Adventures in Babysitting Small Asian Grandmas

A High School acquaintance of mine introduced me to a book that amounted to a young woman’s modern etiquette guide.  I believe it was called something like, 50 Things Every Girl Should Know.  Or, Our Bodies, Our Manners, Ourselves.  Or, Well-Mannered Girls Who Run with the Wolves.  But no matter.  It was filled with useful tidbits such as: “Ladies, if we all simply sat on toilet seats instead of squatting and spraying we would never have to deal with dirty toilets, and the world would be a better place.  So let’s all agree to sit.”  On writing* to someone after neglecting a correspondence: “Ladies, you know it was rude not to write.  Your friend knows it was rude.  Don’t belabor the point.  Apologize once, and then pick up where you left off.”  Gentle readers, I aspire to become a cutting-edge, cultivated lady.  Therefore, I’m sorry.  Now let’s say nothing more about the three month blog gap.  Let’s just pick up where we left off. 

Dumplings can only take a girl so far.  At some point her soul needs sustenance as well.  (Besides, at this point the dumplings are giving me the skin and body of a 16 year old.  And by that, I mean my 16 year old skin and body.  This is not a good thing.)  I’ve now been removed from the hotbed of cultural activity that is New York City for about five months.  Of course, as I’m still living in an international city, my current creative dry spell is really for want of trying more than anything else.  Attempts to remedy the situation are currently underway.  First stop: the Verdi Requiem at the National Concert Hall.  What a perfect introduction to Taipei’s classical arts scene.  The hall itself is stunning, all rich burgundy velvet and ivory marble, with an organ surrounded by intricate wooden carvings.  It expertly walks the East/West divide.  What really stands out about the hall, however, is the acoustic.  It is bright.  I’m talking tangerine-lemon-sunshine bright.  Like much of my generation, I’ve been predisposed by the modern recording industry to appreciate just such a sound, and appreciate it I do.  The acoustic worked well for the soloists, who generally had a covered technique which might have been lost in a duller hall.  It did no favors for the choir, unfortunately.  The sopranos had a rather thin sound which the hall highlighted.  But the real musical marriage was between the Hall and the National Symphony Orchestra.  The orchestra was tight, with an enveloping, burnished sound that filled the hall confidently.

The highlight of the evening took place offstage, however.  As in the US, much of the audience was well past retirement age.  Seated behind me was a withered nonagenarian who was reacting to the performance in a rather…aggressive manner.  True, the NSO does have a superb percussion section.  But I found it a bit distracting when the Small Asian Grandma stomped her feet in time with the music during every climactic moment.  Luckily, the old lady’s daughter realized that this wasn’t entirely appropriate, so she attempted to shush the venerable aged woman.  But Small Asian Grandma was having none of it, and responded by hauling off and smacking her daughter’s arm.  Rather violently.  And loudly.  Repeatedly.  I took this in stride until the Libera me.  This is a fiendishly difficult movement for the soprano, filled with sudden dynamic shifts, and requiring supreme control.  When the first floating high note was marred by the sound of familial violence I could restrain myself no longer.  I turned around and gave Small Asian Grandma “the look”.  You know the one.  The one that says, “Hey, in case you forgot, there’s a live performance going on here, and I’d prefer to listen to it without the accompaniment of your stomping and slapping.  Thanks.”  This may have been a tactical error.  Small Asian Grandma leaned forward in her seat, craned her neck, and glared at me.  I, in turn, leaned forward in terror, convinced that I was about to become a featured player in this domestic tragedy.  I could see the headlines: Saucy Waiguoren Assaulted by 110 Year Old Asian Midget at Sparsely Attended Classical Concert.  I was spared the likely concussion by the quick-witted daughter, who jerked her mother back before impact.  Alas, the daughter thus incurred a veritable barrage of kicking, slapping, and punching.  This built to a rollicking crescendo matched by the percussion, driving us forward until the final moments of the piece echoed throughout the hall:

BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum

*stomp stomp stomp stomp*

Libera me!

*thwack*

Final chord

Truly, this woman had remarkable timing.

So what did I learn, dear reader?  First, I will have to pursue art more diligently and deliberately while here in Taipei.  I may have to fight for it.  And second, I’ll have to wear protective gear when I see Renee perform in May.  And perhaps bring weaponry.  Now would be a good time to hone those ninja skills. 

