World Cup Culture Convergence in Mongolia

7/2

Started my tour today in an old non air-conditioned gray Soviet van that we named Igor.  Long drive through basic flatlands.  We did see a few giant hawks, some heron-type things (cranes) and horses, goats, sheep, cows and dogs.  Mongolia has 18 times the number of farm-type animals as it does people.

Igor held eight people; Ekra, the driver, Selonga, the "guide"/cook, and six tourists; Jenny, a Korean girl, Vicky and Craig, British Doctors, Bert and Giselle, an old German couple, and myself.  At around four, we stopped at Baga gazariin chuluu, a temple that was destroyed by the Soviets in the 1930s.  It was decent, with pretty scenery, and blessedly, only one other group of tourists- even smaller than ours, and a Mongolian father and son were there.

While waiting for Selonga to make dinner, I went for a nice walk around the rocks, then went back to our ger.  A ger (known in the West as a yurt) is the traditional Mongolian home.  It's a short, round wooden structure, padded by a thick layer of wool and covered in canvas.  Usually, there is a shrine on the far wall facing you as you enter the door, though you'd trip over the stove, which is kept in the middle of the room so the chimney can exit through the circular hole on top that is generally half-covered.  The beds, or more typically, mattresses, are pressed against the walls as if from centrifugal force.  The toilet is an outhouse outside, though sometimes it's just a hole in the ground, covered with a few wooden slats to stand on while you squat.

7/3

Today was another long day of driving (350 km), though at least my lunch was excellent today (though not markedly different- more meat, vegetables and potatoes all fried together, served with rice).  We saw our first group of camels and drove to Temeen shavar (the Flaming Cliffs), which were very nice, but (and I feel a bit bad saying this), I'm starting to think I could've done an off-road trip from part of California through the Southwest and had essentially the same experience.  Trade gers for a few scattered houses or cabins and temples for churches and that's pretty much it.  Both have blue skies and vast emptiness, people herding animals, and not a whole ton in the way of culture.

I think I can go one more day without a shower before I start to feel really gross.  I'll likely have a babywipes bath tonight.  Apparently much of the area we've been passing through on our way to the desert is known as the Steppes (pronounced steps) and is basically just endless flat, slightly green plains.

After I'd written all this, at about 10:30 p.m., my germates and I noticed a lot of noise coming from our next-door neighbors.  Jenny came by and told us they were watching the world cup inside.  Vicky and I had remarked on the satellite dish upon arriving at this ger camp, which was an odd enough sight in such a remote site, but to actually see a small newish looking but black and white t.v. playing the Germany-Argentina World Cup game inside a ger in the middle of complete nothingness in Mongolia was surreal.  The bright white light illuminated the almost exclusively white faces inside, the Mongolians who actually lived in that ger (save two sitting in the very front), had abdicated their seats for the foreigners and so a Mongolian grandmother, mother, two men and a child sat watching through the door and refused stools when one of the foreigners offered to give up theirs.

It was a bizarre experience, all the more so because I was watching part of the World Cup without beer.  We later agreed that they should have charged admission and had beer available for sale and they would've made more money than they did selling the handmade woolen items (toy gers, camels, hats, purses).  It was also amazing to think that the World Cup actually reached that far and made me feel more inclined to watch it and helped me understand its relevance was real- I'd always assumed that the idea of rural people in poor countries watching the WC and the world feeling united was pure propaganda, but seeing it actually bring together people of different cultures and places was almost...well, let's not go that far- it's still soccer.

7/4

Even though this post won't actually go up until later, I still feel obligated to write a patriotic post in honor of Independence day, especially since I won't get fireworks, sparklers, a beach or a barbeque, though I might get beer.

Things the U.S. Does/Has Better Than Anywhere Else:

Movies/ Movie Theater Experience
Customer Service
Individual Rights
Road Trips
Directness
Medical Care (IF you can afford it)

Better Than Most:

Cheese
Ice Cream
Mexican Food
Quality of Higher Education (ignoring all the many problems with it)

When, that is, if, you think of Mongolia, you probably think, as I did, of vast deserts (meaning the Gobi) and little else.  Today, in the Yol Valley of the South, I saw an Ice river/ glacier.  We'd driven a few hours this morning to get there and arrived at the museum near the entrance around noon.  The museum was just a few smalls rooms, all except one filled with indigenous stuffed animals.  The other room had four  glass cases and a table in it.  Two cases contained small dinosaur bones and remnants.  One contained a partially exposed small dinosaur skeleton, remarkably preserved in a way so that you could see its basic shape still.  The last glass case contained several dinosaur eggs, some almost whole, some broken into a few (though not many) pieces.  Most interesting to me, however, was the table.  On a basic, small rectangular card table, without any covering whatsoever, were dinosaur bones.  The sign didn't say what kind, but there they were, just sitting on the table like sewing machines at a garage sale, waiting for someone to pick up and ask "How much for this one?"  The sign did say not to touch them, but I'm a rebel, so I stroked one giant dirtied-ivory colored bone, thicker than two soda cans. The part I touched was fairly solid, but most parts looked splintered, like wood while it's burning.  I did learn one thing in the museum however: Mongolia has snow leopards, though they're very, very, very rare (according to Vicky who said she watched a documentary on it, it took the BBC team three weeks to spot one and that was using the latest technology with several people, filming 24 hours a day).

