...once the Great American Road TRIP ends?
It's a mystery, but I'll accept recommendations and proposals.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Portraits of a Young Morgan
I am writing this blog post under duress, but not really. Morgan Jill Clark, as my top non-family-member blog follower and america-surprise greeting organizer, has requested that I write a post about her.
That's Morgan, sort of. She doesn't look like this in real life. I'm not sure what happened with this picture. She recently took up yoga, which is how she was able to extend her leg that straightly.
Morgan grew up in manhattan, which makes her a real New Yawker, way more than anyone who grew up in Queens. She went to Hunter High School, which is a great school but alleged racially discriminatory, according to the NYT. Fortunately, Morgan is white!
Morgan hates nature. Whenever she sees it, she makes a poopface.
Ew!
She knows all the words to most rap songs and Sister Act. I met her on New Years Eve 2002 or, arguendo, at the annual Queens Croatian Party Dud in 2007.
This is Morgan and I in New Orleans. We were so much thinner then! That's why I'm now a pescatarian.
This is the end of her post, but it may be just Part I.
That's Morgan, sort of. She doesn't look like this in real life. I'm not sure what happened with this picture. She recently took up yoga, which is how she was able to extend her leg that straightly.
Morgan grew up in manhattan, which makes her a real New Yawker, way more than anyone who grew up in Queens. She went to Hunter High School, which is a great school but alleged racially discriminatory, according to the NYT. Fortunately, Morgan is white!
Morgan hates nature. Whenever she sees it, she makes a poopface.
Ew!
She knows all the words to most rap songs and Sister Act. I met her on New Years Eve 2002 or, arguendo, at the annual Queens Croatian Party Dud in 2007.
This is Morgan and I in New Orleans. We were so much thinner then! That's why I'm now a pescatarian.
This is the end of her post, but it may be just Part I.
Location:W 74th St,New York,United States
Friday, September 17, 2010
Surprise!
Morgan, Steph, and Petra met me at the airport as a surprise! How amazing! They even made signs.
Even Gio came!
Even Gio came!
Location:Columbus Ave,New York,United States
This flight is long.
I'm flying over the north pole now. Let's see - I got to the airport at 7:30am. It's now 14 hours later than that, and I have 9 hours left in the air. Ugh and I just realized I forgot to take my malaria pill and the fatty next to me is blocking the way to my bag. And I can sleep! I'm grouchy.
Location:150th St,,United States
Movie reviews II
Shrek I. Great movie! Shrek 2. Good but not nearly as good as I. Shrek 3. So so bad!
You'll be surprised to learn that Shrek 4ever after (see what they did there) was GREAT. Funny movie! Good plot! Rumplestilskin! It had the same effect on me as Toy Story 3.
You'll be surprised to learn that Shrek 4ever after (see what they did there) was GREAT. Funny movie! Good plot! Rumplestilskin! It had the same effect on me as Toy Story 3.
Goodbye Asia!
I bid you farewell with a creepy picture I took in the singapore airport. See you in 24 hours!
Signs
Asia has some funny signs. For example:
Instead of "do not enter," they have "we will shoot you if you enter." they have this sign even in parks to make sure you stay on the path!
No smoking. No standing on toilets and pooping. No washing your feet. (this is bc lots of these countries just switched from squat toilets to western toilets)
No making of noises! The last bullet point is serious, but still - it's weird to tell people to be concentrated spiritually.
It's true.
Instead of "do not enter," they have "we will shoot you if you enter." they have this sign even in parks to make sure you stay on the path!
No smoking. No standing on toilets and pooping. No washing your feet. (this is bc lots of these countries just switched from squat toilets to western toilets)
No making of noises! The last bullet point is serious, but still - it's weird to tell people to be concentrated spiritually.
It's true.
Location:Cheong Shun Rd,,Hong Kong
Our friend at the Indonesian Resort
A 4 foot water monitor! SO COOL! He would swim with us even! (of course, when he jumped in the water, I would chase him and the rest of the pool would run away).
Bintan Island was cool and relaxing. It was our first real downtime of the trip. Basically, we did this all day:
Drank these:
And overlooked this:
This was weird
Names have been change to protect the innocent.
