wailing wall.

erf. what.

just went to the wailing wall. with zero expectations. and i’d have to say that it is the coolest part about the trip so far. yes, rivaling — and beating — petra.

huh.

maybe the reason for it is that it was more of an introspective time when otherwise the entire trip has been filled with extrospective bramblings. bramble. bumble.

hm. so. going there was pretty powerful. it felt that way. perhaps it was something about thousands — millions? — of people dumping their wishes and wills and prayers and concerns into this inanimate object… i don’t know that i believe in religion, but i certainly believe in the power of will, of souls, of connectivity. and something about that strikes me as extremely powerful, and really, really present at the wailing wall. shit, i didn’t realize WHAT the wailing wall was, or that it was even in israel. i had only heard of it by name before.

heading up to the wall, it is separated by men and women. men and women cannot pray with one another. it is customary, i guess, to walk away from the wall backwards, with your back away from it. i thought that was stupid. did not comply. maybe it was rude to say that i thought it was stupid, but i say stuff. oops.

… started walking up to the wall and the whole left side of it is the gates that separate the men from the women. alongside that are tables, with chairs, and tons of people sitting by themelves with their bibles or torahs, studying, reading, meditating. then you approach, and many people are doing the same. many are rocking back and forth, mumbling, praying, crying. … .. . even getting close to the wall felt really powerful. a looming presence. a present presence. whatever it means…

i didn’t have a prayer in mind. didn’t even know people prayed there. hell, i haven’t prayed since like, early college. i stared at the wall and considered three sentences that came to mind then and there, and kept them in my mind, and just decided to ramble out whatever else came beyond that. i forget what those three sentences are at this moment. it was almost as if i said all of these prayers and exorcized them from my soul and barely can remember fragments of them now. sherry and i were joking before approaching the wall that we would be praying about world peace and saving the environment, and funny as that is, that’s pretty much exactly the things i prayed about. albeit not in any particularly cheesy sense like that… mostly i prayed for human beins to gain understanding, and openness… to find importance in mathematics and patterns and underlying building blocks in the universe… and most of all, to understand ourselves so that we can spread that understanding outwards. evidently, myself in this stream of consciousness prayer believed that understanding was the ultimate key to, i guess, peace? there was visualizations — waves of energy, radiating outwards.

soon, sherry mentioned that she wanted to approach the wall, which is actually quite difficult considering how crowded it was. you basically had to wait a turn to get close enough to touch it. sherry went first, and came back and told me i should definitely go. i went the next time it opened up…

close to the wall, you can seriously hear wailing. from multiple directions… and even so far as multiple people away. very intense. everyone has her own style of wailing, of course… some mumble, some sob quietly, some cry noisily… .. . and it almost puts you in this trance-like state to be there, amongst all these tears and all this sorrow… again, wasn’t necessarily expecting to pray, but once i got there, i had to. leaned against the walls, and prayed… to nobody in particular… to just a universal energy force… and i prayed hard. got mazed, the physical world falling away… there was nothing but sound — sound and the fury of extending a will.

surrounded by all this sorrow, and with no plan in mind, the first words in my meditations were pretty much, “why all this sorrow” repeated over and over and over, like a mantra. it simply could not be helped. it tumbled out. and then… a general wish for people to attain what they wanted… not what they thought they wanted, but what they really truly wanted… that human beings as a whole would simply learn to go with the flow, to accept life more readily… and that that would yield a synchronicitous reality that made apparent — and granted — what was wanted. and beyond this… again… with the visualizations… a sweeping, swooping orange-tinted force, radiating outwards, scooping up everyone in the wall and bringing them inwards, and then to the entire courtyard, and then to the entire country, and then to the entire world, from a globe’s point-of-view.

what the fuck. i don’t even know. got mazed so hard.

but that is only from a spiritual aspect. later on, we went indoors and underground to check out some parts of the old town, and it was INSANE to see how far down the original streets that jesus christ SUPPOSEDLY walked on (there’s an endless amount of conjecture with no real fact…)… cause at the time of christ, to two thousand years later to 2011… debris and natural build-up puts buries the original land beneath a HUGE amount of sendiment. it’s crazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzy to actually see.

fuck. trippiest night. easy. and it also led the brain to spin off on a bunch of other tangents, including thoughts about my parents, and tons about mortality, in general, and how much i hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate fucking hate religion and wished that i had prayed for some kind of religious unification cause this shit is fucking stupid. as it goes.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESH.

hello israel / life.

i’m listening to… eets feats. (seriously, there is so much good music out there it is RIDICULOUS… .. .)… and now, elika. these are all albums that potentially need to be reviewed. drowning in a sea of them. hmmm probably going to pass on the elika now that it is being played. haha.

