Technical Difficulties and Some Stuff About the Finer Things in Life (Food and Beach)

I'm having some issues getting the past few computers to cooperate with my camera, so I will be without images for a while, apparently.

Lisa and I arrived in Dalat this afternoon after a few days of "real" vacation, meaning, we went to the beach.

But I should start before that.

After we got back to Saigon, Lisa needed some down time. So she sent me to cooking school. :-) I spent a half day in a Vietnamese Cooking class on Sunday morning. I met our teacher, Chef Bao, and his translator/assistant, Jasmine, in Ben Thanh Market. Matt and Katie from San Francisco followed close behind. It was just the three of us. We started the class by taking a spin through the food section of the market, learning more than I needed to about the delicacies of Vietnamese cuisine. Luckily, the menu plan did not include any organ meats, frogs, or eels. We finished the market orientation and headed for the Vietnamese Cookery Center, which sounds so much better in French (Centre Culinaire du Vietnam).

At the Cookery Center, we started off with a small snack (We didn't make it. Just ate/drank it) of tea and candied ginger. Tea is a coomon starter in most restaurants. I think it's generally a pretty weak jasmine or green tea, and can be hot or cold. After tea we moved to our work stations.

The first course was Vietnamese Spring Rolls (Cha gio). We were instructed on the ingredients to mix (including pork, taro root, spring onion, shallot, and a few other things), and then we were instructed on how to roll it in the netting rice paper. Netting rice paper gives the spring roll a kind of cool consistency - almost like you have rolled it in really thin noodles. We deep fried the rolls, and made a dipping sauce, which included one of THE most important ingredients in Vietnamese Cooking: Fish sauce (Nuoc mam). If you have a Vietnamese meal in which fish sauce does not figure prominently, then it isn't Vietnamese.

Course two: Caramel pork in clay pot. I have also seen this dish using shrimp. The thing that makes southern Vietnamese cuisine different from northern Vietnamese cuisine is that it tends to be sweeter - thus the caramel use, as well as liberal use of sugar in most of the dishes. We were to work for a balance between sweet (sugar or coconut juice), salty (fish sauce) and sour (lime juice) in several of the dishes, including the spring roll dipping sauce. We did not make the rice that went with it, but Chef Bao showed us the proper amount of coconut juice (not coconut milk) to add to steam the rice. He had a seriously bad-ass rice cooker too.

Course three: Sour clam soup with dill. Seafood is very common, and dill is used constantly, with seafood as well as other things. I wasn't sure I'd like this dish, because, I mean, come on - sour clam soup? Does that really sound appealing? But it was surprisingly tasty.

We did not make dessert, but we were served sauteed bananas in coconut milk, sprinkled with sesame seeds.

After class, Katie, Matt and I hopped in a cab back to the market. I HAD to get some of that netting rice paper to bring home to try this out. After securing three bags of the stuff, I met Lisa, and we got on the road to the beach.

Ahhhh the beach. You can't *not* relax at Mui Ne Beach. That is, after you have reached your final destination. The 2km walk from where the buss dropped us off to get to our hotel while carrying a heavy, overstuffed frame-pack, in flip flops while you need to pee after a 4 hour buss ride was NOT very relaxing (mental note: Lonely Planet Guide does not use the same scale on all of their maps, so objects may appear closer than they actually are).

But once we got there, it was reeelaaaaxing. We went to bed early, we woke up when our internal alarms told us too, we ate good breakfasts, we relaxed by the pool with books, occasionally hopping into the cool blue water when we got hot. I did finally get in the South China Sea on Day 2. It was lovely. We ate pizza for dinner and went to bed ridiculously early again.

It just doesn't get much better than that.

Now we are in Dalat. It is significantly different. They call it City of Eternal Spring for a reason. It's cool out and we are surrounded by mountains and pine forests as opposed to beach and palm trees. It's lovely too, just in a different way. And both options are better for me than being at home in cold Washington DC.

More on Dalat tomorrow after our tour with the "Easy Riders."

Boating the Mighty Mekong

The Mekong Delta takes up the southern tip of Vietnam, and thanks to it's lushness, it has helped make Vietnam the world's second largest rice exporter, according to Lonely Planet.

Lisa and I decided to get there by group tour. It was cheap and made things easy. It was a two day/one night tour and advertised stops in a few towns and floating markets along the way. Floating markets are made up of boats anchored in the middle of the river selling wholesale produce to buyers. It's a pretty cool sight, but the best action is seen really early in the morning.

Our tour yesterday did what tourist-tours do: We stopped at a bunch of places to buy crap and to see some educational things, like how to make coconut candy (I can just hear Dave gagging as he reads this), rice paper, and puffed rice treats (they only look like Rice Krispy treats, which was a disappointment to me). We went to the Cai Be floating market, but it was late afternoon so everything good was pretty much over.

Today was going to prove to be much of the same, so we decided to ditch our tour and do it on our own. The group stopped in Can Tho last night and we had some free time. We arranged for a nice lady to take us in her boat to the Cai Rang floating market this morning at 6am. We spent the night in a hotel arranged by the tour. I swear it sounded like we were sleeping on the side of the road. I'm convinced that the roof was just corrugated plastic with nothing insulating the noise from outside, and we were right on a main road. I think I got a few good hours of sleep there, but not much!

The departure was early and slightly painful, but worth it. The river was teeming with boats, and because we took a small motor boat instead of the larger tour group boats, we were able to maneuver right in there with everyone else.

After we returned to land, with the help of a local colleague of Lisa's, we took a "non-tourism" bus back to Saigon. It was the best air-conditioning I have encountered on a Vietnamese bus yet.