Igor has not been happy with us and our poor comrade has overheated often, forcing us to get out, pour water into his engine (which is inside the car in the front seat between the driver and shotgunner, under a leather covered compartment), wait around for a while, and try again.  He made it to the parking lot for the walk out to the glacier and we had lunch Selonga had prepared that morning (over-oiled fried rice with a tiny bit of mutton inside and carrots).  It was only a 2 km walk to the ice and it was a very nice mostly-flat walk by a stream that became a river, through green grass that climbed onto hills that turned into small rocky mountains.  Most of it reminded me of the Seven Sisters near San Luis Obispo.  The ice river was rather random and seemed to just come out of nowhere so that was cool.  I slid along it a bit and watched it melt away, drip by drip.  It'll be gone by the time I put this post up.  It was pretty but mostly just impressive because it was so surprising and random, just there.  A big chunk of ice in the Gobi Desert.

While we were gone our guide Erka had taken part of Igor's engine apart in an attempt to fix it and we had to wait for about an hour and a half after we got back for him to put it back together, and it only seemed to work marginally better.

Since we were so far behind schedule, we decided to stay nearby for the night.  It was a fantastic decision as the place we found was a lovely, tiny village with a population of 50 or so.  It was the sort of country, self-sufficient area Mao probably had wet dreams about.  One interesting thing was that this tiny place had a basketball court and a basic elliptical with some other basic exercise equipment.  In Northern Asia, I've noticed that in general, they seem to pay much more attention to their youth and old.  For the young, there are many more options for things to do at night and on weekends like; video arcades (ubiquitous and larger and more extensive than in the U.S.), jimjillbangs and manga libraries/ internet cafes (again, better than those we have in the West).  For the geriatric set, I've particularly noticed that several of the parks that have areas and exercise equipment specifically set off for Seniors (I know this because they have English signs) to keep them active and encourage physical and mental activity until they die.

Anyway, it was a lovely little area.  After dinner and a walk around, I saw a group of men leaving the largest house (likely a school/ community center) who were dressed in red and blue briefs.  They got into cars and drove off.  Soon afterwards I left too and walked back to our ger camp. 

As I walked over the hill, I could see that the cars had stopped just in front of our group of five gers and that all the tourists were sitting in about a third of a circle and the men in briefs were inside the part of the circle they'd created.

My guide said they were going to do a show for us, and that it was 4,000 per person (about $3) to watch.  It looked interesting, so I said I would and sat down.  They'd already started a bit but when they started a new round, the two men would stand from about fifty feet back, then slapped the front of their thighs twice, then slapped their butts then slowly jogged over to their referee (there were always at least two).  Just before reaching their designated referee, they'd start to do this very slow movement of flapping their arms up and down, in a way that was supposed to represent a hawk.  I imagine it was supposed to seem elegant and smooth, but it just managed to look idiotic.  They'd "swoop" around their referee three times and then the referee would pat them on the shoulder and they'd go to dance circles with the other fighter.  At some point, they'd embrace and be locked in a hug for ages until one finally made some movement that knocked the other off balance.  You lost when your hands, knees or elbows touched the ground.  It wasn't very active and most of the time the wrestlers weren't really moving, which is why they had two or three fights all going on at the same time.  It seemed to be a bit of a psychological game in a way, but it also seemed that the men who looked the worst in their briefs, chubby bellies overhanging them, did the best.  It was really neat to watch, and I got a picture with them afterwards, though not a very good one.  Two of the tourist guys tried a match and one of them, who said he'd had some karate training, did okay.  The other one was flat on his back in about ten seconds.

Samurai Culture at a Great Sight

4/30

There was absolutely nothing I wanted to see in Sendai and since the cherry blossoms in Kitakami still hadn't bloomed (I'd checked on my way down yesterday), I found a random daytrip in my guidebook.

On my way to the station, I saw these cherry blossom trees, perfectly in bloom, but not a whole orchard of them, the dream I'd pretty much given up on.  They were inside a school yard and the two little girls you can sort of make out were running around trying to catch the petals as they wafted to the ground.  It was really cute, but I didn't want to be creepy so I just took one picture.

