the final meal

Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 7:50 AM

it is freezing here in the computer room of the drafty tama ryokan... but warm in my room with my ceramic heater blowing and my two quilts. so before i run back up there, a quick tokyo note.

had a great time this saturday and sunday with my friends from osaka, wada and nami, and narumi, a friend of my friend joseph who splits her time between tokyo and philly. we went to the tokyo city museum, the shrines at asakusa and meiji (at meiji shrine saw several shinto wedding processions), ate good food, saw lots of shops and bright lights (the highlight being kiddyland, an enormous wonderful toy store), and kabuki! we went on saturday evening so see a single act, and then ui went back past night on own. i:m glad i went back --- the act we saw on saturday was interesting, but a bit slow --- even for kabuki --- whereas the two acts i saw last night were really pretty engrossing. the first was a very dramatic tale of a man who slays his own son in battle and tries to pass off his son's head as that of his enemy; the second was a dance involving a lion spirit and butterflies. beautiful.

today i got up early and went to the tokyo central fish market, which was incredible. giant tuna everywhere, very macho men cutting fish with long knives, crawly things in buckets of water... just how i like it. after taking lots of pictures, went off to daiwa sushi (recommended by the lonely planet, but also by every guidebook around it would seem by the crowd, including the japanese and chinese ones) for breakfast. waited in line for almost an hour and a half, but it was worth it. a tiny little restaurant with just a sushi bar... about $33 for the chef's set of 11 pieces of nigiri sushi, a roll, omelette, and miso soup. incredibly delicious, very funny and entertaining and friendly sushi chefs (kind of like bartenders in their relationship to the patrons), just overall a highlight of the trip. especially the --- was it shellfish? --- that was still alive and moving!

afterwards, walked around the outer market, where there are stalls for regular customers. was wishing i had three stomachs like a cow, because there were so many interesting things on offer!

ended up the day at shibuya station, where the giant 5 way pedestrian crossing that you might remember from 'lost in translation' is. it is quite something.

had a light dinner at a soba noodles place... good, but almost too delicate for my hearty tastes. but i now have sampled quite a few japanese foods while here: ramen the first night, udon for lunch on saturday, sukiyaki for lunch on sunday, soba and sushi!

my flight leaves at 3pm tomorrow. sad to leave asia, but looking forward to returning to 'real' life!

and hopefully i'll still have time to have katsu-don for lunch tomorrow....

hot times in tokyo

Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 7:53 AM

so i just took a bath with a bunch of naked old women.

i got to tokyo this afternoon and made my way very smoothly to my little "ryokan" in the takadanobaba (say that 3 times fast) neighborhood. it's not a touristy neighborhood at all, but is close to everything, near a university so there are lots of restaurants and bars, and the ryokan is only $41 a night! it is the funkiest little place --- a lady's old house... a warren of little rooms with tatami mats and paper screen doors... dreadfully decorated... a resident cat or two... but really wonderful and totally sifficient for my needs. the rooms are unlocked and so is the front door... 24 hours a day... that's the kind of place japan is.

i got to bed late last night and so i took a nap when i got the tama (name of ryuokan... they have a website... you can google it) and then dragged myself out to wander the streets a bit. i was starving, but restaurants in japan can be a little intimidating, since you can't read the menus, they are a little shut off from view usually, and in general japan is such a polite and orderly soceity that i don't feel quite as okay barging into places and acting like a stupid foreigner (unlike in, say, cambodia or china). but after walking down the main drag a few blocks i came upon a place called fujiyama, that looked pleasant inside... minimalist and modern, but not too hip... had people eating in it, and had a guy making fresh noodles in the front window! so i went in and what a good choice i made. the older gentleman, who may have been the proprietor, was apparently delighted to see a gaijin wander in and proceeded to explain the menu to me in japanese, which didn't work, knew the words for noodle, cabbage and pork, which gae me some idea, and then went and got a sharpie and drew a picture on a napkin of the house specialty: a big bowl of fresh ramen noodles, a bowl of soupy sauce, and a plate of pork, cabbage, bean sprouts, hard boiled egg ad\nd nori (dried seaweed). you add the noodles and the side items to the soup in increments and slurp it up. it was delicious! (cost about $9, to give you an idea that no, japan is not hideously expensive anymore.) i was glad i didn't order the "big size"... the man said "big size?" and i pointed at a substantial portion of noodles the woman behind me had. i thought that was the big size, but then a little man next to me got... mount fuji of noodles, complete with a flag on top!!! the proprietor man proudly told me that it was mt. fuji, which i guess explains the name. this bowl of noodles as, literally, bigger than the little man's head. i was tempted to wait and see if he finished it, but instead...

