favorite moments from southeast asia

- First moments in bangkok: riding the water taxi that seemed to me like a water-born  Turkish dolmuş, the haphazard, careening-around-corners, jump-on, jump-off mini buses I became so familiar with in Istanbul. In Bangkok, we seemed to sit right at level with the water, protecting from splashing water by a thin plastic sheet as our tiny boat plunged down the river, barely acquiescing a full stop at the docks to let passengers leap on and off. A pretty entertaining start to the trip.

A couple hours later, I heard the call to prayer sound out from somewhere behind the block, unexpected yet oddly comforting.

bangkok by water

- Drinks on a rooftop bar with my Bangkok Couchsurfing host. Clearly ambitious and already on the cusp of a successful career, she told us her goals of attending business school in the U.S. Somewhere in there, she snuck in a side comment about hoping to marry an M.B.A., all while slyly eyeing my soon-to-be consultant male friend. I sat back, hoping for sparks to fly.

- Yoga on the raft anchored off a beach in Koh Samet. The skies had just begun to clear, and the clouds moved across in amazing dramas of light and color over the water. Add to that my exultant victory over my fear of swimming, and the raft was quite possibly the most soul-enriching place in the world at that moment. The only logical thing to do then was yoga. My travel buddy J led the two of us in downward facing dogs and warrior poses that exposed our bodies to the endless water, and our bums to the 5 or so landed beach-goers.

the raft

- Meandering conversations with our guesthouse owner in Chiang Mai. He took us up to a spot on a mountain overlooking the city, far away from other tourists, and there our talk ranged from why this expat stayed, how we find happiness or get blinded in our pursuit of it, Thai political culture (or lack of it), and American foreign policy. Then we walked over to the a waterfall- or rather, water slide – where a bunch of Thai boys were alternating between drinking, singing, sliding down into the pool of water, and, somewhat more dangerously, running off cliffs into said pool of water. (I served as photographer, having just recovered from a rather nasty fever.)

somewhat of an action shot

- One particular taxi ride in Chiang Mai. The taxis there are more like minibuses, trucks with the truckbeds covered over. You climb in through the back and sit on opposite padded benches facing whoever else the driver picked up. This is the best setting for spontaneous interactions – unavoidable, intimate, yet anonymous, and short enough to avoid pressure of more sustained conversation. After a trip to one of the weekend markets, we hopped into a taxi along with three other girls, each carrying assorted shopping bags. One girl showed her friends a small woven figure she just bought. It was easily the most disturbing thing either J or I had seen – some kind of demented vampire, a mix between morbid and cute. We started laughing, and that set off more show-and-tells that included us, as we pointed and giggled together without the need of words.

- An impromptu modern dance improv session between J and me. We clambered into a large temple-ish structure far from the road, where no one else  bothered to enter. The building was composed of one long corridor – perfect for filming some dance. Later, we identified the building as the Khleangs, and the row of 12 buildings directly alongside it as Prasat Suor Prat, translated as Temple of the Cord Dancers. According to our guidebook, it’s rumored that performers used to dance on ropes tied between the buildings.

That can’t be entirely coincidence. I like to think the ruins still echo their memories of former glory, and we somehow responded.

- Riding on the back of motorbikes, casually passing by the temples of Angkor Wat. For the women driving, it was just another commute to work, but for us, an exhilarating journey of wind and air rushing past an unreal landscape.

- Eating watermelon cut straight off the vine in a watermelon field. Then watching the Cambodian women we came with try to load giant bags of watermelon (seriously, bigger than they were) on their motorbikes, which would also have to bear two people for two hours on dirt roads back to Siem Reap. Of course, their determination and sheer confidence won out, and we made it back, watermelon, people, and all.

watermelon and women

- Dancing freely and joyfully at the only nightclub in Siem Reap, with all the Cambodian friends we had made gathered in one place, during our last night in Cambodia.

- Experiencing Kuala Lumpur traffic in the hands of a pro. Sitting in the backseat as my friend drove and struggled against suburban traffic (everyone in the city apparently had the same destination in mind: the mall), I couldn’t stop laughing, the kind of laugh that waters your eyes and feeds on itself. Something about it was so ridiculous, this little car with its little driver battling the massive tides of this mechanical, inhuman traffic.

- The climb up Mt. Kinabalu, one of those worst/best moments. I will eventually get back to re-writing that post.

