What I did on my summer vacation...

Visiting Thorfinn and enjoying some Kriek Beer at a Brussels café. French fries not pictured.



Day trip to the medieval town of Brugges, Belgium.


Bytur i København på cykle. We biked to the flashy new opera house situated across the harbour from Amalienborg.


Beach day at Amagerstrand. It only rained a little.


Keeping everybody in check.

Ida

This is Ida Brun. She was a notable Danish ballet dancer from the 19th century. During kartoffleferie (fall break) in '99 I spent five days at Thorvaldsen's Museum at an art camp trying to make her head out of clay. Unfortunately in the decade since, my Ida has lost her nose and is suffering from a severe case of cracked skin. I was happy to find marble Ida in much better condition on my latest trip to the museum.

Sankt Hans

Yesterday was the ultimate Danish summer day.
The day was clear, blue and relatively hot for Denmark.
The deer in Dyrehaven meandered the fields in front of the hermitage as if they were posing for a guldalder painting.
We stopped for lunch in a beautiful old mill village.
And it was Sankt Hans. So the evening featured a bonfire in Bernstoffsparken and a large gathering of Danes singing nationalistic songs.


Dyrehaven.

Lunch.

On The Street

Harem pants is a trend on fire in Cph. They were also extremely popular among the backpacker set of SEA. Another point for globalization -or should that be minus point?

<3

"Agreement Street" dotted with a heart.

Domestic Goddess

I am honing my skills as a seamstress and cook. Well honing may be a little extreme. First consider, in the last 16 months I've cooked a proper supper approximately once (this largely due to a severe lack of essentials i.e. an oven). Now that I am cooking meals on a regular basis I'll be appearing on Top Chef in no time. But still, perhaps resuscitating is a more accurate term.

My seamstressing has been in reaction to the arrestingly high price of doing pretty much anything in Cph especially shopping which I now consider a purely spectator sport. I have thus turned to the domestic sphere in which I try to copy designer bags I see on my "sightseeing" outings.

Now I have loads of entertainment for those hail storm filled days (of which there have been 2 since my arrival, btw).

How civilized

In København I've been spending my time visiting spectacular museums. It's nice being in a city where famous stuff is kept. Actually, it feels a little decadent. Also, as an added bonus it's an activity you can do in the rain.

A rare sunny evening at Louisiana opening night of "Arkitecturens Fremtiden er GRØN!" (Architecture's future is GREEN).

Brown Bread

Being out of Asia feels awesome. I had a great time. It was a wicked adventure. I will definitely go back. But, right now, I'm am totally psyched to be out of Asia.

It had been sixteen months since I'd eaten brown bread. I find it totally thrilling I can eat rye bread every day and it doesn't taste remotely sugary nor does it contains ridiculous ingredients such as whole corn kernels or red bean paste posing as chocolate. Give me a week and I'll be longing for delicious spicy dishes.

Having been reunited with my dear computer I've uploaded photos of my travels: here, here, here, here, and here.

Aaaaaaah

My last week in Thailand is going to be totally self indulgent. While traveling I was really quite disciplined with my money. Generally I was very good at sticking to $20/day or less. Now that I've made it to the end of the trip I've decided to enjoy a bit of what Bangkok has to offer. NOT the seedy stuff (get your mind out of the gutter). Rather, Bangkok has great spa treatments: Thai massage, oil massage, foot massage, facial, mani- pedicures etc all for cheap cheap cheap. Tomorrow, though, is shopping day. It's going to be a good week. :-)

Driven Out!

It was a manic decision. But we needed to leave Laos. We tried to like it, but in the end Laos just didn't do it for us. Maybe we're just tired of traveling. Or perhaps there is only so much sticky rice a person can handle. But what ultimately made us leave were the ants.

They invaded at night. In the morning they were everywhere. Even in our beds as mosquito nets are completely useless against ants. We spent two hours murderously cleaning out our packs. We became increasingly vexed by the situation, and by association Laos, and decided it was definitely time to go to Bangkok.

