Hong Kong - Just for One Day

We were only on a plane to two hours before we touched down in Hong Kong, China.  We decided to get out of the airport and use our 10.5 hours in the crazy city to the fullest. We took a train then a bus, both magnificently clean and exactly on time.  This emptied us out on the streets of Hong Kong Island in Kowloon.  We were both immediately overwhelmed by the smog and felt like every breath was a puff of a cigarette.  There were innumerable signs of all sorts all in Chinese everywhere.  The buildings seemed either disgracefully run down and a shambles or brand spanking new.  The rush of the traffic was more akin to that of city traffic at home and every other vehicle seemed to be a big bus, they have the public transportation thing worked out perty good.  The city felt suffocating as we wandered looking for somewhere to have dim sum or any sort of dumpling because other food places had pictures that were unrecognizable and not a lick of English was to be seen describing anything.  Eventually we found this wonderful tea shop with pictures of dumplings and descriptions in English and we had some of the most delicious dumplings we have ever had.  I also tried this very interesting and yummy aloe and honey tea that had big chunks of aloe meat floating in it.  

After that we wandered through a big market and found some cheap carry on luggage for our suits that we were carrying in suit bags on our arms.  We shared a beer and jumped on the subway to go down to the water to find the Intercontinental Hotel.  We had heard from our friend Trey, whom we met in Southern Thailand that we shouldn’t miss the opportunity to have a drink at the Intercontinental and get a good view of Hong Kong proper from across the water.

 

I am so glad we did!  It was a beautiful bar with a wall full of windows and a live jazz band.  We had a few drinks and a few apps over about 3 hours and soaked in the amazing view.  I didn’t envy the people huddled outside on the dock below as I sipped my dry Belvedere martini and munched on buffalo mozzarella caprese salad.  It was an amazing way to end our incredible trip.  It was romantic and relaxing and there is no where I would rather have been and no one I would rather have been with than my new fiancé!  Then we got back on the bus then the train and then the airplane and made it back to the Bay Area!

We are home now safe and sound…

Thanks for staying tuned everyone!

Love,

Devon and Breen

Bangkok – Second Time Through

We were lucky enough to hear about a chic, super-cool hostel in Bangkok called Lub D (translates to “good night’s sleep”).  It has a great location in the Silom part of Bangkok and a big central gathering room and bar, with very friendly helpful people at the counter 24 hours a day. We befriended some fun fellow travelers (many just starting their journey) and played a lot of Jenga.  The hostel’s design is wonderfully modern and deco with simple red furniture in the rooms and clean black and white décor.  We splurged and got a private room with a double bed, it was either that or bunk beds.

We felt a bit overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of Bangkok after spending time in Laos and Cambodia.  We got hornswaggled by a few tuk tuk drivers who were participating in a government run subsidy plan designed to keep tuk tuk prices down for tourists and help the tourism industry that has been badly damaged by the red shirt coup of last year.  The deal is that the drivers get $5 gas cards just for taking tourists to government approved tailors or jewelry shops even if nothing is purchased.   This did keep the price of the tuk tuk ride way down but we were brought to a few too many jewelry stores and tailors basically against our will and then one driver even lied and wanted us out of his tuk tuk before we had reached our agreed-upon destination.  We didn’t pay him but had already gone inside a tailor and had to awkwardly say we had to go.  We ended up somewhere beyond the reach of the sky train in the rain during rush hour fighting with the driver who ended up telling us to get out and not pay him.  So much for this tourism subsidy thing, we are never getting in a tuk tuk in Bangkok again, that’s for sure!  We had to get on a random boat taxi and walk a fair distance just to get onto the sky train and get back to the hostel.

