Week 35 - Racist Children and Plumbing Bewildering

Week 35 - Making some changes

After last week's less-than-positive update, I started to feel better. It was good to let out a little of steam, and everyone has been extremely supportive. As of now, we have about 15 weeks left of work. That number is feeling slightly daunting, but I am going to continue to take it one day at a time and try my best!

The real reward, the veritable carrot at the end of this Chinese stick is that we are going to Indonesia in July. Indonesia is a place that I never considered much before, but after the idea came to me it has been totally intoxicating. I cannot stop thinking about it! I've been spending a lot of my free time looking at travel guides and researching. Planning this trip has been a great release, and a big distraction from the particularly tough days.

The work this week was good, which also went a long way in reinvigorating my desire to stick this job out. I've been enjoying the most recent music-themed unit that I have been teaching. Music is something I am passionate about and find very easy to discuss. The kids have also been very active in class, probably because I have been showing plenty of music videos and concert/recital footage fromyoutube.

One incident that arose from showing off so many videos is that I've been able to really examine the way that these children perceive people of different cultures. I've shown videos of male and female musicians, as well as multiple races and ethnicities. Pleasantly enough they seemed pretty ready to accept any and all kinds of people, save for a few outliers ("HE IS A BLACK PERSON!!!!").

But then I showed the xylophone video. Xylophone, for some reason, was one of the main vocab words from the unit. Anyway, I found a great video of a young female virtuoso at a recital. The girl was from Japan, and once the kids realized she was Japanese they went absolutely nuts.

I am not sure how well everyone knows this, but the Chinese hate the Japanese. Historically there are a lot of reasons behind this, but prejudice is never a good thing, obviously. Nevertheless, racism against the Japanese is completely okay and is even encouraged in China. There are still a large number of restaurants and business, mostly outside of big cities, that proudly display signs reading, "NO JAPANESE ALLOWED INSIDE".

I had had hopes that my kids, at the early age of 9, would be more supportive and progressive. Plus, the video was not of the highest quality, and the girl's finer features were quite blurry. Ultimately though, I didn't think about it. It was the best example of a xylophone recital that I could find, and the race of the performer did not register for more than a second.

These children, the kids that I have spent the better part of 8 months getting to know, completely flipped like a switch. They espoused some of the most blatant and disgusting racism I have ever personally witnessed. Several children pretended to get sick, and begged me to turn the video off. 

One kid said that they were going to have nightmares. Perhaps the most upsetting was when one child stood up and said "LET'S MURDER HER" and pretended he had a machine gun and shot up the screen. This was accompanied with raucous cheers.

That class did not end well. In fact, it ended with a rather stern lecture from me. Sadly, and only partly due to the language barrier between me and my students, I was unable to get through to them at all. They just didn't understand why it wasn't okay to say terrible things about someone they didn't even know based solely on their looks. Keep in mind that they couldn't actually even see her face.

This thought really stuck with me for a few days and, by Thursday I had had an idea. Thursday was the day that I had a lesson with CIPP1, a completely different group of kids who are all of the same language level and therefore use the same textbook as my other class.

For CIPP1, when I presented the video I skipped past the part with a subtitle indicating the performer's name and nation of origin. I also told the kids that she was a Chinese musician. Would it work, I wondered? Would they see through the ruse? I honestly wasn't sure if her features were clearly Japanese enough to be seen through the out of focus, zoomed out video.

Not only did the kids not suspect a thing, they had a completely different reaction to the video. They absolutely loved it. It was their favorite clip of the whole day, and they kept exclaiming "She is so beautiful!" and "She is so good at the xylophone!". This was a far cry from CIPP2, who had been shouting things like "What a monster!" and "She has scary tentacle hands!".

I think the lesson here is pretty clear, so I will not beat a dead horse. I do however think it is worth underlining once more that these are kids. Some of them aren't even 9 yet. Sure they can be naughty and nobody is perfect, but by and large these are my two favorite classes. They are all smart, well-behaved, adorable children. Yet, even at this age, their prejudices are so deeply programmed that they became immediately hateful to a terrifying degree as soon as they were presented with a culture that they think of as lesser.

The other hot topic of the week was preparing for the open lessons. On Friday the 27th, hundreds of parents will descend on the school and come to observe just how good we all are as teachers. While most of the foreign teachers are quite confident in our abilities, the Chinese teachers who are our bosses and coworkers are all freaking out. Things have been extra chaotic lately, almost as though they are trying to break all previous records of classes cancelled/rearranged. This past Wednesday it hit a fever pitch that was nearly unbearable. However, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I came through the other end of the crucible with an unexplainable smile on my face.

Perhaps it was the shear absurdity of it all. Maybe I just had a good lunch that day (just kidding, that is never the case), but whatever the reason I have found myself to be cheerfully happy for the rest of the week. I hope I can hang onto this feeling!

After nearly 5 months away, Laura and I went back to Guangzhou this weekend. This was another moment that felt like a breath of fresh air. It felt good to be walking around in a big, modern city. Even though Guangzhou is not very far or very different from Foshan, it is always sufficiently different to be a proper diversion. Accompanied by our buddy Leon, we hit up an amazing Turkish restaurant (THE BREAD YOU GUYS), and went to Ikea. The Ikea trip was mostly to pick up some candles, but we treated ourselves to some Swedish candies and chocolates as well.

We spent the rest of the day just meandering around and enjoying the peace and quiet of a lovely day in the middle of a big loud city. A lot of time was spent exploring new areas, and we found some interesting looking restaurants to check out some other time. What does Tibetan food taste like? I hope to report back with that answer before too long.

All in all, this has been a good week to help remind be why I am here, and to make me confident that I can stick it out through to the end. I've been in a cheery enough mood that I don't even feel like complaining about the constantly leaking pipes in our bathroom that the plumber actually made worse before he left, or the electrical problems that our flat has been plagued with ever since the repairmen tried to fix a burnt out light.

Bring on next week!

(No pictures this time around. Sorry folks)

Week 33 and 34: I am Still Here

Now allow me to tell the tale of readjusting to life and work in China.

This will effectively bring us up to the present.

One caveat, however. This is not a nice update. This is not an update with gloss or glitz. I will try and be positive and humorous as I always do, but more than anything else this update is about the real China. The big reality of what it's like to be here and to have 4 months left to go. I want to talk about the things that I've been afraid to truly mention and reticent to share.

Let's begin:

After what was probably the worst flight of my entire life, we were back in Guangzhou. Gone was the quiet tranquility of a city abandoned. Everyone and their mother had come home, and south China was broiling at full capacity with the movement of a few hundred million people.

Our apartment, unsurprisingly, was completely untouched. No repairs had been done, and another two weeks worth of mold growth were there to greet us when we opened the door. I had had just about enough of this crap. Jason, our wonderful roommate, was still acting like nothing was wrong. He couldn't be made to understand why layers and layers of mold on every single piece of clothing, wall, and furniture was a bad thing. "It's okay!", he repeated like a broken record, "there is mold like this all over Guangdong province! The weather here is no good".

Angel, our wonderful boss, was just as unhelpful. She said that the workers would come whenever they were able and paint over the mold so we wouldn't have to look at it anymore. At this point, the last shred of sanity is gone. At this point, I'm done being nice.

I started making demands. It's bad enough that we have to live in the mold pile, but now there are going to be construction workers coming in? I asked if there was somewhere that we could stay in the meantime. Another apartment or a hotel or something. Angel said that even though the holiday is over with, construction workers in China are still on holiday for another few weeks. Why is this? Who knows. I asked if she was aware of any other construction workers in China. She said that she would try her best.

The next day we started work again. One silver lining to all of this is that we didn't have any class requirements on the first day. We got to acclimatize without having to have any lessons.

We were all looking forward to spending the day making lessons for the next week or so. Of course, the Internet wasn't working at all. I suppose this was a long time coming. For the last several months our Internet speeds have been tanking. By now the crawl had come to a full stoppage. Without Internet we are basically useless at work, because we don't have any other resources to plan lessons. The children are all so terrible at English that to even muddle through the simplest of lessons requires a whole gaggle of pictures and videos.

Since China loves to kick me while I'm down, Angel appeared out of nowhere and said "COME ON LET'S GO!". She apparently decided to get Laura and I a hotel to stay in while they do construction in the apartment. This was a nice gesture, I suppose, if I hadn't had to fight tooth and nail to get anything. Angel said that the reason we were being given a hotel at all was because they had to almost completely tear out the bathroom. They thought we'd enjoy having a working toilet for a few days.

Pulled away from the work I was unable to do anyway, and also missing lunch in the process, we piled into the school's car and went to the hotel. The hotel did not look too shabby from the outside, and I was actually surprised. Halfway through the check in process, however, Jason told the concierge that the room was for Laura and I.

Suddenly, the concierge started shaking his head and waving his hands. "NO FOREIGNER ALLOWED. THIS HOTEL NO FOREIGNER". We were barred entry from this hotel because we were foreigners. Angel was shocked; apparently she had never heard of this all-too-common practice in China. In reality, a lot of hotels are like this. Any guide book or travel site warns potential visitors to check ahead before entering the country

With no other places planned, we just milled around the parking lot for half an hour while Jason searched on his phone for other hotels in Foshan. He eventually found one that allows foreigners to darken their doorsteps.

The "Vienna Hotel" was located about halfway between our normal apartment and our school. It was actually a lot nicer than I thought it was going to be, and when they asked if this was acceptable I told them that it would be fine.

I had no idea how long we were supposed to be staying in this hotel, obviously, and neither Angel nor Jason could tell us how long it would take to repair our apartment. They bought us a week at the hotel, "just in case".

Jason informed me that he had used an online coupon to book the hotel, and as such there were some strange rules that we had to follow. Every single morning, before noon, we would have to check out of the hotel and then re-check into the hotel. This was so that we would always get the deal price on the hotel. It made me feel really special and valued to learn that they went to the absolute cheapest hotel possible, and then only agreed to let us stay there because they had a coupon.

We dropped off our few days-worth of clothes and went back to work just in time to be done for the day.

