cambodia (except for Siem Reap)

Stoul Treng Museum of the Crime of Genocide

back at school

I made it back to Chengdu without a problem after thoroughly enjoying my time in the north of Thailand. I'll fill you in on the details and post some photos after I pick out the good ones since posting all 2000 of them isn't really an option.

Today was the first day of the new semester. I'm teaching two classes that I had last semester, one of freshmen and the other juniors. The rest of my schedule is mostly non-English majors, but that's all I know about them. After tomorrow I'll hopefully have a better idea of what those classes will be like.

It's nice to be back eating Chinese food again, though I can't say I'm so happy with the switch from sunny skies to gray. Fortunately, most of the cold weather is over and spring is starting to work its way in. I'm looking forward to a few months of sitting outside studying Chinese and drinking tea.

one more week

This morning I bought a ticket to fly from Bangkok to Chengdu early on the first of March. It's worth it to avoid 4 days of buses. So tonight I'm taking a train up to the north of Thailand to relax for the last little bit of vacation before I have to return to cold Chengdu.

in Bangkok

I'm currently in Bangkok, trying to work out a way back to China.  Flights are expensive, buses take forever.  It's a tough call, and unfortunately today is some Buddhist holiday and all the Chinese travel agents in the city are closed, and they're the ones most likely to have discounted flights.  Not to worry, though, I'll find a way back.

I got here yesterday on a bus from Siem Reap, the Cambodian town next to Angkor Wat, one of the largest temple complexes in the world.  And it was impressive.  Very impressive.  Big.  Old.  Ruins.  I rode a bike around from temple to temple, stopping both at the busy, touristy ones and the abandoned, empty ruins.  Just wait until you see the pictures. 

Cambodia

After going as far south in Laos as I could and using all but one day of my visa, I crossed the border (two huts on a dusty road in the middle of nowhere) into Cambodia.  I went straight up into the mountains in the northeast to Ban Lung, a small, dusty town surrounded first by farmland and then jungle.  Just 6 km from town is a beautiful lake, 50 meters deep and perfectly clear.  They say it's the best swimming pool in the country.  I swam across it (800 meters or so) with a Welshman I met there.

Now I'm in the capital, Phnom Penh.  It's a real city, but the roads are full of motorbikes instead of cars.  I plan to visit the usual tourist sites here, including S21, a school converted to a prison where the Khmer Rouge under the rule of Pol Pot tortured thousands of political criminals.  It's amazing how nice the people are in a country that was ravaged by civil war up until about 10 years ago.

From here I'm going to the famous Angkor Wat.  Until then, take care.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Bolaven Plateau

I'm back in Pakse from the trip around the Plateau. It's a really wonderful place to travel. Not too many tourists, but enough so there are guesthouses. Lots of waterfalls, villages, and coffee plantations scattered throughout relatively dense jungle. The people were really friendly, of course, and the food wasn't bad either. I wish I could spend more time there but my Laos visa is running out - I need to leave the country by the 10th or get it extended. I think I'm going to visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia - everyone says it's simply amazing. First, though, I'm going to visit a wat in Champasak that's from a similar time period, and then relax in the islands for a few days. Mmmm, hammocks and fruit shakes.

southern Laos

I'm writing from Pakse, the travel hub of southern Laos.  Just east of here are is a plateau littered with waterfalls which I'm planning to explore in the next few days before heading south to relax on one of the Four Thousand Islands in the Mekong.

 

It's really beautiful here.

 

in the capital of Laos

I've made it down to Vientiane. This city is a strange, random architectural mix of French, Lao, and what looks to be modern Chinese (read boring concrete boxes). Despite being the capital, the city seems pretty quiet, especially compared to the metropolises of China.

My plan at the moment is to take a bus further south to Savannakhet tomorrow or the following day.

Hope you're enjoying the winter - I'm busy avoiding it.

Hanging out in Vang Vieng

The internet access here is really expensive so I must be brief.

This small little town in the mountain has been completely transformed by tourism.   The streets are lined with guesthouses, restaurants, bars, TV bars, and travel agencies.  It reminds me of Pucon, the town in Chile where I climbed the volcano.  The surrounding mountains and rivers, though, are beautiful.  I'll probably spend another couple of days here exploring (bicycle rentals are cheap) and then keep heading south.  I'm taking plenty of photos to show to you, but I don't have the cable to connect the camera so you'll have to wait until I get back to China.

