Grand Adventure Part 2: Cambodia

Journeying to Cambodia was a very unforgettable experience. It started in the morning when we had a taxi take us to the bus. Instead of driving down the one-way street and going around the block, our driver thought it would be much more convenient to back down the road into the middle of a busy intersection and then pull a u-ey in the middle of the street. All of us were kind of freaking out while this was happening, but we were not at all surprised after experiencing a few days worth of driving like this. Then, when we got onto the bus to Phnom Penh, the assistant guy made us all surrender our passports. At first we were apprehensive, but he said it was so he could fill out our visa paperwork: and really, where could he escape with our passports while on a moving bus? When we got to the border crossing, it was weird to contrast the security into Cambodia to that of America’s: the man who was in charge of scanning the x-ray as our bags passed through was texting people on his cell phone, and the man at immigration stamping passports was smoking a cigarette directly in front of the no smoking sign. Before getting back onto the bus we all had to go through a health screening, which luckily we all came through with flying colors. Then it was time to catch a few z’s before arriving in Phnom Penh. This was quite tricky seeing as every time we passed a scooter or car on the road the bus driver would honk; and I would say we passed well over 100 scooters and cars.

 One of my first glimpses of rural Cambodia.

We arrived in Phnom Penh around 4:30pm which is almost the time all of the site seeing attractions close. Since we were leaving the next morning for Siem Reap and wanted to see some of the famous things in this capital city, we hired a tuk tuk driver to take us to all the main sites just to walk around and take some photos. Cambodia is truly a beautiful country. The architecture is really amazing! To no surprise, when we asked our tuk tuk driver to show us the Royal Palace, he took us straight there and drove around the whole thing. The only frightening part of this was that he wanted us to get a really good view, so he drove on the opposite side of the road against all of the oncoming traffic!

 

A cute little Cambodian baby I was making faces at, then got to hold for a little bit.

  

In our tuk tuk getting ready to see Phnom Penh.

 

 Center of the city.

After our city tour we walked around a market that was close to our hostel. We ran into some people who were also staying at our hostel and they were chilling on some rugs eating street food. We decided to join them and chatted for the rest of the night. One nice thing about Cambodia is that they use US currency. It was nice to hold American green in my hands again, but I was not used to how skinny and long it is compared to all of the other currencies I have used. Although they use USD in Cambodia, they do not use any of our change. Instead, they use their own currency—Riel—where a $1,000 note is equal to $0.25, and they only price things in quarters.

 Five of us with some people from our hostel in the background.

Our original plan for traveling from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was by river boat, however, the river boat was far more expensive than the bus, so we opted for the bus. The bus was not scheduled to leave until 10:00am, so Steph, Mike, Lena, and I decided to wake up early and see the famous Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. We didn’t realize until we were almost there that it was Valentines Day, and Steph joked that “nothing spells love like a genocide museum”. The museum is a high school that got turned into a prison where people were tortured before being sent to the killing fields during the Khmer Rouge regime in the 70’s. Out of the nearly 17,000 people who went in (this number does not include women and children) only four survived. There is rusted razor wire surrounding the entire perimeter of the high school, and we saw prison cells, torture devices, photographs of prisoners (both dead and alive), and paintings of some of the things they did to torture people. I lost it and started crying when I saw a painting of a Khmer Rouge cadre trap shooting a baby. It is hard and incredibly sad to believe that these things were happening not even 50 years ago. We couldn’t stay here long because we were all very emotional.

 Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

After heading back to the hostel, we hopped on the bus to Siem Reap. The man that I was sitting next to on the bus was sitting with his child on his lap. When we stopped at a small shop for lunch, I bought a bag of banana chips and shared them with the boy for the rest of our ride. Halfway though this journey, a family had got on the bus and sat right next to us. This family included the stinkiest baby I have ever smelt. We all felt like we were going to throw up for the rest of the ride. The bus then stopped in this extremely rural area where we thought we were picking up more people, but this was where we were getting off. The first thought that went through my head was exactly what did I get myself into. We got a tuk tuk to navigate us through the dirt roads to our hostel, and once we arrived we made a deal to hire him for the entire next day to drive us around the temples of Angkor.

