Introspective Wednesday: The Last

So I realize I haven’t really done one of these since England, but since this is the last Wednesday ever of my travels and therefore the last Wednesday on my blog (unless you want to hear all about my unemployment and the efforts of my mother and me to make our fat cat into a lap cat), I thought it would be nice.

It’s been a crazy ride, y’all. I’ve certainly had my downs, from trying to figure out the transition in England to all the tribulations of solo travel (in both Slovenia and Asia) to physical injuries and beyond. But I've had the ups on exploring England’s beauty, playing in a London orchestra, watching some amazing sunsets, splashing around with elephants, taking it easy in China, and pretending to be the Underhills with my dad in a fancy Cambodian hotel. I’ve also had my educational moments in England, Laos, Cambodia, and beyond, learning more about the world around me.

I’m surprised by how my friendships have developed and new ones have taken seed in the past ten months. My friend Laura (the famous Laura Maas!) commented in an email about how rich how friendship had gotten in the past year. I’ve found this to be true with so many of my friends. I send weekly tomes to the Me in Ireland, a girl I didn’t even know a year ago. I received visits from wonderful friends during my travels, and stayed connected to those who couldn’t make it. When I had a visit of 24 hours to DC in January, I still managed to see a ton of friends and (more importantly) get a ton of free drinks. And the new people in my life who I’ve met by accident or design have done nothing but enrich it all. Even now I have two out-of-state visits, two bachelorette parties, and two weddings to go to just in the next four months – with friends I’ve known for three months, friends I’ve known for three years, and friends I’ve known for thirteen years. I’m a lucky girl indeed.

Some of my travel buddies, visitors, frequent Skype partners, and/or drink buyers...

Also, this is the famous LAURA MAAS!! (And when I saw this picture I got really homesick for that shirt I'm wearing. Or really any new clothes that aren't the five I've been swapping between.)

I’ll leave you with a quote from the most famous dude in this part of the world, Buddha himself. (I actually saw this on a placard in a random bathroom in Siem Reap…)

When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back to the sky and laugh. 

Okay, nothing to do with travel, but I'm just really excited to see them again.

Welcome to the Jungle: Glamping in Kep

I woke up at 3.30am, desperately needing to pee (there’s your ladylike lede right there, folks!). I tried squeezing my eyes shut and convincing my bladder it could wait another few hours, but no dice. I carefully untucked the mosquito netting wrapped around my bed, groped around for the flashlight on the floor, and tiptoed across the wide-paneled wooden treehouse down the wobbly stairs slick with rain. After paying a visit to the garden (read: open-aired) bathroom and examining the back of my leg for a possible mosquito bite, I crept back up the stairs and shrieked loudly as a bat - yes, a bat - flew at my face suddenly before veering away. Yes, folks: I went glamping in Cambodia (that’s “glamorous camping,” for those not in the know).

As I type this, I’m sitting in one of those wicker round chair things on our treehouse balcony looking off into the valley as the sun dips lower and birds chirp merrily around me. I have to admit, my life could be worse. 

When my dad first started planning his part of the trip, he immediately booked a treehouse in an “eco-resort” in the seaside town of Kep. Yes, I keep saying treehouse. We are in a bona fide, no-fourth-wall, perched-up-on-stilts, treehouse. I promise you it isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. And that whole eco-lodge thing means that electricity is mostly for lights – no A/C – and WiFi in a non-starter. We decided before arriving to cut our trip short a day, in order to split up our travel to Vietnam over two days. So when we arrived to find our, ahem, rustic accommodations, I was glad we were only staying for a day and a half.

Even though I was eager to leave, I have to admit that all in all it was a pretty relaxing 36 hours. Although we had to endure several bumpy tuk-tuk rides on the very rutted dirt road leading up to the lodge (I can’t even begin to describe how bumpy that road is), we had some enjoyable relaxing time on our balcony, rode in a tuk-tuk through the countryside to a pepper plantation (Kampot pepper, guys, it’s a thing), enjoyed some meals on the sea, and most importantly, sussed out restaurants with WiFi and went crazy.

So the verdict on glamping in Cambodia? Definitely not something I’m eager to do again, but it certainly has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience to kick off my last week abroad.

