If at first you don't succeed, try China again

So we are back in China. We decided we needed one final dose of being stared at, heckled, cursed under hushed breath, ripped off, laughed at, spit on, snot-rocketed at, and did I mention ripped-off. It's really not that bad.

We are enjoying a bit of time in Southern China. We did not see any of this part of the country our first time through, so we wanted to at least get a taste. We have spent time in Nanning, Guilin, and are now in Yangshou. We're preparing for a cross-China trip back to Guilin, overnight to Shenzhen and then on to Hong Kong where we'll spend the last week or so of our trip. We are both very sad, but all good things must come to an end eventually (for Genevieve at least).

Good thing I'm going on to South Africa.

Tet (Lunar New Year)

Who knew travel during Tet would be so hard. Instead of paying the double/triple prices demanded of tourists by those Vietnamese who work during the national holiday of Tet, Philip and I decided to try a little exploring on our own. It didn't work so well...

Censorship

We're back in the land of internet restrictions, so unfortunately we are unable to look at our blog to see if it looks ok or post pictures to the blog entries. Until then you'll have to settle for reading our prose and checking the new flickr site for pictures. Adios

Border Crossings

You know you're crossing the border between 2 developing countries when the official borderline looks like this...

Cambodia, Cambodge, Kampuchea, Khmer Empire

So we survived Cambodia, even though we don't have the T-shirts to prove it (they did sell those there, though). Although we spent a mere 11 days in the country (by far our shortest stint on the trip), we feel we got a pretty good idea for the place, people, and culture. We started our trip on the Lao/Cambodia border in the N/E corner of the country a few days earlier than planned because Philip Grant and Ashley McCounaghey were making a last minute visit. We packed our bags, bought a $30 bus ticket we hoped would get us to Siem Reap the following day and set off. Needless to say, the travel experience was not first-class, but that story is for another time.

We spent 4 days in Siem Reap, the highlight, of course, being the magnficent ancient Khmer empire temples of Angkor. They are definitely a wonder of the world. Had we not forgotten to charge Genevieve and Philip's camera batteries the night before, we would have many more pictures to share. The memory of the day is etched in our mind and the sweat from our journey is still stuck on our clothes. We could only handle the heat for 1 day, but there is definitely enough sightseeing to keep you busy for much longer.

After leaving Siem Reap, the 4 of us headed to Phnom Penh for a quick 1 day jaunt to see the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda before heading south for some beach time in Sihanoukville. The beach was wonderful with the exception of the incessant barrage of touts, hawkers, and children asking for money. The most pleasant of this bunch were the well-dressed women who offered massages, nail clippings, and other beach side beauty routines. Genevieve was hexed by a 10 year old boy when she refused to give him money. Philip had his nails done multiple times while a man with a stump leg tried to solicit money from him by placing his stump on Philip's shoulder.

All in all our trip to Cambodia was enjoyable, albeit sometimes frustrating when trying to walk in peace down the street. We ended the country with a grand birthday dinner at a fancy French restaurant where we all proceeded to gorge ourselves on fois gros, red meat, cheese, wine, and other western treats and got food poisoning as our payment. Cambodia, we will miss you and look forward to returning one day to stay in your fancy hotels where moto/cyclo and tuk-tuk drivers are forbidden.

We're Switching to Flickr!

It's taken 4 months, but we've decided that the inadequacies of Zooomr have finally become unbearable. So, we've decided to suck it up, spend the $25 for a flickr pro account, and switch on over. We'll probably be able to upload all of the past photos and our photos for the last month that are missing from Zooomr in the time it would take to upload 5 pictures to Zooomr. Keep a look out for our newly organized photos (cut us some slack if its not perfect right away) at www.flickr.com/photos/adamslevin. As many of you pointed out, we should have done this from the beginning, but what can we say, we're unemployed and on a budget.