 The boy I shared my banana chips with.

After settling into our hostel—which happened to have the biggest and cleanest rooms we had stayed in yet at only $3.00 a night—it was so hot we needed to find a swimming pool. Lonely Planet recommended this great pool bar named Aqua, which took our tuk tuk driver forever to find and ended up being an eerie bar with no pool. That was the first time Lonely Planet led us astray. We found another pool after that short detour and got some swimming in before bed.

The next day it was rise and shine at 4:00am. We went outside in the pitch black to head off to Angkor Wat and watch the sunrise. When we got there, none of us could see a thing. We walked about 10 minutes where we got to the spot by a pond to watch the sun come up. There were a ton of people already there and we purchased a chair and hot cocoa from some locals for a dollar which made us confident we were in a good spot. That was the most amazing sunrise I have ever seen in my life. It was like looking into the obscure darkness and the next thing you know, the sky is illuminating over the most massive and astonishing temple you have ever seen. That was my first glimpse of Angkor Wat. Waking up at 4:00am was definitely worth it. Before the sun fully rose, we hurried off to walk through the temple before the masses of people arrived. It is hard to believe that something constructed in the 12th century (during the reign of Suryavarman II) is still standing today. Angkor Wat is the most famous of all of the temples of Angkor and was built for the Hindu God Vishnu. This temple can be seen on the Cambodian flag. It is surrounded by a moat over 200 meters wide and the entire temple is covered with bas-reliefs (some measuring up to 800 meters in length and 3 tiers high).

 

Angkor Wat during sunrise.

  

Sitting on the edge of Angkor Wat.

 

 Taking a nap in some hammocks during lunch.

We visited some more ruins before heading to Bayon. Bayon was just as cool as Angkor Wat. It has a disputed number of towers (somewhere around 50) each having faces carved into them. It is said that Bayon has over 200 faces towering overhead. Another favorite temple of mine was Ta Prohm. This is the one where they filmed parts of Tomb Raider. It is so old that it has trees rooted around the walls.

 

One of the many faces of Bayon.

 

Ta Prohm.  Look familiar?

 

 Some more of the ruins.

It was most definitely a long day seeing the temples in the scorching sun with begging children constantly attacking us: at one point, a young girl was chasing Lena (I mean sprinting after her) trying to get her to buy a book. Our tuk tuk driver even got a flat tire while transporting us between temples. Our touring ended around 2:00pm and we still wanted to watch the sunset. With our extra time, we went back to the hostel for a bit to nap, but I couldn’t sleep. Then we went back to see Angkor Wat again and after that hiked up a hill to watch the sunset. One day was not enough to see all of these temples. Some people spend a week there and you can even get guided tours that explain the history behind all of the temples and tell you the stories of the reliefs. Angkor is definitely a place I am going visit again in my lifetime—it was simply incredible. Annnnd, I will have to go back anyway when I adopt my Cambodian child.

 Sunset on top of the hill.

 

 Our feet got incredibly dirty.

 

 Climbing down the steep steps after sunset.

After a long day on our feet we went into the town where we grabbed dinner and got a fish massage at the night market on Pub Street. We submerged our feet into a kiddy pool of kissing gouramis and they nibbled away at the dead skin on our feet. I am so ticklish I could barely stand this, but it was a lot of fun.

Fish massage!

We got back to the hostel for the final time around midnight, and I had to make a phone call back to the states regarding a summer internship. I didn’t get an answer so I headed to the computer to send an e-mail to follow up the message I left. It took me forever to find the e-mail address for the recruiter, and I did not end up going to bed until around 3:00am. I had been up for nearly 24 hours! I was so tired and fell asleep while setting my alarm. I guess I did not hit the set button on my phone because I woke up at 7:00am to Lena freaking out asking what time it was. 7:00am was the time our bus was leaving to Bangkok.