P.S. Re: my Facebook query a few days ago, I did decide to start taking malaria pills. Can't tell if I am having wildly hallucinogenic dreams or not; my dreams have certainly been vivid, but I've always had pretty vivid dreams. Bummer, huh? But no malaria yet (touch wood!).

Laying down some TRUTH on SE Asia

With less than one week to go before I am back in the U.S. and enjoying a delicious meal of Hamburger Helper (CRAVINGS I HAVE THEM), I’ve been reflecting a lot on what it is like to travel in this region. I’ve been bouncing around here for the past two months, minus that interlude in China. (Oh yeah, that thing.) Southeast Asia is a tourist mecca for a number of reasons – there’s a well-trodden backpacker’s trail, plenty of varied food options in the larger cities, relatively cheap costs (you can live a mid-range lifestyle for well under $50/day) and you can always find someone who speaks enough English to help you out when needed. Plus it's a pretty gorgeous region.

Despite that, I was surprised by the unexpected difficulties and just how foreign this region can be. Crazy concept, huh? The very act of walking outside is an assault on the senses. It’s oppressively hot (and yet Cambodian women most often wear jeans, two long-sleeved tops, a scarf, and GLOVES when I would rather be naked than wearing shorts and a top I stole from my friend last year). The act of walking down the street is hard, as you navigate broken or missing sidewalks – and where there is a sidewalk, it’s usually covered with parked cars and scooters – forcing you to walk on the street. Dirt kicks up and cakes your skin as you pray no cars hit you. You can’t go two steps or stand still for five seconds before being ascended upon by tuk tuk drivers shouting and waving “TUK TUK? TUK TUK LADY?!” And saying no once doesn’t matter, because the thirty after him still think maybe I’ll say yes to them. Even if you navigate the streams of people, the exhaust spewing out of vehicles, and the heat, the smell of trash, street food cooking, and just plain humanity is enough to knock you over. So, who’s ready to go visit?!

It’s not a surprise that I’ve often taken refuge in places that exude the calm environment or the atmosphere at home. My dad and I were giddy walking through the nicest hotel in Phnom Penh after drinking at the bar, inventing our alter egos in case anyone asked. Even now, I’m happy as anything sitting in a huge Western-style coffee shop, sipping on an iced chocolate coffee and tapping this out on my phone.

I partly feel like a failure for wanting to escape to the nice when so many around me don’t have the option. I recognize I should be more adventurous when it comes to getting out of my comfort zone. But I have had my share on perching on a plastic chair on the street eating food from a cart and walking steadily across the street without getting hit. Sometimes baby needs to reward herself by sitting in an awesome café and watching the Lizzie Bennett Diaries (everyone, please. Watch them.). Cause you know what? That gives me just enough juice to jump back into the next level of crazy and prepare myself for this last week abroad. 

The light and the dark of Cambodia

Along with Laos, I knew incredibly little about Cambodia before making the decision to come here. Heck, I couldn't even pronounce the name of its capital - Phnom Penh - until a couple of months ago. (For the record, it's Pa-nom Pen.)

To me, Cambodia is a layered country, especially from the point of view of the tourist. Phnom Penh in particular is full of these contrasts around every corner. At first glance, it's a gorgeous capital city with tree-lined streets set in a friendly grid pattern (thank you, France). The luxury hotels are truly luxurious, with graceful bars, soaring lobbies, and multiple infinity pools by the veranda. 

Dig a little deeper, and you see the rough edges of Phnom Penh, the indications that this is a poor country in a poor region of the world, beset by environmental challenges, diseases, and the ravages of war. Traffic is insane, but most people drive their family of five around on a tiny and cost-efficient motorbike. As you ride through a tuk tuk around the city, you pass streets teeming with food carts and open-air markets, trash and suspicious smells. I finally understand the phrase, "Assault on the senses."

Then you dig even more, and hit the core of Cambodia, that which darkens its past, colors its present, and defines its future: the Khmer Rouge and the horrors of the 1970s.

I don't know about you, but I knew nothing about the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot except the vague understanding that it was a bad thing somewhere in Asia a while ago, and Pol Pot was referenced once on Gilmore Girls. Before arriving, I tried to read up on that period to have a better idea of what happened. But nothing can prepare you for visiting the sites of tragedy. 