So here's the story. One of chris's friends was traveling in Cambodia with a few friends the same time we were there, so we decided to meet up. Amazingly, we me in a north Korean restaurant, which was as odd an experience as you'd expect. Very sovietish.
So we meet up and he introduces us to his friends. One of them, we'll call her Allison, looks oddly familiar to me. After pondering for a few minutes, I realize I met her in Paris last year when I was visiting another friend named Linda (fake name, I would never be friends with someone named Linda). I turn to Ashley and am like "we met last year through Linda! And now we're in Cambodia! This is weird and random." chris and Danielle both know Linda too so they chime in about how cool she is.
But then things get weird. Bc instead of being shocked and awed by the weird coincidence, Ashley looks pained and does not seem very friendly. This was odd bc I found her quite pleasant in Paris. After dinner I even asked to take a picture with her to send to Linda, which is attached at the top. She doesn't look that happy, does she?
Well! Turns out here is what happened. It's pretty complicated:
A third party at the table I never met was named Judy, and she dated linda's ex boyfriend after Linda and he broke up. She is apparently a little intense about the relationship, and a bit jealous of Linda - to such a degree thy mere mention of linda's name makes her lose it a bit. In fact, after I mentioned her name she excused herself and went to the bathroom for a while - I thought she was sick but apparently she was upset!
So what happened is - Allison was worried when I mentioned Linda that Judy would lose it. That's why she had such a pussface in the picture! Complicated, no? I find the whole thing amazing though. Running into someone in a north Korean restaurant in Cambodia who I met in Paris, an mentioning a girl I know from NYC, which stressed out a third party who I never met. So weird!!
What did the Muslim cab driver say when chris asked him if he wanted to visit america?
"hahaha! No no no no no! They'd think I was Osama and detain me!"
Yes, we are selling ourselves really well to the rest of the world. America! A great place to be Christian or Jewish!
Yes, we are selling ourselves really well to the rest of the world. America! A great place to be Christian or Jewish!
Durians
Durians! An amazing discovery. Durians are a fruit. They look kind of like small green pineapples. Also, they are GROSS. So gross that they are BANNED in public places in Singapore. You get on the metro in sing and there is a no smoking sign and next to it a no durian sign. We tried durian ice cream, and it lived up to its grossness. Literally smelled of gym socks and body odor.
Anyway, we really like them and amazingly I found a no durians Tshirt in the airport as I was leaving today. The last one in the whole store! It may be too big for me but I have no regrets buying it.
Anyway, we really like them and amazingly I found a no durians Tshirt in the airport as I was leaving today. The last one in the whole store! It may be too big for me but I have no regrets buying it.
Location:Cheong Shun Rd,,Hong Kong
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Injury alert!
Danielle has an allergic reaction to malarone and her body has been covered in welts for three days. This diagnosis comes from Dr. Gortenberry and is definitely accurate. He just prescribed her Cetirizine, which is the same as Zyrtec.
Location:Indonesia
Too much adventure
Decided at the last minute to take a ferry to Indonesia and lounge on the beach for a few days. It's pretty much better than anywhere (except yellowstone duh).
Location:Bintan Utara,Indonesia
Cambodia! Shhh
Cambodia! It is an awesome place. Much more rural and undeveloped than Vietnam. Made me happy, see?
Listen up though. This trip has really brought home just how little we know of this part of the world. For example, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge - by many measures the worst genocide of the twentieth century (not that it's a competition) - we all knew the names but none of the history. I didn't even know that it succeeded the Vietnam War - from 1975-79, about two million out of the seven million total Cambodians were killed. "Never again"...?
Anyway, let's get a little more focused. We arrived in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Friday. It's a great city - really more of a village, but on the scale of a village. Great food too!
We rented a bungalow-hotel room in this really nice place. The beds had mosquito nets to keep out the malaria/dengue carriers.
Also helpful were the geckoes that ate the mosquites.
Best of all, there was a great pool nestled in basically a rain forest!
On our first full day there, we spent the morning focusing on the genocide.