I left Lisa alone this afternoon to take a nap and walked around Saigon a bit. I went to visit the War Remnants Museum. Interesting but VERY one-sided (not surprisingly). I think the most interesting/sad part of it was seeing a special exhibit on US Vietnam War correspondents. There was a room full of photos with the stories of what they depicted as well as who took them. It was an homage to the fallen of the press corps, and therefore many of the pictures were labeled as the last photo taken before the particular photographer was killed, sometimes immediately after the photo was taken. It was an emotional exhibit.

There were some pretty graphic photos and stories of other events, usually involving the bloody torture and murder of civilian women and children, and the aftermath suffered by victims of dioxin (Agent Orange) exposure. But of course the Viet Cong soldiers were nowhere to be found in any of the horrors of war. There was lots left unsaid. Not to say that what WAS shown wasn't horrible of course. And much of it can never be justified. But I do know it wasn't always that one-sided. As Lisa put it on another occasion, we have a lot left to learn.

In between all of this, I DO plan to relax some. :-) Tomorrow we plan to go to the beach for a few days. After my morning cooking class, of course!

World Religions and World History

First full day in Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh City, depending on who you talk to. We took a bus tour to two interesting destinations: To the Cao Dai Temple at Tay Ninh and to the Cu Chi tunnels north of the city.

I had been fascinated with what I read about Cao Daism (a true "world" religion) in a book I got for Christmas: A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam by Norman Lewis. He wrote of his introduction to Cao Daism in 1949 that he encountered:

"...a cathedral that looked like a fantasy from the brain of Disney, and all the faiths of the world had been ransacked to create the pompous ritual, which had been grafted on an organization copied from the Catholic Church."

The inside is about the most colorful place I've ever seen, with dragons swirling around pink pillars, blue cloudy skies painted on the ceiling, and a large orb with a big eye in the middle of it over the "altar." Apparently past consultations have been held via seance with the likes of Victor Hugo (who happens to be one of the patron saints), Joan of Arc and William Shakespeare.

Odd doesn't even begin to cover it.


Next we changed gears COMPLETELY and went to see the Cu Chi tunnels, which was a network of 125 miles worth of underground tunnels dug by peasant guerrillas and Viet Cong during the war. The network had three tiers and in some places went down to 30 feet underground. Approximately 18,000 people were living in these tunnels during the war, and they included kitchens, dining rooms, hospital rooms...basically anything you might need to live underground for an indeterminate amount of time.

There were two particularly hard things about seeing the tunnels. First it was the claustrophobia. We were allowed down into one. We could make the choice to circle out at the second tier down or continue to a third tier. These tunnels are small. You have to crawl through them in places. I opted out after tier 2. That was enough for me to see.

The second difficult part was seeing the intro video that was filmed as part of Vietnamese propaganda in 1967. It was a little over the top, even for me. I may have my own conflicted feelings about the US involvement in Vietnam, but it's still hard to hear about peasant guerrillas being awarded as "American killer heroes." Our tour guide himself had been conscripted into the Viet Cong for 3 years.

Vietnam still hasn't healed it's own wounds from the war. Those who fought for the South Vietnam Army (and sided with the US) and actually stayed in Vietnam (instead of fleeing after the fall of Saigon) still face discrimination and persecution. It's pretty sad to see the aftermath from this side of the world. It's clear that there really were no winners of the war, no matter what the Vietnamese government thinks.

Tomorrow we are off to the Mekong Delta.

Day 2 : Temple Hopping

We didn't know how great the weather was yesterday until the sun came out today. It gets hot when the sun comes out. Lisa and I wanted to hit a few of the temples that we didn't make it to yesterday. It's a good thing there weren't that many. We were done about 2 hours in.

But we did get to see some impressive stonework. First we went to Preah Khan, which is one of the larger temple complexes. The Lonely Planet Encounter guide sums it up best:" "Preah Khan is a genuine fusion temple."Many - if not all - of the temples have a mix of Buddhist symbolism and Hindu sympolism that went back and forth over time, but this building had the most interesting combination. In each area, you see combinations of the religions. The picture I have posted shows the most interesting example. At the base of the picture is a "linga stand,"which originally housed a linga, which is a phallic symbol associated with Hindu worship of Shiva. You can see a slight protrusion at the left of the picture (most of the lingas themselves have actually been stolen). Sitting on top of the linga stand is a Buddha statue, which is - obviously - associated with Buddhism. But as you will notice, the Buddha head has been cut off, a casualty to the Hindu worshipers at some point over the centuries.

Finally everyone seems to be living in harmony. At least in stone form.

We are going to get some Mexican food for lunch (they have good margaritas, and I have to admit I haven't been too impressed by Khmer cuisine - even if the temples are awesome and the people are really nice!), and then heading to the airport, bound for Saigon. Then I will be happy to not be on a plane again for a while. :-)

Siem Reap and Ankor, Cambodia

I was going to say something cheesy involving Laura Croft or Angelina Jolie, but I thought I'd spare everyone the obscure movie/video game reference, although it was seeing that movie years ago that introduced me to Angkor Wat as a place anyway. So Lisa and I arrived in Siem Reap yesterday afternoon and spent all day today temple-hopping with our guide, "Tim." I don't have time to go into a lot of details about this amazing complex, but it is worth mentioning the fact that it has seen a lot of history since construction began in the 10th century, and seems to have experienced back-and-forth identity crises (Is it Hindu? Is it Buddhist? Is it both?) ever since. We hit several temple complexes, including Angkor Thom and the Bayon, Ta Keo, Ta Prohm (where parts of Laura Croft: Tomb Raider"" was filmed), and Angkor Wat.