* When I was in High School people wrote letters.  Yes, I am old.

Have fun, go mad

“Time doth flit; oh shit.”

~Dorothy Parker



Back in high school I had a teacher who was downright obsessed with living an attentive life.  He railed against us sleep-walking teenagers, as we wasted our poor, unexamined lives in a haze of mediocrity.  At the time I didn’t really understand his plight because to a 16 year old EVERYTHING is vital, immediate, and most likely painful.  Unexamined life?  All I did was to examine my life, and usually found it wanting.  But I certainly never found it to be fleeting.  My days were raw, my emotions exposed, and it seemed that I had set up shop in adolescence indefinitely.

DV, savoring the now.

These days I live the cliché – the passage of time somehow does speed up as one ages.  Now I comprehend the desire to shake someone out of her dreamlike state.  Of course, what I really want is to be the shak-ee, not the shaker.  Even with all the turmoil and change of the past year I still feel like I’m letting the days go by.  I still don’t know how I got here.  And yet, here I am, in Taipei again, and already mostly settled in.  I’m trying to savor more, to live in the chaos and contradiction, but I still feel like I’m floating.  A dumpling here, a steamed bun there.  I’m not sure how much I’m really taking in.  I felt this way after my time here last summer, during my month of travel, and also during my time back in New York.  I want things to stop for one moment, to slow down just enough for me to see the view from my window.  That doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon.  Also, this is beginning to sound like the hackneyed whining of the newly 35. So please accept these brief images from the past two months.

Most days I wake to the smell of hot oil and the sound of babies crying.  I snuggle deep into my mosquito net shrouded cocoon and contemplate the day.  Work starts at 12:30pm, and I’m either a 30 minute walk, 20 minute subway ride, or 10 minute cab ride away.  (Yes, this is pure luxury after 12 years of painful MTA commutes.  I am free, I tell you!  Free!)  Breakfast might be a scallion pancake topped with egg, soy sauce, and la, or perhaps a CheeseBacon Waffle™.  Of course there will be bing café (yes, I know three Chinese words now.  And yes, they still all apply to food.  And yes, one of those words is “CheeseBacon”).  I can bring these items onto the train, but I cannot consume them on it.  If I try to do so a mysterious Asian will appear and kindly request that I spit out and throw away the offending food stuff.  No caning, mind you, just a gentle request to follow the rules.  She then ninjas back into the general throng. 

So many questions, finally answered.

My place of work could be mistaken for your average American office – until you reach the bathroom.  I have been “gently” mocked in the past for my delicate sensibilities regarding bodily waste.  Well, I’ve kind of had to get over that here.  First of all, squat toilets.  Yeah.  They’re exactly what they sound like.  And they are well-loved here.  Many public buildings will have a 50-50 split, squat and non-squat.  The non-squat toilets will have instructions detailing proper usage – i.e., do not climb on top of the toilet.  And certainly do NOT put paper into the commode.  Our delicate island’s plumbing can’t handle it.  So… um… yeah.  The used toilet paper just stays there.  Used.  In the trash bin.  In the bathroom.  Oh the humanity.   

Never mess with Captian the Diner.  Literally

And that’s not the extent of Taiwan’s strange trash culture.  Taipei is an extremely crowded place, and if we were all to just pour our trash out on the curb it would make NYC look like an oasis of sanitary splendor.  So instead, we have to carry our garbage directly to the garbage man.  Luckily, this process provides endless entertainment for the inept ex-pat.  At 10pm the garbage truck will announce its presence by playing a horrifying midi-version of Für Elise.  Upon hearing the first poignant electronic strains everyone in the neighborhood emerges from their lairs with bags of sorted garbage.  And just like that, the trash dash begins.  Some trash goes to your average, Western style truck, but the really lucky garbage goes to elderly Asians wearing odd hats.  Take, for example, the cardboard man.  This ancient little fellow stands at the corner with his motorbike cart piled high with cardboard stuck in every which way and eagerly takes all our recyclable offerings.  Where does he go?  What does he do with all of it?  He’s like the patron saint of paper waste, smiling his toothless grin, happily relieving us of our Taiwan beer cases and noodle box packaging, and then softly melting into the humid night. 