A Note About Tuk-Tuks

*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP* (a loud and obnoxious clap probably best used to scare a raccoon from your garbage cans or in some other similar human-animal interaction.)

I glare (through my sunglasses) in the man's general direction. Though I know he can't see me it makes me feel better.

"HEY LADY! YOU WANNA TUKTUK!?!?!??!"

What do you think? I think to myself probably more bitterly than the situation really requires. I'm walking towards Pub Street. It's about 20 feet. Do I really need a tuk tuk?!

"WHERE YOU GOING?"

Not really any of your business.

"TUKTUK!?TUKTUK!?"

Whatever happened to hailing a tuk-tuk when you need a tuk-tuk?
It's not really an impulse decision.
You either need a tuk tuk or you don't need a tuk tuk.
I am aware of the possibility of taking a tuk tuk.

"TUKTUK PLEASE?"

Gaah!!! As soon as I get to Bangkok I am making a t-shirt: I DON'T NEED A FREAKING TUK-TUK!

For three weeks, whenever I left my guesthouse, a restaurant, store, or go anywhere near the outside world I'd go through this interaction at least a half dozen times. Today, at the Pakse International Airport, there wasn't a single tuk-tuk for hire. I'm serious. Zero. Nada. None. It's like they don't have tuk-tuks in Laos, which is obviously just silly. It was a totally freaky experience.

One More Week

I don't really want to leave. Julia doesn't really want to leave. So why leave?

This evening at around 7 pm Julia had a magnificent brainwave for a fundraiser for New Hope. At 8 pm we had changed our flight to Laos giving us an extra week in Siem Reap. I know it may appear we've gone a little mental for this organization. But honestly, is that bad?

Julia's idea involves our kids, simple art projects, her friend's gallery, her brother's band, and hopefully a whole lot of revenue for New Hope. The finer points have yet to be nailed down (they'll probably be formed and fueled by many ice coffees over the weekend).

What tipped the scales, really, was our walk through the village today. The school itself is in the "better part of town" meaning the buildings have walls and roofs. About 100 meters down the same road, the shacks are made primarily of palm leaves, walls are optional. "Kitchen" is used to refer to the one pot in a household -wherever it happens to be put down.

We've seen the same kids come to school every day for a week. They all wear the same thing everyday and they are all pretty grubby. In a classroom setting it is more difficult to tell who comes from a poor family and who comes from a desperately poor family. It's a different story out in the village. It's easy to see that the family living in a corrugated steel building (four walls and a roof) is far better off than the mother and her kids squatting under s palm leaf roof with no walls.

We saw how much rice families had to feed 4-9 people for the next six days. Not much. Malnutrition is rampant. We saw a 14 month old baby no bigger than a healthy 6 month old. Most infuriating of all, the Cambodian government actively bans, and will destroy, vegetables grown on their land (the majority of the huts are essentially squatting on government land).

Here's why I am staying. Kids from sponsored families were so obviously so much healthier and better off than kids with no sponsor. Considering the miniscule cost to keep a family alive we can't not at least try.

New Hope Community Center

I've spent four days at the New Hope Community Center. This NGO operates within a very poor community living on the doorstep of Angkor Wat. Its HQ is a former "karaoke" bar (brothel) now a community center. Three rooms are dedicated to teaching Khmer and English. There is one computer room (they have Internet on Fridays), a kitchen and a beauty room to teach practical skills the students can use to find jobs. A free clinic on campus provides basic health care and medicines. One of the most important roles New Hope plays in this community is organizing sponsors, via their webpage, to help families in critical condition receive 15 kg of rice a month.

For two days I worked as an English teacher. The lessons I taught were very similar to those I taught in Korea but the experience at the school has been extremely different. Many of the kids get to school by peddling a grownup bicycle, about 5 times too big for them, with one kid on the back, one kid on the front, and one barely touching the pedals with their feet. Few of them are wearing shoes. But they are a smiling bunch of kids extremely motivated to learn.

More volunteers arrived on Tuesday and I gave up my class to do some admin work. The last two days I have dedicated to writing profiles of families in need from the community. These profiles will be posted to their webpage and hopefully somebody will sign up to be their sponsor. Today I'll be going with a Khmer New Hope volunteer into the village to collect more stories.

