Three Days in Shanghai

Let me start by saying that I am keeping an open mind about China and would perhaps like to visit there again some day to see more of the country. We only experienced a very tiny part of China - just Shanghai and Hangzhou. That's like coming to the United States, visiting NYC and Trenton, NJ for three days, and then forming an opinion about how much you love or hate America.

With all that being said, I think this might be the first place that I've traveled on vacation that I really didn't like and just couldn't wait to leave (Shanghai, at least).

The city of Shanghai itself is fine. It's a lot like New York City - very crowded, huge metropolitan area, financial and business hub for the country, gateway for travel, etc. And there were some interesting and pretty sights to see in Shanghai.

Rainbow Pride stairway:

Dead ducks:

Oba-mao:

Meth Lab Supply Store:

What really turned us off were some of the cultural differences. The constant hacking and spitting and shoving and belching and nose picking and staring and conning and deception and general rudeness of the people was a difficult transition for us, especially since we had just spent weeks in some of the friendliest places I've ever visited.

One part that we did enjoy was a day trip to Hangzhou.  We took the fast train from Shanghai to Hangzhou and spent the day walking around the famous West Lake, which was really beautiful. 

Hangzhou was also the only place we met anyone who seemed genuinely interested in being friendly (exclusive of the various con artists!). We happened to walk into what they call "English Corner," which is an area near West Lake where, for the past thirty years, Chinese people gather on Sundays to practice speaking English. They were excited to see a couple of Westerners and we chatted with the folks there for probably an hour before continuing along our walk. The guys we talked to were really friendly and smart (one guy was getting waaaaaay too deep into some philosophy theories for my tastes. I couldn't keep up!). And I also learned from him that being an accountant in China means you are good at cooking the books (OMG).

Perhaps it was road weariness or homesickness, but Buddy and I were both glad to leave Shanghai and head back to the States. Maybe we will go back one day under different circumstances and really enjoy it, who knows. 

As a parting gift of sorts, when we were in the Shanghai airport waiting for our flight to leave, a Chinese guy walked over and intentionally launched a snot rocket right next to me. I am very grateful for Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer!

The Killing Fields

Cambodia experienced decades of wars, both from external forces and from internal conflicts. The history is quite sad, and relics of these wars still exist all over the country. There are still millions of live land mines throughout the country, causing dozens of people to be maimed or killed every year. The Cambodian population has one of the highest percentage of amputees in the world.

Most recently, the people of Cambodia were under decades of tyrannical rule by the sociopath Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime. The torture, killings and genocide that they endured for years left hundreds of mass graves throughout the country, commonly called The Killing Fields.  

The Cambodian people have erected memorial sites at the Killing Fields and we visited one in Siem Reap. It was so incredibly sad. I had to leave the little museum a couple of times because I couldn't stand to see the pictures and stories of the horrific acts of torture inflicted upon these people for no reason.  War is really, really fucked up.

The Killing Field and torture prison in Siem Reap was actually at the site of an old Buddhist monastery. It's kinda cool that they have now built this little monument and museum at the site, but also converted the temple back to its original purpose. Today it is once again an active Buddhist monastery, and they have planted a bodhi tree right next to the piles of skulls (Buddha was believed to have been born beneath a bodhi tree).

Angkor Archaeological Park

So....we spent two days exploring this place:  http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/668

One could easily spend days and days and days here, but with 105 degree temperatures and 90% humidity, it's kinda hard to motivate after a few hours!

It is so hard to describe in words the sheer awesomeness of this place. 

Some of these temples are over 1,000 years old, and you can still read the inscriptions in the stones and see the detailed carvings. And thanks to various restoration projects, you can even climb up many of the temples and see the beautiful Cambodian vista from the "top" of their world!

Angkor Wat selfie:

We had an awesome guide, Veasna, who drove us between sites and recounted the history of the temples and of the various Khmer kings. We learned more about the ancient Hindu religious stories than I was expecting! 

