Rizz goes round the world

She's alive!! (Saigon, Vietnam)

11 February, 2007

Yes, I am alive and well! I know, I know, long time no update. South East Asia has proved to be such an amazing journey for the senses, it's gotten overwhelming and I don't even know what to say! Nor do I want to spend time behind a computer when there's so much adventure to be had out there!

I have fallen in love dozens of times-- with the colors everywhere, with the architecture, with the ubiquitous buddhas, with the markets, the street food, hell, the food in general (except the meat, but I still marvel at it. Oh, and I ate a cricket! Tasted like a potato chip), with longtail boats, with tuk tuks, with the complete lack of safety regulations (it's quite liberating, really) , with motorbikes. In fact, I've discovered that there's nothing better than zooming along on the back of a motorbike-- I love it! Well, except for when I'm wearing my big pack--what a work-out for the abs to stay upright! Particularly unnerving given the lack of traffic patterns here, especially in Vietnam. Motorbikes are everywhere here (along with their honking horns) and you'd be amazed at the amount of stuff you can fit on one. The typical arrangement of passengers has a small child (usually a toddler) standing up in front of the driver, the driver (on a mobile phone), then 2 people behind the driver, both sitting side-saddle, with at least one holding an infant, if not both. The average is 5 people, but 7 is not unheard of. And then the goods you can carry! Hundreds of plastic bottles of water, dozens of large sacks of rice, metal shelving units, fishing rods and box, nevermind the daily items of shopping bags, briefcases, shoulderbags... the list goes on and on. Julie, imagine emptying your car and carrying everything on a moto. That's what people do here. Who needs trunks, anyway? We're so excessive! Just have one of the 6 other people riding on the motorbike with you carry your stuff. I've thought of marketing a game for it, like the car bingo game we had for road trips when I was a kid, when you slide the plastic window over the picture of the item you've spotted.

Anyway, it's been an amazing ride. I have a few entries I'm working on, but here's a quick re-cap of what I've been up to since I left you (which was in Singapore). (This is long, so feel free to read it in chunks.)

Malaysia:
(15 December-24 December, 2006)

I was still pretty exhausted and not in top travel mode, but Malaysia struck me as an incredible country. A few people who've headed there that I've met along the way haven't liked it, but I found it charming, though Kuala Lumpur, the capital, was pretty boring. Malaysia is a primarily Muslim country. Women wear head scarves, but they're not fully veiled or anything. The head scarf is actually a relatively new thing here. Another relatively new thing is that all ethnic Malays (there are plenty of Chinese, Indians, and other Asian ethnicities here as well) are required by law to be Muslim. With this law came the head scarf. The law was a reaction to the economic power held by the ethnic Chinese, which the Malay government viewed as a threat. To create a sense of unity among the Malays, a unity that they hoped would cause Malays to gain power as a group, they indoctrinated Islam as a religion (I read all of this in A Fortune Teller Told Me, by Tiziano Terzani, by the way. An INCREDIBLE book!). Anyway, seems a bit extreme, and apparently there are tensions between the Malays and the Chinese, but when I was there, I witnessed no evidence of this. Also, while Malays are required to be Muslim, everyone else has freedom of religion, and there seems to be great religious tolerance. Like in Singapore, Muslim mosques stood down the street from Hindu temples, Christian churches and Chinese pagodas dedicated to Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.

At any rate, in Malaysia, I checked out Melaka, a charming and colorful historical town down south, whose narrow streets, sans sidewalk, were reminiscent (to me) of some old Spanish towns I've been through. They had a great night market here, and I got to try such delicacies as candied fruit on a stick and egg-fried ice cream, along with a more traditional Laksa. The market was even complete with a giant karaoke stage, with dozens of tables (full) in front! We watched for a bit as people belted out Irish folk songs in Malay (for real. One of the songs was vaguely familiar. Then I realized it was The Foggy Dew, just not in English), while a crazy old man dressed like a ghetto-fabulous adolescent in the States, danced and lip-synced in front of the stage.

Kuala Lumpur was pretty boring, which was good, as I was sick (again), and spent a lot of time watching boot-legged movies. I also checked out the Batu Caves (more on that in another entry), and, of course, the Patronus Towers. I also reunited with a girl I'd met in Singapore, Lindsay, from KL, who introduced me to the KL way of evening life: hang out in an air-conditioned mall and then head to the local food stalls for some roti!