Roadtripping through North-Eastern Laos

Since arriving in Laos two weeks ago, Adam and I have been hard at work, seeing much of what is to be seen in this beautiful country known as the "land of a thousand elephants and the white parasol." We're only in the country for three weeks, so we've had an accelerated travel schedule, moving from town to town every couple days. Given Laos' lack of a well run transportation system, the process has been exhausting as most travel days start at 6:00 am with Adam and I arriving at something that resembles a bus station, and ending around 5:00 pm, when we finally arrive to our destination.

One particular journey that proved to be especially grueling occurred last week, when we decided to explore North-Eastern Laos on Route 7 which, although notorious for being a very tough trip, is one of the most beautiful and less frequented road trips in all of Laos. Our journey started in Luang Prabang, where we boarded a slow boat taxi to the river town of Nong Khiaw, and didn't end for another three days of busrides, with stops along the way. Those three days were a test of our patience....day-long boat rides are one thing, but sitting on the back of a pick up truck for two days in the freezing cold (and I mean cold! My feet were completely numb for an hour after disembarking one time) while sharing a seat with a 75 lb. rice sack, and even one time having to hike 7 km to get to the next village (yes, we were left abandoned on the side of the road) are a whole different story. Needless to say, we made it to our final destination on Route 7, Phonsavan, saw some incredibly beautiful mountain ranges and valleys along the way, and were provided with non-stop entertainment from our fellow passengers. Let me just say that people in Laos don't travel lightly, bringing what must be a good amount of their belongings on these journeys. In addition to large suitcases, we also found people boarding with giant rice sacks filled with rice and various mysterious objects (one even containing a crying puppy, which was too much to handle!), rifles and machetes, car engines, animals of all varieties, kitchens, crates of beer, and of course the occasional motorcycle. Regardless of how crowded these buses and trucks would get, there was always room to fit just one more person and their requisite packages in to the already crammed area.

We still have another week, and a number of additional bus trips, to go in Laos, so who knows what else we might end up seeing along the way.

Thai Hospitality

If anyone is ever looking to do absolutely nothing for a week and just sit and relax on a beach, we have (with the help of our visitor Matt Loebman) discovered the place to go. The proprietors, Mr. Chai and his family, have built a remote jungle and beach bungalow on the small island of Koh Jum called Old Lamp Bungalows. To reach this island you board a ferry bound for Koh Lanta from Krabi and about halfway through the boat stops, some longtails pull alongside and you hop down to be sped away to the beach. I'm sure the longtail boat was developed for food fishing purposes but now they are being used for tourist fishing.

In the mad peak season rush to book a hotel in advance, we just picked this island and this hotel almost randomly (thank you KohJumOnline for your help) and we definitely got lucky. We spent 10 days and 9 nights relaxing, eating great Thai homecooking, hanging out with our new friends Jo-Jo and Mr. Mango, and being pampered by Mr. Chai's 5-star hospitality. The care and attention Mr. Chai's family put into the place really came across, whether by way of the freshly baked bread, homemade peanut butter or offers to make Coffee and Chocolate Shakes for us.

Thanks to Matt for coming half way across the world to hang out with us. We hope you had as much fun as we did.

Thailand So Far...

BANGKOK

CHIANG MAI

PAI

Thailand

So we've made it to Thailand and despite experiencing a bit of culture shock and a mutual desire to return to China (didn't see that one coming) we seem to have settled into the more relaxed pace of this country. One aspect that has really thrown us for a loop is the sheer size of the tourism industry in this country. Yes, we have arrived in the middle of the peak season, but we were not expecting to be greeted by this many tourists and tourist-centric activities, restaurants and hotels. In China we had to fend for ourselves, and here its almost as if everything is available at our fingertips. Neither is worse or better, its just different.

Currently we are in the small Northern town of Pai. Having spent our first five days in the bustling metropolis of Chiang Mai, this little riverfront town with its strong SF hippy/gypsy chic-vibe has provided us with the perfect locale to just sit back and do nothing for a few days. Aside from relaxing, we trekked for two-days to visit local hill-tribe communities (blog posting on the experience to follow), and tomorrow we take a ride with the Elephants!

