Luzhou Express

Mi Vida Cusqueña

2007-02-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

Plaza de Armas in Cusco.

Bibi and I stayed in Juan's adorable, whimsical house for almost two weeks. My room, caught during a messy moment.

Lots of plants in this house, as well enormous, pointy hanging decorations.

Yarn for making the multi-colored tail of traditional bachelor hats. The lovely green hummingbird painting is the work of the house's resident artist, commissioned by Juan to paint birds for his restaurant/bar and home.

Onwards to Machu Picchu! My companions on the budget route: 6-hour bus, 1-hr in the back of a pickup truck through bumpy mountain roads, 22km walking in the night with our backpacks, including 10km on train tracks in the rain with few flashlights. We reached Aguas Calientes at 4am utterly exhausted.

Giddy the next day.

Llamas contemplating mist-enshrouded Machu Picchu.

The salt mines of Maras looking something like a candy factory.

The gorgeous terraces of Moray where the Incas attempted to adapt plants from the jungle to the Andes.

Juan shows off a self-made Cusqueño hat.

Selecting our trout from the farm.

Juan, taxi driver, me, Bibi, and a Jamaican-Australian friend dining on our catch.

Guinea pigs are a delicacy.

Dinner at Fallen Angels, a fancy restaurant with bathtub-fishbowl tables.

Salar de Uyuni

2007-01-27T11:51:00.000-08:00

The most highly anticipated destination for me in South America: the world's largest salt flat, 10,000 square kilometers in area and up to one kilometer deep, containing 10 billion tons of salt. Pictures from the fulfilling three-day jeep tour courtesy of Kylie.

Llama crossing.

During the rainy season the salt flats are covered with water more than 30cm deep.

Clouds in the mirror.

This salt sells for less than one dollar per 50 kilograms.

Bolivia claims Fish Island.

A thriving colony.

Reflection.

Wild flamingoes.

A fox looking on for our scraps from lunch.

Laguna Verde.

Laguna Colorado.

Arbol de Piedra.

Lone vicuña in front of the red-dusted mountains.

Vizcacha, the chinchilla's slightly less adorable cousin.

Quinoa! A delicious and healthy Andean staple.

The Road to Panama City

2007-01-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

Sometimes runs northward to Nicaragua first. Unsure of what to do after Costa Rica, I boarded a northbound international bus with the intention of going diving in the Bay Islands of Honduras. What I actually wanted to do was go to Bolivia, but this did not hit me until I was finally reading the Bolivia section of my guidebook during that bus ride. Realizing my error, I alighted in Granada, Nicaragua and desperately searched for airfare to La Paz.

The cheapest ticket by far was from Panama City, but that was now two days' travel by bus. Still, it was worth the saving of several hundred dollars, so I decided to take the first bus from Managua to San Jose the next morning. Unfortunately, I was too one-track-minded to get to enjoy Granada's colonial architecture before dark. Here are some pictures borrowed from the web:

I caught a microbus into Managua, an hour away, and got to observe firsthand the phenomenon of busses not really stopping for passengers. They tended to slow down instead, and those alighting had to jump off and run a few steps while those boarding had to run to catch up, sometimes after throwing their luggage to the handler riding on top of the bus. It was all a bit comical and proved true the next day as well. Fortunately, I was always riding the full length of the route.

The Nicaraguans I met during my brief stay were very friendly, but everyone tried to warn me about this and that danger. I found a decent hostel near the Ticabus station and the proprietors insisted on walking me to and back from the local diner which was just a block and a half away.

The next morning I discovered that all long-distance busses were full. Determined to get to Panama City in one day, I took a local bus to Peñas Blancas, walked across the border, taxied to Liberia, taxied again to San Jose (the cabbie booked a domestic flight for me enroute, reading off my passport and credit card info while driving as fast as possible, and definitely overtaking over 100 vehicles on the curvy, one-laned, three-hour speed ride), flew to Golfito (where I got take-out from a nice Chinese family-run restaurant), bussed to Paso Canoas, walked across the border again, waited for two hours, and caught an overnight bus to Panama City.

Excellent displays at the Panama Canal museum.

Including a small aquarium section.

Miraflores Locks.

A cruise ship enters, guided by little vehicles called mules on the sides. This particular ship is paying $78,000 to pass through the canal.

Gates open and the ship is lowered to that level.

Successful passage! One more lock to go before they're at sea level with the Pacific.

My favorite thing about Panama City was the city busses, decommissioned former U.S. school busses, all decked out with loud stereos systems and even louder paint jobs. I was mesmerized for half an hour on this pedestrian walkway over Via España.

Beach Redux

2007-01-14T11:56:00.000-08:00

Our three days in the beach town of Manzanilla (Spanish for chamomile) were spent swimming, getting sunburned, eating at a very reggae restaurant, hanging out with a young Russian couple from Boston, and spotting howler monkeys in the trees, sometimes more than ten at a time. Lovely, pristine beaches though no good snorkeling or diving to be had due to the season.

Maxi's, the most happening restaurant in Manzanilla.

Beautiful beaches, warm water.

Then we headed down to Panama. After an uneventful border crossing at Sixaola and taxi-boat combo, we found ourselves on the sunbaked Bocas del Toro archipelago. There we stayed at our best hotel yet, a good-valued inn with hardwood floors, nice bathroom, and almost-warm water. The first day of snorkeling on our own was a bit of a disappointment, but our snorkeling boat trip the next day was a winner. We saw dolphins from the boat, and much more underwater life, including a series of seven arrow squid-looking creatures lined up horizontally in a row from smallest to biggest, bubbling a bit and hanging out in place. The icing on the cake was meeting some very cool Americans, including a brother and sister pair (he being an actor and she having spent the year before college traveling around New Zealand, studying at a martial arts school in Xian, China, and working in Shanghai) and a marine biology girl who had graduated from my high school the year before I did.

We left Bocas by plane to David the next day, and crossed back into Costa Rica at Paso Canoas, a large, chaotic place. The bus ride up and boat trip down to Drake Bay left us exhausted, and the subsequent backpack-laden walk around to find affordable lodging in the very expensive area felt torturous. Finally we located an acceptably dingy room at a reasonable price. Drake Bay had been talked up by several people but didn't end up seeming special to me, though my impressions are colored by being caught on a hiking trail for an hour after dark and getting stung by jellyfish while snorkeling off Caño Island.

For our flight back into San Jose, our taxi pulled up to some benches under a covering, like a large busstop. There was an airline representative sitting with a clipboard and swinging his legs. He checked us in by listing our passport information on a piece of paper and we were ready to go. The 12-seater plane landed on an airstrip resembling a wide dirt road, turned around, we boarded, and took off.

Tortuguero

2007-01-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

After a sequence of three long, dusty bus rides originating at 6am in Monteverde, we reached Parismina in the mid-afternoon, a little village on the Tortuguero canal system. We were the only disturbance as far as the eye could see on the still, luscious green-fringed, mirror-perfect water. The air turned from mist to rain to mist as our boatman blasted Bob Marley songs (singing along, though he probably didn't understand a word) on our one-hour atmospheric ride up to Tortuguero.

We stayed at Cabinas Tortuguero, run by a friendly family with an amusing menu for their attached restaurant. Using an automatic translator on Spanish menus seems to be popular around here, and theirs included such gems as "coffee or you" for "café o te," "everything turned into charcoal" for "carbonara," and "fragmentation hand grenade" for "piña" (maybe because the small, spiky explosives were shaped like so?). We really cracked up the day we discovered this and I think our service was slower as a result.

The prime window for wildlife-spotting was 6-9am, and both mornings we went out in canoes to try our luck. The first time we went with a spunky Afro-Caribbean guide who pointed out a river otter, howler monkeys, lizards and iguanas, toucans, and many other birds. The next day we rowed out on our own and saw white-faced squirrel monkeys and toucans. I was very pleased, as this was more than we had seen in Costa Rica thus far.