After the 10pm garbage block party it’s time for an evening run in my neighborhood park.  In NYC (or at least in Washington Heights) this would be the prime time to meet up with drug dealers and prostitutes, but in Taipei I mingle with senior citizens and families.  Okay, maybe the senior citizens are really just looking for the next fix, but at least they hide it well.  The city is both nocturnal and safe.  It’s a wonderful feeling.  I’ve grown up with the unfortunately common assumption that all women are targets.  The world is not kind.  The boogeyman is waiting to get you.  Not so here.   Also, I’ve probably got 50 lbs and two feet on the local boogeyman, and could probably drop kick him down the road if need be.   So I run around the perimeter of the park, carefree, listening to trip hop and fado, because that’s how tortured and brooding cabaret artists roll, I guess.

No worries, I could totally kick his ass.

 

The late night finds me enjoying the splendor of my Taipei apartment, which kind of looks like a drug-induced Ikea fever dream, or a 12 year old Moroccan girl’s club house.  I chat with friends, I write, I read, I loaf, and I pine for my other city.  I slip off to sleep amid the gentle caterwauling of the neighborhood cats, and marvel at the mysteries of feline stamina.  The morning may bring a hike in the local mountains, or a trip to a tropical island.  Most likely it will involve scallion pancakes.  Maybe this time I’ll manage not to miss the moment.  But if I do, I know I've got good people around to help me get it back. 

New York, will you wait for me?

So here I am, packing up to leave town again.  I haven’t even finished writing about my last trip, and now I’m about to head back to Taiwan.  I really fell into a blogging void during my time back in NYC, which is unfortunate because this visceral, aggressive, beautiful city delights and frustrates me on a daily basis.  But as we are about to be parted for the longest stretch yet I find myself only recalling the romance of the place, and the thrill of making it through each day here.

New York, I love your citizens.  I love the deli people who follow my breakfast whims.  Every few months those whims change.  Sometimes it’s an egg sandwich.  Sometimes I’ll go through a bagel streak.  These days, it’s just my morning coffee, small, light, no sugar.  But after a few days the deli people have got it down, and they serve it up as soon as I walk in, to the occasional dismay of the other customers ahead of me in line.  They don’t understand; they don’t have the same unspoken connection to the deli people that I do.  They can only dream.  We may be a surly bunch on occasion, but damn if we don’t take care of our locals.  I can’t help but think that only in New York would the wine store guy up the street actually tell me to call at closing time if I “need a few more minutes”.  Yup.  The wine store will hold the show for me.

New York, I love your artists.  Through connections and blatant pandering I have been involved in an amazing show for the past month.  Look, I’m not going to lie: it is a weird, specific aesthetic that gets me going.  It’s rare that I meet someone who says, “Oh yeah, I totally dig Weimar cabaret.  In fact, I just wrote one that pretty much fits in with all that you think about religion and politics.  Why don’t you perform in it?  Also, two of your best friends are involved in it too.  So, you know, come on down to Brooklyn.”  Yeah, I don’t get that a lot.  But in New York I do.  It’s probably going to have to sustain me for the next year.  What can I say?  Ich liebe The Brick. 

New York, I love your food.  You do sustain me.  In fact, you might be specifically calibrated to my personal brand of gluttony.  In one week I dined on world-changing pizza, soft shell crab in green curry (yes! More please!) , and fried chicken with a side of FRIED KALE.  Yes.  You read that right.  Fried kale.  It was delicious, and I have no regrets.  None.  Admittedly, I have been in dumpling withdrawal, but that’s my own fault.  I could get my albino ass down to Chinatown, I just haven’t managed to do it because I’m a lazy over-booker who’s looking ahead to a year of cheap nightmarket delights.  Is that considered taking the easy way out? 

New York, I love the family you’ve given me, blood-related or otherwise.  How have I managed to stumble across so many people who are willing to look past my absurdity?  I guess I credit you.  And here I lose words.  How do I describe the unbelievable people in my life?  How do I explain the endlessly engaging conversations?  How do I describe the wine-fueled nights of dancing?  Can I really do justice to Girls’ Night?  What words can I use to explain finally feeling safe?