To be continued…

Grand Adventure Part 1: Vietnam

I am finally home from one of the greatest adventures of my life. During the Chinese New Year, I successfully made it safely through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Singapore with seven of my friends who I met studying abroad at CUHK. Souvenirs from my Grand Adventure: Vietnamese rice hat, magnet from every country visited, 18 bug bites, and a sunburn that caused me to peel on my back, chest, nose, and scalp. Since my trip was so long and I have a ton to write about, this blog will be in multiple parts starting with our first leg: Ho Chi Minh City (also called Saigon), Vietnam.

 

Most of the streets looked this way.

 

 The power lines were crazy like this everywhere!

We left Hong Kong the night of the 11th after a long day of school. The flight to Vietnam was a lot of fun! It was only a few hours and since there was no movie playing, we entertained ourselves by listening to the airplane radio station and singing aloud in our seats. This plane ride is where it was discovered by Steph and Mike that I apparently have an accent. I don’t think I do, but I guess when I say certain words I sound like a “country bumpkin”. For the next twelve days (and possibly for the rest of the school year) I will never live down them imitating my “accent” and telling me I live on a farm (which I guess growing up in Stanwood almost constitutes as farm life).

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City pretty late in the evening. Earlier that morning I picked up my visa from the consulate in Hong Kong so I had no trouble getting through immigration, although they barely looked at my passport anyway. I then had to exchange my money to Vietnamese Dong. The exchange rate turned me into a millionaire with $1,000,000 Dong equally roughly $52 USD. Once clearing customs we caught a taxi to our hostel where I sat in the front seat. It was my first experience of all of the crazy driving I was about to experience. There were lines on the road, but it seemed that no one cared. For most of the car ride we were in the middle of two lanes and the driver was honking every couple of seconds. Once we settled into our room which smelt of mold and had ants all over the place, we found a local restaurant to grab something to eat. When I say local, I mean that there was no westerner in sight and the staff didn’t really speak any English except for this one boy who looked about seven and I think was one of the workers sons. His name was Ryan, and he got bumped up from his busser position to be our waiter since he was the only one who could communicate.

 

Just a few hundred thousand.

 

 Our waiter Ryan!

The next day Steph, my Canadian friend, and I woke up early to find a tour that went to the Cu Chi Tunnels from the Vietnam War. After finding and booking a tour that was leaving in the next twenty minutes, we went to wake up the rest of our group and grabbed some continental breakfast our hostel was offering. The breakfast was much better than the quality of our room: I must admit, the coffee I had was the best I have ever tasted (even better than Starbucks) which all made sense when I learned that Vietnam is the second largest coffee bean exporter in the world! Once we got the Cu Chi Tunnels we started our day in a guided tour which ended quickly after watching part of a documentary that kept talking about the “ruthless Americans” and the “crazy batch of devils that blew up innocent people who were just trying to live their lives”. I seriously felt like I was being brain washed. We decided to just explore the tunnels by ourselves after that. We saw all sorts of booby traps and the original entrances to the tunnels. We actually got to go into the tunnels and walk/crawl around. They were so cramped and hot and dark—I’m taking pitch black! It is crazy to think that people actually lived down there for months. The tunnels are over 200 kilometers, some are even three stories underground, and part of the tunnels even expanded under the American camp near the town!

 

One of the original entrances to the tunnels.

  

Without the flash on the camera it would be pitch black.  We were all scared and holding onto each other.

 

 Some booby traps.

On our way back to town, our driver asked us if it was okay if we listened to music. Of course we said yes, and the next thing I know we are having a dance party to Barbie Girl by Aqua while driving passed rice patties. It was quite the experience. Before we got back to town, we stopped by a shop called Handicap Handicrafts where the name basically describes who made the handicrafts. They were beautiful but way overpriced!

We then had our driver drop us off at a restaurant where I ate some amazing pho and then later found out from Lonely Planet that the restaurant we were at was one of the best restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City. After lunch we walked around some street markets and went to the center of town where they once did a task on the Amazing Race. Crossing into the center was an adventure all in its own. There are not really such things as cross walks in Vietnam. It is like you cross and hope cars and scooters dodge you. On our way back to the hostel, Steph and I bought some rice hats for only $15,000 Dong ($0.75 USD). She ditched hers half way through the trip because they were a nuisance to carry, but I still have mine! By the time we reached Thailand, everyone got annoyed with it because they were always tripping over it and people would stare at me when I wore it.