What is also clear is that the Cambodian people have a huge amount of pride in this complex, which is important, because after the intense and horrifying history they saw under Pol Pot, these people deserve to have something to have pride in. They have built up a heck of a tourist industry around this town and these historic structures. Normally I would be averse to over-touristy areas, but I'm glad I didn't avoid this one.

Tomorrow we will check out some smaller temples in the morning, and then in the afternoon we will fly to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City to check out the Mekong Delta for a day or two. It's nice to have some warm weather. :-)

While you were sleeping...

It's Monday morning for me, but back home, it is Sunday night. At least so far, my body seems to be adjusting. The fact that I was able to slep for most of the night here unaided is pretty impressive. I'm glad I wasn't interested in "sleeping in" though, because everywhere is loud outside in the daytime.

I got here about mid-afternoon yesterday and was able to walk around with Lisa for a while, before we met our friend Karin for dinner. It has been unexpectedly warm recently and was sunny yesterday, but it appears likely to rain today.

In about an hour I will becollected by Tu, a friend of Lisa's who is going to play tour guide for me this morning. Then will meet Lisa for lunch before Lisa and I hop on a plane again (goody) to Cambodia.

Having not seen much of Hanoi so far, I have limited observations and not much new knowledge. I think I am close to mastering the art of crossing the street which requirs more trust in your fellow man than I ever imagined. With hoards of motorbikes and bicycles bearing down on you from every direction, you have to keep from looking at the big picture and instead take is row by row. You step out and get past the first row and then look for your next opening, trusting (at least hoping!) the whole time that the drivers will ultimately stop for you if needed (they don't move too fast, which helps!

The sidewalk of every street is filled with open shopfronts, spilling out with a wie array of products, and each street is known for what it primarily sells. For example, last night we walked down (among others) candy street, toy street, "offerings" street, and maternity clothes street.

A few additional odd things I learned:

• The Ho Chi Min mausoleum is open for viewing from Dec-Sept. After that, rumor has it that he sent back to Russia for re-embalming.
• home/shop owners are taxed based on what square footag of space touches the street. As a result, many placs look narrow, but they go far back, or have many stories.
• You have to be selected or appointed to be a member of the Communist Party, which makes it a very elite group. This seems very strange and extremely counterintuitive to me. Isn't teh whole point of communism about the "collective" and equality of everyone? I'm going to have to find out more.

I happened to luck out and I have free internet in my hotel room (I can't imagine that's standard!), but I'll be checking out shortly. Hope to get a hold of a connetion in Cambodia!

Quality Airport Time

I knew when I planned this trip to visit my friend Lisa in Vietnam that the worst part about it would be getting there. My Orbitz itinerary kindly pointed out that the total duration of my travel would be 29 hrs and 32 min. This included a 4 hour late night layover at JFK and a 5 hour early morning layover in Seoul. The thing that sucks about both of these scenarios is that nothing is open in airports really late and really early.

For my first layover at JFK, awesome Dave came to the rescue by supplying me with snooty chocolates and wine money, so I was fortunate to find a sport at JFK that was selling half bottles of wine (all of the actual bars were closed by then). I can't tell you how the pairing of the airport Cabernet Sauvignon really worked, but it didn't much matter. It was a lovely way to spend time in a fairly crappy airport.


We started boarding the 747 bound for Seoul at about 12:30am. It's no picnic spending 14 hours on a place through the night and across multiple timezones, but the Korean Air flight attendants made it as nice as they could. I was extremely psyched about the dinner (I guess? At 2am, it didn't really fit into a "meal framework.") which arrived complete with an instructional sheet (in English and two other southeast Asia languages) with "Directions on How to Make Bibimbap." This includes adding the steamed rice, as much hot pepper paste as you'd like, and sesame oil. Then you mix it all together.

It was probably the best damn in-flight meal I have ever had. Way to go Korean Air!

I arrived at Seoul airport at 5am, and had to basically kill time until anything opened. I'm still waiting to be able to get my boarding pass (I am told that this will happen in about 15 minutes), and I still have about 2 hours til my flight leaves. But the airport is excruciatingly clean, lots of comfortable seating and lounge areas, a free internet cafe, and...there's a Dunkin Donuts right across the hallway. The airport experience doesn't get any better. Seoul is now my new favorite airport. :-)

I'm looking forward to getting on the ground in Hanoi though. I need a shower pretty badly at this point.

Then the real adventures will begin.

Dusting off the Pasaporte!

When I left the field of international health, I assumed I wouldn't get any more cool trips. But in May and June, I had three trips. The first was to Philadelphia. I got my cheesesteak fix taken care of. Then I was off to Chicago. I went shopping on the Magnificent Mile. Then I was off to Spain. And as an added bonus, I got a few days to play. And Dave came along too!

So just to recap the higher points from Spain, here's my top ten list:

Number 10: Experiencing the joy's of Czech auto engineering

After some time in Madrid, Dave and I rented a car to head towards Barcelona. The rental car guy said "it's a Skoda Fabia." I had to have him repeat it several times, before I said, "I don't think we have that car." He just shrugged.

The Skoda is cute. It doesn't feel real safe, and didn't fit both of our bags in the trunk, but whatever. It functioned and Dave enjoyed driving stick shift. We held our own against the European drivers.


Number 9: Spanish Style

Most of our friends who Dave and I have spoken with already already know of our amusement with Spanish style trends. Basically, if we use Europe as a harbinger of what is to come in the fashion world, the what we will be seeing with be a really scary 80s flashback. It will include:

• Mullets
• Rat tails
• MC Hammer pants
• Bright colors (as in fluorescent)
  

Indeed, a little disturbing, but amusing to see nonetheless. Not all Spaniards were dressed this way, but the trend was noticeable.