After finishing our first day of work, in which we were utterly prevented from doing any work, it was time to go back to the hotel. We spent all night making lesson plans for the next day of work.

The rest of the week was frustrating as well. They dropped a few bombs on us unexpectedly. For example, we have to do an "open lesson" at the end of March. Similar to the Zhaoqing school, the open lesson basically means that the parents are allowed to come and observe a lesson. Since nobody is ever genuine in anything they do here, it is all a big ruse. We were told that we would have to prepare a lesson ahead of time, the best and most fun lesson we've ever had, and rehearse the heck out of it with the kids.

Over these last two weeks there have been innumerable instructions regarding these enigmatic open lessons. There is always more and more requirements. We need to have every child in the class give a little bit of a speech, and we're also supposed to have them perform a song. They need to rehearse everything well enough to do it perfectly, but also the lessons are supposed to be a surprise. We were told that we should make the lesson Easter-themed, but now that everyone has prepared an Easter lesson they have been acting disappointed and angry that we are all doing the exact same thing.

I could attempt to outline each and every plan change that has been laid on us, but it would tiresome and tedious. Needless to say, it has been perhaps the worst two weeks of work so far.

Before the big "open lesson" day, we have to have an official practice lesson with our boss and the principal supervising. To make matters worse, there is another sports day of some kind, and another dance recital of some kind all coming up. We've all had several of our classes, including the official demo open lessons, cancelled and rescheduled. As it lays now, most of us now have extra classes to teach next week, on top of the 50-hours or so work of work we will already be doing.

By the middle of the week, we were out of clean clothes and had to go back to our apartment for some fresh stuff. Coming into the apartment in the middle of the work zone was a bad idea. The workers had completely DESTROYED the entire place. They splattered this brown paint stuff all over the apartment. There was paint on the walls, on the ceiling, and on the floor in every single room. It was even in rooms that there was no work going on in. There was chalky dust stuff everywhere, which is the majority of what the apartment walls are made of.

Jason informed me that the work was not going as scheduled, and that we would have to continue living in the hotel for the time being.

At this point, the hotel had lost a lot of its luster. Come to find out, the entire hotel was under construction. I guess this is why they got such a good deal. There was loud work going on all over the building, and a lot of stuff didn't work. There was also a different construction zone going on outside the hotel. Jackhammers started at 6am every single morning except for Saturday and Sunday, when it started at 7am. The drain in our shower was also completely clogged.

In the end we ended up staying there for 10 full days. The final product looks pretty decent, although I'm not sure how good the repair job is. There is still an insane amount of moisture in our apartment. Our clothes are all wet all of the time and we can't get them dried no matter what we do. Jason says that it's very normal in Foshan, so we shouldn't worry about wearing cold, wet, wrinkled things all the time.

Also they cut all the power in Laura's bedroom. It's been about 5 days now and they've still not fixed that.

On a related note, Jason has officially lived with us for 7 months now. He wasn't supposed to live with us at all, you may recall. They initially said he was going to stay with us for one weekend to help get us acquainted. Then we were told it was just for a few weeks. After that the story was that Jason's other accommodations don't have air conditioning and that he would move out when it wasn't hot anymore. Once winter hit, we were told that his accommodations were under construction until the end of February. We were promised that he would be gone be March 1st, but then he had to stay and oversee all the repairs.

Our first weekend back there was nothing going on, so we literally just sat in our hotel room and worked on lesson plans (since the Internet still doesn't work at all at work).

This weekend was Laura's birthday weekend, and so we tried to do some nice things. We were stymied at literally every single turn, though! All of our favorite restaurants and stores seem to have mysteriously gone out of business since January. The places that we ended up going made really bad food, and then I had one Chinese beer on Friday night and ended up puking for almost 14 hours straight!

It wasn't all bad, though. We had a few great evenings with our friends and coworkers. No matter how bad it gets here, having a few friends here always makes things better. They are pretty much the only reason why I haven't quit already. Not only would I miss them, but I'm pretty sure that they would just be given all my classes and made to work twice as hard for no extra thanks or pay.

This post is very difficult for me. I don't want to turn this blog into a complaining blog. That may seem ironic at this point. I feel like all of my stories are complaining stories. But that is not entirely a coincidence. Things have been steadily getting worse and worse, and I am getting much worse and looking past it all. One can only look for so many silver linings before they realize that they are absolutely drenched in a thunderstorm.

The truth is that I kind of hate it here. I haven't always hated it here, but I've definitely hated it here since Halloween. Overall I do not regret making the decision to come here, but I regret coming here almost every single day.

I also don't want to appear weak or less-than my best. I know that only a few people read this blog, but they are all people whose opinions I value and care about. I am worried that if I let my true feelings about China and my time here shine through, that everyone will think less of me.

March has not been the first time that I've considered just throwing in the towel and going home. Even on the best days, this experience has been very different from what we were promised. I feel as though every single thing that our recruiter told us, and everything in our contract has either been a deliberate lie or a purposeful exaggeration.

Speaking of the contract, I have read through it recently and it made me laugh. The school has broken almost every single promise that they have made to us. The contract indicates that we are not supposed to work on weekends, or after five. The contract also says that we would never have to work more than 40 hours in a week.

But still, I am afraid to give up. I don't want to be seen as a quitter. I don't want to disappoint my new friends, or make my friends and family at home feel ashamed of me. I know that I have it within me to finish this job, but I don't know what the benefits of sticking through to the end will be. I don't think there I will feel any kind of major accomplishment. There will be no reward for finishing, aside from the rest of our meager salary. I am not sure that I will ever be able to use this job as a reference, since Angel is very difficult to contact outside of mainland China. Even if someone did contact her, I honestly do not think she would have anything positive to say about me. Angel very clearly resents Laura and I, and how much money we have cost her.

This isn't like running the marathon, something that also very difficult for me. This is a different animal altogether.

I'm rambling now. This whole post probably won't make me look very good, but I really want to be honest. I think these feelings are a very important of my story here. It's very easy to simplify things for Internet consumption. Everyone loves to post the pictures and the good news, and filter out the rest. Or, some people like to be dramatic and only share the bad things. Real life is always a lot more complicated, and over here that still remains true. There have been some really great moments and I have tried to share all those, but there are a ton of really awful ones as well. There's also a lot of mind-numbingly dull moments too.

One of my major goals in coming here and being a teacher was to make a difference in someone's life. Unfortunately this school actively works against me being able to do that. We are always having classes cancelled, rescheduled, or overridden. When we do have our normal classes, we are always forced to add things like Chinese songs and dances, and basically to do things which undermine any potential knowledge gains. At this point, one of my major goals is to compile accurate documentation so that I can share what this job is actually like to any potential future employees.

It's not all bad all the time, and I think there is definitely a "kind of person" that would thrive here, but I don't think that I am that kind of person. I think that any future employees deserve a full disclosure of every single thing that will get thrown at you here. The bosses and our recruiter in Michigan are either incapable or unwilling to do that, and so I have nominated myself as the best person for the job.

This whole post is kind of a mess, but I think that accurately reflects my life right now, so I'm just going to go ahead and end it here. This is what China has done to me. Hopefully next week is better.

Here are some awesome pictures:

Some mold on our fridge! It's everywhere now!

One of the teachers was preparing the strangest skit I've ever seen.

The "repair job". Look they got rid of the mold by painting the apartment brown! But only some of the parts.

They were extra careful where they got the paint.

My favorite kind of party

Yeah I wouldn't pay the US $500 a month to send my kid to this "enplish" school

Another gorgeous day in a wonderful place.

Classic, meaningful slogan in a classroom here.

My friend Chris is a celebrity!

Laura enjoys a thoughtful birthday present. Thanks guys!

Week 32 (My 60th post!): Suzhou was Su-junk, or The Flight From Hell

Suzhou - Getting Soggier

Coming to Suzhou meant more rain and more cold, sopping wet adventures. It rained nonstop for all three days we were here. I misread where our hostel was located and, even though I was right in thinking that it was within walking distance of the subway stop, we got off at the wrong stop and wandered around for over an hour.

The hostel had lots of cuddly cats, which was nice. There were also some dogs, but they were decidedly unfriendly. In fact, they were a lot less friendly than you'd expect dogs living in a hostel to be. It was mildly alarming.

Our rooms were definitely an improvement though, smaller and cozier. We only had one roommate most of the time, and he was a quiet little innocuous guy. He barely made a peep the whole time. This was lucky, since most of the other guests in the hostel were part of this huge Chinese family group. When I say family, I mean the whole damn family. Aunts and uncles, babies, angsty teens, and even grandmas and grandpas were staying at this hostel.

We had to interact with them whenever we needed to use the bathroom or the showers. I tried to be friendly, but I'm pretty sure I scared the poor souls. They freaked out and clutched all their belongings to their chest when I walked by. One of the nights we stayed there, one of the middle-aged members of this Chinese family got stuck in our room. I swear she didn't sleep a wink. She was terrified of Laura and I!

Whenever we deigned to venture out into the misty cold, we were bombarded with other tourists. Suzhou is famous for its canals and its gardens, two things that date back to about 500 years ago. The canals are mostly restricted to a single historic district now, and it just so happens that this is where our hostel was.

It was nerve wracking to walk along these thin canal streets, with walls on one side and nothing but water on the other, being squeezed shoulder to shoulder with about 50,000 other people. Still, we managed to enjoy ourselves whenever we could.  We took some really great pictures, and spent most of our time in one or two little cafes in this touristy area. One of the cafes sold hot watermelon juice, which Laura fell in love with.

One night we stumbled across a Sichuan family restaurant. Sick of fast food and "western" food, we decided to eat inside. The food was pretty tasty, but that is not what I remember the occasion for. No, I will always remember this restaurant, until my dying day, because it's the restaurant where Laura got peed on.

I am not sure if I have mentioned this in my writings or not, but babies in China don't wear diapers. In fact, they rarely wear pants. If the weather is cold or wet, their parents will put special pants on them that have no middle. I have seen so many baby genitals this year, and it's always a bit of an unpleasant shock. You just want to quietly eat your putrefied tofu paste or your chicken toenails in peace, and before you know it some toddler is flapping his penis at you.