In a nod to the phrase dark tourism, visiting sites where tragedies have occurred has become quite popular, whether for educational purposes or memorial purposes. Two such sites rank as the top attractions in Phnom Penh, despite their sadness: S-21, or the Tuol Sleng Prison, and the Killing Fields. 

You can read more about the Khmer Rouge and the atrocities they committed on your own - I'm certainly not educated enough about them to educate you. What I can share were my thoughts upon visiting these sites. Rather I should say, I wish I could share my thoughts. But all I can summon are brief impressions that profoundly impacted me. 

Things like walking around a school-turned-torture-chamber-and-prison, where the museum curators have posted dozens of walls of pictures of the prisoners. Hundreds of faces stare out at you: some boldly, some accusingly, some with tears in their eyes. All I could think of to whisper was, "I'm sorry."

Things like the museum exhibitions with pictures of Pol Pot and the other leaders - and their faces have been angrily scratched out by visiting Cambodians over the years.

Things like walking past the two-foot-wide wooden prison cells, the doors swinging open. Touching one of the doors softly and realizing who had touched it in the past.

Things like walking past the groups of visiting Cambodians, from the elderly to schoolkids on a trip to young children. Realizing that these events are entirely in the memories of all Cambodians, that we are only a generation removed. 

And that's the thing: these atrocities were so recent. Trials for the leaders still haven't concluded. In 2013! In fact, a big news story today is that one of the leaders who was on trial just died. 

But despite the heartache and the soul-crushing tragedy, Cambodia goes on. It certainly is a place for everyone to visit, if only to learn more about the worst of humanity but how goodness overcomes and marches on.

Next Life

To kick off our tour of Cambodia and Vietnam, my father and I decided to start out big: exploring the temples of Angkor. This massive area in the western part of Cambodia was the original seat of the Khmer empire and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the world's largest religious monument, and the site of historical and cultural significance in Cambodia and, arguably, in all of Southeast Asia.

We hired a car and a tour guide (I love getting to splash out now that Dad is here. Hello, rose and lemongrass martini.) and set off exploring on Dad's first full day in country. Just to make sure he would really feel the jetlag, it was - as always in SEA - miserably hot by approximately 11am and a hellish inferno by 1pm.

Despite the oppressive heat, we managed to explore quite a few temples over the two days we had our tour guide. From intricate narrative carvings, to temples of thousand faces overlooking the area, to jungle temples with trees entwined as part of the landscape, to taking in the mass of the famous Angkor Wat, I think it's safe to say I can call myself a tomb raider. (Fact: Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider was filled over two months in the temples of Angkor. I know this to be true because our guide said this fifty thousand times, and Cambodia in general is fairly obsessed with that fact as well. As Dad and I have not seen that movie, we can neither confirm nor deny.) It's also safe to say that by the time I get back, I'll probably have bug spray permanently affixed to my skin. My hypochondria has kicked in big time, you guys.

As we wandered the temples, we also chatted with our guide about his life and experiences. One of the things that struck me the most was how he would often say "Next life!" with regards to a specific experience he had not had. I'm not sure if he was being glib about it, or as a man living in a Buddhist country, referring to a deep-seated religious belief.

Either way, the things he had never experienced but hoped to in his next life, if his karma sticks out, ranged from amusing to thought-provoking.

"Do you get snow in your home town?" [Exclaims over a photo my dad shows him of 3 inches of snow outside the house] "Ooh! I never seen snow! Next life."

"Those apartments over there [really gorgeous three-story townhouses] are very expensive. $11,000 a year! Next life."

"How long was your flight here? THIRTY HOURS?! Wow! I never take a flight before. Next life." 

[In response to my dad's question if he has ever been out of Cambodia, such as to Thailand, which is an easy bus ride away] "No, all my money saved to pay for kids' schools. I never leave Cambodia. Next life. 

[After asking if we would come back to Cambodia and in response to my dad saying he should come to the United States] "Next life, I will be BORN in the United States!" 

Needless to say, it was a humbling experience. I'm sure I will have more to say about the challenges of being seen as a walking ATM but also about understanding more about the incredible poverty modern-day Cambodians face, on the heels of the horrors the country has experienced so recently. But even this side-comment by the guide had me thinking about both the privilege I have by simple virtue of where I was born, and also the importance of doing what is possible in this life with what I have been given. Considering those things include watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat, I am a lucky girl indeed.