On Monday, we all got a stark reminder of how close these kids are living to starvation. Over the weekend a little boy in the kindergarten class (the class we made balloon animals with on Friday) ate poisonous toad eggs and died. Of the four kids who ate the eggs one died, one is still in hospital and two have returned to their families. There was an emergency assembly at school to tell all the little kids never ever to eat eggs they find and if they are hungry to come to the school and they will be given food.

On Tuesday, a woman showed up at the school sobbing uncontrollably. Her neck bore red marks from her husband's hands where he had tried to strangle her. She had obviously been beaten and was clearly in a lot of pain. As far as I understand the situation, they are getting a divorce but the man showed up demanding she give him 2000 riel (equivalent to 50 cents US). We called the police but they were busy. They told us, as an NGO, we could take a statement from the woman. Finally a policeman showed up but it appears all he accomplished was to force the man to "take care"of his wife. It seemed like an extremely dodgy resolution to force a batterer to be in close contact with his victim.

Teaching feels like a side note to the drama that passes through New Hope on a daily basis. Though I definitely recognize its importance. It's been an eye-opening experience here at New Hope and I will endeavor to continue my support of this organization after I leave Cambodia.

Dr. Beatocello

Dr. Beat (pronounced be-at) Richner has opened 6 children's hospitals in Cambodia. He has developed a system in which he can provide free medical care and medicine to his patients. He is doing great work for the children of Cambodia. To support his hospitals he relies on private donations and receives some support from the Cambodian and Swiss governments. I learned about his work from a provocatively named documentary "Dr Beat and the Passive Genocide of Children." Dr. Beatocello is the stage name of this Swiss doctor who believes poor children in poor countries deserve the same medical care as kids in richer countries. I went to his concert last Saturday night to hear him play his cello. Though he played two of the shortest pieces I have ever heard I believe his cause is a good one. Learn more at his website.

Julia and Julia Teachers

Julia Teacher is back! In the volunteer edition. Next week Julia Teacher 1 and Julia Teacher 2 will be helping out at the New Hope School on the outskirts of Siem Reap.

Today we showed up for some orientation which translated into making 75 balloon dogs, and playing a variety of my favorite games from Korea includin 7UP and hangman though sadly no hokey pokey.

The downside of teaching is the hours. We work from 2-6pm which happens to be the hottest time of the day during the hottest month of the year in Cambodia. It is unbelievably hot. By 2:30 I had drenched my T-shirt in sweat. It does, though, feel really good to have purpose to my day more than hunting down food/lodging and the occasional temple.

The Streets Are Full of Water

Yesterday was without a doubt The Best Palace Visit Ever.

The grand palace here is of the same sparkly-gold spire variety of that in Bangkok. The crowds are fewer and the gardens are greater. But the weather was incredible!

Property owners and tuk tuk drivers may not agree with me on this, but yesterday's monsoon rocked my socks. There was so much rain in ~45 mins (combined with poor drainage systems) that the palace grounds and the streets of Phnom Penh flooded! On several occasions I found myself wading through knee high black water trying very hard not to think of terrible water born diseases. As it happened, after the storm, our hostel was in the middle of a lake. It took one foolhardy but awesome tuk tuk driver to discover an alternate and less submerged route back to our hostel and shower. Best. Palace. Visit. Ever.

Man on cell phone in front of the Grand Palace.

Vietnam

It happens every time. Whenever I have moderate-high expectations of a place I am inevitably disappointed. If, on the other hand, I have rock bottom expectations I am usually pleasantly surprised. I understand that if you expect nothing and get something you feel pretty happy. However, in the case of Vietnam I was braced for the worst and got the best.

Street food: fried tofu with mint leaves and white noodles.