The boat trip down the river in a fancy long boat was fun.  We were both glad we took the optional detour to the “Snake Show” because we were able to really get a feel for city life on the river.  Many of the buildings are falling down and decrepit, but some nice houses with seemingly good foundations stand out in stark contrast.   We saw schools, wats, shanty towns, kids fishing or swimming or just waving, it was a beautiful ride.  We got to the snake show and it was sad to see some monkeys and deer in tiny cages.  The snake show was short but scary with one man hitting and teasing and then milking a pissed off king cobra just feet way, another dancing with a deadly viper, and sill another showing us the strength and jaws of a boa constrictor by throwing it around for a bit.  

 The boat trip back to the main river we caught site of a huge lizard in front of the hollow remains of a dark wooden building.  Our boat driver spotted it and backed our boat up so we could get a better look.  The thing was over 6 feet long from head to tail, I looked it up and it was one of the largest lizards in Thai Land, a Varanid Monitor Lizzard, similar to a Kimodo Dragon. After the boat ride we were dropped off to walk around the royal palace and Wat Poe.  Another fun part of the trip was running into a floating shop.  I bought a Buddha from the cute saleswoman in her small wooden long boat.

It was great to be able to trust the street food again, and we ate a lot of it in Bangkok.  So good!  We sampled a bunch of it when we went to the Loy Krathong Festival celebration with the beautiful Thai marketing director of Lub D. hostels named Nalin.  She had some friends meet up with us who were passing us caterpillars and grubs and round balls that were similar to corndogs.  We got swept up into the Loy Krathong Festival celebration at our hostel when we arrived just as a group of backpackers were finishing making their Krathongs, which are the flolded banana leaf and flower arrangements that are traditionally floated down the river with a  candle on it and some incense.  We voted on our favorites and then were handed our own and told to join in the precession to the river.  It was a crazy night at the wat near the river, with firecrackers and lights everywhere (though much more confined and not seemingly as dangerous as the same festival was a month earlier in Luang Prabang).  We were blessed by a monk and brought our krathongs to the riverside and let them go at the same time again, sealing our love again as the festival tradition goes.  It was an unexpectedly fun evening.

The fun in Bangkok was a great way to end our time in Southeast Asia, but we still had one more adventure to have on the way home, with a full day layover in Hong Kong!

Love,

Devon and Breen

Battambang – Sleepy City By the River

 After all the rushing around in Siem Reap and Angkor Wat we were both excited to laze about in the sleepy city of Battambang.  We decided to make a stop here on our way back to the Thai border because we heard it is the best place to get a sense of the actual state of a healing Cambodia and the changes and modernization that the people face across the country. While Pnom Phen is rapidly modernizing and being developed, it is a pocket of quickly changing culture in a country that is changing much more slowly, and Siem Reap has been vastly changed by endless tourism because of Angkor Wat, Battambang does not get many tourists and is developing at a sleepy pace comparatively.  And for those of you wondering, no, we were not Pnom Phen when the stampede occurred on the night of the Loy Krathong festival killing 360 people.  We were celebrating Loy Krathong in Bangkok by then.  We do know of a few fellow travelers that were planning to celebrate there and have already heard from one of them who is fine, but was only 100 meters from the chaos.  We have yet to hear from a few others, we are hoping they are ok.

Battambang was an interesting blend of old and new, with many restored old French colonial buildings, shanty town-style architecture with stapled corrugated iron patches, as well as a few very new-looking, modern buildings such as the new mall that has yet to open.  You can also see the blend of old and new in the daily rush of the people and visually see the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Some drive sparkly modern cars and wear modern clothes and some are on rickety old motorbikes or rusted, ancient trucks and wear dirty clothes with holes in them.  The majority of Cambodian people still live in the countryside and are peasant farmers.  It seems that many of these people come into the cities to sell their grains, fruits, veggies, meats and fish or handmade wares. Others seem to live in the main part of the city and work within the city infrastructure or in retail/wholesale, they are bankers or shop owners. We saw very few tourists compared to everywhere else we have been and enjoyed the slower pace of the pretty city.

