Travel to Live. Live to Travel

As we sat watching the sunset, a woman asked if we wanted to buy a balloon for good luck...

I had seen these balloons up north before and jumped at the chance. Besides, we could all use some good luck.

As the balloon floated by, tourists stopped drinking and playing soccer to watch it rise into the clouds...

A little kid even started clapping...

We watched it float into a tiny black dot in the sky...

Best 100baht I've ever spent =)

We first saw these balloons last year during our visit in Chiang Mai. If you’re interested, this blog had photos with literally thousands of hot air balloons being sent off during a festival. The photos are night photos–the balloon is fun during the sunset, but it’s absolutely magical at night.

To put it simply, Laos was amazing. While it doesn’t have the bustle of many neighboring countries, it also doesn’t have the hustle.

Here’s a smattering of our memories of Laos now that I finally have the internet to upload the backlog of photos:

Crossing rickety bridges is fun. Lying in a hut and watching other people do it is more fun.

Spending 6 hours in a hut relaxing

Delicious food stalls with friendly vendors everywhere you go

Roads in Laos mean a 15 mile journey can take 2 hours...

Many people are able to do back-breaking labor while joking with each other and smiling at passersby

Local buses. Just as slow as a VIP bus, but more fun. "Natural AC" is awesome too!

Beautiful scenery and little villages everywhere you go

Main worry of the day: fruit falling on your head

Buying from friendly people who don't do hard-selling (this photo was not staged--the vendor actually smiled!)

The many creative uses for the thousands of spent missiles and the like

Luang Prabang, the second largest city in Laos, would be a blip on most other countries' maps

Young boys who would normally be out making mayhem are instead living monastic lives.

You meet children with very few toys or playthings--but they don't seem to care that much. Wheelbarrow with your dad beats mostly battery-operated junk anyways.

The town supermarket

If you want to see more, there’s probably several hundred photos you can look at here: http://www.flickr.com/himene/

Just a selection of photos taken off a speeding boat (in most cases), sorry about the blur =P As always, more photos at http://www.flickr.com/himene/ just navigate by sets since I’ve been uploading a huge backlog of Laos photos and the photostream isn’t in chronological order (or any order).

Woman watching from a boat (probably doubles as her home)

There are two ways to go: slowboat or "speedboat" aka canoe with a motor -- note the crash helmet.

A village along the Mekong

Dawn on the Mekong. Very eerie and beautiful. Lots of mist and birds chirping.

Lemongrass, galangal, spicy wood, and many other things make up the base flavors of Lao food

Hey foodies! This post and photos are for you! In Luang Prabang, we decided to check out the cooking class by Tamarind (a restaurant) which was highly regarded (and turned out to be good).

The class started out with a market tour led by our Lao teacher, Jack. He pointed out various herbs, meats, and sauces used by Laotians (insert whinging by an annoying old Australian couple here about the cleanliness of the market and how awful it is to eat certain meats, waaaah). After that, we were taken to the riverside kitchen to cook.

Something I noticed before is that in Lao, most cooking is down over hot coals. Most people don’t have electricity at home and therefore, no stoves or ovens (remember, electricity only really came to Lao 15 years ago). Cooking is primarily done by grilling, stewing, or steaming. This is also one of the poorest, most isolated countries on earth so, traditionally, food is also very simple. The ingredient list might be quite long, but it’s all stuff that can be picked in your garden (or foraged from the forest/riverbank.)

Steaming sticky rice over coals, the Lao way of cooking

Another important point in Lao cuisine is the fact they use sticky rice to eat. They pull rice out of the steamer, then ball it up into their hands and dip it into different food. Therefore, Lao food tends not to be as soupy/creamy/oily as Thai food. Lao food tastes more “herby,” and what we discovered was that it was flavor overload for basically everyone.

On the menu were several dishes. Orlahm, is a traditional stew in Luang Prabang made with buffalo meat and basically every herb you can think of in huge quantities. It also contained something they call spicy wood, which is…wood. It was pretty weird eating wood, the outside is super bitter and spicy while the inside tastes like peppery chicken. It also makes your mouth feel like you’ve been injected with novacaine. I don’t feel any guilt in saying I’d never eat it again.