Hanoi was a very pretty city with quite insane traffic. I met Julia as planned at a hostel in the Old Quarter and we spent our first couple days in Vietnam practicing walking at a consistent speed across lanes of possessed scooter drivers. We indulged in various types of street food, namely a lot of fried tofu and mint leaves. Discovered a very pleasing, and happily widespread, cafe culture. To get our dose of culture we visited the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh (raising the number of dead people I saw in a week to 2). Experienced incredible propaganda at the prison that held John McCain as a POW (apparently being a POW at Ha Long prison meant it was like Xmas everyday). And took in a water puppet show.

Halong Bay was one of the most talked up sights in Vietnam. To be honest for us it was one of the most disappointing. It was quite expensive to get there as you are almost obliged to take a tour. It was really cold and I didn't have proper clothes on me. We went on a kayak trip from hell -though did see some nice caves. It was nice but not all that.

Sapa, on the other hand, is all that and more. To think we were seriously considering skipping it all together! Sapa is the name of a town in the northern mountains close to the Chinese border. We took a very comfortable sleeper train to Lau Cai and a minibus up into the mountains to Sapa. It poured our first day and we quickly decided to check into a hotel (into the nicest room I've stayed in to date at $5 each per night).

Many of Vietnam's ethnic minorities live up in the mountains farming rice and other things. In Sapa hordes of Hmong women come to town wearing traditional indigo dyed coats with intricately embroidered sleeves to sell bracelets and other trinkets. It took quite a while to figure out the best way to check out the surrounding area. We finally settled on a 2 night/3 day guided trek with a local guide. Our guide Vu is an 18 year old girl from the local Hmong tribe. She was an amazing guide sharing with us stories about poisonous leaves and indigo plants as well as her very cynical views of marriage (apparently many unhappy wives turn to the poison leaves as a last resort).


Terraced rice fields and H'mong children in Sapa.

The first day of trekking was easy and extremely beautiful but also very touristy. The second and third days we were on our own in a world of terraced rice fields. In the afternoon of the second day as we were walking through a small village we heard chanting. Vu explained it was a local shaman and she took us into the house to have a look. A pretty incredible experience. We were supposed to stay with local families but our "homestay" was more of a rustic guesthouse. We slept and ate separately from the family. I did scam a cooking lesson from Vu at the second homestay and I learned to make springrolls. We woke up on the third day to pouring rain. This proved to be very problematic because we had hiked down to the bottom of a valley. Getting out was a very, very muddy affair. We were tired and dirty but also proud and extremely impressed with our days in Sapa.

Magical Mystery Land

Julia: "I feel like I'm on crack*"
Me: "Me too. How can people hate Vietnam?"
Julia: "Absolutely no idea."
Me: "It's like a magical mystery land."
Julia: "Seriously! Sapa's one of the most incredible places I've ever been."
Me: "Hoi An is Candyland for grownups."
Julia: "Seriously man, this is amazing."

This convo went down after two hours of poking around dozens of tailor shops in Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage city half way down the coast of Vietnam. We arrived a couple days ago after two consecutive nights on trains from Sapa in the northern mountains.

My only experience with tailors was the brief stint I had working at StitchIt where I pinned pants. However, StitchIt and the Hoi An tailors are a world apart. Here, you can walk into any of 500 tailors and order anything. Any style, any size, any color, any material etc. etc. etc. Upon realizing this incredible opportunity both Julia and I felt incredibly giddy and really quite overwhelmed with possibilities. So we took a coffee break which probably didn't help too much given the potency and high sugar content of Vietnamese coffee.


One of the many cafés I visited in Hoi An.

After a few days of mulling over my options, sussing out various tailor shops and narrowing my (originally very long wish list) today is the day to shop. Julia has continued south early. I'll meet up with her again early next week. But she's left me dangerously unsupervised in Candyland.

*meaning really, really happy, not drugs Mor.

CSI: Bangkok

So maybe Bangkok has a bit too much (disturbing) character. On my way to the canal ferry this morning I came across a dead body in the water. Yes, that's right, a dead human being. He (?) was probably murdered given the grotesque situation the body was in. Thankfully I wasn't the first to discover the scene (imagine explaining that to Thai authorities!). About 30 Thai people were lining the sides of the canal, though, oddly, there were no cops on the scene at that time.