Luang Nam Tha and Luang Prabang

I'm having a great time here in Laos ( the 's' is silent).  The first thing I did was go on a 3-day trek through the jungle in the north of the country.  We got to visit two villages of different tribes to see how they live and how their lives are changing as Lao develops.  Our guide was from a nearby village, and his English was excellent, probably better than some of my students.  The trail that we walked on was built by the two villages we visited, and the food we ate was prepared by them as well.  A part of the trip price also goes to the villages to be used for community development, most likely for their schools.

After the trek I took a bus 200 km (but 8 hours) south to Luang Prabang, the tourist capital of Laos.  It was the capital of Laos for a while and is now on UNESCO's list of world heritage sites.  The temples here are amazing, and there are lots of them spread throughout the small city which is otherwise comprised of a strange mix of traditional Lao and French architecture.  There are far too many tourists here, but I can see why.  Walking around the city is quite enjoyable, and the weather is perfect.  Not too hot in the day, and a light jacket suffices at night.

After spending a few more days here I think I'm going to head south.

Take care.

winter holiday: Laos

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Kunming in southern China, the first leg of my journey to Laos. From there I'll proceed overland, probably arriving in Laos in 3 or 4 days, depending on how slow I feel like taking things. I don't have to be back at school until the beginning of March, and I plan to take advantage of that time by exploring laid-back Laos. I'll keep you updated along the way as long as there are internet cafes.

Christmas

My third Christmas away from home. It was certainly more fun than last year, when all I did was eat with some friends. There are enough foreign teachers here that we can have family-like dinners together that do a good job of imitating a real Christmas. Of course, I would have rather been at home for the holidays, but given that that wasn't possible, I'd say I had a pretty nice time. On the 24th we had dinner at Kat and Ramon's, the Australian couple that runs the Aussie hospitality program here. We had roast lamb, roast goat, roast chicken, and many other delicious home-cooked Western food. I brought Skyline dip and it was a big hit, as usual, especially since no one had ever had anything like it before. There was also an Australian Pavlova for desert which was pretty god - not like anything I'd ever had before.

After dinner, we opened presents. Everyone seemed to really like the thinks I picked out for them at one of the souveniry streets downtown. Afterwards, as the evening was winding down, we were treated to a guitar duet: Ken, the Japanese teacher, and Chris, Stacy's younger brother visiting form Australia for a month. A good night, warm and friendly.

The morning of the 25th I got up earlyish to call home where it was still Christmas Eve. It was wonderful to talk to everyone, but I would have rather been there myself. I had to cut short my conversation with my brother to melt chocolate to put on the buckeyes I hadn't finished making for Christmas lunch. Again things were potluck-style, showcasing the creative cooking skills of expats. A ham, apricot chicken, lasagna, salads, glazed carrots, and many other non-Chinese treats made for a great lunch with pumpkin pie for desert. Fantastic, as far as being away goes.

Thanksgiving in December

Yesterday we had our second Thanksgiving dinner, and even though it was on a Saturday, I think it topped the first one. Instead of going to a restaurant, we ate downstairs in the meeting room. Everyone brought a dish (appetizer, side, or dessert) and Bob, a teacher in the British program, ordered a turkey from the restaurant we went to on the real Thanksgiving. The bird was delicious—juicy, and best of all there was dark meat. The other dishes were fantastic too. We had salads, pumpkin, cheesy cauliflower, roasted as well as mashed potatoes, and probably a few more I've forgotten. Oh, eggnog too. Then Don's fantastic crustless pumpkin pie—not as good as my mom's, but close. And my contribution: buckeyes. Everyone loved them, but I don't think they compared to Grams's. I need to get the recipe from her so I can make them for Christmas.

Thanksgiving

Belated happy Thanksgiving. I'm sure you had a wonderful time with your family - I wish I could have. Thanksgiving away from home just isn't the same. Not to say I didn't have a nice holiday (if you can call it that since I did have class in the morning), but there's something strange about not being home for Thanksgiving. I went out to Pete's Tex Mex, a restaurant in the south of the city, with a group of ten other foreign teachers from my school and had their Thanksgiving special: apple cider, pumpkin soup, Waldorf salad, turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, broccoli, and, of course, pumpkin pie for dessert. It was really good for a restaurant Thanksgiving, but like I said, just not quite right. In any case, I had a good time and enjoyed the non-Chinese nature of the food.

Luodai

Today I went to Luodai, an "ancient" city about an hour southwest of Chengdu. Although I'm sure there was a city there more than a thousand years ago, nothing remains of it today, so I got to walk around a modern recreation of the town, not nearly as impressive as the ruins would be. It's a common attraction for Chinese tourists or people like me looking to get out of Chengdu for the weekend and therefore has a sort of Disneyland feel to it. The most popular thing to do is dress up in traditional Chinese clothes and have your photo taken, which needless to say I didn't do. Otherwise, you can shop in the souvenir stores that line the crowded streets or sample the many snack foods that Sichuan is famous for.