- Happily watching dozens of young children playing at night in a square facing Kuching’s river. Three or four vendors were set up in the square, selling those ubiquitous light-up toys,  the kind you sold in amusement parks and touristed pedestrian streets around the world. The kids flocked there to play with them for free, and the night air was filled with colored light shooting up and racing back down. Occasionally, one of the vendors would count off, “Satu, dua, tiga!” and on “Tiga!” all the kids would scream with excitement and simultaneously unleash their flying light. Beautiful, joyous, simple.

unfortunately, no good photo of the magic, but the atmosphere is there

ponderings

Today, I felt the first breath of cool air for the first time in two months, and it was glorious.

In celebration of this weather, I took a short walk in the evening, and my mind turned to travel (conditioned by the past few days of scrapbooking photos from Turkey last year… what an endeavor). Travel – what I experienced, how I experience it, why I appreciate it, what are its pitfalls. So for this little post, some musings on travel.

Travel is a luxury, and ultimately that’s why I appreciate it so much. You could go on and on about finding your unknown self in new settings, or learning new ideas and approaches to change the way you think back home, or meeting people you’d never meet otherwise. All of which are well and good, of course, but frankly, I’m not sure if I have learned many, if any, truly profound lessons abroad that I did not already know from home.

What makes travel special, and those moments of insight particularly profound perhaps, is that you have absolutely no obligations to schedules, routines, habits. Instead, you luxuriate in just exploring on your own time, on your own terms. You spend your time seeing things and going places in which you don’t really have much of a stake; in most cases, you can enjoy them without the burden of any personal baggage. Travel gives you an exhilarating, selfish freedom from your normal life.

Of course, there’s a flip side to this, one that I became acutely aware of with the Norway tragedy. I’ve never been to Norway, in fact the only Nordic country I haven’t been to (well, Iceland was only an airport layover, I guess). But I felt a pang nevertheless. Traveling, and living somewhat, in Copenhagen made me develop a stake in the city, a self that’s imprinted in its pavements. By association, I have a connection with Denmark, and by further association, Scandinavia. I was furious that someone had wrecked the Scandinavia I knew and had frozen in memory.

So what am I saying? Travel is freedom, but maybe you’re unaware of the place silently latching on to you with each step you take. After I’ve returned home, I’ll pay more attention to news about Shanghai instead of Seoul, or Thailand instead of Vietnam, or Scandinavia instead of England. Maybe in travel I’m seeking not more freedom, but more connections, more ways to be tied to the global ground.

No Eat, Pray, Love epiphanies here – so far, I have yet to discover my gustatory, spiritual, or romantic self(ves) while on the road. Maybe all I can conclude for now is this: I’ve been so lucky to have been given the freedom of experiencing and subsequently connecting to new places and situations. There may not be very tangible results to show for it, but that’s besides the point. That individual freedom itself is rare, valuable, and addicting.

home daze

After that last failed attempt to post an update, I was sufficiently discouraged from blogging for the remainder of my travels. I was defeated. A week and a half at home later, it took every ounce of determination I could muster to open up WordPress and stare at this page.

Not like there’s much to talk about recently. I will still get to posting bits and stories and moments from my Southeast Asia travels. (Think of me as easing my way back into this blog with this post.) But there’s something to be said for reflecting on the nothing that manages to fill a day.

I’m a very different person at home than I am at school or particularly while traveling. When in a new place, for example, I seem to inhale limitless energy from its sheer novelty. There’s always someplace to find, or if there’s no destination in mind, an endless supply of new streets to wander. My travel buddy in Thailand and Cambodia commented on this – my strange energy – more than once.

Then there’s me at home. In the past 10 days, I can probably count the places I’ve gone outside the house on both hands. Most days, I haven’t even stepped out the door (maybe the occasional trip to the grocery store.) And despite all my to-do lists to make the most of my time, I find myself slipping into a slow, lethargic rhythm – or non-rhythm, because there is no pattern. Hours upon hours spent sifting through and organizing years of photos. (I will always, always print physical copies of photos.) Minutes and hours in the kitchen, as my mother tries to teach me cooking as she haphazardly taught herself years ago. More hours spent pouring over newly-discovered and beautiful food blogs. (Current favorite: http://www.101cookbooks.com/) When I’m feeling really ambitious, a half-hour or so going along with a ridiculous Korean workout video. But that’s for another post.

And where are the other hours? I have no idea. Definitely not being spent studying for a test-that-shall-not-be-named (that I might not even take.) Definitely not being spent reading books for work training that have not yet come in, despite having ordered them 2 weeks ago. But I’m letting the lethargy take over, as I do every time I come home. To-do lists get lost into background noise, or hum, rather. Nothing ever gets too noisy here.