It was just spectacular. Like the temples in Egypt, it's hard to believe that humans created these massive structures when they did with the simple tools available at the time.

Things We've Learned in China

1. Want to use Facebook or Google or Twitter or YouTube or Dropbox or have a blog? Too bad. The Great Firewall of China has all of these blocked.

2. Bodily functions should be fully and loudly expressed. People here hock phlegm, spit, audibly fart and burp, pick their noses, pick their butts, etc. and they do it often and in public.

3. I've wondered how the big cigarette companies are still in business, since it seems like fewer and fewer people in America still smoke. Well, we figured it out. They moved their market to China.

4. In China, Pizza Hut is a fancy dining experience, including maître d's and linen table cloths.

5. Chicken feet. They eat them. They are everywhere.

6. There is no toilet paper, except in the hotel. You have to pack and carry your TP here.

7. Hard staring, especially at foreigners, seems to be completely acceptable. And should the foreigner decide to stare back and see how long the staring contest will go on, the Chinese person will win.

8. If two innocent looking girls approach you on the street and ask you to take their photo and then start chatting you up, they are not just being sweet. They are actually trying to get you to go to a tea shop where you get conned into footing a huge bill. We saw this happening over and over! It's pretty remarkable.

9. Before checking your luggages, you can pay $3 to have everything shrink wrapped! (this is all over Asia, not just China)

Kun Khmer Kickboxing

Tuesday and Thursday we visited the temples and I'll have a separate post just about that.  But after our first day at the temples, we thought it best to have a "rest day" (it's really fricking hot here and intense sweating for 6 hours will take it out of you!) so we spent Wednesday visiting more of Siem Reap.  Actually, first we slept in, then we ate a late breakfast, and THEN we wandered around Siem Reap. :-)

On Monday night we had met a few expats living here, one of whom started a Cambodian handicrafts business that pays good wages and provides education to their employees (http://cambolac.com/html/). Wednesday we found their shop to purchase a couple of souvenirs and did some more haggling in the markets.

One of the things that Buddy really wanted to do in Bangkok (had we spent time there) was to see a live Muay Thai match. Interestingly, it turns out that Cambodia has a very similar martial arts style called Kun Khmer AND they had a match on Wednesday in Siem Reap!  Our tuk-tuk driver, Tola, took us to buy tickets for the fights and he was so cool that we asked him to join us. He is a really nice man, and he said yes, but we aren't sure if he actually *wanted* to go or if he just said yes to be nice. Either way, it was really cool to hang out with him for the evening and loads of fun to watch the fights! Plus, since everything was in Khmer, he was really helpful in letting us know what the hell was going on.

With this style of fighting, there is this whole ritual that the fighters go through in the ring right before the match starts. It's a mixture of prayer, thanking their trainers, and some sweet dance moves. It's pretty fascinating! Here is a video I took of it (no fighting in this, it's just the warm-up prayer thing):

http://vimeo.com/98623965

You may have noticed the music in the background...throughout the fight, similar music plays and gets faster and faster with each round. It's really hypnotic and gets the crowd going, as well as the fighters. Plus the fighters kind of dance and hop to the beat! 

It was definitely a fun experience watching the Cambodian guys bet on the fights.  During one of the matches, all the betting guys got really pissed because it looked like one of the fighters was throwing the fight. We learned that it's pretty common for someone to pay one of the fighters to intentionally lose. The judges ended up calling that match a draw, which seemed like a pretty good solution and probably prevented a riot.

And when there was a really good match, the winning fighter would get tips from the crowd! There was one guy in particular who really killed it and everyone was whooping and cheering and throwing money at him. The whole evening was a lot of fun!!! 

Fishy Foot Massages & Siem Reap

Our first full day in Siem Reap, Cambodia, we decided to take it easy and just wander around to get to know the place a bit. Siem Reap is the town closest to the Angkor Archaeological Park, so it's where all the tourists stay when they come to see the temples. The town has grown into a giant tourist trap - a staggering number of markets, restaurants, and hotels, plus all the little businesses that accompany those (such as laundry services, bicycle rentals, and tuk-tuk drivers). 

