Asia 2012--Temples, Nature and Food--Part 6

The next day we flew to Bangkok and a couple of hours later back to Mumbai.  We hadn’t had breakfast and wanted to go to duty free; there was no time for either.  The IndiGo lines were extremely long, and we soon discovered why.  When Glenna asked a friend of hers what he wanted her to bring back, he said a 42” flat screen tv.  She took that as a joke.  Well, it wasn’t.  At least every third person in line had a TV or more than one on his cart. I wondered how in the world they got the right one when they got to Mumbai.  It seemed to me that it would be easy to walk off with a bigger one than you had bought.  Passport control was slow too; by that time our flight was well into boarding and we had a long way to walk still.  But we made it, and Glenna even got a gift for a friend.  The immigration lines were crazy in Mumbai also.  We came in at the same time as a large flight from Riyadh.  Lots of cutting in line.

TVs on their way to Mumbai

Glenna in her drums class

The next day, my last day, we went back to Churchgate so that we could go to her drums class.  It was fun for me to observe her playing the drums, both with the others and individually.  There was a wide range of talent in the class.  We didn’t have time to stay for her other classes.  We had to have Irani chai and bun with butter again!  Then it was off to the Fulbright office to do some business and then back to the train station where we got another vada pav before going back to Bandra West.  I had seen a YouTube video DabbaWalas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTkGDXRnR9I) a couple of months ago showing their fascinating system for delivering a hot lunch to the men in the offices.  The wife makes the food in the morning at home; it is picked up by a DabbaWala, identified by an exacting system, transported, and delivered hot to her husband for lunch.  Well worth watching.  Well, anyway, outside the train station we saw it in operation.  They were sorting the containers getting ready to deliver them.   At lunch I had my last pineapple shake.  Then we did last minute shopping and errands. 

DabbaWalas organizing lunch

Back at the apartment we worked on the presentation she was going to give at the Fulbright conference the next week and packing the large suitcase I had brought to bring some of her belongings back.  To save time, we had dinner delivered (common in that part of Mumbai), mediocre Italian with the also so-so wine we had bought at the Whiskey Village in Laos.

I had to get up at 1AM to get to the airport for my 4:40 flight.  Glenna put me in a taxi, and away I went.  I was on Qatar Airlines with a change of plane in Doha.  We came into the terminal to join a massive throng which seemed to have no order.  Eventually we discovered that there was a line to go through security (never mind that we had done that in Mumbai).  It snaked back and forth.  After about 40 minutes new people started cutting in line.  The orderly Westerners tried to get them to queue up, but eventually gave up and pushed with the best of them.  Coming in an hour late, we didn’t have time to be polite.  And then we had to go through security again at the gate.  My conclusion after encountering lots of duplication at airports in many cities is that these are just ways of giving jobs to people.  You just have to put up with it. 

On the long flight to Washington, DC I slept reasonably well and watched TinTin and the second episode of Mildred Pierce.  By the time I arrived in South Carolina, I had been traveling for 27 ½ hours.  When I got back, it was the evening of our monthly community social.  When I walked in, I got a hand!  Wow, what a lovely end to a wonderful trip.

Asia 2012--Temples, Nature and Food--Part 5

Golden Banana Boutique Resort

After a rushed lunch we were off to the airport to fly to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  All our flights were on time and everything ran very efficiently.  We were impressed.  Our last hotel, the Golden Banana Resort Hotel, was the best of a good lot.  As with most Southeast Asian hotels, it was open to the elements.  The reception area, dining area, and rooms all surrounded the pool.  We had a big platform bed and a wonderful shower.  We also had a private second floor balcony with hot tub and lounge, also overlooking the pool.

Once again we were in the old part of town.  It was dinnertime, so we ate a block away in a place where we were the only Westerners.  That isn’t always a good thing for the stomach, and we have occasional problems throughout our trips.  But it seldom holds us back.  (This time I wasn’t sick until I got home, losing 7 ½ pounds in two days.)  After dinner we walked around the night market and along the river which was lighted up nicely. 

One goes to Siem Reap because of its proximity to Angkor Wat, and that’s where we went the next day, me in a tuk tuk with our guide and Glenna on a bike.  She’d been wanting to do that the whole trip.  It worked out well because she stayed on after I went back to get some nice sundown pictures such as the temple reflected in the moat.