How Kristen Got Her Travel Groove Back

I had heard some pretty scary things about traveling in China: that it was just a really difficult country, that Westerners were stared at relentlessly, that the pollution is enough to literally knock you down.

Despite all that, I made a last-minute decision to skip exploring more of Laos in favor of heading north to Beijing, where I could crash with family for a week. A decision made partly out of loneliness and partly out of the attitude of, "Well, if I don't go to China now, I'm never going," turned out to be one of the best choices I've made on this trip.

Simply put, China was awesome. I had spent the past five weeks traveling solo - which, in Southeast Asia, is easy to do and there are plenty of people to talk to, but the simple act of having to navigate new cities and figure out places to eat and sort out sleeping arrangements is really exhausting. By this point, I had done it in five different cities in two countries.

By contrast, I think I had the easiest tourist trip to Beijing that anyone has ever had. I stayed in a beautiful, huge apartment with my cousin and his wife and finally experienced a bed that wasn't Asia-style rock hard. I mean, the floors in the apartment were even heated! AND since they have a DPO box they can get deliveries from Amazon for all their non-perishables - hello, Crispix. Allow me to eat this entire box over the next week.

I even got a welcome gift bag! Chateau Pierson is so classy.

Besides experiencing the comforts of home, I just had a deliciously easy and relaxed week. I didn't have to make a single restaurant choice, and when I did go out to eat, it was with two people who speak Mandarin. More than that, I got to do exquisitely normal things - after more than a month of every day being exciting but challenging, this was incredible. I went grocery shopping with my cousin (and got to watch him charm the fruit ladies with his Mandarin and as a result get tons of free fruit to munch while we shopped). We went out with his friends and played trivia over pizza and beer. I lazily watched a bunch of (totally legal) movies. And did I mention the heated floors?

And yes - the weather was cold and the pollution pretty terrible, at least for the first few days. My second full day there, the day started at about 520 (the scale to measure Air Quality only goes up to 500, by the way). That afternoon was a bit more clear but SO windy that I think I saw a woman on a bicycle flying by. But the bonus of that wind? It shoved all the pollution out, giving us some gorgeous blue sky days right as the weather warmed up to the 60s.

I managed to do some touristy things, namely the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Temple of Heaven. But besides that, I just took it supremely easy, indulging in Reese's Cups, trips to their gym, and a Chinese massage that literally involved hammers (much to my surprise).

It was with reluctance that I left such a comfortable environment. But it was time to head south so I could continue with the final leg of my trip - Pops and Daughter McCarthy take on Cambodia and Vietnam!

My great wall

I sat alone in the cable car and suddenly started to talk out loud to myself. “I have no idea what is happening next, in any facet of my life. All I know is where I have been and where I am right now.” This comes out as almost a nervous chant, a reassurance to myself as I stand on the edge of the abyss. Never before have I felt as aimless, as misdirected. My paths have always been clear. Now all I know is what is right in front of me: the Great Wall of China. 

**

 I pass group after group of tourists on a pilgrimage, as I am. Whether to tick something off the bucket list, learn more about Chinese history, or try to put their own lives and concerns into perspective, we are all dumfounded by the massive amounts of stone and memory in front of us. 

**

 I haven’t been this cold in weeks. I’m bundled in three tops, two pairs of pants, a puffy white coat, a sarong I’ve fashioned into a scarf, a homemade hat, and mismatched globes. But I step on the stone, lay my hands on the wall, and will my shivers (and the memory of past shivers) to temporary stillness. I am here. 

** 

As I walk, I shed item after item of clothing as my mind sinks deeper into reflection. It’s almost required in a place such as this, deep in the Chinese mountainside.

I have my own “great walls.” At this moment, I have those emotional and mental blockades preventing me from reaching through to the other side. Whether these blocks are protecting me or imprisoning me, I don’t know. What is on the other side, I don’t know. 

** 

Now I sit directly on the wall, the mid-day sun warming my knees. It’s an astonishingly clear day: a bit of irony to this clouded mind. I’m sitting on this solid reminder of past, present, and future, as I contemplate my history, stumble through my days, and try to map what’s next.

There is no map. There is not even a cartographer who can assist me. The stretch of stone path in front of me is all I have.