We happen to be here in the low season, so most of the shops are not busy and there are a LOT of tuk-tuk drivers just hanging around. This means that everyone is both bored and wants your business. (Hellobuysomesing?!?!) It also means that the folks with good personalities really stand out! We've met a couple of really funny tuk-tuk drivers that cracked us up. We've also heard, more than once, a bored shop keeper just say "hellosomesing?" That's pretty funny, too.  :-)

In SE Asia, massage places are everywhere and we've been taking advantage of the cheap services as often as possible. Before we arrived in Siem Reap we'd already had hour long foot massages, full body massages, Thai massage, shoulder massage, and hot stone massage! But something you see all over Siem Reap are these big fish tanks with signs that say "Please feed our hungry fish your dead skin." I had heard about these before and wanted to try it, and for a whopping $2 each we got to stick our feet in these tanks for as long as we could stand it. It tickles soooooooo badly!!! I couldn't even stand to put my whole foot in there for more than a second!  The fish are really aggressive.  Here's a short video for you:

http://vimeo.com/98551809

Cambodia is naturally beautiful with a tropical climate, lots of lush greenery. This is the walkway to our hotel room (!) and a view of the badass pool that's right outside our room.

This tree looks like it has dreadlocks.

And a few more photos from our wanderings around the town....

A temple we stumbled upon:

In the market - tasty snacks of fried tarantulas and grasshoppers. You'll be pleased to know that we did NOT try these...although we paid the little boy proprietor a dollar to let us take pictures and HE ate one for us!

"Best Singers!"

I finally got two videos from the karaoke competition to upload!! The quality is bad because our internet here is really slow, but at least the audio came through loud and clear. 

This girl was told by the judges that she used too much body language in her performance:

http://vimeo.com/98552390

And this girl was our absolute favorite of the night!

http://vimeo.com/98552438

It was so much fun!

Things We've Learned in Cambodia

1. Cambodians do not know the street names or numbers. Like, AT ALL. There is basically NO REASON for the streets to even have any names, because nobody knows them.

2. Every time a waiter serves you something, they tell you to "please enjoy." So at one meal you may hear: Please enjoy your drinks! Please enjoy your bread! Please enjoy your noodles! Please enjoy your porridge! Please enjoy your fruit!  :-)

3. Gender roles are very defined and followed pretty closely. See number 4 below.

4. Accounting is nearly 100% a female occupation in Cambodia. The only males who go into accounting here are actually gay. 

5. "Hello buy something?" may be the only English that person knows. And it's pronounced: "hel low bye sum sing?"

6. Scam: women will come up to you with a baby in their arms and beg for milk for their baby. She will protest "I don't want money, only milk for my baby." But if you buy the milk, she will then promptly return it to the store and split the money with the store vendor. We read about this in advance so we didn't fall for it, but it was definitely tried on us.

7. Outside of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh (the major cities), Cambodians live in truly abject poverty. It's one of the poorest countries in the world. Living in huts made of palm leaves, only one water well (or sometimes NO water) for an entire village of 20+ families, hours commute for the kids to attend the nearest school (and so many do not go), etc.

8. Cambodians are some of the friendliest, kindest and happiest people we've ever met.

9. Families are very close knit and look after each other. Our temple guide had 26 people, all family members, living in one small house with only 2 bathrooms. He works to pay for his niece, nephew and daughter to attend school.

10. There are around 8-10 MILLION landmines still active and laying around Cambodia (left over from decades of wars). Still today, every year there are hundreds of people injured, maimed or killed by active landmines. It's quite terrifying to think about and there are some amazing relief efforts going on (we had an opportunity to visit with this group: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/07/29/cnnheroes.cambodia.demining/ )

11. The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot were fucking terrorist assholes.

12. The ancient temples are over 1,000 years old and you can still see some of the writing/inscriptions and intricate carved details in the stones. Really beautiful and amazing!!!