Matsushima is another of the "Three Great Sights" in Japan (remember, I visited Miyajima, one of the other two, near Hiroshima?) and it's another place that's extremely popular with Japanese tourists but not really with foreigners (which was why it was so amazing that even though it was the Friday before Golden Week, it wasn't too crowded).  It's basically a town surrounded by tons (about 250) of little islands that dot the ocean like large stepping stones.  One of the islands, Fukuura-jima, has a botanic garden on it while others are renowned for their rock formations. 

From Sendai, it was about 30 minutes on the train to Matsushimakaigan Station (confusingly, that's the stop, not Matsushima Station) and as I walked out there was a Visitor kiosk, manned with people beckoning me over and smiling.  A very helpful woman gave me an English map with descriptions of the different places to visit.

First I went to Godai-do, an old wooden temple that is only opened once every 33 years, last in 2006.  It provided a nice view and I got to walk over a funny bridge that didn't actually pose any threat of falling down, but was very awkward as the slats were too far apart.  Besides that though, it wasn't too exciting.  The botanic garden island was pretty much the same- nice but boring.  The views were lovely, but as with almost anywhere, I think it would have been much more impressive had the sun been shining.

Matsushima really is still a small fishing town and locals were collecting oysters in a very dark, stinky black mud.  I walked on the beach and saw that this island was actually connected by said mud to another of the little islands.  I decided that I really wanted to go to this island, just because.  Very gently, I stepped on the dried or stronger parts of the mud and oyster shells so I didn't fall through the mud and get wet and dirty.

For a while, I did very well, accumulating only a tiny bit of mud.  But then, that's how life is, isn't it?  It's going well, going well, going well, and then you take a wrong step and BAM! you're up to one ankle in muck and you're getting the other foot filthy in an attempt to get the first one out.  One of the shell collectors laughed at me and started talking to me, fairly extensively, in Japanese.  I didn't mind the laughing and laughed back a bit.  I'd known I was taking that risk and it was just kind of fun.  Maybe I was just in a good mood, but I felt happy.

I made it over to the island, only to discover that I could only get about four feet onto the island unless I wanted to swim.  The return to the larger island went much the same way- very good until it wasn't.  It was at about this point, when both shoes were soaked and covered in grime, that I stated to think it hadn't been my best idea ever.  I had to wash my shoes off in the public bathroom sink and then try to wait for them to dry while I played my cell phone game I'd just discovered.  Since it was going to take forever, I knew I had to put them at some point and just deal with the uncomfortableness.  My socks had somehow stayed relatively dry, so I tried to cover them to keep my feet warm.  I covered one with the plastic tissue holder, taking out the tissues, and the other with my sunglasses case which is made of some cloth/ not really but sort of waterproofy stuff.  It wasn't great, but it worked, kind of.

Hoping to buy some indoor slippers, which I'd seen at 100 yen stores (about $1 USD) I went back to the town.  I didn't see a 100 yen store so I tried some tourist shops but all they had was the traditional wooden flip-flops which were too expensive for something I'd only use for a few hours.  Oh well.  I passed by the Zuigan-ji temple but decided to skip it since I wanted to get back sooner rather than later.  The one thing at the temple that sounded interesting was closer so I just looked at these Buddhist rock carvings.  They're tablets or whatever carved directly into the cave walls.  It was okay, but not quite as cool as I'd imagined.

Next I went to the Kanrantei tea house, which means "a place to view ripples on the water" which was beautiful and had a spectacular view of the bay.  In the late 16th century, it was given to Date Masamune, a famous samurai Lord who nearly became the shogunate to control the whole of Japan.  He was known as the One-Eyed Dragon as he was blind in one eye from a childhood bout of smallpox.  Due to his influence, this area seemed to display more samurai culture than any other place I went in Japan.

The walls and sliding doors of the teahouse were decorated with gorgeous gold paintings by Kano Sakyo, a famous painter of the period.

Inside the back part of the teahouse building was a samurai history museum.  The museum was small, but fantastic.  They had a lot of samurai stuff used in daily life, including suits of armor, makeup brushes and a case, clothes, an old painted map of Matsushima and a golden shell game (all shown below in order), which was all really interesting and even better, they had information in English!

I bought a bit of squid on a stick, and some large scallops on a stick from two different food windows on the main street and headed back to Sendai, to pick up my backpack, which I'd left in a locker at the station, and to try gyutan (cow tongue).

My Mother makes tongue sometimes and I love it.  She prepares it by boiling it for a very long time with cabbage, potatoes and carrots and then slicing it.  I usually put butter on top of the slices and eat them like that.  Every once in a very rare while, I'll also enjoy a tongue taco at Papis, my favorite taqueria.  So the idea of cow tongue, far from appalling me, appealed to me and I was looking forward to seeing how they cooked it here. 