My last stop in Malaysia was Penang, where I reunited with Tamas, my Hungarian friend I first stumbled upon in New Zealand, along with his friend Anders, whom he met in the central highlands of Malaysia (following this?). We bravely faced mad Malaysian traffic in our rental car, which we hired, essentially, because we were bored. We headed down to the snake farm, where we got to hold lots of mildly poisonous snakes and pet a 23-foot python, and then to a Buddhist temple out in the hills. The tranquility was slightly ruined by the incredible number of tourists. They were mostly Asian, and delighted in yelling "hello!" and asking to have our pictures taken with them when they saw us. Still, at the top of the central pagoda, on a balcony overlooking the hills, well ventilated with a gentle breeze, I was able to lose myself for a bit. To my right and down below was the town, but if I kept my head straight, all I could see were green, rolling hills. The sound of a gong was carried to me by the breeze every once in a while, and the scent of the flowers down below was carried to my nose. It was lovely.

Thailand
(24 December, 2006- 4 February, 2007)

After a final night in Penang of hawker food and pool at a nearby local bar, Tamas and I headed out in the early morning of Christmas Eve for our journey into Thailand, which proved to be an adventure indeed. More on that in another entry. After some time on the beach and New Year's on Ko Phangan, the full moon island, a night that involved hanging on for dear life to the back of a pick-up truck because the inside was full, fire dancers on the beach (lovely until they all got drunk and started spilling lighter fluid everywhere), firework schrapnel falling on my head, and a late-night walk home through the jungle, we made our way into Bangkok!

Tamas and I had hoped to take the night train into Bangkok, but there were only standing-room tickets. So we schlepped our way across the town of Chumphon to hop on a bus. There was only 1 seat left. Uh-oh. Tamas, being chivalrous, said he didn't want me to get to BKK alone at 4 in the morning (although I think it's also because he was just as nervous about doing that solo as I was) and we briefly played with the idea of an 8-hour journey standing overnight. Fortunately, no is never the final answer in SE Asia, and we managed to score 2 bus tickets.

Honestly, Bangkok was much tamer than I had envisioned. I expected culture shock. In some ways I was disheartened to encounter New York City on a small dose of YaBa (Thai speed). I honestly felt more in a foreign land on Khao San Road, the backpacker ghetto, full of aged hippies and Thais offering dreadlocking services, than in the rest of Bangkok. I'm thinking that the numerous stories I've heard about the madness of SE Asia, along with a gradual acculturation along the coast, have helped dull any sense of culture shock. It's of course different, and mad, here, but I've never felt over-whelmed or out of place. Perhaps I lived here in a past life. :) Anyway, I'll test the whole theory when I get to Delhi, I imagine.

Over the 6 week period I was in Thailand, I ended up spending over a week in Bangkok, and managed to be more than just a tourist, which was great. I mastered public transportation (I even took the bus a few times! Yes, this is an accomplishment. Bangkok is the worst planned city in history, I believe, and the tangle of roads, along with the fact that all the destinations are in a different alphabet and there's no good bus map available anywhere, makes taking a bus something that, really, should be awarded) and checked out a few random galleries. In Thailand, I also learned to haggle like a pro (just ask my brother!) and got to witness the spectacle that is the National Anthem, played at 6 every night. When it's played over loudspeakers, everyone freezes in spot. Imagine a giant city coming to an absolute stand still, everyone frozen on the sidewalks, in the markets, coming out of the subway. It's bizarre--straight out of a sci-fi movie. And I used to be impressed when a smattering of students arriving late would freeze in the hallways during morning prayer.

Apart from their great national pride, the Thais also have an intense adoration of their king, who is celebrating 60 years on the throne this year. Every Thai is in possession of a yellow polo shirt with the royal insignia on it, and on Mondays, King Day, the entire country is an enormous ocean of yellow. I of course bought one.

At any rate, back to BKK, where Tamas and I arrived on the 4th of February. T picked up his friend Gabor at the airport, and, after a night checking out the seedy underbelly of Bangkok on Soi Cowboy (not for the faint-of-heart, and not something I will write about here), we headed to the Royal Palace, of course nearly being swindled on the way, where I promptly freaked out at the swarms of tourists. Later that night, we had massages and dined on bugs (like I said, tasted like a potato chip), I waited in excited anticipation for my brother Dan and Adrian, his girlfriend, to arrive!

Apart from the fact that I was excited to have my first visitor during my journey, I was also psyched as Dan lives in Alaska and I don't get to see him often. I can't remember the last time we had 3 solid weeks to spend together, so having him here was truly a gift!