Angkor Wat from the moat

Our guide for the day was very knowledgeable according to Glenna who knows a good bit about Hindu and Buddhist mythology, the religions which inspired Angkor.  We went to Angkor Wat first, walking first around the outside walls and then going inside.  Angkor was built by a 12^th c king as a temple to the Hindu god Vishnu and was later used by Buddhists.  It is known as having a very harmonious plan and for the wonderful bas reliefs along the outer walls which tell stories from the life of the king as well as Hindu myths and depictions of hell and paradise.  The condition of these reliefs was amazing given how old they are and how relatively exposed.  Various countries have taken on the task of cleaning or restoring parts of the complex which actually survived fairly well because of the moat around it which kept the jungle back.  However, there once were about 1000 Buddhas in the complex; most of the heads were knocked off and sold to museums around the world.  Shameful.  The Cambodians are very proud of Angkor Wat, even putting it on their flag. You hear so much about Angkor Wat, another World Heritage site, but I have to say I was a wee bit underwhelmed, perhaps because I’ve seen so many wonderful places in India also.

View of hell at Angkor Wat

Bas relief of chariot rider at Angkor Wat

King who had Angkor Wat built

Temple inside Angkor Wat

Headless Buddha

After a lunch nearby we went on to Ta Prohm, another of the temple complexes and one which was the setting for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie.  They took care to point that out several times.  But it was built as a Buddhist monastery and university in the 12^th c.  In the 15^th c it was abandoned and neglected so that the jungle grew up around it and, in the case of the enormous spung trees, even in it.  It is now a very romantic setting and the favorite of many.

Spung tree growing around temple

Spung tree taking over at Ta Prohm

Fixed smile on tower faces

The third temple complex of the day was the enormous Angkor Thom, built in the late 12^th c by another Khmer king in a symmetrical plan and also surrounded by walls and a moat.  We only saw a small part of it, the Bayon and the Terraces of the Elephants and Leper King, because I had just had enough walking.  The interesting feature of Bayon is that each face of all of the towers has a massive head carved into it, each face exhibiting a fixed smile.

Bayon at Angkor Thom

It’s always fun to learn about customs.  Our guide told us an interesting one.  Everywhere the Cambodians put their hands together and bow slightly in greeting.  Our guide told us that the tips of the fingers are held below the face for peers, to the chin for elders, to the nose for respected people such as teachers, to the eyes for the king or a priest, and to the forehead for a god.

When Glenna got back, we had dinner in the room so we could watch the rebroadcast of the Oscars online.  We always have a competition to see who gets the most right.  This time I won though it wasn’t really fair since Glenna has been gone for much of the movie year.  We agreed on the awards for The Artist.

Shaking hands with Glenna

The next day we took a tuk tuk to Tonle Sap Lake.  This lake is the largest in SE Asia and gets much bigger in the monsoon season when the melting snows in the mountains swell the Mekong which meets the Tonle Sap River forcing it to reverse its flow, backing up the waters into the lake.  When the waters recede, they leave behind very fertile land, a breeding ground for all kinds of fish. 

We were the only passengers on our boat trip on the lake which took us by floating villages that I thought were really interesting, Glenna less so.  The houses are on rafts, and every house has a boat to get from one raft to another.  There were lots of simple houses, stores, a Catholic church, and both Catholic and Vietnamese schools.  We stopped at the store where we were encouraged to buy food and supplies for the poor kids in the school (more to enrich the store owner, we figured, because the prices were crazy) and then went to the school to deliver them.  As usual, the kids took to Glenna.  Some of them wanted to shake her hand, a common occurrence in our travels.

Catholic Church on Tonle Sap

House on Tonle Sap Lake

When we were passing from one raft to another, Glenna slipped and fell downward, saved only by our boat driver who grabbed her hand and pulled her back up.  Another stop was at a crocodile farm (hole in the raft with a net in it as in VietNam) where we were encouraged to give money to feed them.  Glenna figured they turned the skins into the purses that were sold in the shop, and we weren’t inclined to support that. 

On the way back to Siem Reap, I especially noticed the dwellings, once again very simple, made of bamboo, logs, and leaves.  At one point we almost ran out of gas.  Our driver was able to get us to the petrol station (see picture).  By the way, the Cambodian tuk tuks are the best of the lot, much roomier and more comfortable than in the other countries as well as more open to the breeze.  For lunch back in town we had another dish on our list, fish amok, as well as pork with vegetables, and Khmer dumplings, a raw casing with egg, vegetables, or meat inside eaten with a red chili sauce.  After some more shopping in the hot, covered markets, we went back to the hotel to get in the pool to cool off.