i’m typing this up as sherry is sleeping, because it is only 5:26am, but i can’t sleep, because i woke up with good ideas, and now the ideas have taken over my brain and i need to work to make it so! make it sooooooo! i’m waiting to be able to purchase internet but i need to call the front desk, and i wanna wait til she wakes up. the alarm is set for 5:45am. i’ve been up since 4:45am! last night we ate amazing fucking food at this hotel because the buffet was um, amazing, and had THE BEST DESSERT EVER… including this coconut cream thing and this hazelnut cream thing topped with truffle… fuck, but so fattening! i’m eating SUPER healthy — lots of vegetables and fruits and no carbs — except for the fucking delicious desserts! BLAHHH. such good dessert everywhere, it’s sickening. but after i ate all that food last night, i seriously kind of wanted to die. like, i could literally only sit at the dinner table for a really long time, unable to move. for once, we were one of the last parties out of there cause i was food coma’ing so hard. so, i don’t think i can eat dessert like that anymore, needless to say. if you can feel the unhealthy and feel your body like, unable to move to such a degree, then it’s probably a poor idea. it was funny, too, cause sherry and uncle stewart both had similar degrees of food coma; sherry got the mad giggle fits afterwards and was being really hilarious and stand-up comedian-like, and uncle stewart was answering auntie ruby’s questions and halfway through, was just like, “i ate everything here,” and motioned around the room, and never finished answering the question. haha. pretty amazing.

life is good.

in any case.
this is my first time attempting to write anything up from my trip to israel and jordan. currently, i dunno what city we are in, but we’re at the leonardo hotel in the dead sea. it’s fairly ghetto. floated in the dead sea yesterday, though, as the sun was going down, and it was a little strange, to be sure. the dead sea is five-to-six times saltier than regular ocean water, which doesn’t seem potentially all THAT harmful, but i guess if you get it into your eyeballs and shit, it burns like a motherfucker. sherry got some in my mouth and told me to try and taste a DROP… and i did. granted, it was a pretty fucking HUGE drop coming off the end of my fingertips, but that shit definitely burns your fucking tongue. it’s weird.

it also has this thing going where you’ll lift your hands out of the water, and they’re wet, yes, but not in any traditional sense. they actually feel kind of dry. it is BIZARRE. they also have indoor swimming pools with water from the dead sea, and i guess you can float in it, but i’m not sure how they regulate that so that it’s swimmable (since in the sea itself, it’s not really swimmable since you can’t really get it into your orifices without some pain). weird.

the water also burned my legs a lot!!! where i had cut myself shaving! and my face had gotten kind of dry because of the weather (and not drinking NEARLY enough water, fuck), and burned a little as a result, too. pretty weird. came back, looked at myself in the mirror, and realized i looked like hell and a half. look what the cat dragged in!

yesterday, we also went to masada, which is an old ruin of king herod’s. he had some palaces in there (king herod being the dude who ordered all babies in israel to be killed in his attempt to locate the great baby jeebus). masada is in this desert-y area, similar to the area near chan chan in peru! kinda, at least, geographically. same color dirt, same sandwiching between ocean and mountain. hot damn. you go travel the world over and there is much similarity in many places… (mom was like, “this place must be on par with macchu picchu, right?, and i was just like… dude… no way. not even bloody close!) i must say, though, israel is hands down one of the most beautiful countries i’ve been to. yesterday, we were passing this one section of the country that was the epitome of HUMBLING. that is all i can describe it as. it was jus these sandstone (?) mountains, but with tons and tons of manmade caves in them. i was just staring at them in awe FOREVER and didn’t even think about photographing them because they were just that marvelous. and then i finally decided to reach for my camera, got it out, and literally the landscape changed into desert mountainscapes. i was like WHATTTTTT. horrible timing. or purposeful timing from the universe. however you look at it… fine, universe, i won’t capture the beauty! fine!

i actually have barely been taking any photographs here. i think i’ve taken like… 175-ish so far, and we’ve been here for four days or something. maybe that sounds like a lot. i dunno. but that’s also keeping in mind that a lot of those are the same photograph, repeated, because one was blurry or whatever. as far as actual photographs goes, it’s probably about… 3/4 of that, at least.

everywhere we stop there’s these really funny explanatory history channel-esque videos, but with some of the worst narration ever. everything is like, made for old people, and kind of funny. not poorly put together or anything, but just cheesy funny, like science class display or something…

what else did we do yesterday………………………………..

before masada, we went to qu’ram, where the dead sea scrolls were found. there were some interesting paths going up into the mountains where there were caves and shit, but they were blocked off. so there wasn’t all that much to see, but there was this little ledge that was open for exploration, and we went over there and spent a good twenty? minutes there… and i was kind of in heaven! i’ve been on the hunt for a good godamned piece of petrified wood for a really, really long time, after seeing one that i fell in love with years back. i was not able to find the same one that i fell in love with — that was truly a special piece, replaced by black rock and with the wood grain very well-pronounced, still — but i did find some really awesome ones, and i found a really, really remarkable one… hands down the coolest rock i’ve ever found… which i’m going to give robby for his birthday (march 5th) just because it is extremely geometric and i KNOW that he would appreciate it. not everyone appreciates rocks, you know? but anyway. to find a huge stash of petrified wood is fucking AWESOME. none of the people i was showing the wood to were that amazed by the concept of petrified wood, but come on. just thinking about it makes me stoked beyond belief, especially when considering the darker pieces, which look as though they’ve been burned… like! COME ON! WHAT HAPPENED! SO FUCKING COOL!