 While in Taipei I took part in the traditional “Chinese Valentine’s Day Temple Visit”.  It involves an elaborate ritual of incense, candy, “ghost” money, tea, and prayer, and it is ultimately supposed to connect you with your soul mate.  I don’t really go in for prayers or soul mates, but I’m certainly not going to turn down a chance to participate in a local tradition.  And what the hell, it’s not like it’s going to hurt (furthermore, I got some neat souvenirs out of it.  And tea.  Which you aren’t supposed to blow on.)  During this process you pray to about 50 million gods.  And I still don’t know what all of those gods do.  The only one that stuck in my mind was the City God.  If I remember correctly, he was our first prayer stop, and he is the one mainly in charge of helping us find the people we’re supposed to be with; the people who will enrich our lives.  Perhaps you’ve already guessed that I adored this idea.  The essence of the metropolis gets to decide who we need to meet, and then works it’s magic to make that happen?  Sign me up.  I believe in the power of the city.  I certainly believe in the power of New York.  And I hope that it won’t forget me while I’m gone, that it will manage to keep me in mind as it charts the courses of all the broke, desperate, amazing people who find their only home here. 

New York, I love you.  You are my home, you are my family.  I’ll be back all too soon.  And I will still hate your public transportation system, but that’s as it should it be.  There has to be some imperfection, somewhere.  It can’t all be roses, unicorns and rainbows.   This isn’t a love story.  This is real life. 

 

The Summer Backpacking Olympic Games

For most of my trip I did not go too far off the standard backpacking route.  For one thing I only had a month and three countries to traverse.  For another, the roads in Southeast Asia get a little bit interesting during the rainy season.  Picture unpaved roads with many, many muddy puddles.  Let’s put it this way; most of my intercity travel required a sports bra. 

I was not unprepared for this, however.  There are a lot of tales that emerge from the backpacker community, and I had done my research.  I knew, for example, that seemingly innocent locals may invite you to their homes, whereupon they will lock you inside an illegal gambling den and demand that you play Texas hold ‘em with a Japanese high roller.  And of course I was constantly vigilant lest I be smuggled into the Southeast Asian sex trade, because 34 year old Albinos are so hot over there right now, so hot.  So when I was chatted up by a friendly Filipino couple in front of the Grand Palace in Phnom Penh and invited to their “nephew’s birthday party” that evening I made sure that I had other plans.  Actually, I’m still kind of disappointed that I didn’t take them up on the offer, but I figured an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of Syphilis or something like that.  Also, did I mention that I was carrying all the money for my trip with me because of the complete stupidity of my US bank?  Yeah, I was doing that.  I spent much of the trip finding new and exciting ways to staple my bags to my appendages.  So in general I wanted to avoid unnecessary risks.

This is not to say that I avoided locals, but that I often ended up socializing with fellow travelers.  Luckily this proved to be a unique cultural experience as well.  You know, for a bunch of pot smoking hippies, backpackers can be an awfully competitive bunch.  I had a pretty clear idea of what I needed during my trip in order to feel safe and comfortable:  my own room, booked before I arrived, no more than $15 per night.  That’s it.  I didn’t care about fan vs. air con.  I could handle sharing a bathroom.  I just didn’t want to wander cities looking for cheap guesthouses.  I preferred to wander cities looking for attractions that closed just as I got there (I’m talking to you, Saigon!)  Here are just a few of the responses I got upon communicating this information to people I met on the road:

“$15!?!?!?  Wow, that’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than I would pay,” said the dirty hippie who walked up to me at a coffee shop and asked for “directions to the guesthouses”.

“You booked ahead?!  How do you even do that?” said the dirty, pot smoking hippie who eventually introduced me to the mystery meat that led to my one bout of food-borne illness.

“Your own room?  I’m sleeping three deep in one hammock over a lit fire next a pond of piranhas while a Donald Rumsfeld look-alike waterboards me.  Only costs $1.50 US.” Oaky, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but only slight.

You’d think I could just avoid these conversations, but backpackers seem to have the same genetic kink that New Yorkers have: after asking your name and nationality, the next question is always how much you pay for your place. 