We went to the S.21 prison, which housed political prisoners. The regime just tortured them brutally until the prisoners "confessed". Our guide was a survivor-her entire family had been killed. She actually talked about how she was happy that her infant child had died from starvation because it was one of the less painful ways of dying. Seriously. Here is an interrogation cell.
Brief history lesson. Pol Pot had the most rigid and extreme form of communism of any of hi contemporaries. He believed that any status symbol was an evil that had to be eradicated (riparian doctrine). So when he took power, the first thing he did was kill anyone with a college degree or who was "educated." then he forcibly removed everyone from the city and forced them into farm work for like 15 hours a day. He intentionally separated kids from their families, brainwashed the kids, and then had them kill their own family. Millions died of starvation, exhaustion, and malaria.
Then america overthrew him!
Just kidding. We did absolutely nothing for four years. Then Pol Pot invaded Vietnam out of paranoia and Vietnam invaded him back, overthrowing his regime. Pol Pot himself escaped and lived on the run until 1998. America and the rest of the international community did zilch.
Back to vacation. After visiting the prison, we went to the "Killing Field", where about 20,000 Cambodians were killed. We had another tour guide whose entire family died. There were pieces of bone, teeth, and skulls scattered throughout the fields, and a memorial seven stories high filled with...skulls.
Our guide was a character. He was, in Val's words, a little disturbed. He would kind of just string together a string of indictments. "Mao. Beijing...very bad. Communism! I know. I saw. I there. Cambodia. Very bad...shhh!" He would shush a lot but we weren't sure why.
Then we went to some museums which frankly were not that impressive.
The next day we are taking a six hour boat to siem reap, home of the massive Angkor wat temples!
Listen up though. This trip has really brought home just how little we know of this part of the world. For example, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge - by many measures the worst genocide of the twentieth century (not that it's a competition) - we all knew the names but none of the history. I didn't even know that it succeeded the Vietnam War - from 1975-79, about two million out of the seven million total Cambodians were killed. "Never again"...?
Anyway, let's get a little more focused. We arrived in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Friday. It's a great city - really more of a village, but on the scale of a village. Great food too!
We rented a bungalow-hotel room in this really nice place. The beds had mosquito nets to keep out the malaria/dengue carriers.
Also helpful were the geckoes that ate the mosquites.
Best of all, there was a great pool nestled in basically a rain forest!
On our first full day there, we spent the morning focusing on the genocide.
We went to the S.21 prison, which housed political prisoners. The regime just tortured them brutally until the prisoners "confessed". Our guide was a survivor-her entire family had been killed. She actually talked about how she was happy that her infant child had died from starvation because it was one of the less painful ways of dying. Seriously. Here is an interrogation cell.
Brief history lesson. Pol Pot had the most rigid and extreme form of communism of any of hi contemporaries. He believed that any status symbol was an evil that had to be eradicated (riparian doctrine). So when he took power, the first thing he did was kill anyone with a college degree or who was "educated." then he forcibly removed everyone from the city and forced them into farm work for like 15 hours a day. He intentionally separated kids from their families, brainwashed the kids, and then had them kill their own family. Millions died of starvation, exhaustion, and malaria.
Then america overthrew him!
Just kidding. We did absolutely nothing for four years. Then Pol Pot invaded Vietnam out of paranoia and Vietnam invaded him back, overthrowing his regime. Pol Pot himself escaped and lived on the run until 1998. America and the rest of the international community did zilch.
Back to vacation. After visiting the prison, we went to the "Killing Field", where about 20,000 Cambodians were killed. We had another tour guide whose entire family died. There were pieces of bone, teeth, and skulls scattered throughout the fields, and a memorial seven stories high filled with...skulls.
Our guide was a character. He was, in Val's words, a little disturbed. He would kind of just string together a string of indictments. "Mao. Beijing...very bad. Communism! I know. I saw. I there. Cambodia. Very bad...shhh!" He would shush a lot but we weren't sure why.
Then we went to some museums which frankly were not that impressive.
The next day we are taking a six hour boat to siem reap, home of the massive Angkor wat temples!