ARR!

the night before that, i got four hours of sleep because i got a last minute powerpoint project from jonalayn. got $600 for like… three hours MAX of work — probably maybe like half of that of straight working. fugg, yeah. but that also led to me crashing out super fucking hard last night post dessert-binging, jesus. i literally got back, was going to do jumping jacks, i said, but i rolled into bed and never REALLY woke up again, though i did take out my contacts at one point and set me alarm, yarr. but it was like, coma sleep.

oh yeah! one funny update about yesterday! tried using a tampon for the first time ever! just because i wanted to go into the dead sea. uhhhh no thanks to those. dreaded every fucking moment of it! but it’s funny that my first time trying it is at age 27! haha. and that sherry had to teach me. aha!

argh, i just prepped all these emails to be sent and prepared to buy internet, and it was fucking busted! dammit, israel! the hotel we’re at tonight had better have internet. and reliable one! and preferably free! especially since we’re staying there for like, three evenings! if it doesn’t, i’m going to lose my shit!

gwar, gonna go eat breakfast now that i can’t use internet. so annoying!!!

just wrote a CLAPS review at least, though.

frag.

siem reap, cambodia, day three.

september 27th, 2010.
woke up and explored the downtown area, which was done and over with in like, ten secnds. siem reap is tiny. i ended up walking in some parts of town that tourists pretty much never went to, and how you could tell was that the tuk-tuk drivers –finally– left you alone, and the locals gave you the weirdest looks. on my way back, i tried to find happy pizza — which i thought was shroom pizza, but it is in fact marijuana pizza — bummer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i didn’t end up eating it — i was going to buy it for take out, but i couldn’t fucking find it on the menu, so i didn’t ask. it was also like, 10:30am or something ridiculous, and i didn’t have much of an appetite…

kept my bike for another day. after putzing around for most of the day, i decided to ride out to bayon. by the way, throughout this experience, i’d been learning to put all of my shit — camera, wallets, money, etc. — in plastic bags. that way, because i had a cloth bag (i bought two bags in vietnam. they both broke, in less than a couple days. so fail… the cloth one i was using — its zipper fell off and it could no longer close!!!!!!!!), so putting stuff in plastic bags protected the contents while i still got to utilize the bag’s utilitarian aspects. so smrt. uh huh. so bag lady. bag lady’s the name of the game.

anyway.

i didn’t take any photos this day, which felt pretty godamn good, to be honest. i just left mycamera at home, because who the hell cares, dawg. it was nice to just relax for an effing moment. i went to bayon first and drew for a while, but then i got bored and went to ta keo. i met a couple people at both temples. at bayon, i met a canadian couple who was traveling for a very, very long time (it seems like everyone we met on this trip was), and at ta keo i met a couple of locals who were working in that temple, and i also met this really young kid who drew in my notebook. more notes on him later. there were also these two japanese guys, and one of them was learning cambodian phrases from the two guides in ta keo, and he asked to learn, “how much do you cost?” haha. errrm. and i gave him this look and laugh — but i don’t think he was embarrassed…

in any case.

had some really long broken english conversations with them, and then the two guide dudes had to leave. they were rushing to get home and ran down the steps of ta keo because they know it so well, even though the steps are really steep and narrow!!!!! i stayed there, watching the 13-year-old kid draw in my sketchbook, for a while. it was pretty cool, cept then it was sunset, and the sunset was obscured by all the clouds. FAIL. this was never-ending sunset fail (the previous day was the only day i was at the complex that a sunset woulda been possible, but josh had been tired of biking). anyway, so i saw no sunset and headed down with the kid, and he showed me this back route and like, insisted on holding my hand and helping me down every step, which was weird, because he was tiny!!!!!! and then, as i was leaving, he asked for a handshake, then a hug, and then kinda seemed like he wanted a kiss, which was really fucking weird. but then he asked for a cheek kiss, “for good luck,” he said, and that as a tiny bit weird as well…………………………… but i gave it. weird. and then i hauled ass out of there.

by then, though, it was pretty godamn dark, so i was riding, and got slightly lost on the way back, and i ended up putting my bike into a tuk-tuk and then riding back home that way. it was $4 or $5, which was weak and expensive, but luckily i didn’t have the full amount of money — or i said i didn’t — so……………… yeah. whuteva. i do what i want. went back to the hostel and passed out pretty early. kind of… unintentionally. yeah. by the way, i’d been conned into buying an angkor wat guide book the previous day at the temple complex. this kid had been following me around -forever- until the $10 book (or was it $12?) went down to $4. but i only had a $20 bill (by the way, cambodians pretty much use american dollars everywhere… not that they don’t use cambodian money, but you can use american dollars just as easily), and he ran away with change, and only gave me back $15. he seemed quite pleased with himself. i told him that it wasn’t nice. and the he said something like, “good luck to you,” which is what cambodians always seem to say when they’re saying goodbye to you. which is kind of sweet, i guess. i guess i like it.

anyway. the rest of that day was a wash until xinlei came to the hostel early the next morning. i was quite impressed that i’d passed out so early and so thoroughly. guess i needed it… i had intended to be social at the hostel, but who the hell needs that anyway…

siem reap, cambodia, day two.

september 26th, 2010.
taking josh’s notes and expounding on them, again… lazy.