Well, this restaurant was really just some family's living room. There were four tables, each of which would have comfortably sat 3 or 4 people. When Laura and I walked in, 3 of the 4 tables were packed with 7 or 8 people each. It was... cozy... to say the least. One family had a baby who we all thought was cute at first. This is before we were betrayed.

Anyway, we're trying to eat our food and this baby is being allowed by his parents to wander wherever he wants. He kept trying to go play with the hot stove and the knives, which everyone thought was adorable. Just as we were finishing up our plate (of hot fried noodles! Delicious!), the baby walks over and just starts peeing. The parents thought this was adorable, and let him finish peeing in front of Laura before they picked him up. Then a waitress came over and, with a broom, "swept up" the pee.

I couldn't even make this stuff up if I wanted to.

During the time we were there we only checked out a few gardens. Even though it was the "off season" and most of the plants were dead or not-yet bloomed, the gardens were charging double their normal price because it was the spring festival. Still, there was some cool stuff to see at the ones we went to. My favorite was the enormous Bonzai tree garden within the "Humble Administrator Garden".

The evening after the urination incident, we were both feeling particularly homesick. We managed to find a single "western" bar in town. It was Irish-themed. We decided to go there and spend the evening. We had some mediocre hamburgers and enjoyed the live band. There was an Irish guy there that befriended us. His name was Aiden and he lived in Shanghai. Apparently he was also a school teacher. His job is to teach American history to 15 year olds. He managed to make us feel really at home and we had a great night sharing "war stories" and also stories about American wars. Then, halfway through the evening, he got up and went to the bathroom and never came back. I'm not sure what happened to him, but I hope he's okay!

On our last day in Suzhou, we took a trip out to the Tiger Hill Pagoda Recreation Park. Tiger Hill Pagoda is actually one of the last unrestored pagodas in China. It is nearly 1,000 years old and aside from a few joists that were inserted to slow its leaning, nothing has been done to it for a millennium. It was really cool to see this huge tilted monolith peeking out from above the bamboo forest. It really does look like it's from another time and another place. Apparently bigger, older, and leans more than the tower of Pisa, so even though the Tiger Hill Pagoda is sometimes referred to as the "Pisa of the East", it would be more appropriate to call Pisa the Tiger Hill Pagoda of the West.

I got to eat some more stinky tofu in Suzhou. I was surprised to see it, since I was under the impression that it is more of a Taiwanese treat, but I could smell it from a few streets away and I definitely knew what it was. This vendor actually had two versions: there was the traditional stinky tofu and then this other kind that was made out of black tofu. I tried the black variety and it was even better. It was smoky, complex, slightly burnt-tasting, and very spicy! It also gave me bad breath for days!

After three days trying to stay warn in Suzhou, we bid farewell to our quiet British roommate and went to our final destination of February - the greatest city in the world: Shanghai!

Getting Shanghai'd

Shanghai is unlike any city I've ever been to in China. It felt absolutely nothing like China at all. When visiting Hong Kong, I remarked that it reminded me of a completely westernized China. I have to amend this statement now, because I think that Shanghai is even more westernized than Hong Kong is.

I've been fortunate enough to visit New York City once in my life. I was a lot younger than I am now, but I remember it vividly. Shanghai was exactly like NYC to me. It was NYC with just slightly more Chinese writing everywhere.

The buildings were big and modern, and everyone spoke really great English. The signs were in Chinese, yes, but all of the English translations were fantastic. There were more western stores and restaurants than I knew what to do with! I mean, let me be clear here, Shanghai has Applebees, Outback Steakhouse, and TGI Fridays.

If you have a TGI Fridays then you have no right to call yourself a Chinese city.

True to form, most of what Laura and I did in Shanghai consisted of walking around and exploring. We both enjoy being physically active and it's a lot cheaper than paying for things. Even though it was still very cold and rainy, there was about one and a half days where it wasn't too bad and we totally capitalized on the opportunity.

One of the first things we did after we got into town was to meet up with our friend Adriana for dinner. Adriana is doing some teaching and tutoring at the college level at NYU's satellite campus in Shanghai.

She showed us around a little bit, took us to a good restaurant, and told us all about her experiences in China. It's really amazing to think that we're both living in the same country, because the way her story sounded, I would have thought she was living in Paris or something. There was a lot more different about the Chinas that we've both experienced  than there was in common.

I won't editorialize too much here, but I will say that Adriana is already planning on doing a second year in China, and possibly even more years than that. Meanwhile Laura and I are counting down the days until we can come home to FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY.

Oh yeah, we popped into a grocery store after dinner (Adrianna needed something), and they had CHEEZE-ITS. I can't clarify enough how unlike the rest of China that Shanghai is.

Our second day in Shanghai was super rainy, so we spent the day checking out some of the malls near our hostel. I've seen enough malls in China, if I'm being honest, but it was pretty much our only option. We had fun seeing the differences between Shanghai malls and Foshan malls, though. One Shanghai mall had an M&M store! We bought nearly a half kilo of M&Ms. I won't tell you how quickly we ate all of them because then you wouldn't respect me anymore.

After lunch we went to the Shanghai Museum of History. Routinely rated as one of the best museums in China, the SMH is also completely free! We spent several hours looking at 8,000 year old clay pots. One of my favorite galleries was the collection of ancient currency. China was one of the first places to develop coin money, and the Shanghai Museum has a pretty big collection. They also have coins from other ancient empires that were originally collected on the silk road. Another amazing area was the "ethnic minorities of China" gallery. What most people think of as a "Chinese person" is someone of the Han ethnicity. In reality there are dozens and dozens of ethnicities of people who are culturally or legally Chinese citizens, and just like a lot of minorities around the rest of the world, they are not historically treated very nicely. This area of the museum was dedicated to a lot of the amazing clothing and art by these oft-forgotten but no less important groups of Chinese citizens.

For dinner we went over to the Pudong area of the city, which features some of the world's tallest sky scrapers including the soon-to-be-completed Shanghai tower. At 632 meters, it is the tallest structure of any kind in China, and the second tallest in the world (behind that Wiz Kalifa one). We settled in at Little Yang's Dumplings, home of the Shengjiao soup dumpling.

Soup dumplings are a specialty, very famous all over Asia, that originate in Shanghai. They are technically buns, and not dumplings, but either way they are much like traditional buns/dumplings in that they are some delicious steamed meats wrapped up all nicely. The twist with soup dumplings becomes apparent when you bite inside. There's soup inside too! The way they make these puppies used to be a well kept secret, but nowadays the secret is out. They freeze a small cube of soup stock, and wrap it up with the meat when they make the dumplings. The steaming process not only cooks the meat, but melts the soup. You have to be careful when you eat soup dumplings, because the soup is usually boiling hot and can gush out if you are not properly prepared.

The dumplings were delicious! We ended up trying both styles of soup dumplings (the Shengjiaos at Little Yangs are a lot bigger and are fried on one side), but I'm pretty sure I preferred the ones at Yang's. You can't beat fried things!

We didn't stick around too long in Pudong, it was just too rainy, but we did take a few moments to enjoy the mysterious and post-apocalyptic feel that the clouds were giving the skyscrapers. The pictures I took that night are some of my favorite from all of Shanghai.

Next morning it didn't rain, so we took advantage of it! We got up early and explored the Bund. The Bund is another famous area in Shanghai, directly across the river from Pudong (in an area called Puxi). The Bund is a street not quite like any other in the world. After the Opium Wars ended, China was forced to open up a number of ports to the western world for trade. Shanghai, at the time a tiny fishing village, began its journey into being one of the biggest and most modern cities in the world at this time. One section of the city, right on the river and near the ports, was given over completely to western control. As countries from all over the world started showing up and taking a piece for themselves, they started building buildings. Some friendly and not-so-friendly competition, combined with different styles of doing things, meant that every single building had a completely different style. Walking down The Bund is like taking a trip around the entire world and all of modern history. The architecture of no two buildings are quite alike. While most of the buildings are banks nowadays, almost every one of them has a fascinating history. We took plenty of pictures of this area too.

Heading south from the Bund we ended up in the "Old Town" area, which is the most traditionally Chinese district in Shanghai. We walked through some old buildings which form a bazaar area, and also checked out one of China's most famous tea houses.

From here we headed west in search of the Shanghai Bird and Insect market. We eventually got too hungry while searching for it, so we decided to come back leader.

Lunch was at 21B Baker Street. That's right, I found a Sherlock Holmes-themed cafe in China. It was basically a shrine to Mr. Bendleby Cumpersnitch. Laura was in heaven. We took a lot of fun pictures with costumes on, and to top it all off the food was shockingly delicious!

Finally sated, we headed back to look for the market and we found it! I had a lot of fun looking at all the prize-fighting crickets. You heard me right: prize-fighting crickets. Another Shanghai specialty is cricket fighting. It was the "off-season" so I didn't really get to see how it works, but Chinese dudes take it very seriously. It's a serious source of income for a lot of people, as gamblers put a lot of money on the fights. There's also apparently a lot of money in breeding crickets. I saw crickets at the market for as much as 300 RMB ($50 US! For a single cricket!). The birds were just okay. It was kind of sad to see them because the cages were so small. Also, one lady in the market clearly didn't get the memo because she was selling pet chinchillas. I'd never seen a real chinchilla though, so the joke was on her.

The next stop on our cross-Shanghai tour was a walk through Fuxing park. This was supposed to be one of the highlights of the day, but it was really disappointing. Everything was dead and brown, and most of the park was flooded. Yuck! We still sat on a bench for a while though because our feet were so tired; we had walked nearly 10 miles at this point.

Later we walked through some of the trendier shopping districts in the French concession. Like its name sounds, the French concession was the area of the city that France took over back in the day. They've left behind a legacy of high class and high fashion, and it's one of the nicest and most developed parts of the city. The malls and shopping were way out of our league, though, so we didn't stay long.