We spent hours at a small second story café called Gecko Café.  They are focused on social equity and provide well-paid jobs to underprivileged youth.  This made the food a bit more expensive for us, but we were served by glowing, happy, eager to please, young people, who were clearly healthy and are treated well at work.  Also, rare in Cambodia, they actually make enough to piece together a comfortable living.

We walked around the city one day, we bought some sculptures from a shop where the shop owner was actually the artist as well. We were able to watch her carve part of a huge, gloriously intricate sculpture of a war scene of some sort with a backdrop of a swirling sea full of fish and dragons.  We walked by a small river flanked by trees and pretty walkways.  We walked around the big central market of Battambang, which is NOT a tourist market.  There were women hand stitching and selling intricate, brightly colored, sequined dresses and shirts that we guessed were for parties or ceremonies as we saw no one wearing this style of clothing in all of Cambodia.  There were also endless stalls of western-style clothes, but more from the 90’s than this decade.

The most interesting thing we did in Battambang was go to an art gallery and “Circus Show” at a French supported, children’s art school called Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPS).  It was an unexpectedly inspirational experience as PPS is a Cambodian NGO that uses art to answer children’s psycho social needs.  The school had expanded over the years to include a free school for holistic education and sees over 1400 children daily.  They also rescue and house children that have been sexually trafficked.  They house or help 70 children that have met this sad fate.  We started the evening wandering around their art gallery looking at the powerful art that the students had created and fell in love with a piece and bought it, thus supporting the child/young adult who created it and the school directly. Many of the students of PPS go on to have careers in visual or performing arts.  We discovered that the student who had painted the picture we purchased was a trafficked child rescued by the school at 12 and stayed until he was 18 and is now working as an artist and computer graphics designer in China!  After the gallery show we saw a performance art piece (the “circus”).  It was about the Kmer Rouge regime and was performed by 8 strong young male actors/acrobats.  It was gut wrenchingly beautiful and powerful, with no words spoken during the entire performance.  It was also a delightfully modern artistic endeavor.  We were both very impressed that this school is able to provide the world with Cambodian artists and performers who are unafraid to venture forth with their art despite the fact that just 20 years earlier, Cambodian artists lived in fear of the Kmer Rouge who killed artists and performers for fear of the dissident ideas they carry forth.  To us the school represents the promising future of Cambodia and the resilience of her amazing people.

We didn’t do much in Battambang and started to realize how tired we were from going going going for the past 7 weeks.  All that’s left is a second stint in Bangkok and a day in Hong Kong on our way home…

Love,

Devon and Breen

Siem Reap, Angkor Wat - Wow.

I(Devon) had heard a lot about Angkor Wat (translation - Temple City) and studied the bas reliefs in an art history class in college, but for some reason I always figured it was an overrated bunch of decaying stone...I was wrong.  It was a highlight of our trip and an absolutely incredible place, I understand why it is one of modern wonders of the world.

Our first experience in Siem Reap, the city near the temples, was being accosted by tuk tuk and taxi drivers, who we now see as something more akin to confidence men, who were waiting like hungry vultures for us when we stepped off the bus, some even had our names written down because we had mistakenly given our names to the bus company.  The drivers buy names of passengers so that you think they are the people from your hotel there to pick you up.  It was nuts, luckily we saw one jolly, smiling gent near the bus station exit holding a very legitimate looking sign with my name and the name of the hotel we had booked called Two Dragons.  We immediately loved our little family run hotel.  The owner Gordon is from Santa Barbara and runs it with his beautiful, sweet, Thai wife, Ning, but really their little, boisterous, hilarious, five-year-old, Matthew, runs the place.  He took a liking to me (Devon) and was our entertainment on a few occasions as we enjoyed the delicious food they served at the little restaurant at the hotel.

Gordon was sweet and helpful as was our wonderful tuk tuk driver who drove is around the three times we went to the temples.  His name was Bunny (pronounced Boo-nee) and he was training to be a temple guide so we basically got a tour guide for the price of  tuk tuk driver.  We feel very lucky that we found him as he was very genuinely sweet and always intelligent about where to meet back up so we could find him easily when we stumbled, tired and dazed, out of touring around the temple grounds.