It was difficult to do much else around Tortuguero as we experienced short downpours seemingly every 15 minutes. The trails were flooded and the canoe tours didn't really go out after the 6-9am prime window for spotting wildlife. So we napped, read, played cards, and waded in the Caribbean a bit. We also had our best meal in Costa Rica at a place called Miss Miriam's. The Caribbean chicken was tasty but the real standouts were the spread of side dishes that we didn't expect (rices, salads) and the prawns, which were more the size of crawfish, fried in garlic butter.

I wish I had more pictures of my favorite place in Costa Rica, with its reggae music, kids playing soccer in the rain, and being able to walk down the one street in town and see our boatman sitting at the friendly outdoor bar, guide hanging out on the front stoop, and guy from the cabinas picking groceries at the store. It was really some kind of magical.

Monteverde Orchid Garden

2007-01-03T04:51:00.000-08:00

Into the Land of Pura Vida

2007-01-03T03:43:00.000-08:00

At the butterfly farm in Danaus, near La Fortuna, Costa Rica.

A mother sloth and baby!

Toucans like bananas. I believe this species is the largest in Costa Rica. Somehow I had imagined bigger from the Froot Loops persona.

Me and a very sharp-toed but docile sloth.

The rolling hills of the Monteverde Cloudforest Reserve.

The hanging bridges tour sounded like a good idea but we saw almost no wildlife.

Victor climbs vertically out of a giant strangler fig vine, a parasite that eventually kills its host.

The Tarzan Swing, a part of the zipline tour (16 cables in all), for which I was chosen to go first. You basically fall off the tall platform while tied to a long rope.

It was often misty at Monteverde, yielding some of the largest rainbows I've seen.

A little green frog at the serpentarium.

Look how nicely this boa constrictor has decorated its home with flowers.

Trondheim

2006-08-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Norway Bussekspress goes from Bergen to Trondheim in 14 hours. Along the way I got to enjoy the magnificent scenery of coastal West Norway.

Solitary canoe bobbing in the water.

One of the larger towns along the way.

Looking across a fjord.

Brake for livestock.

View from the rotating top of the Trondheim TV tower.

Nidaros Cathedral, the biggest church in Northern Europe.

This canal runs through the center of Trondheim.

Erlend, my Norwegian bachelor farmer host.

Supposedly the only bicycle lift in the world. You ride with the wheels in the rut and one foot on the platform. Tricky to use, and every trial requires a new ticket so, not a poor revenue source.

Wandering around the Trondheim fort.

We attended the three-day Storås Festival. Luckily, one of the hosts I contacted through Hospitality Club was the organizer of the event, so he offered me comp admission - value $150. This is Mira Craig, popular Trinidadian-Norwegian hip-gyrating singer.

The camp site was quite orderly.

Hanging out with our tent neighbors. Boy, can these people drink! And sing all kinds of Norwegian and English songs.

Our tent was not properly set up and practically toppling down by the end of the festival. Rain showers every afternoon didn't help.

Back in the city, nighttime view from Erlend's apartment window. About as dark as it gets in the summer.

Expert climbers Erlend and his friend Anders (not pictured) treat me to a session to the climbing gym.

Do I look like I'm having trouble holding on? Indeed.

After waiting for the airport shuttle at the wrong busstop for an hour (bad directions from a bus driver), I took a regional bus in the direction of the airport in a last ditch effort. When this bus driver heard about my predicament, he decided to zip over there even though the airport not on the route! I was embarrassed since there were other people on bus, but they didn't seem too alarmed. Although I missed my flight, I was rebooked on puddle jumper making three stops on the way to Bodø. We flew at 2000m or so, right over the mountainous coastline. Much like a great helicopter tour without the noise or price tag.

So many cute, bumpy, green islands.

Behold, glacier!

Norwegian Wood

2006-07-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

Landing in lush, cool, misty Bergen was quite a shock coming from the sun-drenched Croatian coast. Another shock was paying 72 kronors for the airport bus into the city.

My host Line lived with her family in a house on the water with breathtaking views. This was taken at approximately 3am, about as dark as it gets on these long summer days.

I even got to stay in my own sub-unit, adorably furnished.

Line's mom was an artist, and the whole house was decorated with her work from paintings to pottery.

Dinner out on the patio.

Norwegian girls wear black.

We spent a day at the family's country house on a secluded island 45 minutes from Bergen. Line's little sister and her friends swam and played in the water. We rowed out to a neighboring island and picked wild blueberries, visited with the sheep and goats, and went fishing.

We caught one! I'm glad I wasn't the one gutting.

Here she is holding her older sister's six-week-old baby. The father is from Virginia (that Lutheran connection). Rustic-looking, eh? They built it all from scratch, as Norwegians tend to do.

Next day I went on the 'Norway in a Nutshell' tour. Looking down at the valley from our luxury coach.

How verdant are the mountains!

The fjord cruise was scenic and impressive though the Japanese tourists tended to hog the best picture-taking spots for the entirety of the ride.

These little road-inaccessible communities along the fjord must be tired of the camera-snapping creatures that float by all summer long.

The Flåm railway was a disappointment. It was billed as a feat of engineering due to the steepness and varied terrain and promised incredible scenery, but in reality it was slow and tunneled with obscured views. At one point we stopped here and were treated to a three-minute Tolkein-reminiscent choregraphed song and dance by performers on little platforms around the waterfall.

My second host was a German girl named Marika, a bit tomboyish, working as a tour guide. Here she introduces me to the wonderful cherry tree on her street, laden with sweet, delicious fruit.

Cute houses in the neighborhood.

An amazing quilt stitched together from her own used clothing.

We walked up many a hill in search of a more complete view of the city.

Fish market near Old Bryggen.

A lovely dinner we cooked with a flatmate and a friend.

Munch munch :)

I went back on my last day in Bergen while Marika was working. How I wished I could reach, but all the low branches had been picked clean. Where's a tall friend when you need one!

Adriatic Interlude

2006-07-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

Magenta sun on the horizon.

Dubrovnik at dusk.

After much walking up and down and around the town in the dark, and running into at least one shady character, I was relieved to find this guesthouse with an expectation-exceeding room.

The only fancy meal I had in Croatia began with a scoop of tuna.

The stewed beef was oily and unflavorful, just like everyone had said about Croatian cuisine.

But flan! Rejoice in dessert. And what nice place settings.

The whole town was completely overrun with tourists. Every native seemed to be a cog in the tourism industry. Not too charming for a backpacker, but that doesn't take away from the resplendent seaside fortress town views.

My time in Dubrovnik was very brief, really just a stopover on the way to Norway. Hopefully next time I'll be able to soak up more of the Adriatic atmosphere and actually go snorkeling and diving!

A Stroll Down the Danube

2006-07-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

I finally arrived in fabled Budapest after years of feeling inspired by its illustrious combinatorics history. The architecture was marvelous, but my picture-taking was not, so you'll have to be content with these meager offerings. I really enjoyed the vibrant street scene; it seemed like a city much more populated and alive than Prague, and there was a great cafe culture, along with easy-to-find wireless hotspots. Due to our limited time we missed out on many a museum and castle and monument and bathhouse, but my biggest regret was not having my metro ticket inspected à la Kontroll.

Victor triumphantly crosses the Danube after it had eluded him in Bratislava and Vienna.

A nice waterfall on the Pest side of the river close to a quirky church in a cave.

We managed to find an inexpensive hotel near Heroes' Square in the embassy district. Perks included interesting neighboring lawns and hearing a Billy Idol outdoor concert through our open window.

On the second overpass looking down on the funicular train tracks up to Buda Castle.

The view at the top was well worth the climb.

The daily special at this Italian-Hungarian restaurant was a peach soup that bore a striking resemblance to melted peach ice cream.

The breaded chicken was mediocre and the pork under a mound of sour cream and shredded cheese was overkill, but potatoes - yum!

I know it doesn't look very appetizing from the picture, but this concoction of beef, potatoes, carrots, and spices was the best (and first) goulash I've ever had.

On the last night, I stayed with a Budapest native, Mariann, and her partner, an Australian whose name I forget. They took me around to packed but charming outdoor bars and introduced me to their friends and the summer drink bambus - half cola and half red wine. This is the view from their apartment window.