Hugh models a wonderfully marinated tilapia

We also made a delicious steamed Tilapia in banana leaves. Once again, the marinade was made up of every herb in existence. But it was really, really nice. A few little alterations and I could definitely add this to my dinner repetoire (the authentic way is a little too flavor country for me.)

Next was the technically difficult to make, stuffed lemongrass. How do you stuff lemongrass, you ask? Well. It was hard. But the results were delicious. Ingredients were minced chicken, lemongrass, every herb in existence (okay, okay–Lao basil, coriander, kaffir lime…oh geez, I don’t know.)

We also made our own spicy Lao dip and laap (a meat salad–I made mine with water buffalo meat). Hugh indulged in the fried worms/catepillars that were offered as a snack. I declined. Nonetheless, I knocked back a shot of lao-lao (aka moonshine) mixed with honey and orange. It still didn’t provide me the courage to eat the grubs though.

All in all, a very good use of the day. You know how they say the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? I always thought that saying had real meaning beyond men being really hungry. =P I believe food is a great way to understand someone, and a culture. Thailand knew this when they sent chefs all over the world to open up Thai restaurants: get people to love your food, and they will love your country (or at least they’ll be up for a visit.)

Grilling stuffed lemongrass while orlahm bubbles on the "stove"

Voila! Stuffed lemongrass and steamed tilapia

We went trekking yesterday through Luang Prabang province, here is a bunch of photos…and text.

Hugh feeding our elephant some sugar cane

For the first part of our trek, we went to an elephant park that uses tourism dollars to try and save elephants from a hard life of logging (which I saw in Cambodia) or being poached. Letting humans ride on your back for an hour and then feed you treats is a much nicer job than dragging/shoving logs around. After our ride, we got to feed our elephant various treats. Ours really seemed to like sugar cane…

Our guide, Bunsai, and Hugh on our way to Houfy village

After the riding, we began our trek to a Khmu village in the hills. It was a relatively easy trek, but considering the heat and having to walk up and down a mountain it was still a bit rough. Our guide, Bunsai, pointed out the new rubber trees that Lao villages are growing to try and make more money, as well as various wild vegetables and grains. It was a really relaxing walk with only birds and buzzing insect sounds to listen to. Along the way, we saw villagers picking wood and forest goods and the sort…

A typical Lao meal: veggies, a main, and sticky rice

When we arrived at the village, we were taken to a special building they use for tourists. Houfy village is extremely poor, but they have lots of rice so they’re not hungry. Eco-tourism helps the village raise funds, and they’re careful not to bring too many tourists in. It was a little weird and felt a bit voyeuristic, but no one was putting on a show for us, and for the large part people completely ignored us (except for the children, but that’s children.)

Villagers building a new hut

While walking around the village, Hugh noted that many of the people (especially women) seemed far more interested in me than they were in him (a white guy). We wondered if it was because they looked at me and saw someone who looked like themselves, but was clearly living a vastly different life. I’m sure a lot of it was just general curiousity. What nationality or ethnicity was I? Why was I with a white guy anyways? Why am I wearing a tacky tourist t-shirt and exposing my arms to the sun?

Children doing hard labor

One of the most interesting things on our trek was seeing the children. We saw plenty of children laughing and playing, and many adorable children who seemed to take so much pleasure in just waving to us and shouting “sabaidee!!” We also saw children hard at work. On our way out of the village, we passed three small children under the age of 10 carrying bundles of wood. They had roped tied around the bundles and then wrapped around their foreheads, so the load was mostly bore on their heads. Our guide joked that the Khmu people had stong heads, but the Lao people had strong backs. He wondered if their necks get shorter from carrying things like that. I wondered if I could have carried the load right then and there (probably not.)

Elephants walking through Tad Sae waterfall

After the village, we trekked to Tad Sae waterfall, passing some smaller villages and elephant tracks along the way. When we reached Tad Sae, it was like entering some magical video game wonderland. The waterfall poured into aqua blue lagoons which poured into more. It was like infinity pool flowing into more infinity pools. The water was freezing, but clear and refreshing. It was definitely an excellent way to treat ourselves after walking for hours.

Best. Waterfall. Evar.