The first night we didn't know we needed cash to get our three day pass, but Bunny was a known figure around the entire complex and spoke with a guard  who let us in and told us how to avoid the other guards who would fine us $100 for entering without a ticket.  Just entering the complex is an experience.  We drove around the 200meter wide moat that the surround the main Angkor Wat (which is actually just one temple in the complex) as the light was fading to dusk.  The natural beauty of the forests there are amazing and lush.  We climbed a hill right after the guards got off duty to a beautiful ruin with an amazing view of the sunset over the grounds.  That is all we did the day we got into town.

The next day we hired Bunny for the entire day (for $15) and he took us to about 10 temples including Angkor Wat.  We got up at 4:20am to get to the sunrise and watched the sky turn to day over the beautiful outline of the main Angkor temple from behind one of the two big ponds so we could see the reflection as well.  It was stunning and felt spiritual, even with loud, rude tourists increasingly congregating behind us.

Just entering the main temple complex is an experience as you cross over the large moat that was intended to represent all the oceans of the world.  The bas relief carvings gallery was incredible, we couldn't believe how well preserved it was after about 900 years of weathering!  Our favorite was the Churning of the Sea of Milk- the daemons and devas (gods) made a pact to work together to churn the Sea of Milk into an everlasting life potion.  It depicts The gods on one side of a mountain and the daemons on the other, with Vishnu at the center over seeing the operation. Both sides are shown pulling a huge naga (sea dragon) wrapped around a large mountain to twist the mountain back and forth to churn the sea. My (Breen) favorite piece of the story is the humanity of both sides: the gods never intended on sharing the potion with the daemons, and of course the daemons had plans to stab the gods in the back the second the job was completed. The wars that followed, and other holy battles, were depicted on the outer bas reliefs all around the main temple.

We won't give a blow by blow of all the amazingness because there is just too much! The Bayon, the overgrown "Tomb Raider" temple (particularly stunning), and the much more well preserved, auburn colored Bantay Srei were all highlights on there own.  All we can say is, GO!

We were also surprised by how much we liked the town of Siem Reap.  We had both imagined it to be a very podunk town with bitter locals serving the masses of balongs (in Cambodia this means foreigner).  However, due to all the tourism, the government provides the town with money to have beautifully renovated French architecture and many gardens and clean streets and everyone was very friendly to us.  The Cambodian people are a warm, resilient people.  Following the terrible Khmer Rouge they have seemingly bounced back quickly and forgivingly, without seemingly harboring much resentment of the past.

We went to a free concert at one of the completely free childrens' hospitals at the recommendation of Bunny.  A Swiss doctor who founded and runs the multi-hospital organization, and who performs under the alias Beaticello played his cello and explained the history behind the hospitals in between beautiful solo performances of Bach and personal Cambodian-inspired compositions.  He also made a plea for donations of both money and blood to keep the hospital running.  We were enthralled as we learned about sickness and the government's lack of funding and what an amazing organization it was, run by a wonderful man.  However, when we got back to our hotel, Gordon proceeded to de-mystify him and the organization, saying he does not have his facts straight and that he makes up statistics, is a spotlight whore, and won't let people into the hospital because some of what he says are blatant lies to raise money.  What he does is commendable, and his goals are something we believe in and even Gordon thinks his heart is in the right place; this is just another question of whether the ends justify the means.  It was an interesting and confusing evening to say the least and we are still on the fence.

Overall, if we had had more time we would have stayed longer.  Like many of the places we have been, we fell in love with Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, but our trip was rapidly coming to and end and we had to move on to see the second largest city in Cambodia, Battambang...