Cozy living room.

Every floor of their building had lovely balcony plants.

The second goulash, which I walked around all day seeking, was something of a disappointment, but I did get to slurp it right next to St. Stephen's Basilica.

Stockholm, Sverige

2006-07-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

A warm welcome after a night on the ferry: mango litchi yogurt, square pieces of soft perforated bread, and cheese all the more delicious coming from that handy slicer.

Lots of blue sky and blue sea around this city built on islands.

Scandinavian interior design at the Nordiska Museet.

Junibacken, celebrating children's literature.

The life-size story houses inside were delightful.

Gamla Stan, or Old Town.

The Nobel Museum with very well-presented exhibits and lots of fascinating news clips about and interviews clips with winners.

Beginning of Drottninggatan, the shopping district.

Gooseberries and lingonberries at the marketplace.

Every meal at home with my wonderful hosts Karin & Patrick was delicious. Roast beef, tomato salad, and potato salad with the cute giraffe serving spoon from Thailand.

For a taste of the summertime Swedish seashore, I took a day trip out to the Stockholm Archipelago, a collection of 20,000+ islands up to eight hours from the city by boat.

No singles action here. Only families with adorable young children running around giggling and greeting everyone with "Hey hey!".

The water was about 18 degrees. Brrr! Nice rocky isles to clamber around, though.

Swedish sheep grazing. One had escaped from the fenced area. Its lovely, generous, woolly rump bounced in the most endearing fashion as it ran down the road.

Butterflies and ladybug-like insects.

A perfect, cloudless day.

Sweet Suomenlinna

2006-07-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

My favorite little fortress island in Europe: green and grassy, idyllic and calm, not too big, not too small, perfect for exploring in one afternoon. Now if only we had remembered to pack a picnic and bring along a frisbee.

My characteristic squint.

The fort itself had been barely used, so the walls were intact and rooms were even dry and non-musty.

Purple, yellow, white wildflowers peek out between the stones to greet the sun. I love how the tops of the fort walls are covered with grass.

Looking through a door.

Looking through a window.

Much nicer than the Sutro baths in San Francisco.

Feel the ocean breeze and the hills alive with the sound of music.

A wet skirt after falling into the Baltic.

See, slippery.

Canadian geese.

I'm a giant next to the windmill and Hello Kitty chairs.

Stone wall arch perfection.

Erno looking out over the shipyard.

The Silja Serenade ferried me overnight to Stockholm. With 13 decks, it is larger than the Titanic.

Posh inside, complete with pod-like elevators.

Wow. Do American cigarette packs look like this?

I had a four-bunk cabin with fancy bathroom all to myself. Best night of sleep in months. €38 well spent!

Day Trip to Tallinn

2006-07-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

Fort guarding the entrance to Old Town.

I imagined armed pursuers chasing their victims up and down these dark, steep, mostly spiral steps in medieval times on my long, tiring walk up St. Olaf's tower.

Old Town as viewed from the top of the tower.

Looking north at the Baltic sea.

Hilly cobblestone streets.

Shades of pink galore. The parliament building nearby boasted the same color scheme.

Old stone building exuding charm.

I spent a few hours on a park bench writing postcards and napping. This was the view.

My almost neon-colored dinner on the ferry back to Helsinki: tuna lasagna and strawberry pie. Looks appetizing, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't cheap.

Helsinki, Suomi

2006-07-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

Peering out the window over the Baltic, the vast expanse of water was calm and glistening and landmasses looked just like in satellite pictures. It was the first time I had experienced the exhilaration of feeling away from Earth, looking down at Earth, and also the first time I had been the only Asian on a flight.

My host Erno met me at the busstop and we passed some nice parks and lakes on our way downtown to see the sights: Helsinki Cathedral, parliament building, museums, shopping district. We rested on a bench in a grassy pedestrian area to munch on our cherries and tangerines and rice pastries and drink beer. I was thrilled to hear stories from his travels to Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Morocco. We ended the night in a lively bar watching the uneventful Germany-Italy semifinal game.

Helsinki train station.

Lovely green domes of the Lutheran cathedral.

I like the color scheme on this corner building.

My cozy room in Erno's flat.

Next day we made three trips to the U.S. Embassy so I could get additional pages in my passport. The embassy workers were nicer than I expected them to be, but then I only interacted the Finnish security guards.

A view of the sea a short walk from the Embassy district.

At the Kauppatori market square next to the ferry terminal I was amazed to learn that all the produce for sale was Finnish. Just three warm months a year and they manage to pull beautiful vegetables out of the ground!

Finnish fruits and vegetables!

The wonderful indoor food market offered a wide assortment of baked goods, cheese, sandwiches, fish, and other things. We got cheese bread, herring pastry, and a salmon sandwich.

Finland currently has presidency of the EU, thus the little flags displaying a pan-European spirit.

The herring pastry looked curious but turned out to be uninteresting as the fish did not have a strong taste.

We sat down on the steps by the water to eat and before I could take one bite out of the salmon sandwich, a seagull swooshed down from behind, kicked the sandwich out of my hand, and then four more joined the frenzy on the steps below to gobble up the catch. Not acquainted with flying rats of quite this much audacity and skill, I was dumbfounded. Then Erno told a story about the time he and his band had to walk by nesting seagulls on the roof to move instruments out of their practice room for a gig. Two of them carried the equipment while the third wielded a broomstick to fend off the attacking birds. We went back into the food market and got reindeer pastry and rhubarb pie, both excellent, to console ourselves.

We surveyed classical Finnish art at the Ateneum Art Museum.

Adorable sculpture of Bacchus and Cupid as children.

Erno's friends Mirja and Andrea came by for a mini dinner party. This was our delicious yuppie salad of arugula, tomato, cucumber, feta, bell pepper, and onion. We also had soul-satisfying little boiled potatoes with butter, and herring in garlic sauce and herring in mustard sauce. I found the last two to be acquired tastes.

After dinner we walked down to the courtyard and sat in the covered trellis with small benches inside, just like a gazebo. Mirja was about to embark on a six-month solo trip to Asia starting with the Trans-Siberian railway. I talked about my travels in Southeast Asia and the conversation drifted to what really happens in Thai massage parlors in Helsinki and elsewhere. Mirja and Erno relayed a story about the time a Thai massage was purchased as a birthday present for one of their friends. At the end of the regular massage, the masseuse, a Thai lady in her 50's, lifted the sheet and demanded, "Are you 18?" The poor guy yelped, fell backward, and ran out of the room.

Later on, I expressed my admiration for how well-versed young Finns were in world history and a number of languages. Mirja said, "Well, we don't know much American history." But it's just one country. "I can name maybe ten president and we know about the Civil War, Vietnam War, and Cold War." Gee, that's better than the average American! Then I started to think that perhaps our collective ignorance is not the failing of individual Americans. Our education system is simply not designed to be world-aware. I studied American history every year before university with the exception of one year of European history. And, since the attention of the class always waned towards the end of the school year, no teacher I've had has given a thorough treatment of the Cold War. We study French and Spanish in school but there is less motivation to learn (we can travel far and everyone still speaks English) and there are fewer opportunities to use it (a trip to France is a much more impractical from the States than from elsewhere in Europe). Also, we don't study grammar in our English classes as much as European children whose educations are essentially bilingual or trilingual so it's more difficult to learn foreign languages later on. I didn't know what the terms infinitive and conjugation meant until high school French. If we had such concepts from grade school, we would be much better at understanding the grammar of foreign languages.

Swiss Perfection in Zürich

2006-07-03T04:37:00.000-07:00

The ride from Vienna to Zürich was probably my most uncomfortable night train experience to date: the windows were open for ventilation but it was stormy out, the train was loud, and four of the five other passengers in my compartment smoked inside. Oh, and I forgot to bring water. Most of the original passengers disembarked by Innsbruck and I got about two hours of sleep before dawn. After that, I gazed wistfully out the window at the alpine villages, imagining hills of edelweiss and cows with bells on everywhere greeting this first morning of July.