We’ve had to unfortunately cut our trip to Vietnam short by about two weeks. We’ll be traveling to Laos tomorrow, so before I quite possibly have no internet connection for a month I thought I’d upload some photos. If you wanna see more, check out http://www.flickr.com/himene/

Tiny frog (it's real)

Freshly macheted coconut

Hugh caught in the rain (black and white version)

Hoi An by night

Tranquil Cua Dai beach (aka China Beach)

Beach bums

Shop selling Hoi An's famous silk lamps at night

I almost lost it today. The traffic here is terrifying. Very few streets have lights, let alone a pedestrian signal. Most people just step out into traffic and trust that the thousands of motorbikes will zoom past them safely. Between the stress of all the horns blaring at me and staring down buses I felt myself just wanting to punch everyone around me.

But then we turned a corner and came across a quieter street with an old colonial building which is now the Museum of Fine Art and everything just got much, much better. The night ended with a Vietnamese meal which could best be described as spiritual (needless to say, we were too busy eating to take photos.) I guess sometimes it just takes awhile to get used to a place…

Walking down an alleyway next to the museum

An alleyway

Birdcages, clothes, and deadly power lines...

Uncle Ho Chi Minh guarding the post office

Former hotel, now home of the People's Committee

It’s been a pretty typhoonrific (new word) season in Asia and while we managed to dodge one typhoon, the tail end of another one has come to put a bit of a damper on our trip in Hong Kong.

Hopefully the rain stops so we can see more stuff, but so far we’ve wandered nightmarkets, antique and curio shops, rode the largest escalator in Asia (or whatever it is)…

We haven’t had the internet for awhile so I’ve had to write back-dated entries so if you are reading this off LJ, you might wanna go directly to this site.

Finally, some photos…

Hugh glances over our yum cha lunch

The smell of fish drying on the sidewalk hit us before we saw it...

Famous Macanese almond cakes. Taste great. Feel like eating talcum powder.

Ah yes, racially insensitive toothpaste. This used to say "Darkie" above the minstrel face (still does in Chinese)

They say when Marco Polo visited Hangzhou in the 13th century, he declared it one of the greatest cities in the world. I’m not sure if that still rings true, but it is a spectacularly beautiful city.

The weather finally cooperated (well, except for the 30 minutes it downpoured) and Hugh and I took to the city on bicycle and bus. Hangzhou has this amazing public bicycle system where you can rent bicycles for a negligble amount of money (basically $1 a day) and drop them off at various stations located around West Lake. This is very handy if you, say, are super lazy and get on a bike outside of your hotel and cycle about 500m to the bus station and nearest drop-off point.

There are far too many places for us to see in a week, let alone a day, but from what I’ve seen Hangzhou is pretty much up there with beautiful cities I’ve been to. It’s also one of the cleanest cities I’ve been to. I know I’m not the only person who associates China with cleanliness, but neither litter nor errant leaf stays on the ground for more than 15 minutes here.

There was one point when we were walking along a causeway when I spotted a small pavillion atop a hill in the distance. It brought this sense of wonder and enchantment that I don’t recall really feeling since I first came to Japan when I was 16 and spotted temples hidden deep in the hills from a speeding bullet train…

Well, pictures describe it better anyway…

People crossing a bridge over West Lake

This dude is important, Hugh agrees.

Boats

An old restaurant on Qinghefang Old Town District...

I think it’s pretty fair to say that business in China is not generally described as “efficient, forthright, honest.” I’ve heard some interesting stories from Chinese friends or people who work in China, and while it’s not every experience, it isn’t uncommon to find yourself in a situation where a Westerner throws up their hands and just goes “WTF, seriously?!” In our ten days or so in China, we’ve been extremely lucky to have met some very earnest, kind, helpful people and have never had the inkling something weird was going on. Obviously it had to end sometime.

This is the part where I digress for awhile…

One of the things I have always wished I could be was a model. Being hot is not really an issue–most models aren’t. Talent and height mean more. Unfortunately, I don’t have the height (probably not the talent either, but hey ;p) So as a consolation prize, I’ve always wanted to have these Chinese-style model/wedding photo shoot done. For my birthday, Hugh indulged in my whims and we went with my friend Jon (who speaks Chinese, but is not from Shanghai) looking for photo studios.

We went to one, but were disappointed by the portfolios. I wanted something more haute-coutre and magaziney. Anyone could take a nice picture of me if we took enough photos, I wanted something unusual. We found one place and were immediately drawn by the photos on the wall of crazy Vogue-esque photo shoots. Everything seemed fine… but this is when the business side comes in.