It was already time for dinner, so we went to a place recommended by our friend Adrianna called Southern Barbarian. Southern Barbarian is a bit of a trendy restaurant catering to tourists or expatriates, but they specialized in Yunnan food. Yunnan food was a cuisine I had not yet tried in China, and I was excited because (surprise), they eat bugs out in Yunnan!

We ordered some fried goat cheese, some spicy mint salad, and a three bug platter featuring Grasshoppers, Bamboo worms, and Bees. Everything was really great! If I had to be picky, I would say that the grasshoppers were a little burnt. They tasted like burnt soybeans. But bees, on the other hand, may be my new favorite bug. They taste like you'd think, as long as what you think is that they would taste a little bit like honey.

Since we love being total disgusting shameful gluttons, we actually went out to eat again before bed. In our defense, it was another 3 or 4 hours later, and we had walked another several miles. This time we were searching for place that had Xiaolongbao, the other type of soup dumplings. Shockingly for a city as big and modern as Shanghai, almost every place that we tried to go was closed even though it was only 8:30 or 9. It took us over 2 extra hours of walking to finally find some places that were open.

To be honest, I was so hungry at that point that I would have just taken anything. This restaurant seemed like a pretty generic family-style Chinese restaurant, which is always a really good indicator in China. We were not disappointed! Shanghai-style food is just divine. A lot of Chinese people don't like it because they claim that it is "too sweet", "too oily", "has too much sauce", or "has too much seasoning" on it. From where I am sitting these are all GREAT attributes about food (save for oily maybe).

American Chinese food is, I'm sure most of my readers will know, very little like actual Chinese food. Shanghainese food, though, is the closest thing I've found to American Chinese food so far. It's funny because most restaurants in the US are labeled as "Cantonese" restaurants. Well, I live in the part of China that used to be known as Canton, and it's so very different that it's laughable.

The next day was not as fortunate in the rain department. It was the coldest, rainiest, soggiest day yet. It was our last full day of our month-long trip and it was tough to stay in a chipper mood. It nearly ruined our first stop of the day at the Muslim market.

A number of the previously-mentioned Chinese minority groups are traditionally Muslim (as opposed to Buddhist, like the majority of Chinese), and they have their own distinct cuisines and food types. Shanghai has a large population of these fine folks, and every Friday morning they gather near one of the mosques and sell all sorts of fresh food. By the time we got to the market the rain started pouring really hard. Luckily there were tented areas near the grills. We hung out near a hot stove and bought lots of goat shish-kebabs, fresh yogurt, fresh pita bread, and lamb meat pies. The full, meaty flavors almost made all the misery from the rain go away.

After, we made our way to the Propaganda Poster Museum on the far end of the French Concession. I had heard about this place online a while back, and it was a good thing I had good directions because it was really hard to find.

It was located in the basement of an otherwise completely unmarked apartment complex. It's basically just some guy's private collection. The museum itself was really cool, and was exactly like it sounds. I had a lot of fun pretending I was a secret agent in the Soviet era trying to find the place, too. The security guards saw us when we walked in and I said the password (Museum). They handed us a crudely drawn map and we had to navigate to the right building and find the secret entrance to the basement. Once at the bottom we had to hook a sneaky left turn and follow the poorly marked sign and we found it!

Learning about China's Red history through its own propaganda posters was a unique way of looking at one of the world's darkest and most deadly eras. We would have stated there a very long time, except that the basement wasn't heated and wasn't very dry either.

Taking a deep breath we braced ourselves for more wet misery and we left the museum.

There's not much else to tell of our Shanghai adventures. We spent a lot of time in the hostel, which was once again full of entire Chinese families. One night we had a grandma and a grandpa in our room. They put all of their comically large underwear on the space heater in the middle of the room and went to bed at 5pm. They woke up at 5am the next day and started making all kinds of noise as they did their stretches and packed their bags!

One night while we were out walking, we saw a grown man taking a dump in the middle of the street!

Just like Taiwan, Shanghai has a bunch of cat cafes. We had a heck of a time finding one though. The addresses we went to never had cat cafes at them! Adrianna says that a lot of stores and businesses seem to move around a lot, and I guess we just had bad luck. The one cats cafe we did manage to find didn't have any coffee, any pie, and also didn't have any cats. We stormed out after threatening to burn the place down.

And so February, which had entered with a roar, went out with a whimper. We boarded our plane and endured the worst flight of our entire lives. If you ever get a chance to fly on Spring Airlines I highly advise you not to do it.

The plane was tiny. They crammed six seats into every aisle when there should only have been four. The plane ride was choppy and full of turbulence the entire time. It is a "budget airline", so they did not serve any food or drinks on the whole three hour ordeal. Even water cost nearly $2.

As is common on most flights anymore, the captain announced that passengers could buy some duty free items from the in-flight magazine if they wanted. Unlike most flights, though, one of the flight attendants got up and went to the front of the plane with a cart full of stuff and with a megaphone. He proceeded to have some sort of auction-style sales pitch on all the items! He did this for nearly 90 minutes. Half of the flight was spent listening to a guy scream into a megaphone trying to get passengers to buy over-priced selfie sticks. Perhaps most unbelievable of all was that everyone on the plane was going NUTS for the stuff. Seriously I think Laura and I were the only passengers not to buy at least one item. This airline probably made $3,000 on that flight. It was like Black Friday on this airplane for these colognes and these replica Titanics.

When this fellow finally finished his spiel, I was ready for the last 40 minutes of the flight to be somewhat peaceful. Of course, I was wrong. China always has a way to take it to the next level. A recording came on the air and asked if we were all sore or tired from our long flight. Then an aerobics tape started, and the entire flight attendant staff led the passengers in an INSANE exercise routine. I wish I were joking. Nearly everyone on board the flight was swinging their arms and clapping their hands and rocking their head side-to-side in this twisted nightmare of a flight.

We got back to Foshan not a moment too soon!

I thought after traveling for a month that I would be exhausted. I was! I also thought that the "traveling bug" would have left me. I assumed that after going to so many places that I'd be ready to settle down. This is where I was mistaken. It was not even a full day later that I began planning out our next trip during our next break. May can't come fast enough!

Overall I am not sure what my favorite part of the trip was. The Southeast Asia portion was definitely better than the China portion. But even still, looking back on a lot of the experiences in China, I can admit that we did and saw a lot of amazing things. I'm just glad I took plenty of photos and finally managed to write almost all of it down. It is a period in my life that I do not want to soon forget.

Is it time for another trip yet...?

Week 31: Breaking the Mold, or, Hanging in Hangzhou

Intermission - Foshan Again

From February 16 through 18 we were back in Foshan again. Our flight back into China was awesome. I booked a flight on Air Kenya only because it was the cheapest flight I could find. I was not expecting much, and truth be told was just keeping my fingers crossed that the place didn't suck.

Air Kenya had the fanciest airplane I have ever been on! The seats were huge and comfortable, and the windows were gigantic. They even mentioned in their intro video that they have the largest windows of any airline in existence. The food was very very good, and the in-flight movie selection was also great. I would seriously recommend Air Kenya to anyone.

We returned to Foshan and it was like a ghost town. We were just a few days away from Chinese New Year, which means that all of the people in the city that were not natives had left and gone to their hometowns. All the natives in Foshan were staying in their homes.

The airport, the subway, and the streets were all almost completely devoid of people. It was so shocking that I took pictures. I took pictures of the empty streets and subway cars.

Coming home was more than a little upsetting. Not only was our trip over, which is never fun, but the mold had gotten much worse in our apartment. Nobody had done any work at all! Not even a tiny little bit. There was mold all over our clothes and all over the bed furniture. Even stepping into the apartment was like stepping into a moldy, dank, soup.

It only took one night to realize that we had to get out. I did some browsing on my "sky scanner" app, and found some incredibly cheap tickets to Eastern China for the 18th. Like, no joke, the cheapest tickets to anywhere that I've ever seen. We booked them without much of a second thought.

And with that we were off to...

Hangzhou - City on a Lake

Hangzhou is a city famous for its lake. The West Lake isn't particularly big or important from an economic perspective, but it is definitely very beautiful. For thousands of years Chinese people have been coming to the lake and admiring its serene wonder. Many poems and stories are written about the lake, and it's basically one of the essential stops on a tour of China, especially if you are a Chinese person.

It really worked out that tickets were so cheap to this city. I am not entirely sure why it worked out so nicely. I think it may have something to do with the fact that the 18th was Chinese New Year's Eve. Chinese people are mostly at their homes at this point, having dinner and getting ready for fireworks.

The flight was short and pleasant, and not very crowded. We landed in Hangzhou and went to the taxi queue. I knew something was wrong pretty quickly. There was no one in the line and all the "taxi drivers" were just hanging out and smoking. Once they saw a potential customer they all started fighting each other for the right to "have us". One guy said he knew where we were going and told us to get into his car. I asked him how much and he tried to speak English to me. He said "seventy five", or something very close to it.

I knew something was wrong because there was no way it should have been that cheap. The reason we always go to the official taxi queue is in an attempt to avoid scammers. This guy seemed like a scammer, and my intuition was confirmed when he took us to the parking lot and passed us off to another group of "taxi drivers". One guy put us into his car and started driving. This was no taxi, either, but his personal car. I was angry, but there wasn't much that I could do. There were no official taxis out! It was almost midnight on New Year's Eve.

He took us to the hostel and them demanded 300RMB. 300 is about $50 US, which is insane. I told him that the other guy said 75, and he started screaming at us. I tried to negotiate but he wasn't having any of it. He started waving his arms pretty violently, and Laura threatened to call the police. After an hour of him pretending to know absolutely zero English, he suddenly understood everything we were saying. He definitely knew "police".

In the end he accepted 200, which was still a lot but was pretty standard to how far he drove us from the airport. This put a bit of a sour mood on the evening, and definitely characterized the second half of our February. Everyone seemed cutthroat and out to get us, and the tourists were even worse than the money takers.

The hostel was located inside of an outdoor mall area that had been built out of several historical buildings. It was like staying somewhere in feudal China, and the location was definitely the best part about this hostel. The interior was kind of crummy, and everything smelled really bad. I think there was a sewer nearby, or maybe some sort of sewage leak. The lobby was a tough place to hang out.