Whoosh.

My host Roger was kind enough to meet me early in the morning at the train station. He had just moved into his flat the day before so Ikea furniture assembly was a big part of the weekend. We unfurled the futon and I napped until noon. After lunch we strolled along Lake Zürich to the center of town and I experienced a bit of a culture shock. Zürich was the very incarnation of the expression "lap of luxury." The grassy park along the lake was full of glamorous sunbathers, giggling children tugging on the sleeves of well-dressed parents, bikers, frisbee players, all looking fit and casually cheerful. The glistening lake was teeming with sailboats against a backdrop of houses and trees on the rolling hills of the opposite bank.

I wandered around the bridges, churches, and shopping areas downtown and sat down on a bench to enjoy my pear-flavored sparkling mineral water. A gregarious middle-aged British lady in a floppy hat came to rest beside me and launched into a long, animated account of all the funny things that happened when her daughter spent a year spent teaching English in China. Those stories were less than fascinating but my patience, or inability to get away, paid off when she revealed that she used to run to the bathroom and feign constipation to avoid being called on during math class in grade school. Silly little British girls.

Shopping district. I was able to find an Adidas swimsuit and stuffed giraffe at reasonable prices.

Cuckoo clock store.

The undulating roofs of these barn-looking buildings reminded me of ruffled mushroom caps.

Boats on the Limmat River.

Narrow cobblestone streets.

The clockface of St. Peter is the largest in Europe. Fraumünster's green steeple is peeking out from behind.

Arches of Grossmünster.

Poodle drinking from a fountain at Grossmünster.

Towers of Grossmünster.

Roger and I have lunch at Google Zürich. It's a good thing we got such large plates of food since the refrigerator at his new flat wasn't working yet and we had been subsisting on apples, rolls, and instant pasta.

My favorite convenience store snack in Europe, first discovered in Geneva. Rice milk pudding with raspberry sauce. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Before the flight, on the train, hiking break, midnight snack.

Cloudy Vienna

2006-06-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

No other city was as exalted in my mind as legendary Vienna after high school European History. First it was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, then the Austrian Empire, and finally the Austro-Hungarian empire. So many chocolate cakes were baked and consumed in class, the oddly shaped servings representing the various kingdoms centered around Vienna. Thus I feel I should apologize to Mrs. Ebeling as I did not appreciate this storied capital as much as I should have.

But I only had two days, it was raining most of the time, and I was still on antibiotics and feeling enervated. The city (and entire continent, really) was celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. There was not much variety in the performance repertoire and everything was expensive and sold out. Since it was often wet out, we did our sightseeing via tram. The palaces and monuments were indeed grand and impressive. We caught a glimpse into how Hapsburg apartments were decorated at the Albertina Museum, but it was the Belvedere that truly swept us off our feet. Along with great general presentation and placards that actually contained interesting and meaningful descriptions of the paintings, there was an exhibit on Vienna Art Nouveau that included dazzling works by Gustav Klimt.

This 1.8m x 1.8m masterpiece in vivid colors with the striking angular poses and timeless ecstatic embrace was absolutely mesmerizing up close.

We had our most interesting meal in Vienna at a Balkan restaurant. Victor was in charge of reading the menu, exercising his interpretation skills in Slavic languages (good) and German (poor). We ordered Balkan salad (chopped tomatoes and shredded lettuce topped with different kinds of cheese and yogurt and eggplant sauces), breaded chicken, pork sausages, and burek (cheese pie). Over at the next table, a stout man was eating what looked like a plate-sized hamburger. Our portions were huge as well and we left feeling very sated.

I will be sure to plan for better health and weather for my next visit to Vienna. We departed on the last day of June, Victor heading to bridge camp in Slovakia and I, after much grumbling, handing over €86 to take the night train to Zurich.

Storybook Prague

2006-06-30T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Prague train station was bustling with backpackers when we arrived on the night of June 25. We hadn't booked a room beforehand and were skeptical of the prices offered by the tourist information desk so we went to the center of town and to look for a good deal. After over an hour of sweating under our heavy backpacks and getting lost in the narrow cobblestone streets frequently converging at all different angles, we found a decent-looking hotel with a room priced comparably to a double in a hostel. Imagine our delight when it turned out to be practically a suite with a queen-sized bed, extra single bed, tall ceilings, many windows, beautiful green upholstering, and lots of space. Whee! I promptly fell asleep, having felt lethargic on antibiotics all day.

After a hotel breakfast of mediocre yogurt and cold tea the next morning, we set out to explore the sunny and picture perfect town. From astronomical clocks on stone churches with intricately carved facades to creamy-colored and stately architecture on the riverbanks to statue-lined bridges to the famous castle on the hill to winding streets filled with little theaters and galleries and marionette shops, the place was indeed very charming. However, it felt a bit surreal. I saw very few Czechs since everyone on the street was a tourist and it was as though we were all roaming around Old Prague Themepark.

The events calendar was chock-full of music and theater performances. I lamented not being able attend them all but I did catch the one I most wanted to see - Aspects of Alice at the Ta Fantastika, the Black Light Theatre. It takes the concept of Alice in Wonderland and continues the story from early adolescence, pantomiming along with music. The original whimsical spirit is artfully perpetuated, the cartoon town is a lovely emerald green, and her first experience of love is with a girl which I thought was really neat (and nice that the Czechs are not shy about tastefully using nudity). We also paid a visit to the Kafka Museum, basically a glorification of the author's lifelong suffering. Certainly makes sense that it takes endurance of pain and misery to churn out great stories such as "In the Penal Colony."

Our time in Prague was very short but the highly anticipated visit turned out remarkably well. Next time I hope to identify more locations from Kundera's writings (this time I only remembered and found Petrin Hill), read some new Kafka in a tucked away cafe, explore more neighborhoods away from the old town, and acquire a proper vocabulary of at least 20 Czech words. On the final morning we rushed to catch the Eurolines bus to Vienna, a steal at $12, and dozed through the Central European countryside.

Impressive riverfront property.

My favorite Prague postcard featured a picture of this building.

The river looks something like a large, calm tiered fountain.

Hilltop view of the red-roofed city.

Green gardens and walkways inside Prague Castle.

Duck, avocado, strawberry on the top left. This inexpensive meal at a quiet, shaded terrace restaurant in Vinohrady was probably our best in Europe.

Salmon gnocchi. Delicious pork medallions and cute potato pears.

Briefly a Berliner

2006-06-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Berlin on June 21 at the height of World Cup fever. The electric energy in the air was stoked by outdoor cafes showing games on large screens to jolly audiences and flag-wearing fans and honking celebraters after every game. I admit to not doing much in the city since I was fretting a lot over an infected cut on my finger. Finally decided to brave the costs and wandered around two nearly deserted hospitals before winning an appointment with a joking dermatologist. He prescribed antibiotics and a local distinfectant while showing off his English and his sense of humor ("there are so many people without arms in Moscow!" and "don't drink this disinfectant or you'll turn yellow and people will think you're Chinese").

Tips from this visit: get 12 East German and Soviet stamps in your passport for €10 at Checkpoint Charlie. Have black currant ice cream in prosecco from a cafe on Unter der Linden. Enjoy moussaka at a Greek restaurant on Kufurstendamm. Make sure you have a valid ticket when riding the metro (last ride cost me €40).

Next time: Attend the film festival. Check out the artists' scene in East Berlin. Take less impersonal pictures.

Alte Museum.

Intact section of Berlin Wall and exhibit.

Victor and his dad at Checkpoint Charlie.

Reichstag.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof.

A Very Guided Tour of Russia

2006-06-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

I flew to Moscow from Paris on the last day of the French Open. Next to me sat a tall, tanned, very athletic-looking Russian young woman and her mother. She was traveling with a huge tennis bag (capacity of 6 rackets or so) and I'm convinced she competed at Roland Garros. How honored I was to have a tennis star help me in filling out my Russian arrival card!