As I said, I encountered this throughout my travels, but it only really pissed me off in Phnom Penh.  That may be because that city was one of the major stops on my Western Guilt tour.  After gorging on temples in Siem Reap, I gorged on sadness in the capital.  I visited two overwhelming genocide memorials in Cambodia: Tuol Sleng, the former Khmer Rouge prison, and Choeung Ek, one of the many killing fields throughout the country.  There is no way not to feel conflicted about visiting these places.  The history is so horrifying, and so recent.  Basically, any Cambodian my age or older lived through the terror.   Surely the current generation grew up in the shadow of their parents’ trauma.  Whatever justice can exist for the murder of a quarter of a nations’ population has certainly not been achieved.  Much has been made of “Comrade Duch”, the one Khmer Rouge official who was punished for his crimes.   But Pol Pot died while living under house arrest, and the Khmer Rouge retained a seat at the UN until 1993.  The country’s wounds are still disturbingly fresh.  Bloodstains are still visible in the cells at Tuol Sleng.  And the memorial pagoda is not the only place at Choeung Ek to see the skeletons of the victims.  Every year, during the rainy season, the waters bring up pieces of human remains and shreds of clothing from the mass graves.  The question, “is that branch or is that bone?” follows you throughout the area.  And while I did not follow the lead of other visitors who took pictures of each item for later verification, I still think a trip to the memorial is important.  Partly because of the travelers I met who “didn’t even know there had been a genocide in Cambodia”.  Partly because of the statement at the end of the Choeung Ek audio guide that “this was not the world’s most recent genocide, and it will not be the last”.  The survivor’s calm sense of certainty was terrifying. 

Humans are a blood-thirsty, mystifying bunch.  We will go to such lengths to label people as “others”, and then we do our best to destroy them.  Afterwards, we sell tickets to view the wreckage.  I do think these memorials are necessary, that they serve a purpose.  But as I was approached by burnt and maimed landmine survivors and crying, pleading children begging for money outside these sites I also felt that my visit was offensive and unjustifiable.  I am one person, taking a vacation.  I can do nothing.  I offer nothing.  I can’t help.  And if i can't help, do I have any right to be there?

 

I require curry

As my trip comes to a close I have a few regrets: I didn't achieve enlightenment, get a book deal, or take a Cambodian cooking class.  I still have a shot at the first two, but alas, I believe the ship has sailed on my Cambodian cooking dreams.  I had only eaten Cambodian cuisine once before visiting the country, and that was at an unmemorable place in Brooklyn. My pre-reading had told me it was kind of like Thai food (except less spicy) and kind of like Vietnamese food (except less fish sauce). Poor Cambodia. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.  Ultimately, it was an exciting prospect to discover a cuisine in the country of its origin.  So here is the low down on the memorable meals I enjoyed during my visit.

 

Ginger pork and noodles in Siem Reap. During my first day of marathon temple-viewing I was near the point of collapse and asked Mr. Ron (the tuk-tuk driver) if we could stop for lunch. I'm completely and utterly certain that he took me to some place that gives him a commission for delivering unsuspecting tourists, but at that point I really didn’t care. I was exhausted and I needed sustenance. And furthermore, my meal was delicious. The ginger was undoubtedly the star in this dish, and it played its part well.  I’m sure we’ve all had those overly gingered dishes in which the heat and sweetness somehow take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and end up a bitter, sad mess.  This was emphatically not the case here.  The sauce was rich, with bite, and it created a silky coating for the flat noodles.  Also, these noodles.  I recognize that they are of the instant variety, but they were sooooooooooooo good.  Their size and texture really matched the weight of the sauces in Cambodia.  Before I go on to the next dish I must give a shout out to Southeast Asia’s pork.  It’s some of the best pork I’ve ever had (okay, Spain probably wins, but come on, it’s Spain!!)   Always tender, often fatty, and never veering toward the dry, flavorless slabs of meat so frequently found in the US.  Yay Southeast Asian Pork!