It's a specialty in Sendai that was first cooked during one of their many "hard times" and I'd been told there were several good places to get it in the station.  I chose one that had a somewhat decent price (since it's a specialty now, it's fairly expensive, though still, not really, I'm just cheap) and went in.  I sat at the counter and watched them prepare it.  They grabbed raw slices and just threw them on the grill and cut them in half and served them on a bed of rice, with some other accoutrements, including tongue soup, in which the tongue tasted more like I'm used to.  It was very good though.  I had it with a large beer and a bit of sake that a man sitting near me shared.

From there, I caught my last shinkansen to Tokyo, found a hostel and relaxed a bit.  I found two books that looked good on the communal shelf; Lucy In the Sky and The Shadow of the Wind.  Lucy was a chick-lit book that was reasonably well written, though with mostly dislikable characters, and since I didn't feel like thinking, I went with that, though I took The Shadow of the Wind with me as well.  After reading in bed for a while, I fell off to sleep on my granite bed.

Trains That DON'T Suck!?!

4/25

I'm on the Hikari shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo right now from Kyoto.  It's really nice, and just so easy- the system works so well here, it's amazing.  I'll get back to that in a minute, but before I forget, you need to know that Sanyo, the electronics brand, has a giant, giant (presumably office) building shaped  like a portable stereo- the kind that is shaped like a smile with the corners chopped off- in rural Japan.  I don't know why, it was weird.  We also keep passing these random buildings; thin and fairly tall, at a guess maybe 40 stories, but they're in rural Japan (I don't think there's much proper countryside left in Japan).

Back to the amazing train system though.  I hate trains.  I really do.  They're slow and confining and usually late and full of weirdos.  Everyone told me "Oh, that's just American trains- they're not like that in Europe.  You'll love the trains there."  They were wrong.  European trains are almost as bad as American trains (not quite as bad as Amtrak, which I really think must be the worst in the world).  They're sometimes late, usually slow and confining and full of extraordinarily rude, smelly weirdos who tended to be rather anti-American (in a way I didn't find in Europe in general).  I'd bought a very expensive rail pass that was supposed to allow me to basically hop on and hop off trains throughout Europe.  In reality this was almost never the case.  The majority of trains required a reservation or an extra fee or your first born child.  It was crap.  The only time I actually enjoyed it was on one trip through the Tuscan countryside, which really was quite nice, as much as I generally dislike the "country" as well.  I've spoken to couple of other people (Aussies, a Kiwi) who agreed with my general opinion of the European rail pass from their own experiences, so while I may have a bit of extra vitriol, it's not just me.

So I was a bit hesitant to buy a rail pass for Japan; it was also very expensive (actually pretty close to the same price as the European one,) but I wanted to travel pretty much all over the country and I'd heard good things about it, so I bought it in Korea (one of the only two problems with it is that, like the European one, you have to buy it outside the country/ E.U.)  The only other problem, if you can even call it that is that you can't take the Nozomi bullet trains, which are the very fastest, like super bullet, trains.  This sounds like it would be a big pain in the butt and take up a lot of extra time, but in reality, it's almost nothing because the other bullet trains are so fast that the difference is almost negligible for the distances traveled.  For example, the Kyoto-Tokyo bullet train I'm on will take about161 minutes, covering 513.6 km, or 319.1 miles.  If I were on a Nozomi train, it would take 137 or 141 minutes.  The only other way this would be a problem would be if most trains were Nozomi, but they're not.  There seem to be more other shinkansen than Nozomi.

Additionally, if the great pass weren't enough, the stations are clean and usually have clear signs posted in English as well as Japanese.  There are no extra fees, unless you wanted a sleeper train (which there aren't many of anyway) and you just show the pass and walk through the gates, onto any train you want.  You actually can just hop on and off.  The trains are clean, with decent seats and reasonably spacious and I've never had trouble finding a non-reserved seat. They're always on time, and it's simple to just walk on and off.  Also, when I say they're always on time, I mean that they are ALWAYS on time.  If they're not, it is a BFD that has to be taken care of right away and might end up on the evening news.  I met a Kiwi snowboard instructor named Andrew who said that he was on one train that somehow was 45 minutes late and people were freaking out but that when they did arrive at the station, the train employees were ready with everything and reimbursed people and helped them get to their next trains, which they made sure were available.  So even when they do screw up (extraordinarily rare, as he said, people were freaking out because it was so weird that they didn't even know what was going on- imagine not understanding a train being late- it's like a dream), they fix it immediately and take care of it as a serious problem.

