Apr 20, 2009

That's All She Wrote

And for my next trick I shall turn 27 ... TWICE!

We flew through Hong Kong on the evening of the 19th and celebrated my birthday in the air somewhere over Japan. We continued east over the international dateline and straight on 'til morning. Of the 19th. By the time we landed at LAX, and made our way through immigration, baggage claim, customs, the Budget rental car lot, and north LA it was midnight on the 20th all over again. And this time there were presents and cake!

So that's it. We're back. Today we work on finding a place to call home.

For those of you keeping track at home that makes:

20 Countries
70 Cities
210 Days
40 Books
17 Flights
16 Passport Pages

I'm less tech-savvy than I'd like, which means you have to zoom out a bunch of times to see this map in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, here's the full route:


View Tripnic in a larger map

As for superlatives:

Longest Transit: Sarajevo to Athens (one bus, three trains, 30 + hours)
Cheapest Haircut: Fort Kochin (25 Rps = $0.50)
Coldest Day: Konya, Turkey
Highest per diem: Venice (250 euros in two days)
Top Bites (Savory): Dal at Bukhara, Burek in Sarajevo, Fried Wonton with Chicken at Mr. Son's
Top Bites (Sweet): Sticky Rice & Mango, Peanut Butter Pide, Ras Malai
Best Buy: Bug Zapper! (purchased in Anjuna for 200 rupees)
Best View: Acropolis at night, Borobudur at sunrise, Hampi at sunset
Best Drinks: Storm Beer Golden Ale (Yogyakarta), Papa's Tapas White Sangria (Ko Tao), Hot Chocolate (Prague)
Best Sustenance in a Pinch: Snickers (but not the halal ones)

I want to end this blog with a cyber-smooch for my favorite travel pillow, atm, co-conspirator, confidant, date, and friend Aaron, without whom I would never have taken this journey. I'd go anywhere as long as he'd be with me.

xoxo Jessie

Apr 18, 2009

Last Stop: Bangkok

True to form, the last two days of our journey revolved around food - specifically, sticky rice and mango, "superb" pad thai, coconut ice cream with peanuts from Nattaporn, Chotechitr's mee krob, radna (crispy noodles with pork and gravy), and this delicious pulpy orange juice.

The sticky rice at Kao Neeo Kor Panich has been prepared the same way for 75 years. It's so good there's a line down the block at any time of day. Women selling fresh mangoes hover outside ready to slice up fruits so ripe and beautiful they cut like butter beneath our plastic spoons. We were here for less than 72 hours and I managed to down three helpings.Meanwhile Thip Sammai Thai is the Father's Office of Bangkok. The pad thai is three times the price Thais usually pay, nevertheless there's a wait for the tables and a constant stream of steaming plates flowing from the street-side kitchen. Aaron went for the basic version, while I ordered the superb, which is covered with an egg:We tore ourselves away from the eating just long enough to catch the sunset over Wat Arun and to check out the wonder that is Chatuchak Market. 15,000 stalls selling everything from knock-off Gucci to hedgehogs. All of it at rock bottom prices. I picked up a watercolor (400 baht/$12) and sandals (100 baht/$3). Iced coffee with condensed milk was mixed while spinning. Totally mesmerizing.

One of the more amusing sights was the section of stalls devoted to western wear:Needless to say, our bad travel karma has dissipated. Just a few days ago the city was brought to a standstill by political protests and had we been scheduled to head out of town then all this would have been impossible. There was still evidence of the unrest on view. Hijacked buses, road blocks, and the military personnel were all still on the street. A protest leader from last fall's demonstrations was gunned down in the street our first day in town. Still we felt very fortunate to see Bangkok when we did. So that's it. Tomorrow we head home. I've got one or two more posts in me, and then ...

xoxo Jessie

Apr 15, 2009

Ko Tao: The Big Chill

The travel troubles didn't end in KL; they followed us back to Thailand where both our cameras gave out on us (ok, actually I broke mine, but Aaron at least can claim innocence). The trip to Ko Tao, our last real destination of the trip was no cinch either. We spent a night in Phuket town, a day on a boat, and a night in Ko Phangan on our way. But it was worth it.