Cambodian Barbeque.  Let it be known, I have eaten snake, and it was good. But nowhere near as good as crocodile!  Actually it was rather chewy, so I don't know what James the Thai Tour Guide was complaining about.  But I digress.  My big splurge dinner in Siem Reap was a heaping plate of Cambodian Barbeque, featuring five different kinds of meat, three sauces, and somehow, also, hotpot.  Who knew?  The whole meal is really stupendous.  You’re given your own enclosed mountain of coals, upon which is placed a rounded barbeque altar.  The hill of grilling goodness is then surrounded by a hot pot moat.  Really, the cookery alone won me over.  So here’s the process: the barbeque volcano is lit, and then a huge, glistening piece of pork fat is placed at the top.  The hot pot moat is filled with chicken broth, into which is thrown greens, carrots, squash, cabbage, and those ridiculously awesome noodles.   While the hot pot is working its sultry magic, the grilling begins.  The five “meats” I ordered were chicken, beef, snake, crocodile, and squid.  The beef came with an egg for dipping, which put such a Taipei-nostalgia smile on my face.   The snake kind of tasted like pork, nothing too exciting.  But the crocodile was amazing.  It had the gaminess of lamb, and yet the sweetness of squid.  I know, I know.  Lamb-squid doesn’t sound very convincing.  But it was good, dammit!  A really excellent meat, one which I would search out again.  It must be said that Cambodian barbeque is a lot of fun.  In addition to getting my grill on, I also got to play with sauce-to-meat combinations.  The sauces were explained to me thusly: one for meat, one for fish, and tofu.  Yup.  Just tofu.  I’m still not sure whether the waitress meant that the sauce was for tofu, or made of tofu, but no matter.  The “tofu” sauce kind of had a lemony béarnaise thing going on, and it was particularly good with the chicken.  The second sauce was reminiscent of chimichurri, filled with fresh herbs, oil, and a bit of vinegar.  I was happy to unite it with its crocodile soul mate.  The final sauce was a pepper-lemon oil, and it bathed the succulent pieces of charred squid in its goodness. 

Speaking of pepper, those Cambodians are pepper-growing masters.  There are pepper farms all over the country, and indulging in a product so fresh was a true luxury.  For my last night in Cambodia I decided to go for the official dish of Kampot: Kampot Pepper Crab.  I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this:

 

Crab is a food that makes me incredibly nostalgic. My Uncle Carl used to boil blue crab for the family at least once a summer. I was the only one who could stand to be in the kitchen during the morally-dubious cooking process. What can I say, I was a kid. I thought it was great fun to watch the crabs try to escape, and do to my part to round them up again. Once the crabs were finished we would cover the table in newspaper and break out the nutcrackers. Oh how the butter would flow! I recalled those days with my Uncle as I smeared the sticky, brown pepper sauce all over my hands and face in my attempt to delicately eat the meal. Chopsticks abandoned, I was pretty much just tearing into the claws and chomping down on anything that wasn’t shell. Every now and then a peppercorn popped in my mouth, and I scrunched my face up from the delightful, tickling pain. Throughout my trip the seafood was outstanding. This crab was rich, creamy, briny, and yet of course it also had that necessary burst of fresh sweetness. I wonder what my Uncle Carl would have made of this dish. I'm not sure he even would have tried it, but I'm pretty sure he would be glad that I did.

And those were just a few of the culinary highlights. Sadly I do not have a picture of a particularly kick-ass seafood red curry that I ate on the beach, but alas, not every meal can be captured. And I haven't gotten into the gloriousness that is Amok. Okay, I may have to revisit this topic in a later post. But for now, I leave you with sun-kissed pepper pods to hopefully tickle your fancy.

 

"Hello Ladeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"

One again, I'm a country behind.  I'm currently in Vietnam, and have been for the past few days, but unfortunately you guys will have to wait for the gory details of the Vietnamese transportation system, because first I need to address my time in Cambodia.  That leg of the trip was added on once I realized that it made no sense to visit Thailand and Vietnam without checking out one of the countries in between.  I knew I wanted some serious beach time, so Cambodia won out over Laos.  I think I made the right choice.  Cambodia is an active contradiction.  How can a place that suffers from such extreme levels of poverty also manage to exude voluptuousness?  It's a beautiful, mixed up place, and it certainly dragged me into the confusion.