i headed out and for a moment thought i might hop on the train and head to shinjuku to wander round. but i'm still exhausted, so instead i went to the public bath down the street! it was a little initmidating, since i was very conscious of being a foreigner and i think i might have committed a faux pas by washing my hair. but it was relaxing... filled with old women, having their friday night scrub and soak. (you scrub off sitting on a little stool under a shower and then soak in a variety of hot tubs and jacuzzis... there is a sauna, too.)

i did feel very, very tall and when i emerged from the hot tubs and saw myself in the mirror, i looked like a piece of tuna sushi...

now i'm heading to bed. my japanese friends are arriving from osaka at 8 am.

oh, yesterday, had a nice day hanging out in the 798 art district with my friend jim, wandered a bit arond tiannamen, ate uighur food for a goodbye meal, and saw the end of the new years fireworks... completely crazy and a good goodbye to china...

bye bye beijing

Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 10:24 PM

so it's my last day in beijing, and i'm taking it easy this morning.
i'm meeting my friend jim (who lives here) at noon at the 798
district, a gallery area that is housed in an old factory complex and
which has been prominantly featured in magazines and newspaper
articles worldwide. i went there the last time i was here, but always
good to go again.

and also good just to sit and not to walk! beijing is an absurdly huge
city and i have seemed to spend much of my time in taxis whipping
along various ring roads, but even when i get out and walk, the
distances are always just extraordinary. as in, "oh, that's not far,
it's just one block on the map." and then the block turns out to be
half a mile long.

but all good. i had two very interesting days, walking and walking. on
tuesday, i was intending to go see the forbiddden city again, but got
a bit of a late start, and then started wandering in the neighborhood
below tianammen square, and then before you know it, it was too late.
so instead, i continued wandering --- first along an old business
strip that reminded me of chestnnut street (cheap stores below,
beautiful old crumbling buildings above) and then into a "hu tong" ---
the warren of alley neighborhoods that makes up old beijing. it's a
beijing that is fast disappearing... which i saw for myself when the
rather rundown hutong i was walking along turned into a demolition
site. it was relaly something to behold. one moment, squat little
housees that had been there for years and year, next moment.... fields
of rubble in the middle of the city.

all this walking was in the interest of eventually ending up at the
"cow street" mosque, which is where i did end up, just in time for
evening prayers. very peaceful, sitting the courtyard as old
gentlement went into the prayer hall. the mosgue is a center for hui
muslims, who are ethnic chinese muslims. the big street outside was
pretty great as well --- restaurants and a big supermarket selling all
kinds of wierd and yummy looking things. oh, and lots of stalls
selling little round floury balls that people buy for the lantern
festival (which is today.... that's the end of the new year period)
and cook at home. i bought some, not realizing that they needed to be
cooked! but i gave them to the girl at the eyeglass place when i went
to pick up my glasses and she was very pleased!

that evening, a bunch of us went to da dong roast duck restaurant, a
fancy and delicious roast duck place, for the most delicious duck i
have ever had. the waitress showed us the different ways you eat the
duck --- one of which is to dip the crispy, fatty skin into sugar and
pop it in your mouth! it's incredible...

yesterday, i had another full day. visited the temple of heaven, which
is hands-down one of the most beautiful buildings i have ever seen.
and enjoyed spending time in the park where the temple is... chinese
parks are great because all the older people gather there to sing,
dance, play cards, exercise, and entertain the tourists. then i took
the very new and sparkly subway to the confucius temple, and then met
jim at a cool little cafe in a "gentrified" hutong area, where the
alley is lined with bars and cafes and boutiques.

and then i had the privilage of going to see the world cup women's
platform diving finals at the new olympic "water cube" aquatic center,
courtesy of one of janet's chinese co-workers who has "pull". it was
great fun and the building is amazing.... though still in the middle
of a contruction site. as is much of beijing...

okay, better get going now. i fly to tokyo tomorrow!

a day of rest

Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 11:50 PM

i'm back in beijing and having a leisurely morning hanging out in
janet's apartment. the weather outside if actually reasonably sunny
and mild... so i feel a little guilty for just hanging out. but i am
exhausted and still have a week of sight-seeing ahead! so today, i'm
conserving my energy...

i arrived back on saturday afternoon. janet had a little stomach bug
and i was really tired, so we stayed in that evening. yesterday we
went with some of her friends to go ice bicycling on houhai lake...
but sadly, the ice bicycling had finished for the season! (i'm still
trying to picture what exactly ice bicyling looks like, but janet
promises she'll show me some photos.) so instead we took a stroll
around the lake... a very beijing on a sunday thing to do. had candied
fruit on a stick, which is a big chinese street snack, and then we
went off to the silk market to get some bargains.