Love,
Breen and Devon

Phnom Phen - the New York of Cambodia

The energy of the Phnom Phen, the capitol of Cambodia, was completely overwhelming after spending weeks in Laos and especially sleepy, tiny Don Det in 4000 Islands.  The cacophony of rushing motorbikes and cars was a bit like an elaborate symphony considering there are very few street signs and the ebb and flow works quite organically.  We spent time in the Russian Market, a sprawling mess of tightly packed booths of clothing, seamstresses, sculptures and the like surrounding a very fishy smelling central food market.
They like their fish here in Cambodia, we saw stall after stall of stinky fish and raw meat just left out in the open, flies a-buzzing.  Haven't seen the fried tarantulas yet, though it is supposedly a delicacy here ("crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside"said the guidebook). We have seen many people selling all kinds of bugs, snakes whole, fried small birds and other supposedly delicious things we won't try. It was fun to bargain on some beautiful gifts n things, that had "fallen off the backs of trucks" such as Ray Bans and CDs, and we ended up usually paying about half of the first asking price.

Though we decided our sensitive hearts couldn't handle the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, we did visit S-21, a children's school that was transformed into a prison for interrogation by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime.  It was intense.  The empty cells still had the bed frames, mats, and such that the prisoners occupied. In many of the rooms there were black and white pictures of the bodies after they had been tortured and killed.  There were exhibitions displaying the tools of torture and head shots of all the known prisoners who died there.  Generally, the Khmer Rouge gathered all the intellectuals, artists, musicians, doctors, etc. and set to imprisoning them and interrogating and torturing them for 2-3 months before brutally killing them.  There was a photo gallery also providing stories from some of the survivors about how their families had disappeared or died and what kind of people they were.  It was heavy to say the least.  It is just insane to think that the Khmer Rouge could do this to their own, innocent countrymen, the fear must have been beyond anything I can actually imagine.  We found ourselves considering the role of our own country in sparking the Khmer Rouge movement and contemplating the complexity of the situation.  It made for a very depressing day.  But we are both glad we went.  It was astounding to think that this all happened so recently-it started around 1975 when Pol Pot had Phnom Phen evacuated and everyone fled out to the countryside and attempted to become subsistence farmers.  Even people who joined his movement were often tortured and killed.  It was gruesome and disturbing, but it is the reality of what happened here and it is amazing to see the bright smiles on so many faces in this country as they still piece their country back together.  What a strong resilient people the Cambodians are!

One night we were eating at Happy Herb Pizza on the riverside and we were approached by many different types of beggars including a child that seemed to yell swears at us after said no.  At one point after we had eaten and I had some significant leftovers, a young boy of about 10 came up to the table and simply pointed at my steamed rice.  I let him have the rice and my fish, we pulled out the chair for him and watched him wolf it down.  The average income in Cambodia is just 50 cents a day and the poverty is astounding.  It got our minds racing about how systemic thinking tools could help their situation, and made us feel very grateful for the abundance we have in our lives.  The child left the head and brought it to a whole group of children down the street that had been begging too.  I wanted to get more food and feed them all, but that is not how to solve the complex, vast, systemic, economic problems.

We were both relieved to leave the hustle and bustle for Siem Reap and spend days wandering the ruins of Angkor Wat...

Love,
Devon and Breen

Don Det, one of the 4000 Islands (Si Phan Don) - Big fun on a small island

The trip down to the Southern most tip of Laos was not well organized, to say the least.  We took an overnight bus to Pakse, where we were lucky enough to be put in the back where there was half the room as in the front (although away from the bathrooms which actually was a plus). We arrived in Pakse in the early morning, having barely slept in our child sized bed we were sharing (should have bought the bottle of Johnny when we had the chance!) We then switched to a van, which drove us most of the rest of the way, to the "pier", a currently forming pile of rubble and dirt that should be a pier in a few months. The tour people attempted to up sell everyone, and would have succeeded had it not been for our stubborn asses-everyone else took the bait. We opted to keep going to Don Det, and not pay more to go to another, further island, which we later found out was more expensive and not as much fun (suckers!). But we payed for that decision later. The boat ride was amazing. A small boat carted us across the Mekong, which in this area is very wide and dotted with tons of small islands which at this point in the year can be small enough to house just a single tree if not fully submerged.