So first, they forced us to pay ahead of time. In hindsight, we should have never agreed to do that. We were lucky it didn’t turn out worse than it did. Then they changed the dates on us and tried to change the times on us–which is annoying, but whatever. Realizing they were just messing with us because we are foreign, we had Jon’s Shanghaiese driver take care of us. He did a lot of yelling–but them being pros, we got nothing we wanted.

I was concerned about the day of the photo shoot, but the people at the studio were really helpful and lovely. However, the business end came back to ruin the night. After a staggering 14 hours (which Hugh and Jon very patiently sat through–thank you so much!) we thought we were nearly done…and then the studio tried to tell us we couldn’t finish that day and had to come back the next day. This infuriated me because they had told us we could finish on the same day, which was the reason they told us to change days in the first place. We refused and demanded we finish on the same day.

Then, of course, comes the part where they backed out on their contract because it wasn’t clearly specified what was included in the price (what does, “you get pictures on a disk!” sound like to you?) We should have checked more thoroughly, perhaps gotten it in writing–but would that have mattered? They were clearly quite used to this because despite having 4 people protesting at them in 3 different languages, most of them seemed completely unphazed and apathetic to it. It seems to be something they do everyday–couple goes in, couple finds out they only get 25% of all the shots they took, girl gets upset, boy buys pictures to try and soothe upset girlfriend. By the way, each extra photo costs $10. WTF, seriously? It isn’t even that expensive in Japan or America.

So, they made us pay ahead of time, they changed dates and times on us, and then they blatantly lied to us when they told us we would get all of our pictures. In the end, they tried to get us to pay $400 US for my remaining pictures but we refused. They tried to say things like, “Oh what a waste of a day, are you sure you don’t want to just buy the rest of the set?” They tried to nickle and dime us for everything and tried to force us to buy photos we didn’t want (for example, they tried to force me to buy an ugly photo because they “needed” it to super impose onto my hand for another shot–$10US for a tiny picture of me sitting in my own hand! Fuck you guys, really.) I refused to give them another dime, even if it meant giving up some nice shots.

Well anyways, lesson is–don’t go to Venus Wedding Plaza on Huihai Zhong Lu 568. Actually, since they swear every studio works the same way–don’t go anywhere on that road. Afterwards, Jon’s driver (who spent a good hour yelling at them for scamming us) told us that this is how it is sometimes, and they do it to everyone, but especially to us because they knew they could get away with it.

Oh well, I only got to take home 30 of my 120+ photos…but on a sidenote, the people at the photo studio (seperate from the people who run the business end in Huihai) were lovely and let us take photos even though we weren’t allowed to. I got to do poses that Jon and Hugh and I came up with (including tons of stupid ones) and not just some of the random cheesy stuff the photographer had me do. So screw you Venus Wedding Plaza and here’s a sampling of what I did yesterday I’m pretty sure I got more than $400 worth of ellicit photography ;P

Getting made up as a crazy fairy...

Who needs a professional photographer when I have Hugh to snap shots like this one

I’m currently editing a video of some of our eating adventures, but I thought I’d share a sneak peak.. =)

A mushroom base hotpot, tasty!

Lunch in Yu Bazaar, soup dumplings made with crab roe

Slurp, slurp...

Despite our best efforts, today started off on a bit of a rough patch. Due to jet lag, we woke up at 5am and had little to do but try and steal internet and eat sandwiches with provisions (baguette, brie, and ham–we’re assholes) we had purchased the night before. Needless to say, when we decided to go out into the city around 10am we were stir crazy and hungry. This is unfortunate, since our first stop was the Bund–a collection of old colonial buildings on the waterfront and facing some pretty spectacular buildings on the Pudong side of Shanghai which are all super futuristic (and/or tacky.)

I usually love this sort of juxtaposition stuff, but instead we was hot and cranky and eager to find something to eat. After a remarkably long walk which wasn’t helped at all by the fact I decided to buy the WORST guide-book to Shanghai. It’s full of beautiful pictures and history on all the buildings, but it doesn’t tell you whether the building is actually functional (long history on the architect of a theatre, but no information on what actual is performed there) nor do the maps bother to list all the streets. I digress–finally, Hugh found a place and we were like, fine, lets go here.