Woke at 4:30 and biked out to Angkor Wat to catch the sunrise, but it was obscured by clouds

we were also late. the bike ride was quick, though, because we were relatively hauling ass, trying to get there in time. we still failed. ah, well. angkor wat isn’t frankly that cool anyway. this is not to say the complex is not fucking awesome. i’m only talking angkor wat — the main temple. it does have some cool bas-reliefs, though.

there were also monkeys… you know how i feel about monkeys… monkeys can do no wrong. monkeys make girls and boys happy. monkeys, monkeys, monkeys. especially if they’re sniffing butts…

josh was a newb and fell sucker to an expensive-ass breakfast and this horrible effing hat. well, he bought a different one, but his fucking, melted, basically, in one day of heat, humidity, and biking. SO FAIL.

cool bridge showing creation myths.

loveth the mossy water float.

biking like a champ. model style.

Biked to Bayon and explored the temple there. It was a temple with many faces

when we first got to bayon, it was raining. it was AMAZING. made it my favorite, although the beauty was not captured in these photos below, and ta keo later beat out bayon as my favorite temple. so it goes.

Next went to Preah Khan and was given an interesting tour by a local who asked for 10 bucks. We gave him 3.50.

but that’s pretty much because we literally didn’t have any money. high-maintenance whore!

garuda, my favorite bird-man!!!!!!! mythical! yeah!

ganesh, all cute and shit at preah khan!

preah khan had hindu and buddhist features. really interesting. the difference can be seen in the legs of the figures and their prayer postures. some buddhas were carved out of the walls (chopped out, really) and they were sometimes replaced with hindu-postured prayer-fools.

Biked to Ta Keo which is the really tall temple with very high and steep steps.

almost didn’t go into it. were getting templed out. glad we did…

Next was Ta Prohm which was a temple over run by trees that grew directly on the sandstone structure, sometimes holding the buildings together with it’s roots.

this is the “tomb raider” temple. everyone digs it so much. i thought it was alright after our awesome preah khan tour…

the old trees WERE cool, though…

i took this spider shot a MILLION TIMES. what was annoying is every shot i would take, someone else would be there, waiting to copy it. and i just thought. man, there’s no way you’d typically want to take this shot (the one below here)… you’re only taking it because i am. no one takes crappy shots like this. i mean, not no one, but barely anyone appreciates this kinda crap… kinda obnoxious.

After Ta Prohm, biked 13 km to Angkor Wat and another 10 or so back to town. My ass hurts from biking on a teeny tiny bike with a teeny tiny, barely padded seat. Dropped of bikes in front of a store and took a tuk tuk to the Old Market for some cheap eats and then took another tuk tuk to the bus station to get my bus ticket back to HCMC.

josh complained a LOT about his ass hurting. i guess his bike was really small, but c’mon, you were a marine, fool! he also took SO MANY SHOWERS. like, literally, three a day. he was definitely the diva between us. i was just a dirty slob (as usual). we also met a guy — an engineering student — on the way back to our hostel from the grounds. i gave him my phone number so we could go watch the sunset on bakhaeng hill the next day, but he never called! stOod up!!!!

After, went back to town and got a Dr. Fish foot pedicure and an oil massage, once again from a guy. I think it’s because Vivian was there I keep getting guys as masseuses. Whatever, better for me I suppose.

josh paid for this massage cause i was getting broke, and he wanted an oil massage but didn’t want to get one by hisself. the place was slightly seedy-seeming, and it was really unrelaxing because it felt like the chick was fucking KICKING!! MY!! ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and also……… there were these really godamn loud people in the main entrance room who kept asking the workers shit like whether they had boyfriends or not, and i expected them to be super shady dudes when we went out, but it was like two dudes and a chick, generally well-vibed, although the main dude (a belgian who spoke english — the other ones were russian and didn’t) did give me some weird looks. but he was generally friendly and just asking basic questions about whether the massage was good or not. still, though. it was really, really, really non-relaxing.

phnom penh, cambodia, day two.

josh’s notes, from which i will expound, cause i’m lazy. i just ate a buncha chocolate. feel kinda sick. whatever.

september 24th, 2010.

Observation: Phnom is more modern than HCMC and very much more westernized. Prices are the same as in the US for most items.

yeah it seemed more expensive.

started off by going to the main palace or something or whatever. it was nice, although there was some special procession or something going on, so a lot of it was cut off from public visits. bummer dummer mummer! but it’s fine. got our fill. one place had this really amazing music playing, with female dancers and stuff… the music was great. but we were roped off from really being able to see, unfortunately… bummer. dummer. mummer.

people thought i was positively crazy with taking photographs of this ornamental gate… c’mon, shit is cool. man, i’m fat (side note).

next up, we went to the killing fields. the tuk-tuk driver we’d met the previous day, john, brought us. here he is! he said that he worked for a non-profit as a driver before the economy turned bad, and he had to turn to tuk-tuk driving to fix it.