I was ushered across the Thai border with another US traveler ( a New Yorker, no less!) by one of the ubiquitous Cambodian "helpers".  You need a visa?  They'll show you where to get a visa.  You need a cab?  Oh, they've got cabs.  And tuk-tuks.  And motobikes.  Hell, they'd probably give you a piggyback ride to the next town if asked nicely.  Our Helper saw us safely through all the visa checkpoints and into a dusty Toyota Camry.  After a quick stop at a gas station (aka, a kid at the side of the road ran over with a jug of gasoline and poured it into the tank) we were on the Road to Siem Reap (yeah, there's really just the one road, paved as of 2009). The two hour long car trip immediately set the atmosphere.  There was such an impossible amount of green.  Stretching in either direction I could see crisp fields of grass, palm trees, rice patties, and emerald mountains in the distance.  There was the occasional shack, either tin-roofed or thatched, and plenty of livestock.  This is kind of area where you break for cow crossings.  As the sun set, I started to wonder where the hell we were going.  We had been on one straight road for two hours, and I could see nothing that looked like a city in the distance.  Darkness fell, clouds rolled in, and the vista was lit up by noiseless flashes of lightening.  We seemed to be outside of time and space.  Finally, we reached a crossroads, and this was the signal that we had arrived in Cambodia's third largest city.  My traveling companion and I were deposited in tuk-tuks (the tuk-tuk: a motobike pulling a cart-like thing containing one or more overly priveleged foreigners) and went our separate ways.

While my time in Thailand was delightfully organized by Cory, this marked the start of just a tiny bit of chaos.  Or not chaos, really.  More of a haphazardous wonder.  I just kind of decided to dive in.  Luckily, Angkor Wat was there to catch my fall.  Okay, just a bit of clarification, feel free to skip ahead if you already know this: Angkor Wat is actually just one of about 25 temples in the area.  It is, however, the biggest.  As in, the biggest religious building in the whole frickin' world.  So it's understandable that the whole area just sort of gets lumped under that title.  I spent three days touring the temples at Angkor, no guide, just me, a tuk-tuk, and a gazillion big eyed children trying to sell me things.  The structures are truly astonishing.  Massive sandstone slabs interlock to form monuments to ancient god-kings.  The obvious questions arise: how on earth were these materials transported?  How did they accomplish such uniform, detailed artistry?  And what the hell was up with king Jayavarman VII?  He oversaw the creation of a temple with 216 faces of a "god" who supposedly bore more than a striking resemblence to the king himself.   I mean, self-glorification is one things, but that's just ridiculous.

 

 

Perhaps one of the most amazing things about the temples is that they still exist. When the Khmer Rouge came to power they slaughtered the monks at the functioning temples, but left the structures standing.  The temples weren't left undamaged, but given the insanity of the regime it's hard to believe that more wasn't destroyed.  I guess they were too busy killing Cambodians for the good of Cambodia. While the temples have mostly escaped human destruction, they are slowly being pulled back into the jungle, wall by wall, stone by stone.  Monolithic trees have wrapped themselves around the temples, found their way inside, and are simultaneously dragging the buildings into the ground amd ripping them up into the sky. 

Since this is the rainy season the tourist hoards were slightly diminished.  Oh, they were there, but I was able to steal a few moments for just me, the jungle-temples, and the monkeys.  Outisde the temples, however, the place was mobbed with peddlers and beggers.  I knew ahead of time that this was the situation, but the scope, especially at Siem Reap, was overwhelming.  I'm not sure there's any real economy aside from tourism in the town, and the desperation for survival has led to a particularly twisted kind of child labor.  Before going to Cambodia I had made a decision not to buy anything from children - in most cases the money goes to a parent or a handler, and the more money they make, the less likely they are to be allowed to go to school.  I hadn't realized that children are basically the only people selling things around the temples.  There are children selling you water, food, scarves, bracelets, guidebooks, genocide memoirs, toys, postcards, paintings, and magnets.  These kids can count to ten in multiple languages.  They have been trained not to take no for an answer.  And this isn't even the most heartbreaking thing, no, that would be the children begging so insistently for money that they almost push you off the road, and will follow you repeating the same plea over and over and over again.  There is no good response.  You can't possibly buy from every one of them, give to every one of them.  And then there's the knowledge that it may actually be doing them more harm than good.  So you end up repeating the litany, "I'm sorry, I can't, I'm so sorry, I just can't," all day long.  To which they respond, "Why?  Why can't you?"

I don't know what else to say.  I also ate, and ate some good things, but  I think I'm going to save that for another post.

And that was Siem Reap.  Breathtaking.  Exhausting.