Victor's grandparents were exceedingly warm and sweet to me even though our common language included just 15 English words, 20 Russian words, and maybe 5 French words. Actually, I'm sure they knew more English than I knew Russian, but I had more opportunities to expand and show off my vocabulary during the stay.

The food was quite an experience. From massive amounts of butter on potatoes to sour cream in soups to whole milkfat sour yogurt, the basic rule was "as fatty as possible." Once I had to turn down butter for chicken with skin in oily soup. The amount of food consumed was also impressive. The breakfast spread would include yogurt, kefir (fermented milk), milk, cereal, cheeses, bread, fruit preserves, and oatmeal. In the evening, immediately following a hearty dinner, we'd have tea with an array of biscuits and cookies and wafers and chocolate. The only time I had caviar was in a blini (crepe) from a street stand and the most consequential impact of ten days spent in Russia was a much greater appreciation for potatoes.

Strolling down a green pedestrian avenue in Moscow.

This student violinist gave a very good recital. Brahms was on the program along with some pieces showing off technique. Afterwards we attended an excellent performance of Chopin's 24 etudes, a steal at $1.

Children's theater in Moscow where we saw the Nutcracker Suite.

We were the only adults in the audience unaccompanied by kindergarten-aged kids.

St. Basil's Cathedral.

A Candyland castle, or the state history museum.

Matrioshkas galore.

Victor and I and his grandma took the overnight train to St. Petersburg for a three-day visit. (Much more restful than my Kuala Lumpur to Penang trip. 4-bunk compartments versus 40-bunk one-compartment carriages are definitely the way to go.) We stayed with Victor's grandma's friend, a sweet elderly lady (and mechanical engineering professor! go Russian intellectual women) who smiled warmly every time I learned a new Russian word, usually an animal, fruit, or color. One evening Robin joined the three of us and we managed to stay out until dawn: avant-garde play, tea house, midnight sushi buffet, walk along Neva River to watch the beautifully lighted bridges open and close, internet cafe, and finally home on the metro at 6:30am. The next night we took the train back to Moscow in a worn out state and recuperated for a couple days before jetting off to Berlin. Supposedly the people in Russia were often rude, prices sometimes nonsensical, and sightseeing with relatives rather taxing and stressful, but I had a lovely time in the land of beautiful greenery and floating cottonwood puffs being shielded and pampered like a plump koshka. Meow.

Lavendar bushes were blooming everywhere.

The Hermitage, a nice sage green and so many rooms! Nice collections though I was a bit museumed out by then.

Pastel-colored riverfront in St. Petersburg.

Dark enough for a nice glow around 3am.

Halfway to being zombies but having a good time despite the lack of smiles.

Glow of sunrise over an open bridge on the Neva River.

A Brisk Walk Through Paris

2006-06-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

I arrived at the home of my first host family late at night on June 7. The father was a train signaling engineer, the mother worked at a small, fast-paced venture capital firm, and the son was a 17-year-old high school student, surfer, and tennis enthusiast. I had my own room with a view of the Eiffel Tower. When I slept, the imaginations of Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov, and Jules Verne keep watch over me from the bookshelf above the bed. The next day a kilogram of cherries keep me company while sauntering through the city. That evening we feasted on broccoli and cheese casserole and a giant sausage from the south of France, something like a meter long, over a discussion on language pedagogy.

Sweetly peachy.

A remarkably uncrowded base of the Eiffel Tower.

Champs de Mars.

Beautiful white-roofed city.

From the second stage I decided to skip the crowds and take the stairs down, not realizing it was 700 steps or equivalent to 25 stories. This is the view across the Seine from the Trocadero.

Musée du Louvre.

All the exhibits at the Louvre were impressive, but I was dismayed by this display of animal cruelty.

My second host was a sweet and generous elderly lady with hearty laugh. She spoke French to me a fair amount and fed me very well. My room seemed to be furnished for a child or grandchild, with many stuffed animals and a mounted glass case on the wall with shelves of cute erasers. Van Gogh´s Irises served as the bathroom wallpaper and there was a very nice, simple blue and purple butterfly shower mat. I visited most of the other must-see attractions in Paris over the following two days, regretting the lack time to consume all the fabulous-looking patisseries.

Gardening accessories.

La Sainte Chapelle.

Palais de Justice.

Musée Rodin.

The Thinker, plus some Korean tourists hogging the steps.

La Basilique du Sacré Coeur.

Night view of the Seine.

Breakfast at Chez Annie, powdered sugar and all. The warm whole milk was good preparation for Russia. I polished off the brioche in one sitting.

Whirldwind London

2006-06-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

On June 5, I enjoyed a very pleasant and restful flight to London. Due to heavy traffic over Heathrow at 6am, we were in a holding pattern with at least four other planes for 20 minutes. It was surreal to look out the window and see us all swirling around a giant vortex, wings tipped inward, each at our own altitude, in a whimsical synchronized dance. When I stepped out of the tube at Piccadilly Circus, everything that greeted me outside was refreshing: cool temperature, clean and open spaces, red brick architecture, British manners, English in wide use, indifference toward tourists, beautiful greenery and flower-filled squares.

I wandered around Central London and Westminster for three hours with my backpack on until I arrived at the Queen´s Park Hotel in Kensington around noon. Mediocre would be a euphemism for the establistment as our room was barely large enough to fit a double bed and there was zero sound insulation so that every time the hallway door next to us opened it sounded like someone was entering our room. I napped for a couple hours before going downtown to meet Victor whose six-hour delayed flight from Chicago almost caused him to miss Les Miserables. The show was not as engaging as I had hoped and the staging was a bit awkward at times, but the innkeepers were very in character and Éponine´s performance touching and sweet. The next day we blitzed through the major attractions on a marathon-length walk.

By Kensington Palace.

Pergola in Hyde Park.

Ducks and geese in Green Park.

Westminster Abbey.

London Eye.

Millennium Bridge.

Tower Bridge.

Night view of riverfront including London Bridge.

On the morning of the 7th, Victor waded through a sea of sleeping backpackers at Stansted to catch his early flight to Moscow. I slept in, had black currant yogurt muesli, bought a Russian phrasebook, and set off for Kew Gardens. Gorgeous! Wish I had all day to explore, but at 6pm I had to head back to Waterloo Station to catch the Eurostar train to Paris. The English countryside breezily bowed a kind farewell as we ducked under water to the continent.

Giant water lilies!

Pufferfish.

Mistiness.

Himalayan poppies.

Belated Thailand

2006-06-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

On May 19, I arrived in Bangkok all giddy about being in a new country. On the flight from Penang, I sat next to an online belt buckle proprietor from Seattle who taught me how to say the numbers in Thai. Proved indispensable through my countless negotiations over the following two and a half weeks.

I took the A2 bus to Khao San Road, a backpacker haven with its sidewalks crowded with clothing, bag, jewelry, pirated cd/dvd stalls, fruit stands and fried noodles stands serving up plates of pad thai for 50 cents, restaurants with English menus, internet cafes, and lodging starting from $3/night. The bright lights, noise, and endless flood of backpackers felt stifling to me, but I only had to be there briefly. I was meeting up with a British boy I had run into on the Jungle train in Malaysia a month before. We spotted each other in the crowds and ducked into Rambuttri, a watered-down version of Khao San Road nearby. It was fun to hear about his misadventures in Thailand (getting stranded outside the elephant conservation in Chiang Mai) and Laos (a nightmarish 18-hour bus journey during which the vehicle broke down at 3am in the middle of nowhere and for some reason everyone had to off-board and stand around until a replacement arrived at 6am). We walked around the next morning stopping at every other food stand we passed to snack and nearly ate ourselves sick.

A tuk-tuk ride halfway across town was negotiated for $3. On the harrowing side as we skirted around cars like a daredevil on a motorcycle. After this obligatory first experience, I never got into a tuk-tuk again.

That night, Victor arrived at the Bangkok Airport. He was impressed when I prevented our taxi driver from shortchanging us by a dollar or so with my confidently delivered, poorly pronounced Thai numbers. Our hotel on Sukhimvit 24 was rather embarrassingly posh, but of course still cheap by American or European standards. I squealed with joy upon spotting the pomelo at the breakfast buffet.

