lots 'o wats

so im back in the states, but thats irrelevant, cause peeps still wanna hear about the trip. and i still want to document all this. so here we go from where we left off.

siem reap aka home of angkor wat

me and unger at the wat

ok, now these are some serious temples. just another reason why cambodia is one of my favorite places of the summer is this cool little town with awesomely nice people and really good food that just happens to be right outside of some of the most impressive achitectural structures ive ever seen in my life! we pretty much spent 3 days there exploring the many temples that are there. Unger and I went around together for the most part. Highlights are as follows:

-our awesome tuk tuk(basically a motorbike with a cart on the back with a bench) driver who wanted to drive us two days later back to the temples, but we didnt know what time we would want to go so he said, "ok ill just show up in the morning and wait outside your hotel all day for you" and he actually did. he was really cool and was quick to drive us away from crazy t-shirt vendors at the temples.

tuk tuk driver

-our group trek up a mountain to see rock carvings in torrential rains. we ditched the umbrellas after about 10 seconds cause we were soaked anyway. the journey included almost getting hit by lightning, wading through a river, climbing behind a waterfall, and some perfect timing of the sun coming out just as we reached our destination to give us a great view of the carvings. it was soo much fun and one of my favorite days of the whole summer.

unger, draths, and a cambodian in the rain pre-hike

-ta phrom, aka the jungle temple. tomb raider was filmed there aparently. its one of the coolest things ive ever seen.

look at that awesome tree growing out of the temple.

-waking up at 4am and riding in the dark to angkor wat to see the sun rise at the temple. it was beautiful, thats all i can say. once it was light enough we climbed to the top and took some great pictures in the morning light.

sunrise

-being invited for dinner and karaoke to ngoys house (one of wesleys friends). they dont have all that much, but they offered us everything they had. and seeing wesley (my professor) sing a sam cooke song was a highlight of the summer for sure.

-tea and ice cream every evening in the hotel restaurant with the lauras. it became quite a lovely ritual.

so thats just a little hint of what i did in siem reap. there were tons more amazing temples, and crazy tuk tuk adventures.

i dont know who this girl is, but its my fav pic i took all summer i think

Rachel's Still Alive... How cool is that?

wow, i havent updated since hanoi? thats pretty bad. since that time ive been to ha long bay, vietnam. saigon, vietnam. phnom phen, cambodia. siem reap, cambodia. and ive spent almost a whole month in bangkok. im pretty bad at this updating thing. but im my defense, time has been scarce, class load has been heavy, and my parents have been here, so why would i waste time at the computer when i could be chilling with them? anway, moving on...

ha long bay
view from the top of a mountain

one of the most beautiful places ive ever been. we were only there for 2 nights, which was a shame. it would have been wonderful to have stayed longer. but it was a welcome break from classes and a nice little vacation from our vacation. we rented a boat for the group and spent our only full day out in the ocean swimming, exploring caves, getting lots of sun, visiting a floating village where many ASAPers bought some live crabs and shrimp which the cooks on our boat prepared for them. It was an amazing day. Beyond that we spent our time in ha long on the beach.

Saigon
a vietnamese tank from the war

saigon was an emotional city for me. the first night there i found out that umkulu (my mom's father) passed away. i felt a little anti social for a few days after that. its not fun being on the other side of the globe when something like that happens, but luckily i have some good friends here i could talk to. a lot of people started to get sick in saigon as well. most of saigon for me was going to markets and going to war museums. markets stress me out, and war museums make you ashamed to be human, so it was a bit of a downer. Im pretty sure i od'd on the vietnam war there. but i feel it wasimportant stuff to see, and extremely interesting to see things from the perspective of the other side. the one good think about saigon, i got a $200 box set of dvds for $25. and i bought 17 other movies for less than a dollar a piece. it doesnt get any better than that. looking back on saigon, i remember more bad than good, but it was an important place to see, and a place i would love to visit again someday.