The petrol station

For dinner we decided we wanted French.  We got steak and fries, and Glenna savored every bite.  She hadn’t had steak since arriving in India so she was ready.  Then we had some good ice cream at another place.  At dinner we made our usual lists of bests and worsts of the trip.  It’s a good way to think back over the trip and relive it.  We both keep daily journals and record these there too.  It is really a lot of fun years later to reread the journal; it’s like taking the trip again.  I have journals going back to my first European trip in 1970.

Asia 2012--Temples, Nature and Food--Part 4

After a last walk around Luang Prabang, we flew to Hanoi, VietNam.  Riding in from the airport, my observation was that the city looked modern and pretty clean.  We were at our hotel, Hanoi Old Centre, long enough to find out that VietNam blocks Facebook!  Glenna tried various workarounds with limited success.  Really, in 2012 what is the point? 

Bridge on Hoan Kiem Lake

We then set out to explore the area and find some dinner.  We always like to stay in the old section of town because that’s usually where the sites you want to see are and where the people watching is best.  This hotel was just a block from Hoan Kiem Lake, the heart of Hanoi in the Old Quarter, so we walked down there to see the night lights and found a restaurant that had bun cha and bun bo nam bo (pork and beef dishes with rice noodles), two items on our must eat list, a list we make for every trip.  These two were very good.

Vintage cars at hotel

In the morning we walked over to the Water Puppet Theater to get tickets for that night; a few minutes later and we would have been out of luck.  We strolled through the Old Quarter with Glenna looking at all the shoe displays and then down to the ritzy French Quarter where we saw lots of fine old buildings and plenty of brides and grooms having the obligatory photos taken in front of a truly ugly monument.

Wedding photos in front of ugly monument

Building in French quarter

Eating at kids' tables

Then it was around the bottom of the lake and through streets where almost every building is yellow and where sidewalks aren’t for people but rather for motorbike parking, watching the Vietnamese eat lunch sitting at children’s plastic tables and chairs, and on to a pho place. All over this part of the world motorbikes are much more common than cars and they speed around everywhere.  Hanoi is known as a place where traffic laws don’t mean much.  If I hadn’t grabbed Glenna’s arm at one point she would have been mowed down.

Beautiful flowers in the lake

Motorbikes on the sidewalk

Our afternoon was probably the least pleasurable of the trip.  We first saw the truly ugly Ho Chi Minh monument, a concrete monstrosity which houses his body which we didn’t get to see because it’s only open in the morning.  Then it was the so-so but very ancient Single Pillar Pogoda.  While Glenna took pictures, I watched a really disorderly group of soldiers, a characteristic that I saw reflected elsewhere during our stay.

Ugly Ho Chi Minh monument

One Pillar Pogoda

Next was the 11^th c Temple of Literature, a series of pogodas the last of which honors Confucius, so named because it was once a university.  Today it’s clearly the place where all school children are brought.  That was enough walking for me for awhile.

Entry to Temple of Literature

Free time for kids at Temple of Literature

Dinner that night was at a restaurant named for their signature dish, another one on our list, cha ca la vong, which is prepared at the table and served with onions and greens, rice noodles and a sweet sauce.  Really good.

Cha ca la vong

Water Puppet Theater

Then it was off to the puppet show.  These seats have to be the most uncomfortable anywhere because the rows are so close together, I guess because the Vietnamese are shorter than the average Westerner.  I don’t know how the tall guys endured it.  But the performance was enchanting.  The musicians playing traditional instruments and singers sat off to the side, and the puppets were actually in a large pool which filled the stage, controlled from behind by the puppet masters.  The stories, all in Vietnamese, were of battle, fishing, rice harvesting, and love.

Water puppets in a dance

Dragons spewing water

The next two days were our other top activity of the trip—a cruise on Halong Bay, three hours east of Hanoi on a road passing through small towns full of the characteristic tall, skinny houses and lots of rice paddies which fascinated me.

Typical tall skinny house

Worker in the rice paddy

Glenna in our cabin

When we arrived at Halong, a tender took us out to our junk.  There were cabins for two, a dining area, and a common area up top.  The first order of business was lunch.  And what a lunch!  There are three classes of cruises, and we opted for the deluxe.  Supposedly the main difference is the food.  Our two lunches and one dinner were just awesome.  They brought the dishes one at a time—and they just kept coming.  It was like Asian tapas.  The first lunch was Julienned salad of pear and papaya, stuffed crab, beautifully fried fish, tofu in sauce, bok choy, mixed grilled vegetables, and apples.  And tiger beer.  A lot of tiger beer was consumed in those two days.  Dinner was even better:  cucumber and tomato salad, shrimp cocktail, spring rolls, clams, rice, pork with spices, fish, chicken, cabbage, French fries, and pears—everything done to perfection and presented beautifully.  Lunch the next day was equally good.  We had the chef come up from the kitchen so we could give him a hand.  And the second day the sous-chef gave us a demonstration of how to carve animals and flowers from vegetables, the most amazing of which was a swan from a tomato.