The Killing Fields is a stark and horrifying monument to the depravity of mankind. At tall tower in the middle of the grounds dominates the scene. Upon further inspection, it is shown to be filled with hundreds of skulls and bones that were all that remained of the victims of the Khmer Rouges bloody cleansing. Millions of Cambodian intellects, upper class, foreigners and peasants alike were systematically slaughtered in the most brutal ways, in order to save bullets used in the battle against the Vietnamese. It was sobering to see that mankind is capable of such depravity.

yeah. we suck ass… photos from the killing fields, below:

the compound the killing fields was in was really quite nice. park-like. nice.

pretty yummy meal, though i’m pissed we ate it because it was in a touristy area. josh’s fault for asking the driver if there was anything to eat nearby before we got out of the tourist place. it was decently priced, though, because the driver basically told them we wanted cheap eats. it was still more expensive than like, the $0.50 we paid for some meals later…

this kid kept coming out of this building, waving “bye” at nobody, going back in, coming back out, repeat.

S-21 was a museum dedicated to the school turned interrogation and detention center. It was run by a Khmer named Dung, who is one of the surviving members of the Khmer Rouge’s leadership and one of the only ones to admit such atrocities occurred. I’m amazed that after all these years, the captured members still haven’t completed their trials. There were many pictures there of the victims that passed through S-21 on their way to the killing fields. Many were small children, infants, even mothers with babies. It was very depressing, but we need reminders of what we are capable of in order to prevent it from happening again. Those who forget are doomed to repeat the past.

some photos from that. this place was pretty amazing and well-worth a visit:

a prisoner.

The Russian market actually has nothing Russian about it. Instead it is filled to the brim with touristy shops and souvenirs. I spent a pretty penny snapping up cheap trinkets to take home. I could probably have bargained more, but it was all in good fun and a few cents is going to make less of an impact on me than on the indigenous.

yeah, i didn’t do that, but i did buy a couple presents…

Ate at rumerg and had fried tarantula

apparently i got confused and wrote about this the previous day. don’t care to change this. oops. oh wait, i just realized what we did the night before for dinner. we went to eat thai noodle house (boat noodle) with some friends of vincent moon’s — local cambodian filmmaker kids. it was fun and stuff, but we never saw them again really.

Massage for 5 bucks, one whole hour

we found a particularly good place that really wasn’t at all shady, which was pretty impressive! my foot massage was $4. mostly it was a good way for her to scratch my bug bites… my feet were really fucking disgusting that evening. no lie. (note to self: why did i just pound all those chocolate chips…)

Rubies wine bar where we waited for British expats that never showed. Being late must be fashionable in this region.

yes, this happened.

Roach flinging

there was a roach in our dorm room. it was running all over the place and i was trying to catch it in this snack box (dehydrated seasoned broccoli snack! so good!) and josh fucking tried to be a man and instead of catching it, like a proper man, he threw it at me! i was like, “WHAT THE FUCK?? SERIOUSLY??” and we couldn’t find it for a while. that motherfucker.

siem reap, cambodia, day one.

september 25th, 2010.

we got into siem reap at about 1:00pm after a fairly grueling bus ride. lots of stops, including one which yielded for josh some crickets and spiders (to put in the mouth). score. i guess. or something. in any case, we had tried tarantulas the night before or whatever (who would have imagined we’d see them again so soon, and for so cheap, after paying $6 for three of them at a fancy restaurant?). josh really liked tarantula but said crickets were pretty gross, because they were “gummy” and tasted more “earthy”, i think, whereas tarantulas are just like soft-shelled crabs or prawns or something.

this is a turtle. i have no idea what the fuck is going on beneath the shell of this turtle. what the hell is going on?!!

in any case.

i called this driver friend of andy’s friend justin, because i assumed he would be pretty cool because he was a pal of justin’s. not so, really. he was pretty awkward and not really at all anything like i was expecting; i imagine the hostel guy who he talked to before he found our room felt similarly, because when i saw him later, he said, “who was that guy who came to find you?” and seemed to think it was weird. anyway. justin’s driver pal didn’t really talk to me at all, but i’m finding this to be the case with many a cambodian male, when i am also with a male. guess they don’t want to come off like they’re hitting on me or something, maybe…?

on the bus to siem reap, they were showing cambodian music videos on the tele. there was one in particular where a chick was on a dock, and a guy was being a creeper / lurkoid in the background; we concluded that — man, cambodians must be some passive dudes. and it seemed more or less to be the case. anyway. the dude we hired was driving a car, which was ball, because it was weird going from ac to heat and back again or whatever. he charged us ten bucks for a half day, which is like what a tuk-tuk would charge for a full day, so that was balls, too. but he took us like, 20km out of town, to the floating villages, cause josh wanted to go. unfortunately, the boat tour of the floating villages cost $15, which was a bit balls. although “balls”-mentioning is strictly money-related. don’t get me wrong; the car was -definitely- unpreferred, but the boat was pretty great.