Number 8: Eating enough cured pig products to ensure that I myself will be well-preserved for years to come.

Two words: Jamon Iberico.

I had it for the first time at the conference in Madrid, and Dave knew about it from the exorbitant prices of the stuff that the one guy has at Eastern Market. So the night that Dave arrived in Madrid, we went out for tapas and sangria, and found a place that sold it, basically, by the plate. They do thin strips, and it is so rich, we couldn't finish the whole thing. Dave also got to try a "vermut" or glass of sweet vermouth wine that is a very popular drink in Spain.

Everywhere you went though, there was pork. It was not uncommon to see a ham hock just hanging from the ceiling, waiting til it's time to shine arrives. And shine it did, whether it was by itself on a plate or in a croquet or in sausage form. We had breakfast one day with a spread that included at least 6 forms of the stuff. I have photographic evidence! At dinner the night before, one of the dishes we split had 3 or 4 types. Who knew a pig was so multi-purpose?*


Number 7: "Clubbing" in Barcelona

I put "clubbing" in quotes because I don't know if what Dave and I did could really constitute clubbing. We eagerly stayed up past our bedtimes (even on a Saturday night), and arrived at Club Moog at 12:30am. We were the first ones to arrive. The bartender said it usually didn't pick up til about 2am. Lucky for us, all of the other tourists who had read about the club in the Lonely Planet guide showed up around 1am. Because you know the Spaniards weren't there. We passed them all on our way out of the club around 2am. They were ready to start their evening, while we were ready to get our lame American arses to bed.


Number 6: Modernista Architecture.

Architect Antonio Gaudi et al did an amazing job creating a very unique Barcelona in the early 1900s. We visited (and heavily photographed) several sites, including the famous Casa Batllo and the unfinished Sagrada Familia cathedral, and the expansive Park Guell in Barcelona. If only someone would renovate a DC condo building to be as unique.


Number 5: The Spanish Parador System; or, spending the night in a castle

Yes, we spent the night in a castle, overlooking the town of Alcaniz, which is roughly halfway between Zaragoza and Tarragona on a Spanish map. It's a small town with not much, but a good sized castle sitting atop a hill.

A website about the Paradors describes them in this way:

"The hotels in the Parador Group were set up by the state to use quality tourism to act as guardian of the national and artistic heritage of Spain and to assist regions with fewer economic resources. "

They are scattered all over Spain, and oftentimes are built from castles (like ours) or monasteries, and are really really nice. I highly recommend them on your next trip to Spain.


Number 4: Art

Well, that's easy enough, isn't it?

I'm not a very high-brow art appreciator, but I remember reading about Picasso's Guernica in college Spanish Class, and I felt like I would have failed something in life if I came to Spain and neglected to see it. It is housed in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, which also houses lots of other cool stuff (Picasso, Miro, Dali, for example) so it was a no-brainer.

I also spent some time in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, which is a good sized private collection, which has some cool stuff too. I did not see the Prado while in Madrid. I know that sounds shameful, but in general I much prefer smaller museums when I hit these different hot-spots anyway.

In Barcelona, we went to the Museu Picasso, which basically had everything in it that Picasso ever drew that did not become famous. I guess that's not fair. There was some cool stuff in there, but going back to how I'm not a high-brown art-appreciator, I don't have the same interest in the sketches that someone found in picasso's closet that he did when he was 9. Sorry.

And we walked all over Miro... on La Rambla. :-) Joan Miro did a cool, very "Miro" styled mosaic on the main pedestrian thoroughfare in Barcelona.


Number 3: Churros y Chocolate

Ahh the humble churro. All you are is fried dough, but pair you with thick, European-style hot chocolate after a night out on the town in Madrid, and you are something as exquisite as the art I discussed in item number 5.

That is really all I can say.


Number 2: Vino y Queso

Spain is a big wine country, and we were driving right through Cava country. Cava is the Spanish equivalent to champagne. It's light and bubbly and refreshing. Tempranillo and Albarino grapes make really nice red and white varieties as well. We tended more towards the rather informal sangria during a lot of meals, but split a few bottles of white and red here and there too. I had checked into trying to do a vineyard tour, but it didn't work out this trip. A good reason to go back.

Then there was the cheese. From my experience here, Manchego and Idiazabal are both commonly known Spanish cheeses, but we had dinner one night at a restaurant (practically our only non-tapas meal) and we got the Spanish cheese platter as an appetizer. There were ten cheeses on it, and most of them were REALLY good. Our main problem was, we couldn't get any of the wait staff to be able to tell us which ws which, so we will forever be left wondering what it was that we ate.


Number 1: Outdoor dining, Spanish Style

You can't beat the climate. We had left DC in an awful heat-wave and arrived in Madrid with very nice weather, perfect for spending almost every night eating outside in a plaza somewhere. Everyone has outdoor seating, and the weather works well for it. And most of the eating areas were in cute little plazas/courtyards, with mostly pedestrian traffic, and not loud cars or trucks polluting the setting. It almost didn't matter what you were eating - the setting was such that every meal was perfect. Though since most meals involved a pitcher of sangria or a bottle of wine, that may have figured into it too...


So it was a great trip and we saw a lot for the amount of time we had. We also walked a lot. Every town we stopped in was extremely pedestrian-friendly. So in spite of the fact that most of my top ten list is food related, I did not gain a bit of weight since we were walking so much. I definitely hope to go back, but will wait til I have more time and the dollar is doing better against the euro. Even still, I expect that Coca-Cola will always cost more than wine in Spain, but I can handle that.


* Vegetarians, please accept my apologies, but I really can't help it. No tofu-derived product could ever convert me after these experiences.