Tomato swan, turnip flower, carrot flower

Carving a flower

Over lunch we started to get acquainted with our shipmates from Germany, Singapore, Portugal and Russia.  Once again, everyone spoke English.  We had a great conversation while waiting for dinner about the fate of the euro—different points of view from the Germans and Portuguese.  Later we talked a lot about previous travels (This was a well traveled group!) and governments and social policy.  The Portuguese gentleman said that in Portugal the out-of-pocket cost for going to the emergency room is so small that people go there when they’re lonely, talking animatedly one minute and “sick” the moment the doctor walks in.  Wake up, America!

Karsts of Halong Bay from the cave

Glenna in Surprising Cave

Halong Bay is notable because of the huge limestone karsts that jut up out of the water.  They are a strange sight.  One of them was large enough to contain a quite large cave called the Surprising Cave though we weren’t sure what the surprise was other than maybe it’s size.  We had to walk up a long flight of steps to get to the opening and then walked up and down through it.  Definitely more interesting than Pak Ou.

Next Glenna and I went kayaking around the karsts, something we were doing for the first time.  We got soaked, but it was really a lot of fun.

Floating fish market

Kayaking in Halong Bay

The next morning we visited a floating fish market.  It was a raft in the water out of which large holes had been cut.  Nets which extended into the water were attached to the sides of the holes, and fish of a given kind were swimming around in there.  One of the holes had many smaller plastic buckets sitting on the nets containing small fish and shellfish.  Our chef bought two kinds for our lunch.  Talk about fresh.  After lunch we tendered in to shore and took the van back to Hanoi, still thinking about all that wonderful food.  I just have to say it—yummy!

On our last day in Hanoi we first went to the Museum of Ethnology.  Because we were short on time we didn’t get to see much of the inside though I think it was probably worth seeing.  But I wanted to see the recreations of tribal houses out back.  And they were fascinating, brought from all over VietNam.

Interior of Bahnar house

Very tall Bahnar house

Ede long house

Our last stop was to Hoa Lo Prison.  This is the infamous Hanoi Hilton.  It was first used by the French to imprison the Vietnamese before we were ever there.  The exhibits concentrated on how the French treated them; they showed prison cells and sculptural recreations of prisoners.  At the end there were a couple of rooms of exhibits on the American prisoners housed there.  The boards and videos talked about how the Americans were the aggressors with no mention of the South Vietnamese at all.  There was a lot of propaganda about how well they treated the Americans, how they allowed them to play sports and fix Christmas dinner, blah, blah, blah. They had pictures and some personal effects (including McCain’s jumpsuit).  I was getting angrier and angrier as I walked through there.  I told Glenna that I was glad we did that last in VietNam or I would have been mad at them the whole time.  Then it was goodbye to VietNam and hello to Cambodia.

Mural of prisoner treatment

Propaganda for sure

Asia 2012--Temples, Nature and Food--Part 3

After our silk-buying expedition it was off to the airport for our one-hour flight to Luang Prabang, Laos.  We stayed at a wonderful hotel right on the Mekong, Mekong Villa by Xandria.  After getting the requisite sundown pictures, we were off for some exploring.  Luang Prabang is a lovely little town with lots of old French buildings.  We walked through the night market which we liked much better than the Thai ones—more interesting craft items.

Sunset on the Mekong

French building on Sisavangvong Rd

Night market in Luang Prabang

The next morning was spent visiting some of the temples in town, observing the monks in their daily tasks as well as seeing their laundry on the clothesline.  The shape of the Lao temples is very similar to that in Thailand, but they aren’t quite as elaborately decorated and don’t generally use floral motifs.  I like both styles.

Interior of old royal palace

Monks' laundry

Lao temple and monk

  Songthaew on Sisavangvong Rd

Red curry soup and baguette

After a great lunch of red curry soup and baguette sandwich on the banks of the Mekong, we took the two hour boat trip to Pak Ou caves.  We knew that the ride would be better than the caves which are set on a bluff high over the river and which contain more than 500 Buddha images brought there by the faithful.  The fun was observing life along the river, seeing kids swimming naked, men working on their fishing nets, women harvesting seaweed.  