The bathrooms didn't smell like sewage, but they did smell like a whole lot of mold. The caretaker of the hostel told us that there was "something wrong with the water pipes" that caused the hot water only to work from 10pm until 6am every day. Maybe I was being too suspicious at this point, but I have a feeling he was just trying to save a few bucks.

Everything in Hangzhou was freezing! The weather forecast had indicated it was supposed to be sunny and in the mid 60s all week.  The forecast ended up being seriously wrong! It was cloudy, rainy, and cold the entire time. Hangzhou is far enough north of Foshan that the climate is quite different. In the Winter it actually snows occasionally. We did not pack very appropriately for the trip, so we had to wear layers of shirts and sweaters and jackets.

Every morning we would leave our bedroom and just be hit by a wall of cold. Our friendly money saving caretaker refused to heat the building. He also propped all the doors and windows open! It was usually 30 degrees when we got up in the morning, and this guy would have frost appearing inside the hostel.

Our rooms were a different story. It was cozy and warm, yes, but don't think for a minute that we were going to be able to sleep at all. We had the strangest assortment of Chinese roommates imaginable. There was one guy who snored incredibly loud. It was so loud that it shook my bed. It got to the point that we started trying to sleep during the day and go out at night, but this didn't help because this man slept ALL DAY. He would usually go to bed at 1am and then sleep until 5 or 6pm the next day. He would then get up and leave until 12 or 1am, and then sleep for another 15 or 16 hours.

Then we had this creeper guy who kept staring at us. Whenever we rolled over he would be watching and giggling. We caught him taking pictures of me a number of times, and eventually he asked if he could do a photo shoot of me.

Not to be outdone, there was the phone guy and the charger guy. The phone guy played with his phone all night long, with the brightness all the way up. This guy also had an alarm set for 5am that he would just let ring for two hours every morning. He was a real treat. The charger guy had to charge all of his devices at all times. Every bed was supplied with two power outlets, but he had at least 4 devices. Every time we came back to the room he would be sitting in Laura's bed or my bed, using all of our outlets too.

Hangzhou wasn't all bad though. The first evening we were there we explored the "old city" district. Everything looked beautiful and ancient, and there were fireworks and firecrackers going off all over the place. It was great to join in the revelry of a Chinese New Year.

The first full day that we had there was very enjoyable too. We spent the entire day walking around the lake. Say what you will about Hangzhou, but the beauty of the West Lake was not exaggerated in any way. It was chilly, for sure, but the sun was out and we just enjoyed taking in every single angle of the lake. There were lots of leisure boats floating along the surface, fully of touring passengers. One end of the lake had a mystical looking pagoda, while the entire place was surrounded by mountains.

As the morning progressed the pathways around the lake started to fill up. By the afternoon it was very slow going. Before the end of the day it was absolutely shoulder to shoulder. It was hard not to get a little bit stressed toward the end. Hundreds of thousands of tourists walking around, spitting and blowing snot rockets, leaving litter wherever they wanted.

Still, at this point we didn't let it spoil our day. We discovered some incredible street food at one stand. They were selling whole deep-fried crabs on a stick. Two crabs per stick only cost $1.50! These crabs were soft-shelled, and the deep fried cooking meant that you could just eat the buggers whole.

Hangzhou actually had a lot of good food. We went to a place called Waipo Jia for dinner (Grandma's house). This place has a reputation for being the best restaurant in the province. Clearly we weren't the only ones in on the secret either. The wait was nearly 2 hours before we were able to get seated. It may be the longest I've ever waited for a meal. We actually went to a different place to have a snack while we waited to eat!

The meal, I think, was worth it. We had some incredible dishes and a lot of local specialties. I spend a lot of time talking about when Chinese food is gross or when it's weird, but when it is good it is SO DARN GOOD!

Our second day in Hangzhou was much more disappointing. It rained the whole day, which made it difficult to go anywhere or do anything. Hangzhou has some nice mountains for hiking, and a pretty well known tea plantation nearby, but what with the weather those things were not very feasible. We ended up going to the pagoda and paying to go to the top. It was so crowded that it was just not fun at all.

I'm not proud to admit it, but Laura and I were both pretty cranky while we were in Hangzhou. The sheer number of people and the bad weather and our lack of sleep made the trip not too fun. Looking back though, I can pick out all the good parts, and I am really glad I got a chance to see the legendary West Lake.

Our next destination was a town called Suzhou. It was connected to Hangzhou by rail, which meant that we got to finally use China's ultramodern bullet train system. For a low price we got to travel at the astounding speed of 190 MPH.

In only a few hours we found ourselves in a new place!

Week 30: All the Ties in Thailand, or, What's Jim Henson Doing Here Anyway?

No, I didn't really meet the king. Let's clear that rumor up right away. I feel like I know him though. 

His picture is everywhere. The Thai people really love their king. He's on the money and his picture is all over billboards and signs. Lots of stores and restaurants also have a picture of him in an esteemed and honored place. Sure, the people don't get a choice in having him on their money and stuff, but I really don't think it's an act. I think they really do love him. He seems like an alright dude, if not a little nerdy.

The king of Thailand was born in Massachusetts, fun fact. He's the only monarch in the history of the world to be born on US soil.

We walked across the border from Cambodia and caught a tuk tuk to the nearest train station. We bought two tickets (for a dollar each!) to Bangkok, and then went to a nearby place for lunch.

Our first taste of Thai food was disappointing. It was cold fish and old rice. Really uninspired stuff, and yet there was such a potent level of spiciness in it that it nearly knocked us on our feet!

The train ride to Bangkok was really long. 8 hours, after a 4 hour bus ride in the morning. It was unbelievably hot, and the trains were not well aerated. The train ride may have been one of my biggest miscalculations of the trip.

Still, it wasn't a total loss. We befriended some kooky characters, including an Irish guy and a German. Plus, I really got a feel for what the average Thai person is like on that train ride. Most of the passengers were just regular man and women on their way to work or to school. The train went across the whole country, but it stopped frequently so there were lots of commuters. I also got to see a lot of the beautiful Thai country, and watch the sun go down on some wonderful farmland.

I think I fell in love with Thailand during the week I spent there. I'm not saying I'm going to go live there after China. I'm definitely ready to come back to the USA. But, even on that train, I knew that this wouldn't be my only time in Thailand.

Our train eventually came to an end and we pulled into Bangkok. The first few days were to be spent with my good friend from college, Rebecca. She met us at the train station and after we exchanged hellos and hugs, we all headed to dinner.

The street food in Bangkok is off the hook. It's everything I wanted it to be, having been a lifelong lover of Thai food. After the mild misstep of our fish lunch, this dinner was a big reassurance that I was in the land of delicious foods. I don't even remember what I had, but I remember that it was delicious!

Rebecca hailed a cab and we headed to the suburbs. Rebecca, like me, is an English teacher at a school for kids. Her school is way out in the Bangbon district of Bangkok, nearly an hour from the city center. Laura and I spent a few days at her apartment, exploring the less flashy and touristy side of Thai life, and wandering around the suburban streets. We enjoyed trading "war stories", and comparing the perks and drawbacks about our various jobs. I'm not sure who came out ahead in the end, but I will say that Rebecca gets a lot more time off than we do...

Along with her other coworkers, the Bangbon crew showed us a great time for those first few nights. We went to this stellar outdoor buffet for dinner one night. It was styled after a Chinese Hot Pot restaurant, but it definitely had a Thai twist. There was a large selection of fresh vegetables and meats to try, and you could just load up a plate and take it back to your table and cook it yourself. I steamed my own crab and also had a whole lot of chicken.

The Hot Pot place also had a selection of meal worms, which I decided to try. Boy was I glad I did! Mealworms are buttery and delicious. They taste like warm roasted hazelnuts, and have a snappy skin on the outside as well! I had quite a few helpings. We finished the meal with some real life western-style ice cream and sprinkles. Not so exotic compared to the meal worms, but it was like a rare and exotic treat to me.

Other Bangbon adventures included going to a fruit market and trying the legendary durian. Durian fruit is often called "The king of fruit", but most westerners cannot stand it. It has a repulsive mind-numbing smell that carries for literally hundreds and hundreds of yards. The smell differs depending on who you ask, but the consensus is somewhere between rotting meat and wet garbage.

I knew I had to try this bizarre fruit. Once while I was in Atlanta I had bought some frozen chunks of durian at an international market. I didn't like it back then, but I also knew that it wasn't the pure experience. Similarly, they sell durian in China but it costs nearly $30 US for just a few pieces, and I knew it wouldn't be too fresh.

But in Thailand durian is everywhere. We bought a few very fresh chunks for a reasonable price. The stench was definitely there, but we persevered anyway. The texture of a durian is sort of mushy and clumpy, not unlike a sort of room temperature goat cheese. The goat cheese metaphor works on a number of levels because it actually tastes sort of cheesy as well. Hot cheese and onions. It's very complex, but not too unpleasant. I do not think you'd want to mix it in with other fruits at all. Durian would not go well in a fruit salad. We also sampled some fresh coconuts during our trip to the fruit market. Also some tiny finger-sized bananas.

After a few days in the suburbs, we migrated to the city proper for some urban adventures. The night life in Bangkok is a bit nuts. The city has a longtime reputation for being notoriously seedy and gritty, and there is still a little bit of that going on. I have to say, though, a lot of it has been "Disneyfied". There are more tourists in Bangkok now than there ever have been before, including lots of families and young people. A lot of the frit and grime of the city seems to have been washed away, or at least brushed into more secluded corners.

Still, you can't walk from one end of the street to the other at night without having people approach you and clandestinely ask if you want to buy a watch, or if you want to go to a "sexy show". These people are best ignored though, and they aren't too aggressive.

Rebecca was a great host and took us all over, showing all the sights and the good hangout spots. We spent a number of nights around Cheap Charlies, a sort of outdoor bar/alley way. It was right next to a different place called Charlies that was a Mexican restaurant. I'm not sure if they were owned by the same Charles or not. But Charlies the Mexican restaurant had really great chimichangas.