Phnom Phen
mass graves at the killing fields

I can now totally understand why Kevin (my cousin) wants to move here. Cambodia is such a great place. The people are so friendly and warm. The history is incredibly moving and makes you want to do nothing but help them. The food was great. I feel like i got a lot out of going there. By far the most emotional part of phnom phen was going to the killing fields. this is where the khemer rouge brought thousands of cambodians, killed them, and burried them in mass graves because they were educated. Literally the entire educated population of that country was wiped out. It is no wonder they are so far behind today. It is amazing to think where they would be if this had not happened. At one time Phnom Phen was the intellectual center of south east asia. Today it is be far the most impoverished country i have seen yet. Although i fear Burma will be even worse. Learning about the attrocities that occured there was very hard, but very valuable. And besides all the depressing aspects, it was a fun city to explore. and as i said before, the people are amazing; some of the nicest people i have ever met in my life.

siem reap and bangkok will be for another entry. siem reap was incredible; a nice change from the depressionville of the last few locations. and bangkok was and still is amazing. the queens park hotel is starting to feel like home. more later...

im in vietnam, and for the most part, i love it! it is hotter than the devil here, but i think im starting to get used to it a little more. we are staying at a really nice business class hotel, which is pretty much the one of the tallest buildings in hanoi. there is nothing here. which is weird, because its a huge city, and there are certainly a lot of buildings, a lot of people, and even more motorbikes, but no mcdonalds, no seven eleven, and no starbucks. we have been spoiled up until now. they havent even heard of mcdonalds here. but even though life has been a little rustic, and my mini bar food is pretty much keeping me alive right now, hanoi is great.

yesterday was by far my favorite day of the summer so far. we went on morotbikes out into the country to the village of one of wesleys friends. it was about a two hour ride out of the city into the country, and it was soooo awesome. of course we werent driving, we each had a driver and we rode on the back. it was a little scary at first. traffic is insane by our standards, but for them it is easy to handle. stop signs and red lights are more of a suggestion here then a law. motorbikes just weave in and out of traffic. wesley described it as a dance, which is true. you could literally cross a street with your eyes closed and you would not get hit. its amazing.

the village we went to was great. wesleys friend, tien, took us to his parents house where they welcomed all of us in and gave us drinks. then he took us to a local temple and we walked around the village. all these kids were following us, we gave them candy and took pictures with them. all the villagers came out of their houses to wave at us. i felt like we were celebrities. we stopped at a little resturant where most of us just ate the fruit and snacks that we brought with us, but a few of the guys went with some of the drivers and ate dog. more on dog eating around here later. but anyway, it was a lovely day. i will say that vietnamese men are kinda creepy and i (and the rest of the girls) got hit on way too much for my liking yesterday, but whatever. boys will be boys i guess.

internets almost up. more later.

Malaysia...Truly Asia

Malaysia was very interesting, I really enjoyed it. It is the only Muslim country we will visit this summer, which I never even knew it was Muslim. It basically is 3 different countries all living on one place. The Malays, Chinese and Indians. They all keep their own customs, have their own schools, and generally don’t hang out together. But somehow despite all this segregation they get along quite well. At least on the surface. Apparently this is a result of the controlling democratic government (oxymoron?) who makes sure to keep tensions down by restricting free speech. Doesn’t make sense to me, but apparently its still considered a democracy. The big question is, can you have a democracy without free speech? According to Malaysia you can. I would tend to say no.

Singapore has been interesting for the same reasons. The laws are so strict here it seems to us Americans that the people’s rights are being restricted, but they don’t see it that way. No chewing gum, no guns, there’s a fine for just about everything. I guess its all a tradeoff. If you want a society virtually without crime, you have to give up some freedoms to get it. It would never work in the US.

The food was awesome in Malaysia. I had some of the best fruit I’ve ever had in my life. Mangosteen. Delicious! I tried durian; the smelly fruit. It wasn’t good. Overall I really liked Malaysia. It was very different from everywhere else we have been.