To explain also, just how on time they are, I should tell you how I know if my stop is coming up at any given time.  If we're pulling into a station at 11:53, and my train was supposed to arrive at my stop at 11:56, I know that it's not the right stop.  Seriously.  Though, of course, they also have station signs in English, and a LED display inside the train in Japanese and English that says the station name.

Furthermore, the people are just normal people, not weirdos.  And they have a simple website to look up timetables.  It's in English and tells you everything you need to know; basically how to get to anywhere in Japan from anywhere else.  You can specify what options you'd like, so I just click off Nozomi, and go with the first option that comes up.  It's great, and easy.

One thing some people might think to complain about would be "But I like to look at the scenery and on a train like that, you'd be going too fast to see it."  This is ridiculous.  You cans still see the scenery, and it's lovely, you just don't have to see the same exact scenery for twenty minutes.  In fact, it's pretty much how I like my nature: separated from me by a pane of glass, looking pretty, as I quickly pass by.

Okay, I think I've rhapsodized about the fantastic train system for long enough, except to say that why the hell don't trains work exactly like this everywhere??? 

We passed a really cool spirally building in Nagoya- I should've taken a picture of it, it was really neat.  What I'm really looking forward to though, is passing Mount Fuji.  I considered actually stopping there, but then I read that climbing it is actually serious, not like a nice hike, and there's snow on the ground there still.  So, I'm going to take a pretty picture from the train as we pass.

Just passed it- it was really cool to see, especially since we'd passed something that said Mt. Fuji Station and I was getting really upset at the thought I might have missed it, but I didn't- it was really neat.

Also, please note here that I made this train with one minute to spare, which makes the score: Laura: 2, Trains: 1.

After this, I caught another Hikari to Sendai, from which point I got a local express train to Hiraizumi, a small town with an interesting shrine, Chuson-ji, and a youth hostel that was exactly in my budget range (cheap) and close to Kitakami, the town nearby famous for its cherry blossoms.

Hiraizumi is not just small, but a tiny town.  And even though it was only around 5 p.m., it was empty.  Empty.  I saw one cab, four people walking (outside of the train station), and maybe ten cars.  It was quiet, almost scarily so.  I walked over to the area the hostel was supposed to be in, couldn't find it, and asked a local mother and daughter.  They understood me and tried to help, but they didn't know either.  The shrine was closed so I couldn't ask there but I found a tiny little bakery and tried to ask the woman at the counter.  She walked away but brought back her daughter, who spoke English fairly well.  I told her the name of the hostel and gave her my guide book and she went back with her mother, and father who came out too, to try to figure it out.  They looked for several minutes, made a phone call and told me that it was closed.  They told me the name of two other hotels nearby that they thought might be cheap and I thanked them for their significant effort which I very much appreciated.

I walked over to closest of the two, after taking the above picture of the shrine and reading some random plaques.  On the way, the mother-daughter couple I'd first asked for help, drove by and offered me a lift to my hotel.  It was only a block away so I declined, though I would've felt perfectly safe, but thanked them also for their consideration.  I found the inn without too much trouble but when I went inside, no one was there.  I started to feel uneasy and wondered if I'd accidentally just broken in to someone's house, after yelling "Konichiwa!?" (Hello!?) several times.  But most personal homes don't have exit signs or rows of identical slippers lined up at the inside steps so I knew I was in the right place.  I stayed there for about ten minutes considering waiting or just sleeping on the couch in the hall, but it was kind of weird, and I didn't know how expensive it might be when they came, so I decided to get back on a train. 

I went up to Morioka and, fairly tired by all that train travel, even though I'd just been sitting all day, walked into the first hotel I saw, Morioka Hotel, about a three minute walk from the station.  Had I seen the sign outside listing the prices, I never would've even walked in, and when the man at reception told me the cost for a single, $50, I started to walk away.  He stopped me and bargaining on a calculator as one does in countries where you don't speak the language, showed me $45.  I said no thank you, not even trying to bargain, but just because I couldn't afford to spend that much.  He asked me if I was looking for a single and I said yes, to which he asked if I wanted a small one.  I said that yes, a very small room was fine and he showed me $40 on the calculator.  Now it was worth considering, as most hostels in Japan cost about $30 anyway.  I was willing to pay $35, but bargained him down to $33, just $3 more than a dorm bed with shared showers, for a single room with a western bed and clean sheets, fast wifi, and my own tiny bathroom.  It even included a disposible razor, toothbrush and super mini toothpaste, tea, and shampoo and soap from the dispenser in the shower which I used to fill up my bottles with.