Monday, September 13, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Kuala Lumpur
After Vietnam, we had a two day interlude in KL to catch our breath. KL is a distinctive place. It's is verrrry metropolitan, even moreso than Singapore in some ways. It has the feel of a major western city in terms of architecture-major skyscrapers everywhere, even one called the twin towers.
But it's also quite unsafe and much less friendly than Vietnam. We had a great cab driver who complained about the corruption of Malaysia in general and KL in particular. Overall, I'd say I liked but did not love it. We did have some fantastic food, but I didn't feel as at ease as I did in Vietnam.
On to the pictographs!
We had to wake up very early to catch the flight. Boo hoo!
Disembarking into Malaysia.
Gasp! Our first golden arches in weeks! I had a big Mac, fries, and a milkshake.
Snake wranglers! This was weird. The human won.
We went to the Malaysian National Museum, which was cool if somewhat whitewashed. This dragon sculpture represents the whole museum. The thing about Malaysia is we really knew nothing about it. Here are some fun facts.
1. The official religion of Malaysia is Islam. Official religions in general creep me out a bit.
2. Malaysia prides itself on being multicultural, as it ha large Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations. The museum stressed this a lot, but it seemed to be much more rhetoric than reality. Still, it's a nice sentiment!
3. The Malawian flag is very similar to the American flag.
4. Colonialism/imperialism really fucked things up, and I'm talking about the European kind. Malaysian history is basically a litany of different European countries conquering and then exploiting the country. This lasts up till the 1950s! America has it's faults but I am proud we don't have a hard imperialistic history. Lefty friends/family feel free to lambast me about how we are too imperialists now! You're mistaken!
Then we went to the space museum, which frankly sucked. There was an antigravity room that was essentially just a slide. Chris went down it.
Wouldn't you know it, but then we got caught in a monsoon! We hid under a bridge basically. One of the biggest, loudest storms I'd ever been in!
We then traipsed through a large park, soggy and wet, until we found a bird sanctuary with a cafe attached to it. The birds were cool but got too close and tried to eat our food! Rude.
This is where we saw wild monkeys as well. Hello, monkey!
You can tell the bird park was cool bc Martha Stewart visited it.
Ok this is weird. Many KL beauty parlors offered body whitening. What's THAT all about!
As I said before, malaysian flag very similar to American. See? They also have millions of them all over the place. It's a bit ostentatious.
But it's also quite unsafe and much less friendly than Vietnam. We had a great cab driver who complained about the corruption of Malaysia in general and KL in particular. Overall, I'd say I liked but did not love it. We did have some fantastic food, but I didn't feel as at ease as I did in Vietnam.
On to the pictographs!
We had to wake up very early to catch the flight. Boo hoo!
Disembarking into Malaysia.
Gasp! Our first golden arches in weeks! I had a big Mac, fries, and a milkshake.
Snake wranglers! This was weird. The human won.
We went to the Malaysian National Museum, which was cool if somewhat whitewashed. This dragon sculpture represents the whole museum. The thing about Malaysia is we really knew nothing about it. Here are some fun facts.
1. The official religion of Malaysia is Islam. Official religions in general creep me out a bit.
2. Malaysia prides itself on being multicultural, as it ha large Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations. The museum stressed this a lot, but it seemed to be much more rhetoric than reality. Still, it's a nice sentiment!
3. The Malawian flag is very similar to the American flag.
4. Colonialism/imperialism really fucked things up, and I'm talking about the European kind. Malaysian history is basically a litany of different European countries conquering and then exploiting the country. This lasts up till the 1950s! America has it's faults but I am proud we don't have a hard imperialistic history. Lefty friends/family feel free to lambast me about how we are too imperialists now! You're mistaken!
Then we went to the space museum, which frankly sucked. There was an antigravity room that was essentially just a slide. Chris went down it.
Wouldn't you know it, but then we got caught in a monsoon! We hid under a bridge basically. One of the biggest, loudest storms I'd ever been in!
We then traipsed through a large park, soggy and wet, until we found a bird sanctuary with a cafe attached to it. The birds were cool but got too close and tried to eat our food! Rude.
This is where we saw wild monkeys as well. Hello, monkey!
You can tell the bird park was cool bc Martha Stewart visited it.