Turns out it was a restaurant that has been around since the 1800s and it was at this restaurant that, finding myself simply overwhelmed, I almost burst into tears. I suppose it was a mix of the heat and the just being so unable to communicate when people think I can. I never know if someone is shouting, “Hey you! Watch out!” or what to do or say when someone asks me a question. You know, it was culture shock.

But remembered this saying we invented yesterday–Think: Luke!

See, I have always greatly admired anyone who went to Japan with me who didn’t know anything about the language or the culture. Me, I studied it for years and came to Japan near fluent in Japanese. It was easy for me. I could have never done what some of my friends did. This is where the phrase Think Luke! came from. We tried to think of one of our friends, someone who came to Japan non-fluent but kind of had fun with that and had a good attitude, smiled, tried to be positive about it, etc. So we thought of Luke (if you’re reading this buddy, you better be flattered ;P) When you feel let down, think Luke!

China is the first country I’ve gone to in Asia where lots of people don’t speak English–cause, well, why should they? They do in Cambodia because the economy in Angkor Wat is based around tourism. I’m just grateful for my Japanese ability which means I can more or less understand signs and read maps and sometimes even make a decent guess at pronunciation.

So anyways, after a delicious lunch and a pep talk, we set off feeling better — found a Starbucks, got our caffeine fix, people watched, pep talked a bit more (which made Hugh feel better this time. We then managed to spend the next 12 hours wandering around Shanghai on foot, amazed at just how sprawled out the city was and how clean it was. There’s always this impression that China was dirty, told to me by my Chinese friends nonetheless. Maybe it is, but Shanghai is near spotless.

At night we had arranged to meet a friend for dinner, but due to my shitty guidebook we found ourselves lost in the French Concession. So we decided to ask a waitress at a cafe, who proceeded to take my book and ask another customer where the location of an unmarked road was. In the end, the waitress asked me if I could read Chinese–I responded that I could a little, and she presented me with a JAPANESE advertisement tourism book that just happened to have incredibly detailed maps of all of Shanghai including all the street names in CHINESE characters and not useless English ones.

THANK YOU!

Anyways, dinner was fun (Yunnanese food) and in the end we got to a taxi and managed to make our way home communicating with the driver only with what limited Chinese we have learned, which, well, made me feel really good. I know I could probably get by just speaking English, but I’ve always felt when in a country every effort should be made to speak as much of the language as one can until the locals laugh at you and speak in English to you. Most of our broken-gibberish Chinese phrases has been greeted with Chinese spoken at natural speed, which tells me either they think we can understand them because our Chinese is just so awesome or they don’t speak English at all–so Chinese it is!

Anyways, after walking around for 12 hours straight we’ve decided that tomorrow is going to be a day of rest….probably.

P.S. I can’t seem to access LJ within China, if anyone knows of a proxy server, please let me know.

So, one of my friends, Janelle (yes I have a friend named Janelle), had this idea when she went off to Canada one year. She asked us to give her a list of stuff to take a photo of. We thought of some crazy things: polar bear on roller skates, for example, and set her off to find things for us.

Hugh and I thought this was a really fun and great idea, so we’ve decided to borrow her wonderful game and ask our friends for submissions for our photo scavenger hunt.

Here’s the rules:

Comment with no more than three things you want us to take a photo of. We will then attempt to take a photo of everything on that list, though exceptions will be made for military/governmental installations (we’re not getting on some terrorist watchlist just for your whims!) or anything deemed utterly impossible, even with a healthy dose of imagination.

Remember, this is a scavenger hunt…so while asking us to photograph Taipei 101 is perfectly acceptable, it’s not really much of a hunt. =P

Thank god for photo timers…
Originally uploaded by Janelle (Himene).

I was looking through my photos when I came across my photos from Angkor Wat and I found myself struck in awe by the beauty of the temple, something that I did feel at the time when I first glimpsed by the towers through the trees on my tuk-tuk ride, yet somehow disappeared by mid-day.

I have this tendency when I go to places to not really be able to take it all in. I remember in Borcay (Philippines) being completely overwhelmed by the beauty, it wasn’t till I came home and saw the photos that I was blown away. I suppose this is normal. There’s only so much the brain can process.

So here are me and Hugh sitting on some rocks at Angkor Wat, probably starving and tired and hoping we weren’t blinking when the timer went off… I realized I hadn’t really linked my photos, so if you’re interested, the rest (well, a select rest) are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/himene/sets/72157604116717027/