Ko Tao is gorgeous. There's a bunch of nice white sand beaches separated by steap jungle mountins all the way around the island. There's something here for everyone: trendy shops, good food, warm water, deserted coves, fabulous sunsets, and oh yea crazy cheap diving on world class reefs. Aaron got certified and together we logged a total of 17 dives. We saw sharks, a sea turtle, barracuda, trigger fish, angel fish, butterfly fish, nudibranchs, anemone with clown fish, a fantastic school of fusiliers, and amazing amazing corals.Clair McCalla's boyfriend Rob was here for the diving as well, which meant I got to have a little Memphis reunion here in Thailand:) Rob, Clair, Aaron and I had an awesome time together, especially on the Thai new year Songkran when Thais and tourists alike get out their water guns:At first the idea of walking around soaking wet and watching a bunch of sunburnt travelers squirt one another in honor of a holiday they don't really understand was a bit silly to me. Then I poured a bucket of water on a complete stranger. Try it sometime. It'll make your year. I even volunteer to be the victim.

xoxo Jessie

p.s. a huge "hello gorgeous" to babies Annabel Chloe Kornberg and Lena Yael Zymskind. I cannot wait to meet you!

Apr 14, 2009

24 hours in Kuala Lumpur

I'm sorry to report that the nasty travel luck followed us to KL. We only had a day to spend there, and we wasted 2 hours sleeping in because I messed up the time change and then another 9 hours sitting at the airport waiting for our delayed flight to Phuket. Getting on the plane didn't help much, since while we were there someone rifled through my bag and stole my Sapa silver trinkets from Vietnam:(

Despite these snafus we still had a great couple hours in KL. Mostly they involved wolfing down roti canai. We stayed in the Golden Triangle and ate dinner on "the food street" Jalan Alor. Malaysian cuisine is a perfect blend of Chinese, Indian, and South Asian flavors. It's also Muslim. With all those possible influences, there's still no explanation for the bacon restaurant:
The city center was packed with F-1 fans in town for the race the following day, so it was a festive atmosphere. We spent the morning walking around the art deco Central Market and Chinatown's tourist hub. Then it was a classic episode of hurry up and wait: first in F-1 traffic, then in the airport hotel lounge. So it goes.

xoxo Jessie

Apr 3, 2009

Jogya!

We spent a week in central Java. During that time my good travel karma ran out: I caught a nasty flu and went to recoperate in a guesthouse swarming with bed bugs. Nevertheless this week was a highlight of the trip despite my sorry condition. I've been avoiding writing this post because there's so much to cover it's a bit daunting.

To begin: in everything from food, music, dress, and transport, Yogyakarta was a major departure from trends and traditions in mainland south east asia. Our first night we walked the length of Malioboro and came accross these totally weird street performers (note the batik, the turbans, and the dancing skeleton):A major attraction for Aaron was the gamelan music. We caught two performances in the kraton at the Sultan's palace (Aaron also spent a morning at a gamelan rehearsal during our two day visit to Solo - I was in bed with a fever). The first featured Ramayana dancers and the second Java's famous shadow puppets (coincidentally performing the same story we watched in Luang Prabang). Each of these were really just short excepts from longer pieces that can stretch many hours (8 in the case of the shadow puppets).

The instrument was played by roughly a dozen men, mostly middle-aged, dressed in batik sarongs and turbans with pointy ear flaps, and carrying wooden daggers in their belts. Their attitude was pretty casual. Those whose gongs were not featured until many minutes into the composition sat nearby chatting and drinking tea while the others got started. Others got up for breaks mid-performance.



The Sultan's palace was an interesting spot on its own. It's carved wood decorations, tin roofs, and open air gazebos reminded me more of Hawaii than anything we've seen up until now. In the last four months we've grown used to the attention we get by virtue of being foreign and pale-skinned, but the interactions here with student groups were on a whole new level. happily for me, it was the first place Aaron was deemed equally intriguing.We also stopped in the Sultan's Water Palace (apparently the architect was killed to ensure the secrecy of the location of a hidden boudoir). But the kraton - the walled royal city- was better than either of the palaces. Inside the huge white walls a maze of residential street winds around the Sultan's quarters. The houses are modest, but their surroundings are utterly charming (as usual I'm an easy mark when it comes to bouganvillia...). Though considerably less picturesque, the streets outside the kraton were also full of foreign consepts. For starters, like Cambodia, motorbike traffic refuels at roadside stands like this one. But Jogya's known for having a pretty colorful variety of transport options. Couples can go by hand-painted bicycle rickshaw. Families (or couples with huge backpacks) can take a horse-draw carriage. Last but not least, smart money goes on the air-conditioned Trans Jogya bus line (3000 rupiah, or $.027, one way). We were in town the week before national elections (12,000 cadidates on the ballot, 125 million people voting, and only manual tabulation means we won't know who won for a couple months). That meant however we traveled we were riding alongside mobile political rallies - huge processions of motorbikes carrying party flags accross town.