The boat took us to the wrong side of the island (which we believe they did because we didn't get up sold). We found out later that there is a normal beach where the tourists get dropped off, near all of the guesthouses and hotels, but we were not so lucky. We were surrounded by locals, none of whom spoke English, and were barely lucky enough to find one who understood the word "bungalow", and pointed us in a direction along the riverfront. We chose to believe, because we had no other option, and walked in the direction she pointed. We balanced our packs through rice paddies and locals houses.  About ten minutes later we saw the first decent bungalows (the ones we had actually found online), and were disappointed to find out they were full. We then found decent accommodations down the street overlooking rice fields and a lotus plantation.  Still, we came back to book the nice place (hot showers) for the remainder of our stay. The owner was a wonderful, cooky Brit named Peter who was obsessed with classic rock and lived most of his life in India.  He was a kind, fascinating, old chap.

The main "street" was really just a five foot wide dirt road shared with many dirty dogs, chickens, mangy cats, water buffalo, a few motorbikes and many tourists on bikes. Oh and there was a pet monkey on a string that I let crawl onto my hands and it bit me (Devon)!  She thougth my bracelet was fruit and was pulling at so I tried to put her back on the fence and that's when the trouble started.  She has had all her shots, but Breen keeps telling me I have incurable monkey pox.  It was worth it to feel her little human-like hands and feet on me.
 

Don Det was a strange place, but had a certain charm to it, though the locals seemed lazy and quite disinterested in serving any white people ( it often felt like an "f-u," though we understand as they have been quickly inundated with many tourists recently).  We spent a lot of our time at the restaurant by the tiny beach/pier in hammocks and met a wonderful group of people our first night and formed a crew that was much fun.  We shared some whisky and Beer Lao and drunkenly decided we should all go kayaking together the next day.  Which is just what we did.  There was a trio from South Africa (Andre and Nikki -who also recently got engaged, and entertaining, talented, aloof Brizi), a wonderful, jolly gent from Wales named Garreth, and a funny, musical, fellow Californian from LA (Brady).  We all got along swimmingly and had an amazing day on the Mekong with our humerus French guide Jean.  We kayaked through sunken forests, saw two of the largest waterfalls in SE Asia, swam at a beautiful beach, got stuck on a sunken tree in the rapids (thanks Brizi), and illegally crossed the border into Cambodia where we ate lunch and watched the very rare and endangered Irrawaddy river dolphins breach. On the way back from Cambodia we had to cross the Mekong at it's widest and discovered that there are jumping water spiders that enjoy hopping on kayaks (that's right, fricking JUMPING WATER SPIDERS... tons of them).  As you may have guessed, Breen and I did not enjoy this very much and freaked out a bit, whacking our paddles against our boats and screaming like little girls, becoming the butt of some well-deserved jokes.  But we survived (and didn't even capsize!) and have conquered some of our arachnophobia! It was one of the best days of our entire trip. Though it ended on a bit of a sour note when we saw a bad accident on the road, dead bodies and all.  These roads and the way people drive here scare me.

The next two evenings we spent with our wonderful new friends and another gent we met at a bar, a doctor from Switzerland named Flo.  We played music (Brady had a guitar) a few different nights.  One night, Brady and I entertained the local crowds into the wee hours of the morning (even after all the bars shut down at 11pm).  We laughed a lot, played pool, and drank buckets of Lao Loa whisky together.  It was quite fun.

We also ran into this wonderful Austrian couple whom we had met back in Chiang Mai.  We ended up going out to Indian food our last night and sharing many bellies full of laughs.  We also had a lively discussion about renewable energy solutions!

Though the water was a muddy brown and the locals didn't like to return smiles much, it was a beautiful place and an amazing part of our trip.  We are so glad we met the fellow travellers that we did, as they were the ones who made it special.

Then it was off to Cambodia...

Love,
Devon and Breen