 

 

Bangkok Part 2: The Search for Ladyboys

People said it couldn't be done.  That I couldn't tour Southeast Asia with only a tiny, dragon-bearing backpack, and without suffering some sort of food-related intestinal calamity.  Well, they were half right.  Petite Bertha and I have been very successful on our travels so far.  So succcessful, in fact, that I've been frequently mistaken for a 26 year old NGO worker living in Cambodia.  I choose to take this as a compliment, rather than as a criticism of my hygiene.  But sadly, my culinary luck ran out.  Let it be known: my last night in Phnom Penh I did select a resturant based on the advice of a dirty, pot-addled backpacker.  And furthermore I did eat a small portion of mystery meat.  I neglected to trust my solid gustatory instincts.  If something doesn't taste good, don't eat it!  But I was trying to prove something, I guess.  And prove it I did, to my toilet, at 5am.  Ah well, such are the vagaries of travel.

I was going to postpone my trip down to the coast to give myself a day to recover in the solitude of my guesthouse, but I was done with Phnom Penh at that point.  So I soldiered on through a 5 hour bus ride (the bus drver was playing weird Cambodian karaoke the entire time) and I made it to Sihanoukville.  Yesterday it was rainy and bleak, so I stayed inside my bungalow, pounded the imodium and cipro, and awoke today to a perfect tropical paradise, and a reasonably recovered digestive system.  And now, with the competing sounds of reggae and Otis Redding, I'll wrap up the Thailand trip.

After Cory and I departed Our Jungle Treehouse we headed back to Bangkok for 1.5 days of temples and mayhem.  The mayhem was compounded by the fact that my ATM card had stopped working at the start of the trip, and after numerous calls to my bank, during which I was assured that everything would be sorted out, I discovered that the people at TD Bank have their heads placed firmly up their asses, and that no amount of pleading and/or threatening would give me unfettered access to my account.  Ah well, such are the vagaries of incompetent Canadian banks. 


True, I flipped out a bit, but with Cory by my side I was able to rally and enjoy our jam-packed 36 hours.  We did a whirl-wind tour of Bangkok that included every Wat in the country, I think.  We saw palaces.  We saw Buddhas.  We saw decorative monkeys (I'm still not entirely sure what the deal is with the monkeys in Southeast Asia, but they seem to play a really important role in a number of religious stories.  I guess I could have asked our guide about this, but she was busy telling us about the Buddha's seasonal wardrobe, and I thought it would be rude to interupt). We did a whole lot of sweating.  And finally we ended the tour with a boat ride through the canals of Bangkok.  The boat ride was spectacular, and I'm not just saying that because we were dead on our feet at that point.  The parts of Bangkok that we had seen were so congested and they were all starting to blur together.  The boat ride allowed us to get a different glipse of the city: we saw villas next to shacks, floating noodle shops, and monks feeding catfish!  My mind is still trying to wrap itself around all that it saaw in Bangkok, but for now I'm perfectly content to hold onto this particular nautical memory.

Of course, our trip to Thailand would not be complete without a bit more curry.  Up until now I haven't truly appreciated the lure of yellow curry.  I always considered it the "mild" curry.  The also-ran.  But after brutalizing my tastebuds with a bit too much righteous chili action I was ready to mellow out.  Also, Cory made some amazing yellow curry at our Chiang Mai cooking class.  Far from bland, it was a delicate mix of spices and coconut that sort of caressed your mouth, rather than attacking it with a hot poker.  To indulge in this revelation I decided to make my last Thai meal deep-fried, soft-shelled crab in yellow curry.  Sure, I could go on and rhapsodize about the meal, but do you really need to hear more?  Deep-fried.  Soft-shell crab.  In yellow curry.  Yeah, it's exactly as good as it sounds.

 

Cory and I also had planned on checking out some of the more "risque" things that Bangkok has to offer, but every place that we came upon seemed hell-bent on selling us into white slavery, so instead the trip ended the way it began, with Thai cover bands.  We came across a bar that had only a few prostitutes and a band of middle-aged Thai men doing surprisingly good versions of such classics as "Smells like teen spirit" and "My Sharona".  Cory and I are both fairly uninhibited dancers, so we got right down to it, and joined a dance mob that included Italian lovers, Irish backpackers, Australian sugar daddies, and Spanish senior citizens.  Our moves were so groovy that they drove the few prostitutes right out of the bar. 

So Cory and I finished our trip with a dancing bang.  All items on the spreadsheet were addressed.  And thanks to her patient ministrations I also managed to make it my bus the next morning, and over the border into Cambodia, which is where our story continues.  But right now my drink is almost empty, and the beach beckons!!