The next day we took a boat trip on the Chao Praya river and went temple tramping.

Buddha surrounded by violet and lavendar shades. I believed this was close to the giant reclining Buddha.

Unfortunately, it had become overcast when we arrived at the Temple of Dawn.

Detail of the facade.

The next day we spent some time wandering through malls looking for the supposedly incredible Bangkok shopping scene. Unfortunately, we stumbled into all the wrong ones like Siam Square and the Emporium. These were full of high-end retailers, ritzier than any malls I had been to in the States, and completely devoid of shoppers. Later on it was discovered that MKB is the place to go for a large variety of affordable goods but beware, if it seems to be a steal it's sure to be a fake. Might not matter much with clothes but sure does with electronics.

Of course, we had to try the fabled Thai massages. Definitely a good value for $6 an hour. I was happy with mine, I think. It was thorough and painful. Victor had humorous communication issues with his masseuse who seemed to only know the words "ok" and "pain" in English. Being taller than the average customer meant that additional cooperation was required which probably compounded the difficulty. It was unclear whether there was any effect after the massage so we did not feel motivated to go through the discomfort again.

Then it was time to take off for Koh Samui. The highlight of the flight was when our captain announced, "... we will arrive at our destination of ... ... uh, Surat Thani." Whether he actually had to look it up or was just lost in thought, it was perfect comic timing. After a slow bus ride to the jetty and an ever slower ferry ride we finally arrived on Koh Samui, delighted by the sandy beaches and shallow, clear blue water by the docks. Thinking that all beaches on the island were more or less the same, we randomly selected Bophut Beach and negotiated a taxi ride there.

We settled into a room at Eden Bungalows run by a French couple, and eagerly set off for the beach. The moment we stepped outside it started to pour. Undeterred, we shivered through the rain and climbed down to the deserted water's edge. Past a row of boats we gleefully hopped into the sea. The water was warm but it was also... dark brown. Between the rocks which threatened to cut our feet we realized our toes were sinking into mud. Hmm. Confused, we wandered further down the beach and got in again a little ways away only to discover the same pond-like consistency. After a couple more tries, a dawning realization: we had come to the wrong beach. It was like someone had played a mean trick on us, but really we had picked it ourselves. The next morning we were on Mae Nam Beach to catch the ferry to Koh Tao. It was gorgeous with fine grains of sand and shallow, sparkling blue water so our faith in Thai beaches was restored. To recap: Bophut Beach if you like muddy and brown, Mae Nam Beach if you like sandy and blue.

Gorgeous Koh Tao, though a borrowed picture.

On Koh Tao we went scuba diving with a shop run by a couple Finns. Definitely an enjoyable time with interesting coral, colorful schools of fish, and even some very large green-and-black striped triggerfish, maybe more than a meter long. After a couple days, we had gotten our share of sun and sand and island life with its abundance of mango smoothies and so-so curries and had given the whole experience a stamp of approval. On the last night though, we experienced a minor tragedy.

Victor steps on a sea urchin, much like the one in this borrowed picture.

Despite best efforts to play nurse, we made nearly no progress in picking out the fifteen or so crumbling spines embedded into the bottom of his foot. He claimed not to feel very hobbled and the next day we took our scheduled ferry ride and bus ride, a 10-hour journey in total, back to Bangkok. Not horrible as far as long-haul trips go, but our bus driver got lost as we were pulling into Bangkok, suspicions confirmed as we passed the same car dealership and gas station for the fifth time. After half an hour of seeing "Main Road - 1km" signs from different approaches and pulling into gas stations to ask for directions, we were dropped off on the side of a large road, negotiated a taxi fare to our hotel, and stumbled into our room exhausted to the core.

We toddled over to Bumrungrad Hospital the next day where we were told that absorbing a small dose of sea urchin poison is not a huge problem. As soon as we made it back from the hospital, I was knocked over by a strong bout of food poisoning. It mercifully subsided after a few whimpery hours and I was able to see Victor off at the airport the following morning.

I was parsimonious and stayed on Khao San Road for the next week, but it was completely the wrong place for me. Maybe it would have been ok if I had gone on the fun excursions I had wanted to like riding elephants through the jungle and tubing down rivers. Instead, I was mired in travel planning for my upcoming relocation to Europe: paddling through the Russian visa application swamp and sorting through the Orbitz mess when they canceled my BKK-LHR reservation without notification. The silver lining was meeting this baby elephant one night.

He nosed around, poking into hands and through bags looking for food, drooling a bit. So cute. For 60 cents you could feed him a few short sticks of peeled sugar cane.

About as uncrowded as Khao San Road gets.

I celebrated the granting of my Russian visa in Bangkok with my first meal of pad thai there. Stay tuned for stories from Europe!

Penang

2006-05-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

After the great AirAsia debacle where I was charged full fare twice for the Tawau to Kuala Lumpur flight, I met up with Dian, my host sister in KL, for a wonderful Vietnamese dinner (looking forward to Vietnam!) before boarding my overnight train to Penang. The coach looks nice, clean, fairly new and in order. The bunks are narrow and short, maybe 2.5 feet by just under 6 feet, but I was able to lie down comfortably with my backpack at my side. However, there were 40 bunks in that car and curtains don't really keep out the sound of loud chitter-chatter, babies crying, snoring, plastic bags crinkling more than four hours into the ride. There was some peace and quiet after that, but I wasn't able to sleep after 2:30am. The lights were on all night anyway, and I started to feel a little queasy toward the end from the stale air. Arrived in Butterworth at 5:55am with a cloudy head, empty stomach (I brilliantly didn't bring any food or water for the 9-hour journey, as usual), and stuffy nose.

It's remarkably hot for dawn but the ferry ride to Penang provides some respite. I feel ill-equipped to deal with a day of sight-seeing and do my best to stay conscious during a two-hour bus ride around Georgetown (the main city on Penang island) while the driver tries to decide where to let me off close to hostels. After alighting on Chulia Street, I wander around desperately looking for internet or food. Penang opens for business really late, the opposite of Semporna (historically 6am with most people in bed by 9pm; now you can get food till midnight). I wander into an open restaurant and have the best dim sum in recent memory (these things always seem to be positively correlated with hunger). Down the road, I find a hostel in which to take a nap. Sadly, the flannel bed felt warmer than my overheated self but I am just barely able to pass out anyway.

I've hardly done anything in Penang. Last night I slept poorly due to the heat and woke up for good at 3am. Today I stumbled around in the blinding light and managed to make it up Penang Hill via funicular railway.

Breakfast: noodles with fish balls and lettuce.

The Penang Hill Railway, boasting the steepest tunnel in the world.

View from halfway. Beautiful city.

View from the top. Wish I knew how to take a panorama. At 13.5km, the Penang Bridge is one of the longest in the world.

Hindu temple at the top of Penang Hill.

I go out for dim sum and invariably order too much food for one.

Fed up with the hot air (there's a ceiling fan working feverishly which brings the condition from strictly intolerable to vastly uncomfortable) and ridiculously warm bed in my room this afternoon, I walk into the shower wearing a t-shirt and pants. Returning to my room drenched, I gleefully discover that I'm now a reasonable temperature for an hour as I'm dried by the fan. Seems like a formula for getting sick, but at least I will be able to fall asleep tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to give what is actually a very attractive city a fair exploration.

Odds and Ends

2006-05-17T19:07:00.000-07:00

Two days into the infection. It's too bad I don't have pictures of the worst (swollen and lizardly in addition to red).

Places visited on the mainland: Gemas, Kota Bharu, Pulau Perhentian, Kuala Lumpur, Penang. Places visited on Borneo: Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan, Semporna.

Turtles are protected by law so they're not hunted for food and you won't find them on restaurant menus. However if caught in fishing nets people might take them home and cook them.