The 3 of us had an amazing 3 weeks: bicycling through the Buddhist ruins of Sukothai, which, to me, honestly spoke more than Angkor Wat, trekking through the mountains near paradise, aka Chiang Dao, where we got to stay in bamboo huts hanging off a hill in a hill tribe village (Lisu was the tribe), haggling and buying way too much stuff in Chiang Mai, heading to Cambodia for a few days to check out Angkor Wat and vicinity (I was most impressed by Bayon, in Angkor Thom), watching the Patriots/San Diego game (that's American football), commented in Thai, in a Bangkok hotel room at 5 in the morning after an overnight bus trip from hell that nearly got us killed and that resulted in my backpack being coated in human piss (I think it was stored under the toilet, which leaked), heading south for some beach time on the Andaman Coast, where we were also confronted by the dreadful and tragic reality that is the Tsunami, and trekking through the jungle with a guide whose name was Tigerman.

The 3 weeks went by way too quickly, and after a final night of shopping in Bangkok, Dan and Adrian headed back home. I felt a bit lost for a day or 2, but quickly was back in form, shopping for wedding dresses (NOT for me, for a girl I'd met in the morning who'd gotten engaged when her boyfriend was visiting), taking a vegetarian cooking class with a fellow veggie buddy, Stephanie, whom I'd met at the Jim Thompson house, taking a yoga class with Stephanie's boyfriend's friend, and conquering every market known to man in Bangkok. I also headed to lovely Kanchanaburi, where I stayed on a raft on the River Kwai in true tranquility. Finally, my visas for Vietnam and India were ready, and on the 4th, I grabbed a flight to Phnom Penh. Farewell for now, dear Bangkok.

Cambodia:
(4 - 7 February, 2007)

I had already passed through Siem Reap with Dan and Adrian to see Angkor Wat, but wanted to come back through Cambodia to Phnom Penh, to check out the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum. My impressions of and information on the Cambodian genocide deserve more than a brief mention here, so I will save my comments for a separate entry.

Anyway, after a few nights staying on the lake in Phnom Penh, I took a peaceful ride down the mighty Mekong into Vietnam. The ride was amazing, as we passed by small villages, fishing boats, rice processing facilities. Definitely a great way to get into Vietnam.

Vietnam:
(7 February - ?)

During my peaceful river ride, I met a few people who intended to head to Phucoc Island, down south. I had played with the idea of going myself, but travel there was pretty complicated and I wasn't wanting to go it alone, so I was happy to bump into some fellow travellers. We alit from the boat in Chau Doc, where we somehow managed to fit our packs onto a couple of motos and a couple of cyclos, and then subsequently managed to haggle for a $12 lift via mini-bus down to Rach Gia, where we'd take the ferry to Phucoc the next morning. During our 2 hour journey, we passed lively villages along the Mekong, with children playing their own version of hackey-sack, chickens roaming everywhere, and adults gathered to socialize at ubiquitous outdoor "cafes", where food carts were surrounded by low red plastic tables and chairs, and hammocks were strung everywhere. The buildings were ramshackle-- made of corrugated tin, sometimes sheets of wood, even thatched, with a small hut lined with plastic out back over the river that served as an outhouse. The main shack was one or two rooms, many had TVs in the front room, and sleeping areas were mats on the floor, hammocks, or, sometimes, a bed frame with, not a mattress, but, again, a bamboo mat. These huts were typical of what I've seen frequently in SE Asia, and also in the urban shanty-ghettos of Europe. I'm sure when I make my way to Africa and, someday, South America, outside of the inner-city, it will be more of the same. It struck me that, as we in the States willingly go into debt for bigger and bigger houses, and wrinkle our noses at the idea of a non-Western toilet, the majority of the world lives in shacks with a hole in the floor, nevermind a toilet. Need a shower? Enjoy the muddy Mekong (where, mind you, the outhouses empty into). If you're not lucky enough to live near a body of water, there's a water pump out front, where you can bathe with the whole neighborhood. And locks? Most don't even have doors! This is how the world's majority lives. When I get home, I will surely be more mindful of what I really, truly need.

It's perhaps shameful that I go from this observation into the acknowledgement that my next stop was a beach paradise, but at least I was helping out the Vietnamese economy. :) At any rate, after a couple of days on the beach, which I spent with my Australian friends from the boat down the Mekong, Wez and Pez, the cutest couple ever, and during which I took an amazing ride on the back of a moto with my Vietnamese guide, Dun, through villages and over rickety wooden bridges, it was up to Saigon.

And, now, after a 5 hour ride-from-hell on a mini-bus that fit 10 comfortably but carried 18, along with all our luggage, here I am! And with free internet! Hence this novel of an entry. I promise future ones will be not as long! And someday I'll add pictures! At any rate, I have tomorrow to continue to exploring Saigon. My friend Karel gets here tomorrow night for a 10-day visit, and the next day, it's back to the beach. Life is tough, no?

Hope you are all well! I put in some effort; now it's your turn. Give me some comments, please!

posted by La Rizz @ 11:38 PM