Singapore to be honest is kind of lame. It would be a lovely place to live; very western. But I feel like i've already seen this. It’s like the states, or like Hong Kong. I don’t feel like i’ve gotten anything out of being here, whereas with all the other countries so far, whether I liked them or not, I learned something from them.

That’s all for now. Off to Vietnam in the morning. As Wesley told us today, we are now leaving the 1st world, and that’s pretty scary. Aside from Beijing, we haven’t had to deal with too much crazy stuff yet, but that’s about to change. Good thing I bought two boxes of granola bars today at the grocery store. I went to borders today and was looking at some books about the Vietnam War. This is going to be very interesting/depressing/moving. Apparently internet is super expensive there so don’t expect to hear from me for awhile.

hong kong

grettings from kuala lumpur! im chillin in the lobby of my hotel with a lovely view of the petronus towers out the window, (those towers from the classic sean connery/catherine zeta jones film, the entrapment) it is soooo hot here! if you spend too much time outside, you feel like you are gonna melt. but at least its sunny, which is a step up from the non stop bad weather in hong kong.

lets pick up where i left off last time:

hong kong: sooo pretty, if only the weather had been better, im sure our free time would have been spent at the beach. Instead we tried to stick to indoor activities. We went to the history museum, which was very interesting to learn about the history of Hong Kong and its transition to and from British rule. Another day we went to the art museum which had a Mark Rothke exhibit from washington dc, as well as a tons of chinese art. we had two company visits there. the 1st was with Brown Forman, the makers of Jack Daniels, among other beverages. i enjoyed it because he focused a lot on marketing strategy, which i find to be fascinating when dealing with such diverse markets. the 2nd speaker was a senior executive with HSBC, it was a good presentation, but very much finance oriented and very much over my head. i havent taken finance yet, so most ofthe time i had no clue what he was talking about. Other than that we spend time wandering around town, seeking out american food (we found a TGIFridays, soo yummy. i miss america), trying some local cuisine, and seeing someother sights, like the nightly light show on the waterfront, and the avenue of stars where we saw the handprints of jackie chan, jet li, and bruce lee. good times all around. I like hong kong, and i could definatly live there one day. We never made it to disneyland though. so sad.

KL update later. naptime.

out peace china.

Wow, it has been a while. China was super interesting. I think I have decided that I could never ever live there, but I am def glad I got to see it. I certainly learned a lot. The reason I haven’t updated in so long is that I couldn’t access my blog at all in China. Apparently my blog is a threat to the Chinese government? I dunno. I guess that’s what happens in communist countries. One day at the internet cafe in Shanghai, the woman working there showed me a note written in English that said I had to write down all the websites I had visited for the police records. It is all too easy to take our freedoms in the US for granted. Since I have sooo much to cover, I will give some brief thoughts and highlights from my destinations.

Nikko, Japan. My favorite stop on the trip so far. It is a quiet little mountain town which was a welcome break after our time in busy Tokyo. The Japanese people are some of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. Everyone has such a high respect for everyone else. I have never felt so safe in my life. We didn’t lock our hotel room once, and there was never any fear of anyone coming in, there just isn’t any crime there. Everyone you meet will bend over backwards to do whatever they can for you. I spent most of the days there wandering around the Buddhist temples there. Unfortunately all the guides only spoke Japanese, so I didn’t always know what I was looking at, but it was gorgeous none the less. Nikko is the kind of town where we could just walk around and explore on our own, which was very nice to have a few moments away from the group.

Beijing, China. My least favorite stop on the trip so far. Beijing is dirty. You seriously can’t see out the window it’s so dirty. There is a thin layer of dust and grime covering everything. The hotel we stayed at was supposed to be a 4 star hotel, and at 1st glance, it was. But we quickly learned that looks can be deceiving and that good appearances are what is valued in Beijing, not necessarily good quality. The rooms were huge apartments, but the kitchen appliances weren’t fully assembled, sometimes lights were burnt out, some rooms didn’t even have a shower curtain. As we learned in class the next day, this seems to largely be a result of the rapid growth of Beijing. Everywhere you look there is construction, and things are being built so quickly that none of it really gets finished properly. As long as it looks nice, that’s good enough.