Tomorrow, though, comes an interlude – a weekend in DC with familiar faces from the college world. A bit of a jolt, and then back home.

i am weak

* I spent over an hour writing this post. And when I went to publish, suddenly all the writing was lost except one messed-up paragraph below. I am so angry right now and am telling the world about my anger.

RAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

mountain home

 

sunset at laban rata

The rain and me at the ironically named Low's Peak

My guide continued to literally guide me down the mountain, warding off frostbite on

my hands and saving me from a few treacherous slips on the wet granite surface.

Because we not only faced wet rock surface, but also a horrifyingly steep incline.  Below

is a photo of what I’ll call Baby Rockface, upon which you can see climbers inching

themselves down via rope. Baby Rockface came after Big Mama Rockface, a completely

water-eroded smooth surface both steeper and larger than Baby pictured below. To put

this in better context, I hate going down any type of incline as it is.

rocks signalling potential slippery disaster

unfamiliar familiarity in kuala lumpur

Moments for pause and reflection are rare when you’re speeding through 3 countries in 3 weeks. Thus, I think the lack of updates since Bangkok can be excused. Tonight is the first night I feel like I can actually sit down at a computer for a meaningful think (as opposed to rushing to check emails/book hostels/write directions/other next steps.)

Today was also my first time alone since Bangkok, as my wonderful travel buddy has left me for Singapore. Today, nothing but aimless thoughts and sensory observations accompanied me through the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Loneliness (bringing me back to my time in Copenhagen, or Berlin) is sometimes refreshingly necessary, if a bit difficult.

Kuala Lumpur is a weird city to be thrown into. At first, I was so excited when I stepped out from our hostel into Chinatown and Little India. So much energy and diversity of people, foods, architecture. I can order a bowl of beef noodle soup in Chinese on one street, and then struggle to figure out how to eat the food at a hole-in-the-wall Indian place a couple blocks down. (I didn’t even attempt to eat with my hands. Sad, and slightly ashamed.)

Ultimately though, the overriding atmosphere of being in an officially Muslim country makes this a difficult place, for me, to grasp. Just when I feel like I can fall into the local street rhythm, something throws it off, jarring me. Sometimes it’s the majority presence of headscarf-wearing women on the street, definitely more so than in Istanbul. Or sometimes it’s the unfamiliar architecture jumbled together, like the colonial buildings that are Victorian-Moorish-Arabic styled, or the mosques both new and old, right next to a Chinatown that looks like any other Chinatown in the world. Then there are the department stores I expected, along Jalan Bukit Binang, but this time stretched down a single street that becomes visually reminiscent of Times Square in Manhattan, not Taipei (my standard point of comparison). In cafes that spill onto the sidewalks, the sweet scent of hookah mixes with the thick atmosphere of people and traffic. Groups of older men dominate the the cafe tables, not throngs of young teenagers. Pop into the food courts in any one of the department stores though, and the people (and food stalls) are almost entirely East Asian.

Of course, I can’t tell who are tourists and who are locals in these places, especially when both groups are so ethnically diverse, and so it’s hard to make conclusions about the city’s people. The city, though, is not the Asian city I was expecting. Religiously, spatially, ethnically, it’s like nowhere else I’ve been, and I don’t know what to make of it. At least I’m not the only one – a KL born-and-raised friend admitted he’s still figuring it out too.

Tomorrow – Borneo! Landing in Kota Kinabalu, then taking it easy for the next couple of days until I go on a climb to the summit of Mt. Kinabalu. Am I in over my head? Probably. But so excited for this finale of my Southeast Asia whirlwind trip.

bangkok, or, another asian megacity

The title seems more jaded or pessimistic than I really mean to be. About nine hours after landing in Bangkok, I’ve re-realized that traveling through Asia is quite often a search for difference between the repeated, somewhat tiring images of humidity-worn concrete roads and high-rises, mega-malls and crowded alleys of knock-offs, and dubious-looking clothes and equally dubious English printed on them. I spent all of today in and around Siam Square (note to self and other travelers: malls and department stores will always have a place for you to securely deposit your large backpack for the entire day.) My mind played a constant stream of images from memory as background to the images displayed before me. (second note, or rather, disclaimer: my Asian travel experiences are actually pretty limited to Taiwan, Shanghai, and limited views from the bus of family-oriented tour groups in China and Japan.) So far, Bangkok reminds me most of Shanghai, in the way its sometimes glossy, sometimes messy behemoth boxes of department stores somehow sit on top of tiny street-side shops without crushing them. And in the way the bazaar-like knock-off department store sits just a few minutes’ walk from the one emblazoned with Versace and company.