In a few days we will head down South for a bit of touring near Bangkok before heading down to the islands for more R&R. I'm looking forward to that!

Asia's Sin City

Well, I've never been to Vegas, but something tells me they don't just give out free tea and coffee spiked with that dangerous ingredient, molasses. Genevieve has assured me that the real Sin City is much bigger and crazier than the ex-Portuguese island state of Macao. To get there from Hong Kong we took a turbojet ferry which takes about an hour of not so pleasant seas. After passing through immigration and getting over our sea legs we hopped on one of the free shuttles from the ferry terminal to the Wynn. Genevieve was initally disappointed by this place as the one in Vegas is supposedly much bigger.

It was here though that we discovered and learned the intricacies of what must be Asia's favorite gambling game, Sic-Bo. It quickly became our favorite as it allows low minimum bets and requires absolutely no skill. The whole premise is you bet on the outcome of 3 dice being rolled. The betting board looks similair to a roullette board, but with numbers and different dice combinations. The easiest bets, which pay 1 for 1, are even/odd and small (4 to 10)/big (11-17). You can also bet on specific sums, double dice rolls, triple dice rolls, specific combinations of the dice and all sorts of other silly bets. We became big fans of big, even, and the number 14. Somehow by playing this game at the Wynn, the Sands, the Grand Lisboa, and the Venetian, we were able to run our initial investment of 1500 HKD between the 2 of us to around 4000 + HKD and then lose it all. Such are the up and down swings of Sic-Bo.

Macao wasn't a totally losing proposition. We did manage to stuff ourselves twice. First for lunch we were tempted by the house specialty sandwiches at the Grand Lisboa cafe. Genevieve opted for the Monte Cristo sandwich while I went for the Monte Cristo Club. We also ordered the specialty of fried bacalao. You can see my great discomfort in eating our lunch of palm oil disguised as a sandwich and fish ball in the picture. We made up for it that night by finding a Fatburger in the Venetian canals (I believe they have one in Italy as well) and opting for that instead of one of the 30 various asian food stalls. Watching the guys behind the counter work make you appreciate a proper American fast food hamburger assembly line. While the burgers and fries were delicious, they were not exactly piping hot after the workers spent too much time perfectly placing pickles, lettuce and tomatoes. It was delicous though.

We turbojetted back to Hong Kong a bit sad we had lost money, but we made up for it the next day by going to the Happy Valley Jockey Club and winning it big - a whole $9 HKD.

We still haven't been able to figure this one out...

Of the many things that kept us awake at night during our romp through China, this is one mystery that we still haven't been able to crack (no pun intended.) For some reason, most of the babies and toddlers wear buttless pants without diapers. If parents can't afford pants of this sort, they'll just open the back seam for the world to see their rosy cheeks. Our question is: how do the babies know not to make a mess and instead pull over to a tree and squat? I can understand for toddlers, but babies that can't even crawl...how do they do it?

Something I've never seen before

We saw a man today walking down the street of Guangzhou (population of many millions) with 3 pet monkeys on a leash. They escaped before we could take a photo.

Traveling through China on a train

In honor of us having just completed our last and final long distance train ride in China, I thought it would only be appropriate to dedicate a blog entry to our good friend, the Chinese rail system. Oh Chinese trains, how I have loved and (mostly) hated you so....

As anyone knows who has traveled on a Chinese train, the system breaks down its seating structure into three categories--Hard Seat, Hard Sleeper, and Soft Sleeper. A Hard Seat ticket basically gets you a spot on a three person seat in a car of about 120 people, while a Hard Sleeper ticket will provide you with a cot, pillow and blanket in a car of about 60 other pals. The most luxurious way to travel is on the Soft Sleeper which is similar to the Hard Sleeper option, but is slightly upgraded, as you are only sharing a tiny room with 3 other people. Like in most of China, you can't escape people even if you try.