No passport required...Part 2

So, we landed in Fajardo, which is on the east coast of Puerto Rico and hopped in a cab to the Hotel Gran Melia. Notice I have not added a link for the Gran Melia. I just wouldn't want a link to be mistaken for an endorsement.

I should be nice. The Gran Melia had some things going for it. First, it's in Puerto Rico. Second, it has a pretty kick-ass pool complete with swim-up-bar and lounge "chairs" in the water.

Well, it has two things going for it.

Here's the thing - and believe me, the five of us have analyzed the crap out of this whole experience - in my mind, we were paying a lot of money, but apparently, as far as all-inclusive resorts go, we were actually going a bit cheap as it turns out. The Gran Melia is a family friendly resort - which means screaming children, loud music, annoying activity coordinators trying to get you to happily participate in things like dance lessons, and poolside quiz games, and yoga at the wedding chapel every single second you are there. It's not that relaxing, unfortunately. Everything about it is just mediocre. The food. The service. Even the phone system was mediocre. We escaped to San Juan on Sunday night for one last hurrah before we left and we were all as giddy as little schoolgirls. We had a fabulous meal at Tantra (see- now that place is worth a hyperlink), and a few drinks, and then negotiated a cab ride home.

And then about halfway into the 45 minute trip home, with five of us crammed in the car, the cab lost it's transmission in the middle of the highway, and we came to a screeching halt off to the side of the road (thankfully).

You have to laugh in these situations. There we were on the side of the road around midnight on our last night in Puerto Rico, waiting for the poor cab driver - who is looking at a huge repair bill - to call a friend of his from a town 15 minutes a way to come and pick us up. And pick us up she did, in her tiny little Corolla, with a lifesize baby doll in the trunk, which we all spotted when she opened the trunk to throw some stuff in, and caused a moment of startled confusion. Just a moment though, until we realized quickly that she did not have a real baby in the trunk of the car. She got us home in one piece, but it was a challenging trip, considering how we had to again cram into a car too small for 5 passengers, and considering how the road in and out of the resort had so many speedbumps that it warranted a four-wheel drive vehicle just to adequately travel the terrain.

I'm not saying we didn't have fun. I think the five of us will always share some sort of bond that will have us joking about the pilates chapel, the Activity Czar, and the dueling DJs for years to come. But at the same time, I think that given a choice, I would much rather vacation at the no frills beach with the barbeque put and some snorkeling gear to keep me entertained over the all inclusive resort any day.

Having said all of that, one of the coolest experiences of the entire trip was going to Bio Bay. But just to be clear, this was NOT associated with the resort. This was a kayaking trip we took one of the nights we were there. You start on the open water right on the ocean and in kayak pairs, following a guide, we paddle in a group through a small channel flanked by mangroves. The channel opens into a lagoon that is one of 5 places in the world inhabited by a plankton or algae (maybe they are the same thing) that photosynthesizes and gives off light when disturbed. The paddling of kayaks disturbs these little guys en masse, and the effect is so wild it's hard to describe in words. When you put your hands in the water, they basically glow. If a fish swims by, you can see a trail of light behind it, and you can see the trail of the kayaks and oars as well. A once in a lifetime experience, no doubt. I highly recommend it.

So that was our little wintertime jaunt. I highly recommend Puerto Rico as a travel destination. I'm hesitant to recommend Culebra because it still seems to be pretty sleepy and less "discovered," but considering only my friends and family are probably reading this blog, I guess it's okay to mention it. Especially because I'll be bugging people to go back when we make a return trip.

No passport required...Part 1

This is embarrassing. It's MAY and I still haven't posted about my vacation in February. It's almost not even worth posting only because everyone has already heard about it, but since this is a travel blog and the trip counts as travel, I have to at least document it before I got on another trip. So if you already know all about it, humor me and relive it for a few moments...

Dave's friends take trips together every so often, and we did some talking back in November about a beach vacation. We settled on Puerto Rico, "Island of Enchantment." I can tell you that most of it was, in fact, enchanting, even the parts of it that didn't work out so well. But I'll get to that later.

Dave and I left before the rest of the party (there were five of us involved in the planning - myself, Dave, and Dave's friends John, Jill, and Clay) Feb. 20. We decided we wanted a slightly longer vacation and were interested in going off the beaten path. Just a little though. Not like trek-the-Himalayas - style off the beaten path, but just something a little different. We decided on Isla Culebra, a smallish sounding, less developed island off the east coast of Puerto Rico. It claimed great beach-front, easy-to-reach snorkeling, and bare necessities for food. That's all we really needed. We had a few hours to kill in San Juan when we arrived, so, laden with luggage, we taxied to El Morro, one of the forts built by the Spanish to defend Puerto Rico against the English and the Dutch (or "The Hollands" as out slightly English-challenged cab driver cum tour guide described to us during a later jaunt to Old San Juan).

After an hour or so checking out El Morro, and in general basking in the warm sun, we stopped at a Wendy's for lunch (I know - roll your eyes at the predictability of Americans on holiday), and headed to the junior airport in San Juan to await our Vieques Airlink flight to Culebra.

The logistics of landing in Culebra after 5pm makes things a bit difficult because many things have closed at that point. Accompanied by a woman from New Hampshire who was planning to camp at Flamingo Beach, we found our way into the "town" to look for transportation. A kind fellow who was chatting with two of approximately four policemen on the island called a taxi driver friend of his, who promised to finish his dinner quickly and meet us in 15 minutes. The details on getting us to the Culebra Beach Rentals are boring so I won't go into it.