Another highlight was the bird market (which actually sells bats, frogs, cats, dogs, kimodo dragons, bunnies as well): And of course, the food. To be honest, the combination of travel fatigue, the flu, and some questionable local specialties meant I wasn't totally adventurous here. We spent a ridiculous number of meals at Via Via, a traveler hangout with excellent Balinese microbrews. My favorite discoveries were street food carts shaped like boats (they sell eveything from nasi goreng to fruit shakes) and a custardy pancake called srabi.





Less appealing (except for the bragging rights) was nasi gudeg, a traditional dish made from jack fruit, preserved egg, and buffalo belly fat.
As interesting as Yogyakarta was, the best day of the week was spent out of town at the Hindu temples at Pramaban and the ancient buddhist stupa Borobudur. Prambanan has seen better days, and after Angkor we were a tough audience. Still, not too shabby: Borobudur, on the other hand, was easily a high point of the entire 7-month trip. We watched the sun rise from behind the giant smoking volvano that sits between Borobudur and Yogyakarta and quickly disolve the morning mist.Borobudur is a massive step-pyramid. The base levels are square, and covered in reliefs depicting life in 10th century Java. The top three tiers of the stupa are round, and we watched monks make a careful loop around each one on their way to the top.Stone buddhas sit inside these bell-shaped structures on the top three tiers. The morning sun lit their faces through the carved stone covers. The monks stopped at each buddha on their way around the complex.









The morning was a magical one and made the week in Java a highlight of the entire trip.

xoxo Jessie

Apr 2, 2009

The Insects of The Temples of Angkor

In the eight years since I was last here Siem Reap's tourism has exploded. So our primary concern was crowd-avoidance. Fortunately everyone else is working hard to get their money's worth. They get up to watch the sunrise over the ruins. When we finally rolled out of town around noon everyone else was eating lunch and we consistently had these wonders to ourselves. Very cool.



Aaron loves to list and order by preference our trip's experiences. The four-faced towers at Bayon were Aaron's favorite sight in the entire collection. If judged by number of photos taken, they were mine as well, though I resist the exercise in general. At any rate, this was the first place we visited in our three days in the temples, and we chose to return at the end of our last day as well.




Other famous photo-ops included the overgrown walls of Ta Prohm (in far worse shape than I remembered it):The carvings at the Leper King Terrace:And of course the featured attraction, Angkor Wat:Our lazy schedule was of greatest advantage here. We ran into a few folks at the entrance but then had the inner courtyards, reliefs, and surrounding grounds seemingly to ourselves. We saw the hordes pouring in as we made our exit. There are plenty of nice photos out there of Angkor Wat, so you get to enjoy my personal obsession with the window columns and apsara carvings:



Now as to the title of this post. Throughout this trip Aaron has spent a lot of time photographing animals instead of wonders of the world. Turtles at the Acropolis. Geese and goats at the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. This reached a kind of fever pitch in Angkor, where Aaron declared the trip worthwhile only after we met up with this Vietnamese Centipede:
So in honor of Aaron's twin delights (random creatures and listing stuff we saw), my favorite insect from Angkor was this red and gold dragonfly:
My least favorite were the cicadas. OK that's not true, because my least favorite insects everywhere are mosquitoes, cockroaches, and bed bugs. But these guys are gross and in Angkor they were sometimes so loud we were shouting to hear one another. This is not a live cicada (they're a bit shy), but his former skeleton. Like I said, gross. One benefit of the development here is the number of good meals available. The best, was this Amok-style fish (cooked in curry and coconut milk and served with morning glories over rice = $5):xoxo Jessie