During the days in the city we spent time exploring. Bangkok has a huge Chinatown and we spent a lot of time just wandering the streets. I won't say that we were homesick for China, but it absolutely felt more comfortable and homey than I thought it would. There is a certain smell that hits you when you enter a China town. It smells like cooking meat, raw meat, garbage, and also like Chinese medicine. It is wonderful and disgusting at the same time. If you smell that then you know you are in a real China town.

Bangkok has its own Royal Palace complex, along with a bunch of holy temple complexes. The royal palace was under construction and, according to our friend Leon, was largely closed. So instead we spent a day at the Wat Pho temple. Wat Pho is known for its enormous reclining Buddha. Between the Buddha and some of the pyramid-style memorials for Thai kings of the past, Wat Pho was a pretty good time. I couldn't believe how big the reclining Buddha's feet were! Bigger than mine even.

One day Rebecca accompanied Laura and I to the Jim Thompson house. I kept confusing this guy with Jim Henson, but they were really quite different. The Jim Thompson house is the former home of James Thompson (obviously), a man who was stationed in Thailand during world war II. He fell in love with the place and decided to stay there forever. He discovered some villagers making clothes with Thai silk one day, and he decided to bring the art back to the masses. He revived the ancient art and made a fortune for himself in the process. His house is now a museum about his life, but thanks to all the ancient art and artifacts he collected, it serves as a museum about Southeast Asian culture as well. Jim Thompson went on vacation to Malaysia with some friends at some point in the 1960s. He got up early one day and went for a walk by himself. He was never seen or heard from again. His mysterious disappearance left an eerie and somber tone over the museum. Everything was really fascinating though, and it was amazing to see a lot of the art that he collected.

Bangkok wasn't all great, though. A lot of the cab drivers tried to rip us off, and so did a lot of the food vendors. Worst of all was the guy who stole Laura and Rebecca's phones. This guy, obviously, really sucked.  He stayed in our hostel with us for a few days, and we actually had a few conversations with him. Laura said, after the fact, that she thought he was very sketchy, but I totally didn't catch any bad vibes.

Nevertheless he was definitely a bad guy. He nabbed their phones and took some money and just disappeared. He put a huge damper on the week, but we decided to try and have a good time anyway.

One of the strangest things that happened to us was one night we got off the elevated train and saw a huge crowd congregating near one of the railways. We went over and looked into the distance and saw some sort of red carpet show going on. Come to find out, none other than Jackie Chan, Adrian Brody, and John Cusack were all in Bangkok promoting their new movie. I actually saw all those guys in real life! It was pretty cool.

Perhaps my favorite memory from the time I spent in Bangkok was the afternoon that we spent watching the sunset across the river from the Temple of Dawn. We sipped some enjoyable cocktails and enjoyed one of the greatest views in all of Thailand. The temple couldn't be enjoyed any better way, I don't think.

After we finished our cocktails and then took a boat ride on the river ferry. Once upon a time, the river taxi was the only form of mass transit in the city, and it is still one of the cheapest and busiest ways to get around. The ferry was stuffed; it was so jam-packed that I was worried someone was going to fall into the river.

The way people pay for public transport such as water ferrys and buses is kind of silly. There's just a short of stout shouting woman who runs around asking people to give her money to put into her pocket. It is really inefficient, and especially on the ferry I wonder how many people get out of paying for their ride.

We didn't just spend the entire week with Rebecca. We ran into all three of our friends from work: Zac, Leon, and Chris. They were all on their own cross-Asia trip, but we happened to just be in Bangkok at the same time. During the first part of the week Leon was in town. He enjoyed a genuine Chocolate milkshake at the Charlies restaurant that was a Mexican place. During the later part of the week, Zac and Chris showed up and we hit up Khao San road.

Khao San was a bit of an adventure. It was really loud and crazy, and it seemed like some sort of Spring Break nightmare. The food and the drinks were cheap though, and it was definitely an adventure. Plus at the end of the night we had some delicious Dönner Kebabs.

Basically our time in Bangkok was the perfect mix of Eastern and Wester, old and new, quiet and loud. I really enjoyed myself. We spent our last day in Bangkok going to the gigantic weekend market. This is the biggest outdoor market in Asia, and it was crazy! We spent several hours walking around and checking out the food and clothes being offered, and I think we only just barely scratched the surface. There were stalls selling art supplies and stalls selling jewelry. We had kind of run out of money at this point, but there were actually some pretty high quality goods there.

Oh! Before I finish this post, I should mention Phuket.

We went down to the sunny tropical island of Phuket in the middle of the week for a snorkeling adventure. We found really cheap plane tickets, and the trip was only about 40 minutes in the air.

Phuket was gorgeous. Sitting in the Indian ocean, it was like an entirely different country from where we had started in Bangkok. The weather was great for both days that we were there. We stayed in Patong Beach, because that was where the dive shop was located. Patong Beach is a huge party zone, but we spent most of the evening walking along the beach and catching little crabs.

Our hostel was pretty nice. It was off of the main party zone track, and had its own private pool. Our room was right off the pool, and there was a pretty nice British guy staying there.

There was a bit of confusion with our snorkeling trip. They moved their office to a different location from where my email had said to go. Once we tracked down the shop (thanks to a friendly local with a cell phone), they had no record of us ever having signed up for the tour or having paid the deposit.

It took a little bit of arguing and convincing but they eventually believed us and told us that we would be picked up the next morning. Early the next day a driver came and got us. Of course, he was confused because he thought he was supposed to pick up four people. He refused to let us get into the car and we were almost late for the boat leaving. It eventually took us having our hostel's concierge call the drivers boss and have the boss assure him that we were the right people.

Once we arrived at the warehouse where the boat leaves from, we were loaded into the boat and started the tour.

The tour was incredible! We had a fantastic time snorkeling and searching for fish. There were plenty of angelfish and parrotfish floating around, but I managed to find a lion fish hiding in some rocks, and even a clown fish in an anemone.

In between the swimming we did some great sightseeing. The islands of Thailand are all gorgeous. We saw a cave where they harvest bird nest soup. We also saw the bay where some Leonardo DiCaprio movie was filmed.

A funny thing happened after our first snorkel stop. Some Chinese guy got lost. He actually got onto the wrong boat and thought that it was his boat. This is already funny enough, but it gets even better. He was with his entire family. His wife, his daughter, his mother and his father were all on the boat with him. He was the only one in his group swimming. He got aboard a boat and never realized that his entire family wasn't onboard.

We almost missed lunch because we had to form a search party for this dude. The tour guide said that it has never happened to him before. Eventually we found him. He was very embarrassed.

Something that really bothered me during the tour. The other guests on our tour were very... um... free with the concept of littering. We were on some of the most beautiful and pristine islands on the planet, and everyone was just dumping garbage everywhere. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to stop these guys and girls, but they were strangers. I didn't know what else to do, so I just sort of picked up after them.

The tour came to a close and the drivers took as back to our hotels. We got the same driver and he caused us more trouble. Since this was just a quick hop down south solely to go snorkeling, we had already booked a return flight. I knew it would take a while to get to the airport, and I wanted to leave some wiggle room. I figured 4 hours from the end of the tour would be plenty of time to get back to our rooms, gather our things, and go to the airport.

Unfortunately I was dead wrong. We got back to the docks rather late, and then it took more than two hours to get to the hotel. We were once again in a "about to miss your plane" situation. We had to hire a private driver and pay an obscene amount of money so to some guy who assured us he could dodge traffic and get us there on time.

This felt like a whole lot of deja vu. Once again we made it to our gate with minutes to spare, only to discover that our plane had been delayed. We ended up sitting for over an hour! It's funny how things work out.

So that was Thailand. We packed a lot of fun into that week, and yet it still went by way too fast. It was great to see some old friends and to make some new ones too. There were lots of highs and lows, but Thailand definitely left me wanting more.

I think I'll go back there as soon as possible...!

We flew back to Foshan and, for a while anyway, thought our month of travel had come to an end.

Week 29: High Falutin' Balut, or, WAT THE HECK IS AN ANGKOR WAT

Saigon - This is My Vietnam

Saigon was hot. I know I talk about China being hot all the time, but in the course of the winter months it has actually chilled off quite a bit. I know that I said Sanya was a lot warmer, too, but this was a romantic tropical warmth tempered by some cool sea breezes.

Saigon was like a brick pizza oven making a deep dish. Saigon was like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Totkopf's head melts off. Saigon was like swimming but on the streets.

Saigon was hot.

We spent a bit of time in the airport getting our arrival visas squared away. While we were waiting, I just people watched. It's always fascinating to see what kinds of people a place attracts. China is hard to pin down. Just what kind of foreigner comes to China? I think the answer lies in a place of not belonging anywhere else. China seems to attract weirdos and freaks and outcasts. When you meet a fellow foreigner in China, your first thought is not "is this person crazy?", but "how crazy is this person, exactly?"

Before you judge me for judging others, it is important to note that I include myself in this evaluation. While I may have a relatively easy time fitting in back in the USA, I still feel adrift from time to time. My desire to come to the other side of the planet is one that I still haven't figured out for myself, but I think it is definitely linked to my own feelings of isolation back home. I am not sure I belong in the world of Psychology, even though I have spent a lot of time and a lot of money to get an education in that field. I am not even sure I belong in the world of 9-to-5 wear-a-tie-and-go-to-work life at all. I don't think a life in China is for me, but I definitely see myself in some of the other weirdos that come here!

Vietnam has its own flavor of tourism. I would classify everyone I ran into in Vietnam, starting with that morning in the airport, as either a hippie or a bro. There were so many elderly Americans, Brits, and Canadians, and they all had long hair and beards. They completed their outfits with tie-dyed shirts and sunglasses. The other group I saw a lot of in Vietnam were rich college frat guys and sorority girls. These people were kind of the worst people I've ever met in my life, but more on them later.

We finally left immigration and headed to the cash exchange. Getting Vietnamese money was really bizarre. Vietnam has had some of the worst inflation on the planet for several decades now. $1 US is roughly 21,000 VDN. So, after swapping out all of my Chinese cash, I had several million dollars on me. It'll probably be the richest that I'll ever be in my life!