We arrived at Playa Flamenco - Flamingo Beach - before it was dark, which was nice, because we could get really excited about what we were in for the next day. The beach was long, deep, and had the softest white sand I've ever felt. The first night we were there, we got to see most of the lunar eclipse, however the clouds rolled in about a half hour before it was full. I'm guessing some higher power was just jealous that we had found our way to such a beautiful location and didn't think it was fair to everyone back home. But we didn't mind.

Once we got moving on day 2, we headed to get a taxi back to town so that I could rent snorkeling gear, we picked up important provisions for the evening (rum) and headed back to the beach. Dave had figured out how to get to two prime snorkeling destinations, both just a 20 minute walk away from where we were. Neither beach could be accessed other than on foot, which meant that they were pretty untouched. The first stop was Playa Tamarindo. It took us a while to find the reef, but once we decided to pay attention to the obvious (dark spots in water=coral), we came upon it pretty quickly. And how cool it was. Fish everywhere, several types of coral, and even an octopus! There's nothing quite as relaxing as snorkeling on a beautiful day. Playa Luis Pena was the second one. The coral wasn't quite as nice but we had a very unique experience with some fish escorts (about five or so unidentified fish were more curious about us as we were about anything else going on and would not leave us alone the whole time we were in the water). There was something very "Disney Movie" about being followed around by these fish. It's like they were trying to tell us something.

We spend the rest of the day either laying on the beach or swinging in hammocks. Seriously - can you beat that? Don't even try. Then when we started to get hungry, we fired up the barbeque pit and started grilling. We finished the day with a beach bum gourmet meal of grilled BBQ chicken and veggies with saffron rice on the side, not to mention a few Cuba Libres.

The next day, we woke up, and did some snorkeling around Playa Flamenco, our home beach. Again, it took us a little while to find the coral, but once we found it, it was (similar to our experiences the day before) really cool. Our cool sighting of the morning was two little squid pushing their way through the water.

We checked out around late morning, and headed for Dewey, and the ferry back to Puerto Rico.

That ends part 1. I really felt like I had to separate the two sections of the trip because they were, just seriously, incredibly different.

Drum roll please...

The painting...

My first piece of real art.

By "real" I mean expensive.

Next to my computer, this is the most expensive material object I own.

Yes, yes... I just looked around my apartment. It may very well be worth most of my other belongings put together.

But when you see something that moves you, even if you can't explain why, and it lodges in your mind and won't go away, sometimes a dollar amount doesn't matter as much.

Here's the artist: http://www.keikogonzalez.com/

Painting up soon

I'm such a slacker. Two people (at least) were interested in seeing the painting that I bought in Bolivia, oh, six months ago. I have thought about taking a picture of it several times since, but it's usually at night (like now) when the lighting is bad. I promise to post one before the end of March.

I haven't been doing much traveling recently because in September I quit my job in international health and starting working in the domestic world. The most exciting travel I have lined up for that job will be 4 days in Philadelphia in May. I promise to post my best picture of the Liberty Bell for everyone. I did go to Miami for a weekend back in October for my goddaughter's first birthday, which was fun, of course. Dave came with me which was great, and that became beach trip number two for us (I went with him to his family beach trip in Nags Head in September). Beach trip number three was much more blog-worthy so I will write about that next.

But I promise...the picture...soon.

Fun new feature

So I found this fun new map feature on some website (see right), though when I filled it out I was really dismayed to find out that, despite the fact that I call myself a travel-bug, I have only visited 8% of the world's countries. I better get on that!

Open to ideas!!!

Back in the country but still recovering

Either way, I was supposed to arrive at national Airport yesterday morning. But the line between point A and point B didn't end up being as straight and smooth as I had hoped.

I left Bolivia on Friday night. The plan was: La Paz through Santa Cruz (another city in Bolivia where all American Airlines flights pass through), to Miami, then spend Saturday day and night in Miami hanging out with my friends Katrina and TJ and my beautiful goddaughter, Sophia. Then continue on home on Sunday morning from Miami.

This, however, did not quite work the way it was supposed to.

(I am not, generally, a superstitious person, however I find it appropriate to point out that I commenced travel on Friday the 13th).

Flight one: La Paz to Santa Cruz. Friday night.

The flight was delayed for two hours, so it's good that I wasn't counting on a connecting flight in Miami right away. We arrived in Santa Cruz a little after midnight, and the plan was, to drop off and pick up more passengers and continue on to Miami.

On the tarmac in Santa Cruz, we were informed that there was a mechanical problem with the plane's landing gear and they had to call in a mechanic. After periodic updates for a little while, we were asked to de-plane and await further news. Another mechanic was woken up and called in, while we lined the hallway of the Santa Cruz terminal for about two hours. At about 3:30am, we were told that the flight had been cancelled and that we should get our luggage and proceed to the check in area for hotel vouchers. By the time all of our luggage came through (including my ridiculously large painting), and we got the vouchers, it was about 6am.

We got to the hotel at 6:30, and despite thin walls (enough to hear the next door neighbor taking a shower and the gathering of dudes hanging out with some weird car alarm/horn thing that sounded like the soundtrack to something like 2001: A Space Odyssey), we were able to don earplugs and sleep for 4 hours, until we had to go back to the airport.

Flight two: Santa Cruz to Miami

Luckily this one left on time, but because of all of this mess, I obviously did not make it to Miami to spend the day with Kat and TJ and to fill my Saturday night babysitting duties. This was the most disappointing part of the trip. We got to Miami around 11, and got checked into the Airport Marriott, got some food (and much needed alcohol!) and went to bed around 1am. I could complain about how poorly stocked the plane was with beverages from Santa Cruz to Miami, but that just seems so insignificant compared to anything else. At least there were decent movies.