Starving, I went into the second restaurant I saw and looked a menu with several options I wanted; crab, shrimp, "lobster," tongue- a specialty from Sendai, clams fried in butter- a Morioka specialty and...whale bacon.  Seriously.  I didn't try it, not so much due to ecological concerns as the fact that there was just too much other stuff I wanted to eat.  I ended up getting a small crab pizza, which was really yummy, and two pieces of "lobster" that I think were just prawns in tempura, but still tasted good, and a Kirin beer.  I bought a donut for dessert and went to bed after a cup of tea in my room.

Sunrise: It's NEVER Worth It

4/1/2010

Because I'm the most incredible person who's ever existed, I woke up and got up at 4:30 a.m. this morning, just to see the damn sunrise over Angkor Wat.  Everyone told me "Oh- it's incredible- all reds and oranges," and "I'm really not a morning person, but it was awesome and totally worth it."  Everyone lies.  It was okay once I got to the right spot, the sun did look kind of cool half yellow and half red, but it didn't illuminate the clouds or sky around it with any color and it was not even remotely, slightly worth waking up that early for.

A bit annoyed, I headed out for the other temples I wanted to see.  First I went into the huge Angkor Thom complex.  This is the gate I passed through:

You may not be able to see it well here, but those are good soldiers pulling a snake.  Around a mountain.  In order to churn butter to make a god or demon immortal, but Vishnu intercedes, and some apsara dancers (nymphs) appear.  It's a long, convuluted story but it is interesting, so if you happen to have a lot of time, here's the wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samudra_manthan

Past the South Gate, I rode on to Bayon, a large temple.  When I got there there was one tourist couple taking photographs but it was otherwise empty.  They left shortly after and from about 6:30 to 7, I only had to share the temple with a man praying in front of Buddha.  This was even more exciting because this is one of the important "must-see" temples and I was worried it would be overrun with tourists.  It was also awesome; walls of four to five foot faces looked down at me with empty eyes and smiles crooked from centuries of abandonment and vandalism.

Eventually, the hoards of tourists did come to Bayon so I left to see the next temple, Baphoun.  It's been described as the world's largest jigsaw puzzle because when they rediscovered Baphoun, it was mostly in pieces and it's still under serious construction today.  Around the back, once I could actually figure out where it was, a giant reclining Buddha was built as one of the walls of the temple, which was kind of cool to see.

From there, I went to the Terrace of the Elephants, which was just adorable.

Then the Terrace of the Leper King (great name, no real story):

Then Phimeanakas, which was not particularly interesting and full of rude Western European tourists.

I was starting to get really grouchy and exhausted and decided that I really needed something to eat and drink so I looked at the nearby tents and didn't see any set up as restaurants and was just about to give up when one of the several people shouting "Cold Drink?" at me, added in "Something to Eat?"  I stopped and looked again at her tent area.  There was no kitchen or restaurant and definitely no menu.  She offered noodles and I asked for rice, upon which she offered to make fried rice.  She only had beef, not chicken, but it was good enough. 

After I'd eaten most of it and downed a Coke Light and half of a giant water, she started asking me questions.  I gave a few basic answers and she started telling me about her life.  She had seven brothers and sisters, was married with one year old son and was 23.  One of her brothers had died and her mother had died three months later.  I asked her if she thought that her mother had died of a broken heart, hoping that she'd understand that I didn't mean it literally.  She did, and nodded.  She told me all about the upcoming Khmer New Year and what people did for that: esentially ate a lot and spent a bunch of time with family and friends.  Unfortunately, as she explained to me, it was a big holiday, but a private one (like Christmas or Thanksgiving) so I probably wouldn't see much.  Later she told me about Khmer weddings; she said that they were very colorful and lasted at least two days.  I can't remember everything now, I can't even remember her name, but she was very interesting to talk to.

In my former bad mood, I'd considered skipping Preah Khan, a temple that was supposed to be very interesting, but was somewhat far away, and in the opposite direction of town and the way I wanted to go.  Now refreshed, I decided I could do it so I set off.  As I said previously, I didn't feel hot when I was actually on the bike so it was a lovely ride out.

On my way to Preah Khan, I passed South Kleang, North Kleang, Tep Pranam and the Preah Pithu Group but just rode up to or by them without stopping or taking any pictures because they just weren't that exciting.

Preah Khan was another huge complex but it was originally set up as more of a village with a temple inside and a sort of minor fortress wall around.  It was cool, though the only really interesting thing about it was its size.  But wait, actually, there was one other really cool thing about it and that it had a double storied library (I think?).  Many of the temples are tiered but this was the only one I saw with two usable floors.  Anyway, there was a ladder on the ground next to it- just a simple, metal construction ladder, but it looked good enough for me so even though I knew it was foolish, I propped it up against the second level and went up and walked around the old columns.