Chinese classes

This week I finally started taking Chinese classes. Since March I've been saying that I want to learn to read Chinese but haven't really done anything about it until just recently. A month or two ago I began paying attention to the characters in the world around me, noticing the patterns and trying to guess the meanings based on the little bit that I knew. I've also been sending text messages to my Chinese friends in Chinese with the help of the predictive text input. Being more attentive to the characters has made me realize how much I want to learn to read and how difficult it will be, but also how knowing a few characters can go a long way.

I wasn't all that interested in taking classes because I knew that I could learn just as well if not better on my own with a dictionary and a few textbooks. Unfortunately, I've known that for a long time and didn't have the dedication to keep up with it. That's why I'm taking classes now—to have someone looking over my shoulder, obliging me to study. They are private classes at the largest private Chinese language school in Chengdu, Chinese Corner. The textbook we're using is boring as far as grammar and vocabulary go since my spoken Chinese is quite conversational, but there are still many characters I don't know in the sample texts, so I guess it's about the right place to begin learning to read. I'm not sure how much I like the teacher's methods, but he seems pretty flexible and open to suggestions, and the second class went much better than the first, so at least we're moving in the right direction. I'll keep going for the next couple of weeks and then reevaluate the effectiveness—hopefully by then I'll be over the hump and able to study on my own.

Emei Shan photos

I know I'm behind on both photos and stories, but I'll try to keep things in chronological order. Here are some photos of our climb up the never-ending stairs of Emei Shan:

a monkey stole Matt's water

carrying a stair on his back

a monkey stole Matt's peanuts

bamboo shoots - pretty yummy

"Are we there yet?"

Elephant Bathing Pool

Stacy found the easy way up

at the top - so much for seeing sunrise

From the left: Matt, Stacy, Kat, and Ramon.

huge gold statue of Puxian which we couldn't even see the top of

Chinese tourists attempt to get attacked by monkeys

Crouching Tiger Monastery

Arhat Hall

National Day trip to Aba

This week is Chinese National Day so we don't have classes.  My friend Stacy and I decided to go somewhere, but since we couldn't decide where, we threw darts at a map, aiming at Chengdu so we wouldn't have to go too far.  Mine landed not too far from Aba, near the Sichuan-Qinghai border, probably about a 16-hour bus ride northwest of Chengdu.  After lunch, we're going to go buy tickets and hopefully be on our way later today.  The area is very Tibetan, though technically outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region, so there should be able to experience plenty of interesting cultural stuff as well as amazingly high mountains.  I'll keep you posted along the way if the Internet has made it up that way.  If not, I should be back in Chengdu on Sunday with lots of photos and a story or two.

Emei Shan recap

I had a great time at Emei Shan, though after walking all the way to the top, I could have done without ever seeing another step as long as I live. We spend Friday night at the foot of the mountain, starting the long way up with a short bus ride on Saturday. We were hiking by 7:40 AM and finally quit for the night at about 8:40 PM, 45 kilometers and about 2000 vertical meters later. The next morning we left the hotel at 4:30 AM to finish off the remaining 2 hours to the Golden Summit (3045 m) and hopefully see sunrise. Unfortunately, as is the case more than ninety percent of the time, the peak was buried deep in clouds and we couldn't see more than 10 feet in any direction, so we opted for some breakfast in a warm restaurant and walked back down to the parking lot and took a bus 2 hours down the winding mountain road to where we'd started. Before driving back to school, we visited perhaps the coolest temple I've seen in China: Crouching Tiger Monastery. The temple is still very active with monks and pilgrims yet somehow manages to preserve a certain tranquility that many of the more touristed temples lack. The most interesting part was Arhat Hall, a small building containing more than 500 larger-than-life statues of famous people who have successfully followed the Buddha's teaching to enlightenment, each one with unique posture, attire, and expression.


I need to get to bed now since I have class in the morning. I should be able to post some photos afterwards though.

going to Emei Shan

This weekend I'm going to go climb Emei Shan, one of the four most-sacred Buddhist mountains in China.  It's supposed to be beautiful, covered in temples and inhabited by mischievous monkeys.  Hopefully they don't take my camera.

I'll post some photos of the Women's World Cup games when I get back.  I went to two double-headers and another single game, but unfortunately the finals will be in Shanghai so I probably won't get to see them.


Time to make sure I haven't forgotten anything and then we're off.