Flight three: Miami to DC

We woke up at 5:30 to catch an 8:30 (or so) flight from Miami. This time, the plane left on time, but did not have enough blankets for everyone who wanted one. Luckily, my co-worker, with whom I was sharing this unfortunate adventure, had snagged one for me from someone else's seat before everyone had boarded.

Baggage Claim adventure DCA.

I should point out that this entire time, we had been hauling our luggage (which included 4 checked pieces, of which one was my oversized painting and one was my overweight rolling suitcase, for which I paid a total of $144 dollars additional just to get on the plane) to and from every airport and hotel we set foot in. Everything had successfully made it out of Bolivia. But somewhere between Miami and DC, my painting was lost. I travel enough that this was not the first time luggage had been lost/delayed/misplaced/whatever, but it was the most expensive piece that had ever been lost.

Luckily by Sunday night, it had apparently been located and was scheduled for delivery. Though it's Monday at 3pm and I'm still waiting. Though I talked to the delivery guy who assured me it woudl come maybe around 7pm tonight.

I wasn't planning on taking the whole day off today, but after trying to sleep in unsuccessfully and looking around at the disaster area that is my apartment, and realizing I had no clean clothes to wear to work and no food to eat, I decided it was worth taking a day to recover. I'm sure at some point in the future I will be able to look back at this experience and laugh, but I'm not there yet.

But at least I can breathe and not get winded walking up flights of stairs. And I just went on a produce buying binge at Whole Foods. And I'm in my comfy and familiar apartment, even if it does have crap lying all over, half unpacked. And I'm not at work. So life's not all bad. But I'll be much happier when my painting arrives.

Winter is here!

People kept telling me that it was going to be really cold when I was here, but up until this weekend, it hadn't been too bad. Last night it started to drizzle, and the temps went down pretty low. From the window of the apartment this morning, you could see white at teh higher altitudes. One of my co-workers just came in and told me that flights have been canceled because they got about 15 cm of snow in El Alto and they don't have any snow removing equipment. It's supposed to be rainy like this til Wednesday I think, so I will keep my fingers crossed that my flights don't get changed any for Friday night.

Taking full advantage of my last weekend...

It’s Sunday and I have had a very full weekend, which is good because it’s my last weekend here. Here’s the run down of activities…

Friday night: Destination: Peña Marka Tambo

Peñas are best described (by Lonely Planet, of course) as traditional Folk Music venues, but they can definitely come to resemble variety shows of sorts. We met a former staff member and his wife and son at the Peña Marka Tambo which is on Calle Jaen, a really pretty and well-preserved colonial street near the Plaza Murillo. I didn’t stay until the end, but got a good cross-section of the entertainment. First there was a woman with a guitar who sang some traditional folk songs. She had an amazing voice and was a brilliant guitarist. Interspersed were some numbers by a folk dance troupe, which was also pretty interesting. Then there was a guy who was a (very funny) comedian, who seemed to be pretty well known by the audience. I left with a colleague before the headliner – Pepe Murillo – which was too bad, but it was already late and we were exhausted. Maybe next time.

Saturday: Destination: Tiahuanaco

Tiahuanaco is still considered to be a very important Aymara religious ceremonial center. It’s about 1 ½ hours drive from La Paz. We basically hired a taxi to drive us there, wait, and then drive us home. Not a bad deal. The ruins themselves aren’t as impressive as I had thought, but after the fact, someone told me that it is much better seen with a guide, because the history you get with a guide makes it much more interesting. I can see how that would be the case. I think the most impressive thing about the ruins was the size of some of the rocks that were used to carve figures and gateways. One of these pieces, the Gateway of the Sun, is said to weigh at least 44 tons. That’s a lot of rock to be hauling around. As in the case of most pre-Columbian ruins I have seen, the engineering that went into building these structures seems pretty amazing and advanced. You can see pictures on my flickr page, and hopefully in the next day or two I can upload them to the kodakgallery page for those of you who prefer that.

Saturday night: Destination: Mongo's Bar.

I joined our administrative assistant and her best friend to go to Mongo's, which is known as a big ex-pat hang-out, which is probably why I didn't like it too much. The bar itself is cool. The music is eclectic (when have you ever been in a bar that played J-Jo, Pink Floyd, and that song by the bloodhound gang about "you and me baby, we ain't nothin' but mammals so let'd do it like they do on the discovery channel..." not to mention endless trance-euro-techno stuff all in the same night?), but the crowd just seemed like an odd mix of people, and not as friendly a feel as other places I've been to. But it was definitely a popular place to go.

Sunday: Elizabeth (colleague) and I went to have an american style breakfast at Alexander's coffee shop and now I'm back at the apartment getting ready to do some work. This afternoon we will take a break and go with another colleague to hang out in the Zona Sur. Not that I need another shopping opportunity, but there's a big market there on the weekends apparently. Looks like the Fighting Cholitas won't happen this trip. Too bad, but I think I have fit in a good amount of activities to tide me over for a while.

Local Art, of the snooty variety

I bought the most expensive souvenir I have ever purchased for myself today.

I bought art.

This art was meant to be mine. I saw this painting on the wall in the Maya MacLean Casa in San Miguel seven months ago when I was here. I contemplated buying it. I even had a dream about it. I went back to see it again, but the price tag was speaking too loudly to me at that point.

To an art connoisseur – which I am not – this painting might be unimpressive. I believe it’s an oil painting, thickly coated with brilliant reds, yellows and oranges. It’s maybe about 5x5ft. big. It’s by a Bolivian artist who was trained in the US named Keiko Gonzales.

But when I found out I was coming back to Bolivia, I thought about this shop and I thought, if that painting is still there, I should buy it.