Baksei Chamkrong was another of those random temples that isn't supposed to be anything special, but just happens to be on the way to/from something else.  It was nearly noon by this time so most of the tourists were gone for the time being because it was just too hot for them and no one was at this particular temple.  It had a ton of steps to climb up to the top, which I always like because it makes me feel adventerous and like I'm doing something cool and different, even though I realize I'm actually not.  I found a slightly shady spot at the top and sat there for a while.  I meditated briefly, mostly because I felt like my intuition hadn't been as strong as usual lately and meditation is supposed to help.  It was okay (the meditation, not the temple- which I thought was really neat).

The last temple I wanted to see was Phnom Bakheng, which has a great view of the city and some of the other temples and is supposed to be a great spot to watch the sunset, but you have to walk up a very steep 2-3 km hill/mini-mountain.  At sunset they have elephants available to rent to take you up there which I would've done but they weren't there at the time so I had to walk/climb.  At 12:30, it was so freaking hot I almost died, and I was sweating like crazy- it was hard work, though I did better than I would've expected, especially since I haven't been running or exercising as much as I usually do.  Once I finally got up the mountain, I had to climb a series of steep stairs, though the view and the complete lack of tourists made it worth it.

I stopped and got a coconut milkshake and it was so good that I had another.  Enjoying my bicycle ride on the way back into town, I passed these kids and I just had to take a picture because even though it's hard to see, that's the moat around Angkor Wat but they're just having fun splashing around.

That afternoon, I did a few errands and then went to Seeing Hands, an NGO supported massage parlor where the masseurs are blind, to get an hour-long massage for $5, plus a $2 tip for Souk, my masseuse and said I'd come back the next day.

P.S. I saw something today that was described as a "Stretchy Fur Preventing Nipple," What was it really?
A baby bottle top.

Motorbike, Motorbike Go So Slow, Motorbike, Motorbike, Go So Fast, Motorbike, Motorbike, Step On The Gas!

3/22

Cable Car and Islands

Still on Langkawi.  Well, I had to go see the cable car, and it was too late to go yesterday, plus it's so simple and fun and easy to be here.  So today, I took a quick morning dip in the ocean, then showered and left with Anne, a Dutch girl who's staying at the same hostel, who I met yesterday.  We rented a scooter and she drove us to the cable car while I sat behind her and watched the scenery go by and held on tightly.  The cable car cost RM30, a fortune here- almost $10, but it was worth it, though it wouldn't have been worth much more.  It was one of those cable cars that's the world's superlative with several additions.  I can't remember exactly what they were, but something like WORLD'S LONGEST CABLE CAR (That Feels Like A Skilift On An Island In Southeast Asia Surrounded By Tourist Shops And Crap Food Connected To A Bridge That Goes Nowhere).  We had a nice view, though you can't tell that from any of the photos I took, walked around a bit and headed back.

We had a few new people at the hostel; a German guy, Nils, and a Danish couple, Stine and Simon, who we invited to our game of Kings, which somehow turned into several rounds.  We were all having a grand time, despite their resistance to Never Have I Ever- the best part of Kings.  They were almost all playing with beer.  I was playing with Razz Rum and Diet Coke.  Maybe it was the extra alcohol in me that gave me courage, but when we found a scorpion the boys started poking at it cautiously, and then I came over and stepped on and killed it.  Later they would argue that they were playing with it and didn't want to kill it, and while that does sound juvenile and illogical enough to accept as true from boys in their mid-twenties, I still think they were simply too scared to do so.  It was definitely the extra alcohol in me that later insisted I go to bed instead of going out with them to Sunbar later, but I didn't mind and it was a great night all in all.

3/23

Stine, Simon, Nils and I decided to rent scooters to go around the island, especially to see a man-made waterfall that was supposed to be cool and some of the other beaches so we rented two ($5 per person for the whole day) and set off, Stine and Simon on one and Nils driving me on the back of the other.  It was fun and Nils was a good driver, though it took me a while to feel really safe.  We drove around for quite a while, Stine navigating, and eventually got to the waterfall, which was as dry as desert sand.  It didn't look like it would have been that impressive even if it had been falling water as it was SO obviously man-made and fake looking.  We headed over to a little locals beach with the same gorgeous white sand as Cenang beach, but much clearer, prettier water.  Unfortunately, we had to get out to keep our stuff safe from the monkeys, who really do like to steal anything that's not larger than themselves.  So we headed to the next beach, which was astonishing because the sand was even whiter than the other beaches and it seemed to go on for a mile, but was totally empty- we didn't see a single other person on the beach.  Unfortunately, I don't have pictures to prove any of this or show you the monkey trying to drive a parked motorcycle because I stupidly forgot my camera. 