Ok this is weird. Many KL beauty parlors offered body whitening. What's THAT all about!
As I said before, malaysian flag very similar to American. See? They also have millions of them all over the place. It's a bit ostentatious.
Sapa
This is going to be a long post.
Sapa was one of my fave spots so far. We took an overnight train there and spent one night in the village, then another overnight train back to Hanoi.
The cool thing about sapa is how pastoral it is. There are staggered terraces of rice paddies every direction you look, with small cottages and shacks interspersed between, and the Himalayan mountains looming thousands of feet in the air above.
The mountains have been carved out into terraces to maximize the amount of rice grown. The weather is cool here (relatively, it's still in the 80s), so the locals can only grow one harvest of rice a year, as opposed to three harvests in the rest of the country. The terraces allow them to maximize their crop output.
This is me, in case you forgot what I look like.
These are more Hmong people! They pestered us to buy trinkets from them in very clear english. Most weren't actually fluent - they'd just memorized some phrases. The vietnamese language is highly phonetic, making it easy for them to mimic American accents in a fairly convincing way.
Open air market in sapa. This was the fruit area. I'll show you the meat area later.
Scorpion wine.
This is our tour guide, Kroon! I think he thought we were too goofy at first, but he warmed up to us by the end. Note: he's not the blond one, thats Val.
Purdy.
Those are the Himalayas in the distance.
This is a young child sweeping. I always found sweeping kind of fun.
A pig! I chased him.
Path down to the Hmong village.
Oh one other thing. There are wild dogs everywhere in Vietnam! This is a cute wild puppy! Hmmm. Why would there be lots of dogs around? Read on!
More snake wine! No lie, right next to it was TIGER TESTICLE WINE! I took a pic but it didn't come out.
Rice, up close and personal.
If you can make out this sign, you should read it. The English translation is hilarious.
Like waterfalls.
A chained one legged monkey. It was sad.
We walked about 6 miles in bonecrushing heat. Good adjective, me!
Danielle approaching the buffalo.
Val gets an asthma attack and takes a ride back to the hotel.
Ok. I should have warned you. I have been alluding to this all post but this is a dead dog being prepared to be eaten.
A decapitated cow.
Sunset in sapa!
Sapa was one of my fave spots so far. We took an overnight train there and spent one night in the village, then another overnight train back to Hanoi.
The cool thing about sapa is how pastoral it is. There are staggered terraces of rice paddies every direction you look, with small cottages and shacks interspersed between, and the Himalayan mountains looming thousands of feet in the air above.
The mountains have been carved out into terraces to maximize the amount of rice grown. The weather is cool here (relatively, it's still in the 80s), so the locals can only grow one harvest of rice a year, as opposed to three harvests in the rest of the country. The terraces allow them to maximize their crop output.
This is me, in case you forgot what I look like.
These are more Hmong people! They pestered us to buy trinkets from them in very clear english. Most weren't actually fluent - they'd just memorized some phrases. The vietnamese language is highly phonetic, making it easy for them to mimic American accents in a fairly convincing way.
Open air market in sapa. This was the fruit area. I'll show you the meat area later.
Scorpion wine.
This is our tour guide, Kroon! I think he thought we were too goofy at first, but he warmed up to us by the end. Note: he's not the blond one, thats Val.
Purdy.
Those are the Himalayas in the distance.
This is a young child sweeping. I always found sweeping kind of fun.
A pig! I chased him.
Path down to the Hmong village.
Oh one other thing. There are wild dogs everywhere in Vietnam! This is a cute wild puppy! Hmmm. Why would there be lots of dogs around? Read on!
More snake wine! No lie, right next to it was TIGER TESTICLE WINE! I took a pic but it didn't come out.
Rice, up close and personal.
If you can make out this sign, you should read it. The English translation is hilarious.
Like waterfalls.
A chained one legged monkey. It was sad.
We walked about 6 miles in bonecrushing heat. Good adjective, me!
Danielle approaching the buffalo.
Val gets an asthma attack and takes a ride back to the hotel.
Ok. I should have warned you. I have been alluding to this all post but this is a dead dog being prepared to be eaten.
A decapitated cow.
Sunset in sapa!
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