 

Bravely crossing the street.

  

Running so we don't get hit.

 

The center of town.

  

Eating some lychee that Lena bought on the street.  I wish they had this in the US.

 

Yay for rice hats!

Then it was off to dinner and to a bar called Apocalypse Now where the westerners got in for free but the locals had to pay about $200,000 Dong. One of the guys I traveled with, Matt, was brave enough to ride on the back of a scooter to the bar. I would have too, but I knew my parents would not be to thrilled if I lived life that dangerously (scooters are the number one cause of death of foreigners in Vietnam) and my mom had just sent me an e-mail telling me explicitly not to ride one. Once at the bar, we made friends with some locals who shared with us their tequila and fruit platter that was garnished with salt. Let me tell you, fruit with salt on it is not good.

The next day at 7:00am we caught our bus to Cambodia.

To be continued…

So You Know Where I Am

This is an outline four the trip we planned during Chinese New Years.  If you click on the placemarks you will see the dates I am there and where I will be staying!


View Chinese New Year Trip in a larger map

My Encounter With Bobo

An interesting occurrence of events happened to me yesterday. It all started at the bank when I went to cash a check that my grandma had sent me for Christmas. They don’t really use checks here in Hong Kong so you can imagine trying to cash one from the US is hard. Well, indeed it is. Not only did it cost half the check to cash the check, the money won’t be in my account for 21 days.

Next, I went to a small convenient shop on campus to pick up some lunch. There are these two old women who work there and they make fresh food that you can buy. I was in a hurry so I grabbed something that was easy to eat while walking and my favorite—a barbequed pork bun. In poor English, the women asked me to point at what I wanted or say the number, and I just looked at her and told her what I wanted in Cantonese. She got really excited and told me that I said it very well. I had to learn the foods I like in Cantonese, or life here would be much harder.

I then began walking down to the MTR station to go into Mongkok for some face wash, bug spray, and what not, and I decided to take this one short cut which is like a million stairs straight down through this jungley area called the Alumnae Path. About halfway down the stairs I heard some rustling in the trees. When I turned back to see what it was, this monkey was coming out from the trees and landed on the railing. He was staring right at my barbequed pork bun about a foot away from me. I got kind of scared and started walking down the stairs quickly. When I turned to see if he is still there, he begins chasing after me. I threw my barbequed pork bun as a diversion and ran down the stair as fast as I cold. I guess now I can officially say that a monkey stole my lunch.

 This is what the monkey looked like.  My friend took this picture on our campus!

PB & J: An American Delicacy

I am finding out that Americans are the only people who eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A few of my European friends had one for the first time here in Hong Kong and now they are obsessed. My roommate, Eva, has never had one either. I will make one for her soon!

Today, Eva made me try this weird bean that apparently Shanghai people love called the cicada bean.  She loves them. I almost threw up and she laughed at me. Yesterday, we made some Chinese food for dinner. She is a really good cook, and I am learning some new things to take back to the states with me. Nothing too advanced yet, but it is coming along. I am hoping to go to the City Super which has every type of food—not just noodles and rice—sometime after Chinese New Year so I can cook something for her. Apparently, she has only had fresh baked cookies once!!! Those are my specialty, so I will probably make those if I can find all of the ingredients. I like rooming with Eva because she makes me speak Chinese to her so I can practice. I help her with her English and proof read e-mails for her (I guess it is shocking that when addressing a woman, we don’t really use Madame). Most of the time though, I have to help her differentiate between male and female names; it is so cute when she asks me how I know if Rebecca is a boy or a girl.

One thing that I am missing from home is the ability to watch TV online. Hulu does not work here and neither do the network websites. It is funny to hear all of the exchange students swapping tips about how to find their favorite shows online, or to bypass certain securities. I have not figured out how to bypass the security and go to Hulu, but I have found a good site to watch TV, but right now it is under construction for a couple of days. Eva also told me about this other site that is good: the only problem is that there are Chinese subtitles and the website is in Chinese so it takes me longer to search for a show than it does to actually watch it.