two boys who’d grown up on the lake took us around, and one would say stuff to the driver, and the driver would answer him fairly rudely. class thing, i think. in fact, the driver kept making “classist” comments. like — when he saw the village kids swimming in the water of the lake, he would say stuff about how it was dirty. the dude’s name was seiha, and he just kinda rubbed me the wrong way, man. dislike. as far as the boys, and the boat, though… basically, the boat used to be government property, but some company privatized it. as a result, they charge a flat, non-negotiable rate of $15 per person to tour the lake, but they use the money and build roads, open schools, etc.

<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_RqrWKVC07xM/TLP0NklslyI/AAAAAAAAYlk/NT1vMn2VzH0/s720/_DSC6448.JPG".

the lake was basically a lot of people who live their lives on the water, and the water grows or shrinks according to what period of the year it is (wet or dry season). there's water still during the dry season, but i think it's like 10x smaller or something. still, though, they have EVERYTHING on these boat-house-shops; they have tv repair shops, basketball courts, schools (for orphans, and language schools), churches — the whole gamut. it's pretty godamn amazing, and "nomadic", but on water. it's brilliant. there were two kids with us; the boat driver who didn't speak (and had his face completely covered in the traditional cambodian scarf) and the "tour guide" kid who said he didn't get money other than tips. he would basically work as a tour guide to practice his english and get free schooling. seemed like a good kid, and i got very good vibes from him (even if seiha, our car dude, didn't). he also let me drive the boat for a bit, and it's basically really simple, with the pedal rigged up to a rope which is tied to the engine somehow. it was easy. like driving a car, or something.

after the boat tour, we took a trip back to town and then went to buy the ticket at angkor wat. if you buy a ticket after 4:30pm, you get a “free sunset” — meaning, you can enter the grounds of the complex without it counting as a day. so, we went to angkor wat and attempted to watch the sunset, but it was fairly underwhelming because it was a sunny day. we left early and just headed back to our hostel, which was this really, really amazing hostel called jasmine family lodge (or jasmine hostel). it’s slightly outside of the main city center, but it cost only $2.50 a night and was bloody amazing! i stayed there five nights; josh and xinlei each stayed two. so. so. so. good. it was like a jungle bungalow. amazing!!!

that evening, we wandered downtown, i think, and just got a bite to eat. food is pretty cheap in siem reap if you stick to the “local” food. we went to this one particular stall, on this island in the middle of the downtown area. it was extremely amusing, because it’s open on all sides and it’s excellent people-watching. everyone in siem reap speaks another language, at least, and a lot of them speak japanese because there are SO many japanese tourists. the stall we went to had this super cute waitress, and she was quite entertaining and definitely hit it off with this huge group of japanese tourists. so it goes.

hyperbolic.

quick post.
practice of the brain.
long time no write.
hoi an, vietnam am in.
best city of vietnam so far.
(which still isn’t as good as either city in cambodia.)

only 5 more days left.
lots of journaling to do.
not that many photographs to chronicle, actually, though.
got a bit tired of photographing.
only taking it when it counts.
only when inspired.
no bullshit.
anyway, there’s not that much to take pictures of, anyway.
even my angkor wat album is fairly slim.
was also limited to 8gb of memory card space.
which is a lot when you’re not shooting in raw.
but i started out shooting in raw.
gonna go back to it, maybe.
seems i don’t really need the space.
yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh dawg.

phnom penh, cambodia, day one.

woke up bright and early to take off to phnom penh from ho chi minh city. stumbled outta bed, went to get a couple pastries to eat, and jumped on the bus. i imagined that it would be like peruvian busses where you drive like, twelve hours, and don’t stop to eat, but i totally underestimated that it was a tourist bus, or something, or whatever. they stop like a million times, and it’s pretty much unnecessary to get food beforehand. but oh, well. i tried to take some photographs of some food vendors who were vending near the place the bus was leaving. one was totes pissed and moved. the other was amused and wanted to see the photo.

anyway. the trip was like, six hours or something, and at the border, the border crossing was insane! the cambodian side was more orderly, but the vietnamese side was complete and utter chaos. there were “lines” but not really, but luckily the bus operator took care of everything visa-related, including the purchase of the visa at the border. i think if one were to go by oneself it would have been majorly confusing, and one would have gotten lost in the throngs of tourists who were also confused. like, there were metal detectors and stuff just sitting there, not being used, and there pretty much were no lines; it was just like, a crowd… bizarro world.

when we finally crossed over into cambodia, it felt like a world of difference almost instantly. my god, the cambodian countryside is fucking *BEAUTIFUL*. so. beautiful. we’re talking flooded rice fields with farmers and water buffalo and stuff. it’s really, really nice. and people just look so rad wearing the traditional cambodian headscarves or whatever; that shit looks ILLLLLLLLLLLLL. they wear it in so many styles. i mean, i just think it’s cool that a nearly entire face-covered outlaw look is cool and acceptable.