There's a place near Sipadan called the Turtle Graveyard. Divers aren't allowed to go anymore. It's not that deep, but it's hard to find even if the path is marked and people have died trying to go see it. Apparently turtles remember where they came into the world as hatchlings and return to that place to die. Perhaps trivial, but I can't help admiring this sense of identity which seems to satisfy two of the three pillars of self-awareness (know who you are, who you love, where you're going). Having a graveyard of turtle skeletons seems to give them something of... a heritage. When a turtle goes there to die (and it takes a conscious effort, as far as I know they don't bury each other) it's hard to imagine having no sense of being a part of a greater civilization. There's a history, lineage, lives lost, loves won, memoirs of individuals sinking into one organic, spiritual garden on the ocean floor. What is any human archeological site but a similar pile of bones?

A Short Dictionary of Bahasa Malaysia

2006-05-14T03:46:00.000-07:00

ya - yes
tidak - no
makan - eat
minum - drink
air - water
teh - tea
kopi - coffee
keluar - exit
masuk - entrance
kecil - small
besar - big
wanita - female
lelaki - male
negara - country
sekolah - school
farmasi - pharmacy
klinik - clinic
teksi - taxi
taman - park
pokok - tree
bunga - flower
rama-rama - butterfly

satu - one
dua - two
tiga - three
empat - four
lima - five
enam - six
tujuh - seven
lapan - eight
sembilan - nine
sepuluh - ten

terima kasih - thank you
sama-sama - you're welcome
saya minta maaf - i'm sorry
saya cinta kamu - i love you
selamat pagi - good morning
selamat malam - good night
selamat tinggal - goodbye

Diving at Sipadan

2006-05-14T02:46:00.000-07:00

Sipadan is the stuff of diving legends. Formed by coral growing on top of an extinct volcano, it is Malaysia's only oceanic island, located off the East coast of Borneo in the Celebes Sea. Instead of the usual gradual drop-off, there is a sheer drop of 600m around the island that makes for excellent wall diving. Imagine staring into a blue abyss of calm, extremely clear water (visibility of 30m is not uncommon) teeming with diverse marine life including black tip sharks, leopard sharks, hammerheads, tornado schools of barracuda, and most of all, a copious citizenry of giant, gentle sea turtles. This is the dive site of my dreams.

Dive journal:
3 days, 9 dives, about 45 minutes each, averaging 20m depth.
Sites: Coral Garden, Barracuda Point, Mid Reef, White Tip Avenue, Turtle Corner.

Looking up. The reef is brimming with life.

Off to a party.

Red fish, blue fish.

I call this one a mazefish. Don't know the actual name.

Cute white tip reef shark, about 2 meters long.

Same dude.

Pinocchio-looking unicornfish.

Close encounters with turtles:
Day 1: I keep a count of turtles spotted and admire from afar.
Day 2: Shy but sincere first contact - I hug a turtle!
Day 3: I introduce myself to every turtle spotted less than 10m away.

Soaring.

Where's Waldo?

"Vera! Stop chasing turtles. Stay with the group."

A second after this picture was taken Divemaster Jefrey coaxed (pulled by back flipper) this guy out of his bed of vegetation. I excitedly petted and hugged him before he petulantly wiggled free. He's probably seen divers all his life but I'd like to think I was something special to him.

Someone's indifferent to my presence.

My, what a pretty shell you have.

Of course, some of the best things I don't have pictures of. Two tornado schools of thousands of barracuda. A school of over a hundred beautiful, large, dark green bumphead parrotfish. A sleeping leopard shark at 35m, grayish with dark spots, about 4m long. Being inside schools of fish, so close we could touch, watching them change directions. All in all, an amazing three days of diving.

Boating back to the mainland we pass Mabul, an expensive resort of chalets on the water.

And many pretty green islands.

Semporna

2006-05-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

I didn't think much of this town when I arrived three days ago. I had gotten up at 5:45am in Sandakan to rush to the bus terminal, only to be told that the Semporna bus had broken down. So I sat on a picnic table, drank my Mangga with Nata de Coco, rolled my eyes as people exclaimed, "24! You look 16," and waited for a private car to drive up that I could hire with other people headed in the same direction.

I ended up getting in a Nissan pick-up truck and got to wear a seatbelt in the front with my backpack at my feet. There were three other people in the back row along with a baby. Driver starts the vehicle and turns the a/c on high. How misleading. For the rest of the 4.5 hour ride, we suffered with the windows partially down, being blasted with hot, dusty air as he chain-smoked. The radio was on thumpingly loud except when he was talking on the phone. (Malaysian pop is not bad, but the speaking interludes were indescribably annoying. Every time the announcer paused, a loud techno beat would fade in, play for a couple bars, fade out. Like every 5 seconds.) No food or bathroom stops. When we arrived in Semporna, he tried to charge me some extra fees, but I wandered off while he was helping other passengers with their luggage. How I miss the reputable long-distance busses!

The worst thing I got out of that day was a nasty case of pinkeye. I really should have worn sunglasses, or stopped rubbing my eye so much, but there was no mirror for me to see how red it had gotten until four hours after it starting hurting. Thankfully, the one doctor in town was Chinese Malaysian (they all seem to speak Mandarin) so I didn't have to worry about difficulty communicating. When I arrived at 8:00am to sign in there were a couple dozen people already sitting around and others constantly filing in and out of the clinic. There were babies crying and people grimacing in pain though no ER/trauma-like cases. I felt a bit ill just being there, but things moved along efficiently and I was called into the consultation room after 45 minutes of waiting. The doctor advised me not to scuba dive for two days and prescribed antibiotic pills, anti-flammatory pills, and eyedrops. I picked these up from the pharmacy and the whole visit cost me just $6.

I'm bummed of course since scuba diving is the reason I am in Semporna. At least my expensive dive package has me staying at the fanciest hotel in town so I've had a nice place to sulk. When not sleeping away the redness/swelling, I've been walking around looking like a druggie.

The view from my window.

I'm very grateful to have use of this bathroom after staying in $3/night hostels.

King-sized bed. The room I had the first two nights ('Eco Deluxe' compared with this 'Deluxe') had a really nice floral-patterned jade green comforter that I miss.

Next to the hotel is this seaside restaurant, really just a large wooden deck over the water (can hear the waves crashing underneath after boats pass).

$1.20 for a .1kg of prawns. 90 cents for .1kg of squid or crab. 60 cents for .1kg of fish.

Grilled crab. My favorite!

Special ABC - jelly, red beans, corn, ice cream, shaved ice.

I generally think the mosque is the most attractive building in town wherever I go. It's funny that Wikitravel (or some other travel site...) advises one to stay "at least 500m away from the nearest mosque so as to not be woken up by 5am call to prayer." There's no such thing as 500m from a mosque in any sort of town. The calls to prayer here I actually find rather soothing and I only notice the 7:30pm one anyway.

There are maybe twelve streets in town.

Peddling little bottles of medicine.

Food stalls. I like the ubiquitous plastic kindergarten/lawn chairs. Reminds me of home, actually.

The unjust steals the just's umbrella.

After a fews days recuperating and eating well, I'm no longer grumpy. My new motto: "Semporna's not so bad." Of course, there are still annoyances like the MIDI-quality elevator music that plays in the halls of the hotel until 10pm-ish. And the apparent lack of lip balm in East Malaysia. But I'm finally going diving today. Sipadan is reputed to have the greatest diversity of marine life of any dive site in the world. Will let you know if I agree.

Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary

2006-05-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

A lovely jungle, very hot, pleasantly bug-free-ish.

Feeding time is at 10am and 3pm every day. Any orangutan, even wild ones, can come and supplement their diet with milk and bananas. That day we saw about two dozen.

Selingan: Turtle Island

2006-05-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

Most expensive tour yet: $110 for an overnight stay on Turtle Island and three Western meals. It was a little shocking to see 60 Caucasians together in one place.

Dock on Libaran Island where we had lunch.

Boating to Turtle Island.

The Philippine Archipelago starts 5km away.

Gorgeous water.

We all crowd around during a mother turtle's private moment: laying 96 leathery eggs. A ranger collects the eggs and takes measurements. She is huge (shell 1m long) and beautiful.