By this point it was about 3 p.m. and Stine was starving.  I'd had a croissant and Diet Coke for breakfast, but hadn't eaten anything else that day.  I didn't think I was hungry, but when we sat down at the restaurant in front of the next beach we'd wanted to see, I realized I was actually starving too.  A random tourist came over and told us that the fish was excellent, and since that sounded good anyway, I ordered a fish in ginger sauce.  It took a while, but really was incredible- one of the best meals I've had so far.  The sauce in particular was awesome and had a sort of buttery softness to it that was deeply flavored but not overpowered by the ginger.

We walked down to the new beach and they took a few pictures but didn't stay.  Next we headed up a mountain almost to the highest point on the island in anticipation of amazing views.  After quite a long ride, we made it to a view point with a marker, looked out to the horizon and saw...nothing.  Fog was completely covering everything more than about 100 feet away from us.  Oh well, none of us were too fussed, so we headed back down.  They did want some panoramic pictures, so we stopped when we got a bit lower.  On the tree in front of us, maybe 500 feet away, was a bald eagle, which was very cool to see.  Strange as it seems, they actually have many eagles on Langkawi, and even have an eagle habitat of some kind though I didn't bother to visit.

Eventually we made it back to the hostel, rested a while, then went out to dinner at a Thai seafood place on the beach.  They had the largest tiger prawns I've ever, ever seen in my life, probably just under a foot long if you'd laid them out flat but they were expensive and the crab was cheap.  I went for the crab in a light curry sauce with rice, which was another amazing meal for about $5, 6 with my drink, lime juice, which is essentially limeade.  Somehow neither the German nor either of the Danes had ever had crab before which I found bizarre, so Nils ordered his own, and enjoyed it, while Simon and Stine tasted it and said it was good.  I'm always happy to introduce people to new (good) things.

We went back to the hostel, had a few beers and talked for a while, then headed out for a nice, but uneventful night at Sunbar.  I spent most of the time just watching other people dance which really is extremely amusing as most people are terrible dancers, and everyone went home happy.

*With this post I broke the 10,000 word mark for my blog- very exciting!  I know you don't care.

Colonization: Nothing New for an American and a Brit

3/19/2010

I got up late, lazily and happily and was hanging out around the hostel and starting talking to Matt, the cute British guy I was dancing with last night.  I mentioned that I planned to swim out to the nearest island and he said he'd go with me so after some time we headed off.  After all that heavy sleeping last night we obviously needed to rest before swimming to an island so we went to the beach, tested the waters and chatted for a bit.  He was rather interesting; psych major (and all that comes with that), funny, lazy, very friendly, and a bit arrogant and superficial, though not in any way stupid.  He'd had an easy life by his own admission, and while I think most of that is simply a reflection of who people are, it was also difficult in a way to compare.  But, as I said, he was interesting and for me, that quality alone will almost always override any negatives, and as there weren't many this time it certainly did.  Plus he smelled like blueberries.

After chatting for a bit, we went out to lunch.  I had a dish with some sauce and prawns, I mean shrimp, and rice.  It was fantastic, until I bit into a green bean.  It was not a green bean.  It was one of the spiciest chiles I've ever tasted in my entire life.  I had to spit it out and could still feel it in my ears for several minutes afterwards.  Once the burning sensation went away, we headed out for an adventure.

We left our shirts with some locals at a table on the beach.  They did a double take when we told them our plan and said they thought it was probably 800 meters.  Google maps says it's closer to a mile, so I'm going with that, especially since it sounds so much more hardcore.  We went very slowly, and though Matt had some trouble initially he calmed down as we went along and we played the movie game, which he sucked at, then we played the "Make Laura Say As Many Football Teams/ Players As She Knows" game, which I sucked at.

After about 20 minutes, I said we were halfway there.  After about 30 minutes, I said we were almost there.  After 35 minutes, I said we were almost there.  After 40 minutes, I said we were really almost there.  After about 45 minutes, we were there.

Honestly, the beach itself wasn't really particularly impressive: the ocean floor was rocky and the sand was rougher and shellier than the beach we'd left, but still it was OUR island and with the effort we'd made to get there, it felt like a real accomplishment.  Here's my poem about it:

A single crab King brandishes his claw,
Upset with his usurption by nature's law.
Its island invaded and now he's a slave,
He threatens but knows he must behave.

Oh how we lorded it over that crab,
As we had no other islands to grab.
Colonizers with nothing else to snag,
And sadly we didn't even have a flag.

You know you enjoyed that.  Don't even try to deny it.

We stayed there for a while and then hitched a ride back with a group of people who we'd allowed to go parasailing on our island.  Thus ended our lovely island day- one of my favorites so far.

*Sadly, no pictures, as I swam out to an island and didn't want to drown my camera.