Next stop was the taxi queue. The taxi stand was located next to a Popeyes chicken! That's was another big eye opener after being in China for so long. The rest of the world is so westernized! Popeyes was far from the only American fast food place that we saw in Saigon.

A quick aside about nomenclature. The official name of the city that we were in in Vietnam is "Ho Chi Minh City". This is the name that was given to it at the end of the Vietnam war when the communists defeated the nationalists. They forced the people of the city to change the name to reflect the leader of the communist party. Saigon is the original name of the city, how it was known before the war and into relative antiquity. A lot of the locals kept calling it Saigon after the war as a bit of a small rebellion. Nowadays there isn't much rebelling going on, but the name Saigon is still used by 99% of the locals and also in almost every context outside of official government documents. I asked a local about this and she said that they think Ho Chi Minh City is too formal sounding. Saigon sounds friendly, and like a family, she told me.

I really loved Saigon and definitely felt welcome there, so I will keep calling it Saigon.

We took our cab to our hostel and marveled at the sights and sounds. Saigon is the very definition of a bustling city. It is loud and constantly on the move, and there is a certain vivacious energy there  is hard to pin down but is wonderful to experience.

And the bikes! There are more motorbikes in Saigon than there are people. Almost everyone drives a motorbike and cars are comparatively rare. Most of the traffic lights don't work in the city either. This translates to a sort of controlled chaos on the roads that must be experienced to be believed. It was much more zany and hairy than China, and yet I always felt much safer crossing the street than I do in China. Everyone just seems to be a much better driver over in Saigon, and also the streets are always so unbelievably clogged that most people cannot reach very dangerous speeds.

Checking into the hostel, I realized that this place was going to be a step down from the 5 star resort we'd just stayed in. While it was definitely a clean place, and truly a pretty nice hostel, the words 'shabby' and 'dingy' definitely come to mind. Also, the hostel was located right in the heart of District 1. Saigon is divided into roughly 30 districts, and District 1 is the very center of the city. This is also where all of the tourists and immigrants live. It was so weird seeing so many white and black people! I honestly caught myself staring. Our hostel was no exception. It was full of teenagers and 20-somethings all on their gap year. I really came to hate a lot of the people in our hostel, although we got lucky with our roommates, all of whom were nice and quiet.

Our first day in Saigon Laura and I just wandered around District 1 and took in all the sights, sounds, and smells. I was eager to try Vietnamese street food, which I had heard was some of the best in the world. I am happy to say that I was not disappointed. One of Saigon's quintessential street meals is a Bahn Mi sandwich, and we had several over our few days there.

A Bahn Mi is some French bread filled with vegetables, a bit of meat, and lots of Vietnamese spices and seasonings. It was so incredibly amazing to have real bread, and to have it packed with such fresh delicious flavors! My mouth is watering right now just talking about one. The Bahn Mi is far from the best food I had in February, but it might be the food I miss the most. I think if I lived in Vietnam I would probably have one for lunch every single day.

We also ate lots of other street food. I had things that I never learned the name of, or any of the ingredients. They were all delicious! One of my other favorites was noodle based and served with some crispy wontons.

Compared to Chinese food, everything in Vietnam is so fresh and bright. It's hard not to become redundant when talking about Vietnamese food, but fresh and bright are really the perfect descriptions of the flavors that pop up into your mouth while you're having a nosh.

Another delicious must-eat in Vietnam is Pho. Pho is kind of like ramen noodles if you have no other comparison, but they are really in a league of their own. True Pho comes with a whole bunch of fresh veggies and condiments on the side which allows you to customize your bowl of soup and noodles. I loved Pho before I came to Vietnam, but visiting it in its homeland just rekindled the flame.

Full from our sandwiches and our noodles, we walked around enjoying the buildings. Vietnam has plenty of Chinese influence, but lots of French influence going on as well. The town hall and the opera house both transported me to another time and another place. I felt as though I was walking down a European boulevard. Only the skull crackingly sweat drippingly hot heat pulled me from this hazy daydream.

We also when to Ben Tanh market, one of the biggest markets in the city. It is known by the locals as the "tourist market" because of its location in District 1. Everything here is super marked up compared to markets elsewhere in town, and yet compared to American and even Chinese prices, everything is unbelievably cheap. We bought Laura a hat to shade her sensitive eyes from the sun.

As dusk fell, we ran into our friends and coworkers Zac and Chris. We knew they were around somewhere, since we had booked the same hostel together. They had been wandering around with Chris' Chinese girlfriend VG and sampling some of the local foods as well. Since we had all met up, we decided to go out to dinner together with some of VG's friends. We hit up a sit down family restaurant near our hostel and once more tucked into a feast.

Chairs in Vietnam are weird. They are all super low to the ground. Picture a child's play chair. The tables in Vietnam are of a similar height. I was way too big for this place. I think it was an attempt at a compromise between the Eastern custom of sitting on the floor and eating, and the Western custom of sitting at a high table.

The food was good and then we wandered into one of the city's many bar streets. We befriended a Frenchman and a fellow from Switzerland that looked 50% our friend Tom Yoder mixed with 50% Abed from the TV show community.

Beer in Vietnam is another revelation. After months and months of Chinese beer, which I am convinced is the worst on the planet, Vietnamese beer reminded me of Michigan. While there are no microbreweries in Vietnam, most cities have their own special city brewery, and they all compete to have the best quality beer in the country. The real winner here is me, Jon Krause, beer fan.

Our second day in Vietnam played out in much the same way. We wandered around the city, trying to avoid the heat. We went to the river front and a few parks, and we also went to the city's Notre Dame Cathedral. It looks just like the one in Paris, so they say. I've not been there so I have no idea! It was pretty neat though. Right next door was the city's post office. It was an art deco masterpiece with a delightful lemon yellow paint job.

As great as Saigon is, there really isn't a whole lot "to do" there. The biggest tourist attraction is the Vietnam War museum. They have a bunch of tanks and bombs and things that the Americans left behind when they decided to throw in the towel from the war. I have no interest in things like war or similar crimes against humanity, so I steered clear.  The day was very enjoyable, and we had quite a few snacks throughout.

Honestly, though, we tried not to eat too much or spend too much money because the real highlight of the trip and most of the reason for coming was the motorbike tour we had planned for the evening. XO Tours is a big tour company in Saigon, and they offer all kinds of fun options for people passing through. Their "gimmick", if you want to call it that, is that people can ride on the backs of motorcycles and "see the city the way it was meant to be seen". The bikes are all driven by English speaking locals, and overall it sounded like a great time.

We had signed up for the foodie tour, which promised all you can eat and all the beer you can drink for almost the same price as the regular tour.

It was an incredibly fun night, and I would recommend it to absolutely anyone who goes to Vietnam. It was a little pricey for us, but we definitely got our money's worth with all the delicious food we got to eat. The tour took us through 9 of the cities districts and we stopped to eat at 4 or 5 places.

We got to eat shrimp, okra, eel, crab, scallops, lamb, and more. The food was jaw droppingly good. I reached dangerous levels of fullness! I think the highlight of the evening was the scallops. Laura and I probably ate 20 or 30 of them each.

The big finale of the night was balut. If you've ever seen Fear Factor, you'll know that Balut is a Filipino dish containing a hardboiled egg with a fully formed duck fetus inside. Not for the faint of heart, I know, but I was determined to try one.

I am not squeamish at all, so I figured I would have no problem getting one down. Something I've discovered with a lot of foods that freak people out is that they really aren't as bad as all the hype. The most damning thing I can say about most "freak out food" is that it just tastes okay. It's rarely as bad as people worry, but it's not that good either.

Balut was a huge exception to this rule. Balut is freaking DELICIOUS. Seriously, drop whatever you are doing now and find a place that sells it. Do they sell it in America? I'm not sure, but I hope so.

Yes, it's a little freaky and sad that you're eating a duck fetus, but the egg is hard boiled so you can't see it unless you start really digging around. Also, as gross as it sounds, the fetus is still quite young and therefore does not really have bones yet. At no point does it taste like you're eating a little baby duck. What the presence of the duck does do, however, is add some incredible flavors to the egg. Think of a hot bowl of the best duck soup you've ever had in your life, but then the bowl is also edible because it's a hardboiled egg. It was steamy, complex, and delicious.

And then, to make things even more awesome, they offered us a "Vietnamese style balut". The classic boiled version is from the Phillipines, you see. The Vietnamese style was basically the same thing, except they FRIED IT IN BARBEQUE SAUCE. This sucker was even better than the last one!

Most of our companions in the tour politely refused the duck eggs. At best, a few of the people gingerly tasted one. Laura and I, on the other hand, each had three or four of them. I'll end the discussion here by saying that you cannot call yourself a fan of duck until you've tried balut. It may be the most strange way to eat duck meat, but it is almost certainly the best.

The rest of the tour was very nice. I got to be pretty good friends with my driver and tour guide, and we also had a lot of fun with the other people in the tour group. By the time we were dropped off at the hostel, we both knew that XO Tours was easily going to be in the top 3 events of the whole trip, even though the month was just beginning.

The next morning was another early one, as we boarded our bus and headed out into the Vietnamese country side on the way to our next stop: Cambodia.

But first we needed coffee! China is kind of a no-coffee country. Its most widely available variety is the instant crap you mix in with boiled water. The second most widely available kind is Starbucks. Neither of these really excites me. Vietnam on the other hand has delicious coffee! They make some of the best and most popular coffee in the world, and the Vietnamese are obsessed with it. A classic and traditional Vietnamese coffee is iced and extremely sugary. It was super cheap and super easy to find, so we probably had 3 or 4 cups per day. I'm sure my doctor will be upset to hear it, but Vietnam turned me into a coffee with sugar kind of guy. It's a habit I've been trying to wean myself away from ever since!

Filled with our last coffee for awhile, we boarded the bus.

The ride to Phnom Penh took about 5 or 6 six hours. Half of it was in Vietnam and half was in Cambodia. The Vietnam half was really enjoyable. As the city petered away into suburbs and then fully gave way to countryside, everything just got greener and greener. You really got to see some amazing sights on that bus ride.