There is a lot of poverty in Beijing, in Shanghai too, but not as obvious there. There are a lot of beggars in the street who will quite literally grab you, or follow you for several blocks asking for money. It is heartbreaking to be followed two blocks by a 5 year old tugging at your pants asking for money, or to have a man with no leg position himself in front of you on the side walk so that you can’t get past. It is really hard to see. There seem to be a lot of burn victims. The first day there we saw a man who can be best described as not having a face. He looked like something out of a horror film. There is definitely a conflict between who to give to and who not to. Because obviously you cant help everyone. As we learned at the US Embassy in Beijing, there is no social system at all set up to help these people. If you are homeless, or disabled, or unemployed...too bad, you are on your own 100%.

Ok, enough of that depressing stuff. Good things about Shanghai:
-The Great Wall!! Which I climbed (talk about a workout). It was awesome. I will post some pics soon.
-The techno club across from our hotel. Sooo fun. I love dancing!
-Interesting company visits with NCR and the Embassy
-The celestial walk. Hard to explain, but it was really pretty and there were really cool animal statues.
-Having an English speaking tour guide at the Forbidden City. It made it soo much more enjoyable to be able to understand what we were seeing.

Wow, that’s it, everything else was terrible. I don’t think I had a single meal I liked, the traffic is a nightmare, the toilets are a hole in the ground, I couldn’t breathe there, every 3 feet you walk someone is trying to sell you something, I got ripped off so many times, it takes 30 minutes to buy anything, they don’t believe in lines and they like to push you over, it smells...yeah, that about sums up Beijing. Despite all that, i'm glad I went, but I will never go back.

Ok, this is getting way too long. I gotta go write a paper. I will fill you all in on Shanghai another day, which I liked much better than Beijing.

i think im turning japanese

wow, everything on the screen is in japanese. it took me 5 min to get to the update page.

so, im in tokyo! finally! it was quite the adventure getting here. we were about an hour away from dallas on the way to japan when the pilot announced there was a crack in the windshield. we had to turn around and fly back to dallas where we waited a good 4 hours for another plane to arrive. we finally left the states at almost 6pm. however many hours later we landed in tokyo and the madness began.

the plane fiasco put us in tokyo 7 hours late. by the rime we got our luggage it was 9 30pm local time. we made a mad dash to the atms, and brian and i were sent to find out when the last trains left. the one we needed had already gone and the very last train left in 15 minutes. we were all rushing around trying to get money, get tickets and get everyone on the train. it was insanity. japanese insanity. i totally take for granted the ability to read signs. since we missed the train we needed, train took about an hour longer than needed. when when we finally got to the right station, we could not find our hotel. lau doesnt help us much, there is a team leader in charge and we all just sort of work together to figure out where we are going. i like that system. it feels good to know that you got yourself across tokyo. im team leader for the day we travel from nikko to beijing. that will be quite the challenge and im already scared. but i know i can figure it out.

last night we got to our hotel a little after midnight. while sleep would have been the smart decision, almost everyone headed out, we found a nice little resturant and shared some snacks and a round of japanese beer. the menu was all in japanese and the waiter spoke about 2 words of english, which was enough to figure out that we had ordered chicken and pork skewers. they were really good. we are very much relying on just pointing and hoping for the best when ordering. we made it back around 3am and were more than ready to sleep. we pushed the trip to the fish market back until friday since we got in so late. so tomorrow ill be up at 4am.

i gotta go, theres a wait for the computers. talk you you all later! i miss you already.

ps. i think i fixed the comments so that anyone can leave one, so feel free to do so.