double piggies on his bike…

so we got into town and checked into nomads, and the hostel is okay, but they try and charge you for every godamn thing, which i am not particularly downz with. soon thereafter, we explored a bit and ate a meal at this stand which was serving soup noodles. we could not communicate with the girls at that stand whatsoever, and just did a lot of pointing and they did a lot of smiling. the soup they gave us was chicken broth i think (d’oh), with all sorts of veggies in it, and slices of fish, but also… blood!! i didn’t eat the blood, but josh ate everything — good for him!

after that, we continued on and found this street with ALL OF THIS! REALLY! AMAZING! STREET! FOOD! and we were kind of like… fuckkkk. but oh well. what can you do? meant to go back there to eat but never got a chance (although i’m going back to phnom penh soon and might be able to after all).

then we went to the national museum, which was almost about to close, and wandered around there for a bit. it was nice-ish, and i followed a chinese tour group around for a little bit, eavesdropping and then playing translator guide, but then they made me feel awkward after i asked if it was okay if we followed them around, so we stopped. the place featured a lot of the ruins which were pulled from the angkor archaeological park, so i guess maybe it woulda been better to go to the museum afterwards so that contextually in my head it would have been cemented better, but whatever.

got kicked out of there and hurried to the stadium to try and catch the sunset dancing group aerobics! yeah! it was amazing to be able to see the sunset from within an asian city — seems damn near impossible with how polluted they usually are.

anyway, the group aerobics/dancing is nutty. it’s like, just masses and masses of human beings dancing coordinated dances to music, and they each pay 1,000 real a month (is it a month?) to pay for the facilities — that is, the music and speakers and instructors. it’s pretty crazy, and the dancing got pretty advanced at times, and you just had to wonder, “how the fuck does everyone know how to dance to this shit?” it was gnar. beyond that, there was a LOT of dancing to korean music! which was the weiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirdest thing. but i must say, their choices of songs to dance to were… pretty good, generally speaking, and very worldly. like some of the djs were playing indian pop afterwards, too. interesting!! but yeah, korean pop is all the rage.

afterwards, we followed this guy (i forget his name) who went to the stadium with his two kids, who also dance there. his younger son was like four or something (in the pic), and danced like a pro! knew all the moves and was like impromptu doing some! the dad worked selling clothes and his sister owned a clothing shop. anyway, we followed them to the mall which was right next door to the place, and walked around briefly and used the bathroom. then potong met me up outside, and i handed off his printer ink to him. and i think maybe he wanted to hang out, but i wanted to check out the supermarket in the mall, so i told him that, and he left. oOps? met his new wife and his sister-in-law, who seemed really young and was cute.

we took the motorbike home from there (as opposed to a tuk-tuk) which was sOoOo fun!!!!!!!!!! it ruled, although it was kinda leg-numbing, too, but it’s amazing that the bikes can fit three grown-ass adults.

let’s see… my timeline is all fucked up. not sure what we did after that. gotta consult the josh cause he took notes.

went to some restaurant (boat house?) because josh wanted to go there and eat fried tarantula (!!!), and i had lok lak, this traditional steamed fish dish. i think it mighta been the national dish or something. it was pretty good, but it was really tiny considering it was kinda expensive. this place was a “nice” restaurant run by street kids, and they were taught pretty interesting manners… one of the interesting parts was that they insisted on putting all the silverware from the right side of you. weird. i just tried the legs of the tarantula cause i was too pussy to eat the body. it was quite crispy and shrimp or soft-shelled-crab-like… josh was really, really into it. i was freaking out prior to eating it, and the workers were looking at me hardcore!

we stopped by a hostess bar or whatever, one of those bars where women stop and drink with you. it was next door to our hostel. josh opened the door first, and the roomful of girls got really excited, and then i followed. i didn’t really get a good look at their faces, but josh said their faces totally fell and they got this WTF look. we sat down and ordered a couple drinks (i drank half a beer), and one girl pretty much just talked to me and nobody talked to josh, haha, and he was kinda like boo! about that, i think! we shot a couple games of pool but josh really *cough* sucked *cough* so we stopped shortly thereafter and then just went to bed, i think. woooooooooooooo.

ho chi minh city, vietnam, day three.

day three of ho chi minh city definitely made me wonder: why did we stay here for so long, again? not to say that the day was completely un-fun, because it wasn’t really, but it’s just kind of pointless. or at least this became apparent after we went to cambodia. ho chi minh city just doesn’t seem to have that much culture or personality, other than one of really hectic, crazy traffic.

we started off by going to eat pho at pho 24. correction: josh ate pho and i drank a bowl of broth with an egg in it. that part was good but the pho was quite different from what we eat. pho 24 had been recommended to us by the hostel people, but later on, a guy who sold us our bus tickets, named thai, said that it was not so good. shrug.