13. The USD is the main currency here.  When you go to the ATM, US dollars come out!

Four Hours at the Bangkok Airport

With all the political conflict happening in Thailand right now, we decided that we would not go to Thailand on this trip. We were pretty bummed about it at first, but then fell in love with Vietnam so it ended up allowing us to spend more time there. So it worked out great, but we did already have one set of plane tickets booked through Bangkok, requiring us to at least fly in and out of Thailand.

So this morning we (sadly) said goodbye to Vietnam and flew to Bangkok, then piddled around the airport for 4 hours until our flight left for Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The Bangkok airport was pretty cool, and we are excited to plan a new (future) trip just to spend time in Thailand. Here are a few pics we took in the airport. Not too shabby for an airport, eh?

After we ate some amazing Thai food, got cheap massages, and finished looking at the beautiful artwork, we took a quick flight to Cambodia and made it to our hotel in Siem Reap.

So much awesome

Tonight we attended one of the highlights of my very existence. It was so phenomenal. 

It was the "BMG Best Singer" semifinals. These were the Top 10 karaoke performers from the BMG International Education group. I have no idea what the BMG International Education group is, or what its significance is, but these are some college-age kids who really love karaoke.

Buddy and I were literally the only non-Vietnamese people there. We went with our friend Moon (who is so sweet!!) - she called our hotel and asked if we wanted to go to a concert tonight. We didn't know what type of concert, but we figured it would be a fun experience to try it out....and we were NOT disappointed!!!

I really, really, really wish I could get the darn videos to upload, but our internet connection is super crappy. So you will just have to wait. But I promise, it will be worth it!

Vietnamese Cooking School

Yesterday we took a cooking class that was a whole lot of fun. It was a small group of 9 people and we started at the Hoi An market to buy all of the ingredients we would need for the day. I'm so glad we went with a guide, because the market is really overwhelming. Here are a few pics that don't do it justice. I didn't take any pics of the meat section because I just had to look at the ceiling or floor the whole time. But Buddy snapped a couple, included below.

This vendor sells various types of rice noodles :

Here are some fruits & veggies & eggs. There are tiny quail eggs, medium sized chicken eggs, and big duck eggs:

Here is a shot of one of the covered areas - there are fish vendors in the foreground, veggie vendors in the back:

And the disgusting meat photos from Buddy:

While in the meat section, this old woman with crazy eyes and a BLOODY mouth was walking around and looking at us. This is not her, because I kind of panicked when I saw her and just hauled ass out of there as quickly as possible without taking a photo.

Buddy thought she was chewing on raw meat or something. But we've since found out that it's actually a type of plant that some of the old Vietnamese ladies chew that gets them high...with a side effect of looking like a complete psychopath. (It's called Betel plant: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel ). 

After purchasing our ingredients, we went on a 45 minute boat ride to a small island next to Hoi An called Thuan Tinh Island:

We then transferred from our motor boat into a couple of canoes to row into the village. I took most of the pics with the good camera, so I can't post them yet. But one of our boat mates took this for us:

I really want one of those pointy hats, but can't figure out how I would pack it home. And Buddy won't let me wear it on the plane.

After we got to the village, they showed us how the rice husks are separated from the rice itself and let us try it out:

Then they showed us how to make rice milk, which was really cool!

Next we walked to the cooking school, which was an outdoor area with a set of tables under a giant bamboo canopy:

The chef was hilarious, even without knowing English. Gestures can really get you a long way here.  She taught us how to make Vietnamese spring rolls with peanut sauce, Banh Xeo (!!) which is the yummy crispy rice pancake that we love, a vermicelli salad, and finally Pho! All of it was delicious and we got the recipes and two sets of cooking chopsticks to take home :-)

It was a really cool day!