And there it was...

I didn’t have to buy it. I certainly would have survived without it. It was an investment that will cut back my food budget for the next few months (which is okay. I need to lose some weight anyway!).

But I have a big blank white wall in my apartment that has been screaming for a piece of art to be hung for many, many months, and it will make my little home feel a little more complete. And it will remind me of a place I have visited. And no one will have the same piece of art in their house, anywhere. All those reasons are good enough for me.

Now the big question is, how am I going to get it home...

Happy Fourth of July

Wish I were there eating burgers and hot dogs and potato salad and beans, etc... with everyone. But alas, here I am at work, while you guys are all probably preparing to go to picnics or the pool, or you are still asleep, or getting ready for fireworks. Poor me. ;-)

Enjoy the festivities today!

If you are an ex-pat like me (at least currently), I hope you are having a lovely day at the office!

12 hours to see a bunch of salt

Over the weekend, I traveled through the southern Altiplano (highlands) to Uyuni. This is what the Lonely Planet guide has to say about this area:

“Stretching southward from La Paz to the Chilean and Argentine frontiers is a harsh, sparsely populated wilderness of scrubby windswept basins, lonely peaks, and almost lifeless salt deserts. …The moment the sun sets – or even passes behind a cloud – you’ll realize this air has teeth… Those who live on the Altiplano are among the world’s hardiest souls, existing on the edge of human endurance…. They deserve a great deal of respect for their accomplishments.”

I personally feel like I, too, deserve a great deal of respect for going there and surviving for just a weekend. To get to Uyuni, one travels 3 ½ hours in bus from La Paz to Oruro. Then it’s a further 7 hours in a dusty and cold train to Uyuni. The miserableness of the train travel was compounded by the fact that the DVD player (or maybe DVDs?) were not fully functional, so during the trip, I watched from ½ to ¾ of three different movies, dubbed in Spanish, none of which I would have ever bothered to watch in the US. I sat next to a slightly melancholy Italian woman who seemed to think her blend of some Spanish and mostly Italian was enough to have a variety of small conversations with me during the trip. She meant well. I smiled and nodded a lot.

I was met at the train station by someone from one of the various travel agencies that arranged this trip (as a team, I guess), and taken to the hotel. He showed me to my room and turned on the “heater.” The heater didn’t do much, and the hotel was made from adobe (mud walls, basically), and it was very, very cold. Let me describe how cold it was. I had three blankets on my bed, which I doubled because it was a queen or full sized bed. I also wore to bed my pants, my running lycra pants under them, two pairs of socks, alpaca wool leg warmers, a long sleeved tee shirt, two sweaters, my hat, and earmuffs. Oh, and my scarf and gloves. I managed to sleep okay.

I mucked around in town for about an hour or so before the day trip to the Salar (salt flats) left and bought a few souvenirs. I ended up on a tour with a very nice group of people: a Swiss packpacker traveling alone, a very cute Canadian couple, and a mom and daughter team of Brazilians, the daughter being a theater actress living in Sucre and mom being a visitor. All very nice.

Our first stop was the Train Graveyard. Interesting, but not much of a story behind it. Then we drove to the small town that’s right at the entrance to the Salar. I did my fair share of supporting the local economy, based almost entirely on salt and alpaca products. Then we drove out to the flats. It was very cool. I mean, yes, in a temperature sense, but also in a sense of being really neat, awe-inspiring, other-worldly. For as far as the eye could see, it was white. We stopped in a few places on the flats and then drove to Isla Incahuasi or Isla de los Pescadores – Island of the Fisherman. It’s literally an island (one of several dozen) that was left behind when the salt water sea evaporated into the flats, and managed to sustain life in the form of mostly cacti and other scrubby, desert plants. The rock formations on the island were actually coral at one point when the area was covered in water. We hiked around on the island for a while and then started driving back, stopping a few more places along the way.

At that point, I was feeling like the trip had been worthwhile.

We got back to Uyuni around 6, and I made plans to meet the Canadian couple for dinner at 7. We found our way to Minuteman Pizza, inexplicably good pizza, inexplicably owned by a dude from Amhert, Massachusetts. Then we, along with another Canadian couple, went to the Arco Iris restaurant/pub for a drink or two before we all went our separate ways and I headed to the train station around 11pm to catch my midnight train back to Oruro.

The train was even colder than the hotel. The conductor handed out blankets. I was wearing the same amount of layers that I had worn the night before, except this time I was wearing an additional alpaca wool hat that I had purchased, along with three pairs of legwarmers (one pair on my legs, one pair on my feet and one pair on my arms). I did not sleep at all. We got to Oruro and luckily I didn’t have long to wait til the bus came. But with the bus came another bad American movie dubbed into Spanish that only worked until about 2/3 of the way through when a cable seemed to become disconnected, and no one bothered to tell the driver to do something about it.

I got home around noon on Sunday, took the hottest shower I could possibly stand, and slept for 4 hours. I felt like a new woman after that.

So the to and fro were horrible and uncomfortable, but hopefully the pictures speak for themselves about how incredible this place was once I actually got there. Definitely a unique experience that I will probably not have again. But, if the chance does come up, I’ll be bringing a sleeping bag. No doubt about it.

Pictures, Pictures

I couldn't get the kodak gallery stuff to cooperate, so if you want to check out some pictures from my first week, take a look at my Flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amyspix/sets/72157600498533112/

This link will take you directly to the Bolivia 2007 set. I haven't gotten a chance to put captions on everything, but will try to do so during the week.

I think the pictures next week will be more interesting. This first week, I didn't do a whole lot. At least not a whole lot that was worth taking pictures of!