Tonight we just got finished booking some hostels for our Chinese New Years trip. We found a nice place to stay in Cambodia with breakfast, WiFi, pool, air conditioning, and a mini bus that will take us to the boarder of Thailand for a whopping $4.00 USD a night. And unlike Macau, we will each have our own bed! We also booked our room in Ho Chi Minh City but are still working on places for Phnom Penh, Bangkok, and Phuket. We did decide, though, that we are only going to find a place for our first night in Phuket and for the other nights we will island hop. While there, we plan on doing an elephant excursion trip, going to the Phuket Zoo to hold a baby tiger (they went there on the Amazing Race), going to Phi Phi Island, and going to James Bond island (or Ko Tapu) where part of the Man With The Golden Gun was filmed. I can’t wait! We leave on Thursday night. For now, I need to go do my homework.

Day 40: The Natives Are Growing Restless

Here is my address if anyone would like to send me mail at CUHK:

Natasha Mukhar Tyson

International Asian Studies Programme

Office of Academic Links

Lady Ho Tung Hall

The Chinese University of Hong Kong 

Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong SAR

Singapore and Malaysia

 

 

After I got out of class on Thursday, I started to pack for my trip to Singapore and Malaysia. One of our friends, Trevor, who planned on coming with us got really sick and couldn’t go. He is better now though which is good!

When we arrived in Singapore the first thing we noticed was how clean the airport was. The bathrooms were immaculate as well. After checking into our hostel, we walked a block to find some food. Singapore food is very good, and we even had some frog for dessert. In our hostel room, there were 14 people. It was very much like sleeping on the porch in the sorority, but with most of the people being strangers and the room being extremely hot! Overall, it wasn’t as sketchy as I thought it would be.

I woke up early the next day to shower. The shower was in the same room as the toilet, and I showered in the one with the squat pot. After our continental breakfast, we headed for the MRT to go downtown. We saw a couple of snake charmers, and I took a picture with a snake! We then walked to see the Merlion. Yes you guessed it—it is a fountain with the body of a fish, and the head of a lion. It is apparently the emblem for Singapore. There was even a Starbucks right next to the Merlion.

After dropping our bags off at the train station, we took the MRT to the bird park. When we got off the MRT we where going to walk the rest of the way, but about a mile later in the sweltering heat, we had no idea where we were. So we hailed a taxi to take us the rest of the way. I don’t think we would have ever found it, even though it wasn’t that far. The first thing we saw at the bird park was the penguins. It was so sad, just like the one zoo scene in Happy Feet. One of the penguins was staring at himself in the mirror the whole time we were in there, even during the feeding. We then headed off to the Birds of Prey show. This was probably the highlight of the trip for me. The man doing the show asked for a volunteer. I raised my hand and then John turns to me and says, “Watch, he picks you.” The next thing I know, the guy was pointing at me and says, “You! In the purple shirt. Come on down.” (Just like Bob Barker on the Price Is Right, except with some kind of Indian accent. This was the first time I have ever been picked for anything like this. After telling the audience my name and where I was from, the guy said a bird would be flying out and landing on my arm. I put the glove on and the man put some cut up meat in my hand. He then told me to look off into the bushes to see what was going to be flying at me. Right as a recognized the bird, there was no turning back. Before I knew it, there was a vulture on my arm eating meat out of my hand.

Then it was off to Little India for dinner. We found a restaurant where a ton of locals were eating so we knew it must be good. We had some amazing food and drank coconut milk straight from the coconut. Then it was off to the train station. On our way there we ran into two other American travelers. They were brothers from California who had both gone to Dartmouth and now were backpacking. One of the brothers had been in Asia for five months and the other just came to join him. They were also headed to Kuala Lumpur. The train we were on was the first sleeper train I have ever been on. Our room even had its own bathroom and shower, which I did not want to shower in because the train was too wobbly. I liked the sleeper train except we had to get out go through immigration at the border in the middle of the night. When we were going through immigration, the man forgot to stamp my passport. Right after I went through I asked one of the officers if they are supposed to and he said yes and took me back to get it stamped. When the man was looking through to make sure I didn’t miss it, he then looks back, and says “oh shit”. Apparently he hadn’t been stamping anyone’s passports. Then when I was walking back outside to the train, I see the man running and trying to track down everyone who was in front of me in line. Good thing I caught that or else we all would have had trouble getting out of the country.