For the most part, Adam and I have been lucky enough to snag Hard Sleeper tickets on our overnight destinations. Again, not the most ideal of circumstances (especially if you get stuck near loud snorers, which we have on all of our many overnight trains), but we've learned to grin and bear it--Adam more than I. A note on snorers, there never seems to be more than 1, but there is always one person making the walls quake.

Recently, while trying to make our way on an overnight train from Hangzhou (my favorite town we've visited) to the mountain village of Wuyishan, we were forced to take Hard Seat tickets, as all Hard and Soft Sleeper tickets were sold out. Despite every fellow backpacker saying that an overnight train in a Hard Seat was equivalent to minor forms of torture in some countries, we thought we were mentally prepared to endure the sleepless night. This was all before we had ever set foot in a Hard Seat car. Getting to our car and seeing the rock hard bench with 3 depressions for 3 bottoms that was immovably positioned at a 90 degree angle, we knew we were in trouble. That combined with the grey air from cigarette smoke and the fact that our seating area would be shared with six other people, making leg stretching nearly impossible, was enough to send us both into a state of panic. Luckily our good friend, the Chinese policeman saw us poor souls and let us know via cell phone text message typing (his wallpaper photo on the phone was a porn picture) that Hard Sleeper tickets had become available and we could upgrade if we wanted. The policeman also was kind enough to alert us of the dangers of a "petty thief" on board and kept making the "lookout" symbol by touching his eyes with 2 fingers. We made our way quickly out of the car but not before stirring the curiosity of everyone on the car. Each and everyone of our fellow 120 passengers on the car became completely silent to witness our interaction with the authority. Needless to say, I will never complain about a Hard Sleeper again.

After pushing our way through 5 crowded cars with our backpacks on, Adam sweating profusely because his fever from food poisoning decided to break at that exact moment, we made it to the clerk who took our money and sent us to the complete opposite side of the train to claim our sleeper seats. We passed the policeman again who checked our tickets and gave us a triumphant grin as if we had led us to the promised land. To give you an idea of the length of Chinese trains, they are about 15 cars long. You can not see one end from the other. The hard seat was in car 14, our sleeper was in car 1. As we made our way down the moving train we noticed that about half the sleeper seats were empty. Just goes to show the wonderful effects of bureaucracy on train ticket sales.

The art of Chinese staring

Actually, there is no art. Chinese people have no shame in giving you a good head-to-toe stare down. Oh the wonders of travelling through a country in which you could never pass for a local. Whether it be on the street, train (I've found these particularly painful given that when entering a train car nearly everyone stops what they are doing to look at what shoes I'm wearing), or even in the bathroom, people seem to simply be fascinated with the strange foreigner visiting their country. Even the babies do it!

Its always a great feeling when Adam and I walk into a small restaurants. The scene that usually follows is one in which the entire place goes dead silent while everyone watches as we painfully try to order something on the menu (that of course we can't read) all while keeping our fingers crossed that we didn't order dog or some other crazy food. I must say though, we've gotten pretty good at doing a quick survey at what other patrons are eating and subsequently order by pointing at dishes that look appetizing. Between ordering and being served our food, people tend to forget about us, but that quickly subsides once the food arrives. The prospect of watching a foreigner fumble with chopsticks usually proves to be too appealing. Slowly we're getting used to the attention...baby steps.

NeeHow from Qingdao

We arrived in Qingdao this evening weary from our ocean voyage. The boat experience was interesting to say the least. The boat was designed to hold upwards of 300 people but times must be tough for Orient Ferry as most of the cargo were containers and only about 30 passengers. I'm sure when the boat made its maiden voyage circa 1980 it was the toast of the Yellow Sea but now the aged decor and pungent aroma of diesel fuel permeating all corners of the boat was not something that made a great first impression. We warmed up to the boat a bit after discovering we were booked in a 12 person dorm room instead of the private room we thought we had booked. The 12 person dorm room ended up being our own private suite as there were so few people on this boat. The boat had a certain strange resembling to the Overlook in The Shining hence the restless night sleep. The creaking boards and occasional chinese/japanese loudspear announcements didn't help. Aside from the deadpan silence that flowed over a room whenever we entered, we were able to make friends with the obnoxious young children that quickly took over the gift shop and boat. Once we were able to conquer the gift shop back, we discovered they sold Tsingtao beer, the beer of our current residence, for 100 yen. This calmed our nerves and got us used to the rough seas.