The border was in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't anyone else around and we quickly went through some offices as a gruff but not unfriendly Cambodian man stamped by quickly-filling up passport.

And, just like that we were in

Cambodia - Land of Angkor

Cambodia had an almost immediately different flavor than Vietnam. Even way out in the countryside it was readily apparent that we were somewhere new. There was a lot less green and a lot more dust.

Cambodia was very definitely a much poorer country than Vietnam. Barefoot children begged for money every time the bus pulled over for a bathroom break. They even tried to board the bus a few times.

It's hard seeing things like this, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong the entire time I was in Cambodia.

How dare I? I thought to myself. I come to this country with so much more money than any of these people will ever have, and I spend it on stupid things. I come to this sacred land that has seen so much hardship and I point my iPhone and take pictures. I sit in cafes and sip iced coffees while there are children within eyeshot that are probably starving.

We had a great time in Cambodia, just like everywhere else, but I was also so very keenly aware of my own privilege that it left me with a sour taste in my mouth almost the entire time. I could see myself going back to Vietnam in a heartbeat, and I basically want to live in Thailand someday, but I don't know if I'll go back to Cambodia unless it is to volunteer somewhere. I just felt like I was disobeying some unwritten rule about how the human race should act toward other members of the human race.

This feeling was not eased by the time we arrived in Phnom Penh. To quote a friend, Phnom Penh feels like the wild west. The whole city feels mysterious and dangerous. Everyone seems like they're out to get you in Phnom Penh. They want your money and then they want you to get out.

I did not really like it there very much.

Still, the town had its own fascination to it. It felt very different from every other city I've ever been to either before or since. Saigon still clearly had a lot of Chinese and French influences on top of its own traditional Vietnamese flavor. Phnom Penh still had some Chinese and French, but it also had Indian influence and lots of Middle Eastern influence as well.

I felt like I was in Saudi Arabia, or maybe in New Dehli. Or was it maybe Beijing or Paris? I wasn't sure, but it sure felt strange.

Our hostel was strangely, well, hostile. Everything was painted sheer black in an attempt to be ultramodern. In the end it just felt kind of murdery.

We explored the town for a while and went to the big temple at the center of the city. It felt like every other Buddhist temple we had been to. Although, this one had a few monkeys running around! They were pretty cool! I've always wanted to see some monkeys.

Dinner ended up being at a strange pizza place, after which Laura and I wandered toward the royal palace. Cambodia has a king, and he lives in a pretty nice house considering how poor all his people are. There were lots of people sleeping or relaxing on the lawn near the palace. The whole evening was very surreal.

Not too far from the palace was a street vendor selling some fresh crickets. I bought a bag. They weren't very good. I usually like crickets but I think these ones were undercooked. Still, I probably ate a half pound of the little guys. Definitely not my favorite bug eating experience in Southeast Asia.

Walking further along the riverside we saw, no joke, a Dairy Queen! We were so shocked and happy to see something nonthreatening in this creepy town that we ran inside and had a couple of big blizzards.

Once the blizzards were gone, there really wasn't a whole lot else to look forward to. We both were absolutely not feeling Phnom Penh. The tourists and expatriates were no help either. If the foreigners in China are just a little bit batty, and if the foreigners in Vietnam are just a little bit hippy, then the foreigners in Phnom Penh all seemed like terrifying miscreants. I shouldn't judge, but it seemed readily apparent that most of them were hanging out in PP to take advantage of the almost total lack of laws exist elsewhere in the world. It was all just a lot of 50 and 60 year old men walking around with Cambodian girls who seemed barely old enough to be teenagers. They all seemed predatory, in a word.

It was alright in the end, though, since we had only planned for the one day in town. We caught the 7am ferry the next morning and headed to Siem Reap.

Siem Reap is a town in the northwest corner of the country, and is connected to Phnom Penh through a series of rivers as well as the absolutely enormous Tonle Sap lake.

The ferry ride was long (about 7 hours), but really very enjoyable. It was really refreshing to just sit on the bow of the ship and watch the world go by. We passed several villages on stilts, innumerable fisherman, and even a floating village. The weather was hot, but it was tempered by a nice breeze created by the boat's speed. We had a few bags of chips and some water to snack on, and overall it was a really great trip.

Pulling into the port near Siem Reap was once again a little bit alarming.  Much less urban than Phnom Penh but significantly more poor, I was more than a little concerned for my safety. Nothing happened, obviously. Maybe it's all an overreaction. It's probably unlikely that anything would have happened in broad daylight to a couple of obvious tourists in front of a crowd of other tourists and locals. Either way, if the point of traveling is to get out of one's comfort zone then Cambodia was really, truly traveling.

We took a tuk tuk (sort of a three wheeled motorcycle) into the town of Siem Reap and checked into our hostel.

Siem Reap was a breath of fresh air. Laura and I both loved it there, and could easily have stayed for several days or even weeks. It was cute and quiet little down with a lot of charm and tons of cafes and restaurants to choose from.

We spent lots of time meandering around the river and peeking into various shops. I picked up a few new shirts at a great price, and Laura got some pants (that she immediately ripped! What a gal!).

Our favorite restaurant in the town was the "Little Khmer Cafe". Khmer is both the language that Cambodians speak and also the official name for their ethnicity. Both stem from the Khmer Empire, which used to control a large region of what is modern day Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

Khmer food is more like Thai food than Vietnamese, but not nearly as spicy. The signature Khmer dish is a baked fish called "Amok". For true Amok, the fish should come from the Tonle Sap lake. Little Khmer Cafe did a pretty good amok, and some decent "western" food too.

Siem Reap also had lots of legitimate western food, including a true blue Mexican restaurant! The nachos there were like a taste of home, funnily enough. It was like being back in Azteca.

Siem Reap was also another prime bug-eating location for me. I actually found a little French style restaurant called the Bug Cafe. Owned and operated by a French man, his goal is apparently to meld high class French style cooking with local Cambodian peasant food, most specifically bugs.

We came here after dinner one night for some "tapas". The food was all absolutely superb, and I got to try some fun new bugs. We had a delicious scorpion salad, and also some "bug skewers". As I have outlined elsewhere on facebook and in the UDM Newspaper, Scorpions have a minty aftertaste that is really interesting. I think it may come from the venom sacs. Also on the skewers were tarantulas and water bugs. The spiders looked a little bit gnarly, but I just dove right in and was rewarded with some incredible fried chicken flavor. The waterbugs tasted like bacon and potato chips. I wanted to eat more! But, being an upscale place, the prices were a little bit high. I could easily see a place like these going over well in Ann Arbor or in Royal Oak though. If someone doesn't beat me to it maybe I'll open my own...

The real reason we were in Siem Reap, though, was not the bugs or the Mexican food or the cute markets. The reason we came to Siem Reap was to see Angkor Wat. Angkor Archeological Park is an enormous area just north of town that contains hundreds of ancient ruins, temples, and buildings. These sites are some of the only remains of the once great Khmer empire. Many of the buildings are nearly 1,000 years old, and they are breathtaking.

We got up at 4am the next day and rode the bikes that we had rented a few miles north toward the park. We bought some bread for breakfast, bought our entry tickets, and had our IDs taken. The first stop of the day was the big Angkor Wat temple itself for sunrise.

I won't spend too much time outlining every single thing we did at Angkor. Angkor is way too breathtaking for words, and almost too breathtaking for pictures. Regardless, I've already uploaded all the pictures we took.

After sunrise we explored the temple. We had some coffee in a little tent cafe near the temple. There was actually several small tent cafes near the temple offering breakfasty things. They all had really strange names. We ate at "Harry Potter Cafe", but right next store was "Lady Gaga Lizard Boy Cafe".

We biked and explored for over 8 hours until nearly 1 o'clock. We saw a lot of cool ruins and dodged thousands of tourists. We saw a swath of more wild monkeys, and they let us take a few pictures with them. I climbed a pyramid I found in the jungle, and took in the view from the top.

At 1 we were getting sort of tired. I wanted to check out one last sight and tried to take a short cut. We ended up in the middle of the jungle on a rocky road. I got nervous after a while because I knew that there are landmines everywhere in Cambodia, even in Angkor park. We decided to turn around and go home for the day, only to discover that Laura's bike had a flat tire.

We ended up walking the entire 5 or 6 miles back home on foot in the hottest part of the day. It was pretty miserable, but I have to say that we were still riding on the high from the incredible sights of the ruins. Nothing could darken my mood too much.

Eventually we made it back to civilization and we returned our bikes. They either didn't notice or didn't care about the flat tire, and so I got my deposit back. One last short walk back to our hostel and we were absolutely pooped. It was only 3 or 4 o'clock at this point but we were DONE. We spent the rest of the day relaxing in our hostel, playing pool and playing with the owners' pet cat. The hostel was really very wonderful. I would recommend Rosy Guest Hostel to anyone going to Siem Reap, and EVERYONE should go to Siem Reap.

Angkor Wat is just one of those things that everyone should do in their lifetimes. To walk the hallowed halls of a thousand year old temple in a thousand year old city is to live another life. You can look at the carvings on the wall and suddenly you are transported to a time when hundreds of builders slaved away to build something of total perfection. To see the monuments to great empires once past, one cannot help but think of the poem about Ozymandias. These kings thought their memory and their kingdoms would last forever, and now all we have is some crumbling monuments to their greatness, nearly entirely lost by time and the creeping vines of the jungle.

Sleep came easily that evening, and before we knew it we were on another bus, this time headed to Thailand.

Our last taste of Cambodia came to us in the form of Poipet, a seedy little border town. The border towns in Cambodia are all really strange. There are tons of dilapidated hotels and buildings, all of which are labeled as "Las Vegas Royal Casino", and "Lucky Sevens Casino Resort", and things of that nature. Apparently gambling is illegal in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, but the Cambodian government decided to make it legal in border towns. This probably brings in a lot of money, but it also brings in a lot of, for lack of a better word, riff raff.

We made it through another round of immigration and found ourselves in a new kingdom.