that was pretty early on, and from there, we went shopping around for bus tickets. compared prices at a buncha places, and soon it was all about the same price, but there was one place with a really hilarious dude named thai, and as soon as we met him, we were like, “alright, we’re buying here.” it was $8 to get to phnom penh and he was so fucking flaming. and his english was spectacular even though it was self-taught (mostly the case with everyone, i feel like), and he certainly worked us out of money by having us pre-buy our tickets to just about everything. bad idea? maybe. it was certainly more expensive than it would have been otherwise, but oh bloody hell well.

beyond that, we ate these really fucking amazing cream puffs at this one place… mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

and then we took the #1 bus — super easy — to go down to chinatown. chinatown was greatly lacking in chinese restaurants, which was honestly kind of a bummer for me. what can you do, though. (side note: i want some korean food. in my mouth. right now.) we just basically walked around binh tay market, which is a tourist attraction, for some reason, because all it is is a market which sells bulk products to locals. like. what do they call it? wholesale. yeah.

anyway. like i said. boring. there were temples and stuff, and we made a loose plan to meet up with edgar, but he never showed up. not much to speak of, man.

later that evening, we went to eat at this restaurant in the touristy portion… or at least, josh ate. i just hung out and drank a coconut shake, which was good and dandy. yeeeeeeeeeeah! yeah? yeah. okay.

ho chi minh city, vietnam, day two.

woke up at 7:00am and grabbed some grub from this street vendor next door… basically just noodles with steamed vegetables and fried egg. so good!! and it was 15,000 dong, which was kinda expensive and i’m pretty sure that was the foreigner rate. but whuteva.

in other news. this guesthouse is totally like, like, i said, living in my grandparents’ house or something. come back and lady is sleeping on the couch, etc. the culture is super interesting. you walk down the alleyways and everything is just OPEN — you can see into people’s living rooms, where their entire families are just doing their things, babies crying, parents eating, whuteva, whuteva, whuteva. fascinating. our luxury of having alone time is totally a luxury! weird, man. weird to think about. but even so, it reminded me of taiwan when i first got here, but taiwan doesn’t have any kind of openness like that. money difference? probably?

anyway.

went to tour shortly thereafter on a tour bus. got two pairs of these funny reflective sunglasses — raybans — huk — and unintentionally ripped the seller off. he looked sOo sad when we were leaving, but there was a lot of miscommunication about u.s. dollars versus vietnamese dong. whuteva. :/

anyway. the tour. took a forever-long drive and made one of those obligatory, “we’re going to sell you shit!” tour stops at this place where people made pottery with eggshell and mother of pearl. it was minimally cool — at least the depressing production part — but the actual store we were at for way-too-fucking-long. and i was really bored out of my miiiiiiziiiiiiiiind.

when we finally got to the cao dai temple, we had only like, a little over a half hour there. pretty much not worth the three-and-a-half-hour-or-whatever drive it took to get there. it was fine and all, and their temple was cool, and the religion was interesting — it basically combines beliefs of a whole bunch of religions and approaches religion in general from a rather intellectual standpoint, quoting philosophers and great literary geniuses along the way (at least this was my understanding, however brief) — but it isn’t all that much to look at when you visit. whatever, though.

then lunch! i just got some veggie spring rolls and made out like a bandit! got a whole buncha plates with my vegetarian meal whereas the meat-eaters got like, one. i win. there are some restaurants which all share the same like, signs, and i wonder if they are government-subsidized or something. honestly unsure.

cu chi tunnels were next, and they showed us a super propagandistic film before we started actually exploring the premises. basically, what the cu chi tunnels are is a stronghold for the vietcong in southern vietnam when the united states military was trying to take over the area. it was a series of tunnels that spanned through 200m when you count all three levels of it… the first level had weird stuff like meeting rooms and kitchens and junk, and even a honeymoon suite (which was different because instead of being a square room, it was a triangular room, which was considered “special” because they knew that triangular rooms were stronger, which leads one to wonder, “why wouldn’t they just have made every room a triangular room?” but truly, there seemed no answer. but i digress). the second level was for communication and the third level was for weaponry or something, and also connected to the underground wells (parallels with the cappadoccia caves in turkey!). there was also a section in the cu chi tunnels where you can shoot weapons like m16s and ak47s, but the bullets are something like 40,000 dong each, which is like, $2 each, and who wants to shoot automatic weapons at that price? insanities!!!! no one partook, i do not think. also went into one of the tunnels briefly, and people were like, freaking out about how it was a lot of exercise to go in them and how it was hot and stuff, and all we had gone was 20m, and 20m is literally –nothing–.

next up, more bus rides, on which i passed out hard-fucking-core. was so fragging tired.

got back and went to the night market, where we got some fat eats. the night market was nothing really like i was expecting — i’ve been spoiled by taiwan — because it was quite small. the food stalls were good, though, and we had a lovely meal in which i ate bitter melon, of all things, fried with eggs and served with this sesame oil and soy sauce sauce, and by god, i kind of loved it. i ate bitter melon and kind of loved it; go fucking figure!

beyond that, just lots of miscommunication with edgar and having a hard time getting ahold of him with no payphones around and no cell phone :[