As we approached China this morning the sky grew dark with some weird weather pattern we were told by our new Swedish friend Daniel (the only other Westerner on the boat) that this is what a nice day in China looks like. Our arrival was a little rough but Daniel's Swedish hospitality saved us with the offer of a taxi ride and a quick crash course in Chinese bargaining. We're here now and if the amazing plate of chow mein and skewers of meat we had for dinner says anything about the rest of our trip here, it will be a delicious experience. Tomorrow we are going to the Tsingtao beer factory to see where its all made. Coincidentally, Quingdao is also known for their wine, but I don't think we will have time to make it out to any vineyards before we hop an overnight train for Beijing tomorrow night.

P.S. Genevieve took advantage of Lady's Night at a weird Japanese internet cafe to post a lot of pictures on the zooomr.com site.

more pictures

so there are some more pictures posted to the zooomr site. I still havent mastered the japanese keyboard or the zooomr site so there really isnt much order up there and i think there are still a few pictures missing.

It rained today so we went to Osaka to check out the mall. They have these crazy food malls here with what seems like hundreds of restaurants. We ate japanese curry and yakitori. The yakitori was various chicken parts on skewers. We were able to figure out what each part was except for a hard crunchy one with a very strong taste. Any Japanese or chicken experts know what this was? This food mall was across the street from an electronics mall that makes Best Buy look like a small mom and pop store. Pretty much the only thing Japan doesnt have on the US is the iphone.

There is an amazing knife store in Kyoto that sells all sorts of Japanese knives. Its quite impressive. Im debating whether to buy one or not. Anyone shipped a knife overseas before?

Hopefully it stops raining tomorrow so we can go for a hike.

Blogger switches to Japanese

So Im trying to post some pictures and write something, but blogger has switched into Japanese. Anyways, we are in Kyoto. We spent yesterday seeing some impressive temples, Kiyomizudera and Higashiyama. We are heading to the Miho museum today for Genevieves birthday. We will be in Kyoto until the 22nd so we can see the Kurama Fire festival and then head to Hiroshima for a day or 2 and then on to Shimonoseki to catch our ferry to China.

We hung out with Lydia Briggs in Tokyo and had a drink with some Cornell people on the top of a great hotel with impressive views of Tokyo. Thank you to her for putting us up for a night. The bullet train to Kyoto was a great experience. Its a much better way to travel than airplanes, so civilized. All in all, a thumbs up for Japan so far.

I am trying to post some pictures to zoomr, but the connection is pretty slow, so i can only get a few in there in the time I have. more to come later.

Tokyo

Here's the quick version of the last few days:
-landed in Tokyo during rush hour
-toured a few of Tokyo's neighborhoods
-went to Kamakura and Nikko
-rode a Shinkansen
-ate Takoyaki, Ramen, Udon, Mister Donut, Tempura, and lots of bizarre snack foods
-beginning to recover from jet lag

pictures to come soon

Getting Ready To Go

Well it's almost time to go. I will be out of my apartment this afternoon and mostly everything is in storage. I've figured out why most people do this sort of trip when they still live with their parents, as trying to concentrate on the trip while moving out of an apartment is pretty stressful. At least I don't have to go to work today.

I wish everyone a great next few months, please email me and/or Genevieve with what's going on in your life. I'll apologize in advance if I don't write back right away or at all. I am going to try to keep this blahg up to date, but we'll see what really happens. I will definitely promise pictures getting posted, but no promises for anything more than that.

Off to Tokyo Wednesday morning...