I felt a little bad. It was actually much more magical earlier that evening when two turtles came up on the beach where everyone was hanging out after dinner and spent a hour digging just 10m away from the hubbub. It was amazing to stare into the darkness where they were, hearing the sweeps and watching sand fly.

Eggs are buried in the hatchery. Incubation period is 50-60 days.

That evening's hatchlings.

We get to say hello before releasing them into the ocean.

Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan

2006-05-05T04:29:00.000-07:00

For $9, I got to travel 250 miles across the state of Sabah in East Malaysia on an air-conditioned coach and gaze at these views all day. Decent lunch at roadside restaurant and bottled water included.

Kuala Lumpur, Truly Asian

2006-05-04T04:54:00.000-07:00

Beef and potato curry, creamy spinach curry, fried tofu and vermicelli, fried anchovies, fried fish. So many delicious home-cooked meals.

Fashion show in shopping mall at base of Petronas Towers.

Asia is dessert heaven.

Petronas Towers at night. Quite attractive even close-up.

Butterfly Park.

Feeding time. Yummy hibiscus flowers.

I really liked these turquoise ones. They seemed more interested in the muddy pools on the ground than in the nectar in the flowers.

So many turtles.

Aww.

Lake Gardens.

National Mosque. Brilliant blues better captured from an aerial vantage point.

A beautiful Chinese Islamic calligraphy scroll at the Islamic Arts Museum.

Spotted on the highway.

Masjid India.

The bottomless banana leaf meal and mango lassi from heaven. This is how my lunch started out. When I had eaten a half, waiters came by and heaped another hefty helping of rice and each of the curries on my banana leaf. I smile appreciatively and carry on eating. Even more food is delivered ten minutes later along with admonition that everything needs to be finished before leaving. Not a bad deal - three meals for the price of one ($3.50)!

I seem to be presenting a very urban-posh (or just very touristy) view of the Muddy Confluence. Will try for more grittiness next time.

Perhentian Islands

2006-04-29T00:47:00.000-07:00

My home for the week, Flora Bay on the Perhentian Islands.

The dive shop where I took the PADI Open Water Diver course.

The restaurant where I ate lunch every day.

The water here is very shallow. Like 2 feet deep 300 feet out. Within 10 minutes of starting to snorkel on the first day, I cut my knee on coral. Vinegar and antiseptic cream and a mixed fruit platter later, I'm back in business, having tagged along with a random scuba class's open water dive. A 10m deep site with great visibility and lots of pretty fish.

Snorkeling here is amazing. There's nothing like watching a hundred rainbow-colored parrotfish of different sizes within a 10-foot radius in a feeding frenzy on coral 5 feet beneath you.

Spotted a black tip reef shark on the first day of scuba. It was cruising along the bottom, about 20 feet beneath me. Surreal... I felt like I was swimming in an aquarium where everything was assembled just so and I could happily observe and go unnoticed.

Even more excited to see a turtle on our second open water dive. It was small (shell about 18" in diameter) and peered at us curiously before floating off slowly in the direction we were going so we got to follow it for a few minutes. So adorable.

This picture was not taken by me but by the divers mentioned below. Slightly larger and less cute than the turtle that I saw.

Baby version. Aww.

On the third night I walked by some divers looking at underwater photos on a laptop. They struck up a conversation with me and I got to show off my mad computer skills by helping them copy some pictures onto a thumb drive. They invited me to a barbecue, and eight of us piled into a tiny 15-foot wooden canoe with a small motor in the back. It's pitch black and we boat over ten minutes to the other side of the island navigating with a flashlight. Turns out two of the divers were part of a team of 30-40 Kuala Lumpur Police officers on the islands for two weeks for commando training (shooting from helicopters, jumping into the water in full SWAT team-like gear, climbing back up on a rope ladder) and tonight was their last night. So I got to eat grilled squid, fried fish, rice with chili sauce, and drink grape juice at what really felt a soldiers' campsite with a couple dozen Muslim Malay men in their late 20's - early 30's. They were quite friendly but the conversation was not deep what with their limited command of English and my knowledge of ten words in Malay. Boating back to Flora Bay, the night sky was gorgeous. The stars were so bright, I could see thousands of them, and we were even graced by the presence of a meteor. We settled at a bar on the beach, a guitar materialized, and everyone started singing Malay songs. I filled up on grass jelly drinks and fried squid before toddling off to bed shortly after midnight. The next day the original group flew their helicopter by the beach where I was taking my dive course and waved goodbye.

Mixed fruit. Love the watermelon here. The mango was not so ripe that day.

Ginger fish and rice.

Squid sambal, peanuts, fried anchovies, coconut rice.

Sunset.

Waiting for the ferry to return to the mainland. Very tan and very mosquito-bitten.

The Jungle Line

2006-04-28T23:59:00.000-07:00

Train map of Peninsular Malaysia.

Gemas, the junction of the west and east coast train lines. It took less that an hour to explore the three streets of the town. Not worth seeing, in my opinion.

Spare accommodations. Mosquitoes, noise from motorcycles passing on the street, and an annoying neighbor who barged into my room and insisted on using my outlet to charge his phone made for a less than savory hostel experience.

Breakfast: winter melon drink, porridge with green onions and carmelized onions, broth with bitter melon, eggplant, and tofu (each pork-stuffed).

I spent twelve hours on this train in third class with no air-conditioning or fans through the sweltering Malaysian jungle. 74 stops between Gemas and Kota Bharu.

As the locals do: drinking Milo from a plastic bag.

A friendly train conductor with who taught me some Malay words and introduced me to his pals (also train employees) en route to a fishing holiday. I ended up talking to them (through a combination of English, Mandarin, and hand gestures) for most of the ride.

Hanging out in the cargo car with the crew. I am explaining how to use the camera in this picture.

These guys were a piece of work, though it's hard to tell from the back of their heads. They bought me dinner and when I expressed a desire to wash my hands before eating chicken curry without utensils, they poured bottled water over a plastic bag. When the train passed through tunnels and the unlit cargo car went dark, two of them shone the light from their cell phones onto my food so I could see. Embarrassing, really.

I also got to ride in the locomotive for two hours. Too bad the conductor didn't want his picture taken.

Mosque in Kuala Lipis, colonial capital.

After all that, I'm going to sheepishly admit that I didn't get very good pictures of the jungle. You'll just have to go see for yourself on the one and only jungle train.

Walking Tour

2006-04-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

The best Hainanese Chicken Rice in the city. A plate of the delectable dish from what the New York Times calls a shrine sets you back $2.

A feast for three near Queenstown. Bring on that crab and empty heart vegetable.

Enthralled by the train system, I rode each line from end to end.

Bright, clean, and comfortable.

I like how Singapore has four national languages. All signs are in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. This one is displayed alongside the tracks at each station.

Pagodas at the Chinese Garden.

Feeding an African Spurred Tortoise.

Flamingos at the Night Safari.

Saying goodbye to my wonderful host family before crossing into Malaysia.

Lovely Singapore

2006-04-19T22:37:00.000-07:00

Something about mugginess and Mandarin makes me feel right at home. I've been in Singapore for two days now. The subway system is a breeze to nagivate, food is everywhere and delicious and inexpensive, and everything is just so green!

My host family is delightful. The four children (7, 5, 5, 1/2) are adorable, gregarious, and endearingly rambunctious. It's fun to pose arithmetic problems to the munchkins, though maybe introducing the concept of negative numbers was a bit ambitious. I love watching them scrawl out their names in beautifully awkward Chinese characters and there's nothing quite like being challenged to count to a thousand by a 5-year-old.

Colorful buildings amidst lush greenery.

Tekka market in Little India.

Tropical dessert paradise.

Yes, I am addicted to henna tattoos.

Fabric shops on Arab Street.

Satay Power.

Fountains of Capitol Tower.

Merlion, the whimsical-looking symbol of Singapore.

Esplanade, the great big durian. The horseshoe-shaped theater inside looks a lot like La Scala. I enjoyed a wonderful production of West Side Story, attended by Singaporeans dressed to the nines and scantily-clad vacationing Australians.