 

Me with a snake!

  

Singapore Merlion.

Holding a vulture at the Bird Park.

The next day we arrived very early in Kuala Lumpur. After dropping off our bags at the hotel, we went to the Petronas Towers; which are pretty famous and can be seen in the movie Entrapment. Also in Kuala Lumpur, we went to the National Mosque where we all had to take off our shoes they gave all of us robes to wear over our clothes before we could go in. When we were walking back to the train station, we witnessed a car accident. We were trying to cross the street and all of us were looking at this round about to see if any cars were coming and then it just happened—we could all see it coming too. It was just a little fender bender, but they were both mad at each other so we just got out of there as fast as we could.

We went and took a short nap after our busy morning, and then headed out to the Batu Caves. First we stopped in China Town where we ate lunch at a place called Beef Ball Mee, and then we got on a bus for the caves. The bus ride was…interesting. We saw a cockroach and every time the bus stopped for any reason, the driver would open the door and his partner, the one promoting the bus, would yell out “Batu Caves, Batu Caves, Batu Caaaaaaves” until the bus started moving again. When we got there the place was jam packed with people. Little did we know, we were there for the Thaipusam Festival (http://www.malaysiasite.nl/batucaveseng.htm). There were probably 100,000 people there. First, we witnessed people getting their heads shaved and painted gold. It was really sad when a mother sat down her young daughter to get her head shaved, and the girl started crying. We then saw people with piercings that went through both cheeks and tongue, and men with their entire front and back side of their chests pierced and attached were these large shrines above their heads. They would dance around and then sit when they got tired. Their friends and family would then help them drink water. Some looked like they were about to pass out, and this was even before they had to trek up all of the stairs. When we got to the top, the caves were amazing! They were all limestone, and there was a small hole in the top where the sunlight came through. When I was looking through this hole, I saw a monkey in one of the trees at the very top. I began to watch the monkey, and before I knew it, hundreds of monkeys were coming down the side of the cave. They were not afraid of people either: kids started feeding them bananas and peanuts. Going to the caves during this festival was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

 

Petronas Towers

  

National Mosque

  

Little girl getting her head shaved.

  

This looks so painful!

  

A view of the caves from the bottom.

  

The guy looks like he is about to pass out.

  

Sorry these pictures are blurry, my camera was dying.

  

 Momma monkey and her baby.

The next morning we flew back to Singapore. We didn’t have a place to stay when we got there because we had to be at the airport at about 4:00am to head back to Hong Kong. So when our plane arrived early in the morning we were still very tired. We took the MRT to a park where we found some nice benches and napped for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I was not feeling well at all. Lena and I went to the bathroom and I threw up a couple of times. The boys wanted to go sight seeing, and I just wanted an air conditioned place to sit. So Lena and I went to a mall. I felt so sick, I didn’t think I could walk the distance to the mall, so we took a cab. Our cab ride was about five minutes, and right when we got there I jumped out and puked in the bushes. It was not fun. Not to mention, I was afraid I was going to get a ticket or something because Singapore is very strict and has a lot of weird laws—like no chewing gum! When we got to the mall, fortunately there was a mother’s room with a few cozy chairs. That was where I slept for about four hours. After my resting, I felt a little better so we met back up with the boys and headed off to the famous Night Safari. We got to take a tram through the park and see lots of cool nocturnal animals! I couldn’t take any pictures though because no flash was allowed.

After the Safari, it was late so we just went back to the airport, slept for a few hours, and then headed back to Hong Kong. We landed at about 10:00am which was just enough time to make it home, shower, and go to all of my classes!