Stepping into historical Bangkok starting tomorrow – and maybe finding that elusive difference.

next steps

Since I last traveled, I wrote a thesis, found something akin to a job, graduated, and packed up and moved four years of my life. This summer, I present an interlude: wanderings through Southeast Asia. Along the way, I’ll (likely) cross through Thailand (Bangkok, Ko Samet, and Chiang Mai), Cambodia (Phnom Penh and Siem Reap), and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Kuching), before returning to the foods and smells and places and people of Taiwan.

Updates will be sporadic until I get to Taiwan, since I will be sans computer, but I have promised myself to maintain a vigilant record of these travels. At some point this summer, it will all get posted. In the meantime, happy summering!

strangers in cities

Another article I want to keep here, about a course that combines sociology, psychology, and urban studies to look at what it means to be strangers in cities.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/stranger-studies-101-cities-as-interaction-machines/62315/

“Copenhagen is becoming the Dubai of Europe”

Long time, no post. But this was an interesting tidbit from an interview by Saskia Sassen that I wanted to collect in this blog:

“FP: Is old Europe then old news?

SS: Well, I think Copenhagen, in a way, is becoming the Dubai of Europe. I love that image. I just get so amused by these things. It used to be that London was the platform for Europe. The Japanese firms, the Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian, even the French firms — if they wanted to operate in Europe, they located in London.

But today, you don’t need that single platform. So Copenhagen and Zurich are two cities that have become very attractive for all kinds of reasons to firms, whether European firms or firms from the rest of the world. And so they locate in Copenhagen, which is a very reasonable city: much cheaper, well organized, and it ranks as one of the top cities in terms of reliability, investors’ protections, good on everything. And Zurich, I don’t know if you have been to Zurich, but if you can live in Zurich, why live anywhere else in Europe? It’s absolutely so stunning.”

Further along… I felt some smug self-satisfaction at this. Looks like I’m ahead of the curve- I win.

“FP: Can you speculate on what FP’s Global Cities rankings might look like in 15 years?

SS: I think that many of today’s top global cities of today are here to stay. Of course there’ll be some shift in their relative influence. And trends like the ascendance of Dubai or of Copenhagen over the last few years. Or Singapore — 15 years ago Singapore was radically different. Maybe it looked the same, but it was a different type of global city — it was not a global city, really.

Istanbul is going to be enormously significant. I mean, who are the top investors in Istanbul today? They are from both the West and the East. The East includes Kazakhstan, China, Russia, Bulgaria; it’s just extraordinary.

The other thing that is happening is of course China. In the future, I think that China and Chinese cities will be even more significant.”

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/27/miami_swoon?page=0,2

connections

Today I stopped by the David Samling Museum in Copenhagen to peak at its Islamic arts collection. Really, I had wanted to go just for one item in particular, but I ended up lingering far longer than planned. It was an impressive exhibit, covering Islamic history from the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Andalusian Spain, India, even China. Maybe the best-designed presentation of Islamic art I’ve seen yet. And to top it off, it was completely free. (Free + Copenhagen is a rare combination.)

But what item was I looking for? During my last week in Istanbul, I wandered through the Museum for Turkish and Islamic Art. This is one of its major pieces, a 12th-century door handle and door from the Ulu Camii in Cizre, in Southeastern Anatolia.

Two dragons meet, touch, and together ward off evil from entering the mosque. It’s quite a lovely piece of craftsmanship. Then I read the description, which said at the end, to conclude, “The other door handle is in Copenhagen.” (Not without a hint of rueful bitterness.) So today I went in search of the other door handle, displaced far far from home. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera on me, so no pictures, but I promise I found it, again prominently displayed. This time, the audio guide quipped, “The other handle in Istanbul has been restored to its original gold sheen. This one in the David collection, however, has retained evidence of its 800-year history.” Maybe it was the British accent, but I suspected a touch of superiority in the guide’s tone.

But nationalism and politics of artifacts and heritage aside,  the visit was extremely gratifying. I kept smiling to myself as I stared at this Copenhagen door handle, a tangible connection to a place that I miss more every day. Then I went down to the modest gift shop where, sure enough, there was a postcard of my door handle. Completely worth the 5 kroner, I decided, as I packed it away to take back home.

Speaking of home, I will be stepping foot back home in about 52 hours. HOME after 6 months. How strange.