Location:Indonesia
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.
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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