Some of the 500 Buddhas at Pak Ou

Houseboat

Glenna on the trip to Pak Ou

Swimming in the Mekong

We also stopped at the so-called Whiskey Village where we saw the liquor being made and bought a couple bottles of wine which tasted more like brandy and a bottle of whiskey which Glenna said tasted awful and which she bought as a joke for a friend of hers in India.

Glenna on the bridge to Whiskey Village

Snake in the whiskey bottle

Our second day in Laos started with a walk through the morning market, 
marveling at the exotic items like frogs with their legs all tied together, birds in tiny cages, and all kinds of meat and fish covered with flies. There were also unfamiliar vegetables and fruits, some of which are in the soup and are totally inedible, presumably there to flavor it.

Birds in cages

Black chickens and flies

Then it was up the 328 steps of Mt Phousi (and I made it!) to the temple at the top.  It is up here that the birds we saw in the market are let go as part of a devotion.  From there we got a good view of the city.

Flowers used in devotions

The 328 steps up Mt Phousi

After lunch we went to Kuang Si waterfall about 50 minutes by songthaew south of Luang Prabang. Along the route to it we saw some pretty lazy bears in a preserve.

Glenna in the songthaew to Kuang Si

Lazy bear

The waterfall is near a small village in a jungle. I was expecting a tall waterfall, but this was a beautiful series of small falls and numerous blue-green pools. Glenna had a great time swimming and trying out the rope swing which was tied to a tree which protruded into a pool. You grabbed the robe and pushed off to the center of the pool and then let go. This is a very popular destination with good reason. We loved it.

Some of the Kuang Si falls

Swinging out over the pool

Glenna enjoying her swim

On the way there and back we got a chance to observe rural life, passing by several settlements where the houses and stores are just bamboo sided structures on stilts. Most of the people in this part of the world live a subsistence existence, giving you pause when you bargain in the market place. Pennies to us is the difference between eating and not eating to them.

One of the must-see events in Luang Prabang is the morning alms procession which we did the next morning, and it really was interesting. Women come with huge vats of wonderful smelling rice which they dish out into smaller containers for the alms givers who line up along a carpet put down on the sidewalk on the main street. About 6:30 the Buddhist monks, some older but mostly quite young, process down the street, each carrying a pot into which the alms givers put a handful of rice or bananas or other fruit or money or bagged snacks. I’m not sure I would want to eat that rice, but it’s all the food they have for the day. There were also a few obviously poor people along the route to whom the monks gave some of what they had if they had too much.

Monk receiving alms

Monks in line for alms

Woman receiving alms

We didn’t see a lot of piety among the monks. I had read that almost all Lao boys are monks for at least three months as a matter of education or discipline or punishment. We had seen them mingling easily with boys playing football (soccer) in the temple yard after their nightly devotions the night before.

Soccer in the temple yard

We had enjoyed our experience with the elephants in Chiang Mai but we hadn’t gotten enough, so we signed up for another excursion to an elephant preserve, traveling along a really bumpy road to get there. This time we got to ride them for an hour, down a steep and narrow trail to the river, through the river, and up the bank back to the camp. Glenna was thrilled to get to switch places with the mahout and ride on the elephant’s neck most of the way. 

Down toward the river

Glenna riding on the neck

Glenna and me on our ride

When we got back, we bought a bunch of bananas and fed them to our elephant; they eat all day long to get the 250 kg that they need, and he was tearing up and shoveling in sugar cane with the bananas.

Greedy elephant

Sugar cane and banana at the same time

I started collecting wooden and marble elephants on our first trip to India. But I had recently thought to myself, why am I collecting these; they’re just big fat animals. Well, after these two experiences and reading the literature at the preserve, I don’t feel that way anymore. They are the gentlest giants you can possibly imagine, and you can’t help but love them. The preserves are there to rescue them from the grueling life they would otherwise have in the logging industry where they are sometimes worked to death.  The notice said that elephants must earn their keep (what other animal has to earn his keep?), and giving rides to tourists is much better than the other life.  They also provide a retirement home for those who can no longer work in their long life of 100 years or so.

Boating to the waterfall

The excursion also included a boat ride to a dry waterfall for which the guide was apologetic. But, hey, it’s the dry season. This trip to the preserve was one of our top two excursions.

After visiting a few more temples and a walk along the two rivers, we were off to the airport for our flight to Hanoi.