention--everyone's entertainment. We had secret pictures taken of us (which were not so secret because her phone made a loud 'click' noise, then we all looked at each other and had a good laugh), they tried to teach us a bit of Mandarin and also gave us some food (some special harvest festival cakes, and yogurt, and a breadstick thing, and a huge thing of ham). We read some books (they were fascinated of course). Then some eating of noodle bowls (yum). I had to walk to the front of the cabin to get hot water. I discovered people sleeping on the really gross floor, in these side-cabin things, and lots of people standing. Also, some smoking. After noodles, sleeping (or should I say, not sleeping). At about 4am, the train took an hour stop, I don't know why, maybe so the train driver could sleep? And then we kept going...
Day 5: arriving in Shanghai
So we get to Shangahi, sweaty, gross, tired and without Cindy's contact info. So we grab a map and our packs and go in search of some internet. Luckily, the railway station is located in a relatively central area, so we were able to find a hotel with a business center, and get cindy's number and address. Our shitty map indicated that there were two stops for Cindy's street, so we choose one and decide to walk around a bit. We quickly decided that our packs were heavy and grabbed a cab to Cindy's (which was ridiculously cheap). We arrive at Cindy's office and she is super busy at work (understandably so) so she sends us out down the street where we accidentally end up at the Museum for the Second Meeting of the Communist Party of China (haha), hide from the rain under an awning at a park with a bunch of asians, and check out another sweet temple. We head back to Cindy's office, and go grab dinner at this amazing dumpling place (rated one of the top 10 restaurants in the world in 1993) and head home for a much much much needed shower, a glass of wine (or two) and some sleep.
other notes on China--there are definitely some interesting smells here. mostly bad, but near buddas it always smells good, either because of flowers or incense. Also, it is generally clean (although in some of the back alleys or hutongs not so much). We are always seeing people sweeping things up or picking up trash (seriously they are everywere). And people are very nice (for the most part) and help us when we ask for it. Also, people stare. A lot. And not the I-glance-away-when-you-catch-
Anyway, hope you all enjoyed. This took FOREVER to write, so don't expect this much detail in all of our next posts, but we'll try :-)
Pictures coming soon!
Love Steph and Phil
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