the silk market is one of many indoor, modern markets in beijing,
where you can buy just about anything. the silk market is one that is
frequented by westerners and therefore supposedly more expensive than
others... but janet and her friends have been doing a lot of shopping
there and have made friends with certain stall-keepers, so we were
assured good prices. i ordered 2 new pairs of prescription glasses
(one sun glasses, one regular). max mara knock-offs for... $21 dollars
each. i also bought a knock-off franck muller watch for $40. (coolest
watch i've ever owned...!) oh, and a pair of knock off raybans for $4.
the haggling is quite fun... and be sure to haggle. just out of
curiousity, i asked a girl how much a 1 gb memory card was. i had no
intention of buying --- just curious. when i kept telling her i wasn't
interested, the price rapidly descended from 200 rmb to 100 to 70...
and might have gone lower! (it's about 7 rmb to the dollar.)

the memory card things is funny, because since the vendors call out
their wares at you as you walk by ("lady, you want tablecloth? lady,
you want necktie?") some vendors call out: "lady, you want memory?"

then, after a brief rest at the apartment, we went for hot pot. it was
a fancy but local place, and we feasted! the best part was defiantely
the dancing noodle guy. he was a young guy who hand-pulls your noodles
tableside! he does a little dance as he pulls the noodles... almost as
if he is breakdancing... and pulls the dough really, really long and
whips it over your table and almost into your face! i promise i will
post some photos of this.

speaking of photos, i just put a couple up on my smug mug page:
http://mariamoller.smugmug.com. i'll try to do aome more while i'm
here in beijing.

cambodia feels really far away now... beijing is just so different. in
some ways, philly is closer to phom penh than beijing is! whereas the
sorya center mall is the only mall/highrise in PP, beijing is just one
highrise/mall/highway after another. or at least it seems so when you
are living where janet lives.... and i think in most places in
beijing, now! tomorrow i might go exploring in a hutong neighborhood,
which is where the old, single-story houses still exist, and things
aren't quite so vast and modern. but now, i'm going to go down the
street to a local restaurant and have some lunch, and then explore
janet's ex-pat heavy neighborhood a little.

i still want to write about the rest of my time in PP. my final day
there was really extraordinary. but now i need some scallion pancakes!

temples, libraries, markets, and shopping malls

Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 2:16 AM

now i'm sitting in phnom penh's only shopping mall, which might also be the tallest building and the only one with an escalator. definately the only one with a rooftop rollar skating rink. ate lunch in the food court. finally got to take a closer look at cambodian street food... sans flies. had something called lok lak, which was quite good. fried egg with rice and pork in a sweet and sour type sauce, along with a bouillion-like soup. better. i'm sure, than the mcdonald's rip-off a floor down. but thankfully, no american fast food chains... yet.

earlier today, walked around wat phnom, the main temple in pp. really interesting, especially the temple that, according to the lonely planet, is "popular with vietnamese residents." it was packed and people were making lots of food offerings... i am guessing because it is new year's for the vietnamese. there were 3 stone lion statues with big pieces of raw meat draped over their open mouths. lots of fruit, of course, but also roast ducks... and a whole roast pig!

at the temple, i also got to see my elephant from the first morning in action. watched her enjoying a bath with a hose, and getting a treat of bananas from some chinese tourists, and later giving a european woman and her two little boys a rocky ride around the park below the temple.

also saw lots of monkeys. 2 were having a little fight in a tree. another one was wearing a plasctic bag on his head like a hat.

then headed through the old french district... stopped in the national library, which is very, very small, but in a beautiful colonial buidling. had a brief chat with the librarian, who spoke better french than english and handled the "patrimonial section" which i believe he said was full of old books about cambodia... in french. they were closing up for lunch (everything shuts down between about 11 and 2) so then i stopped in the fancy raffles hotel to freshen up in their nice restroom and then made my way to the central market, which is a really incredibly shaped indoor market. i will post photos soon! after wandering around and taking photos of dried fish, i made my way down to this very different market. the AC is good, and it is interesting to see the first buds of renewed cambodian prosperity. this country has been through so much, and was so destroyed by war, i cannot begrudge them their mall.

oh, the rollar skating rink was playing loud rap music. that i can begrudge them! ;)

now i'm heading out to get a 2 hour spa treatment. don't begrudge me that. tomorrow i go out to a traditional dance academy that is run by the friend of a friend to see them rehearse. tomorrow i'm also moving to the scandanavia hotel. the hope and anchor has a great view of the river, but the area is very noisy and touristy. scandanavia is only $5 more expensive and is a boutique-y place with a pool, which will be nice in the heat of midday. (otherwise i would just have to come back here to the mall...)

back to beijing and the cold on saturday, though.

burning dvds before sunset

Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 8:23 PM

i wrote this email 2 days ago, but once i finished... the internet
connection was too slow to send it. ararghgh. (and the dvd never did
get burned.)

now i'm in phnom penh. we got here yesterday mid-afternoon and janet
flew back to beijing (and work) this morning. i'm about to go take a
walk around the city. its almost 8:30 here, and the weather is lovely
this time of day. by about 1:00 or 2:00 it is insanely hot and stays
that way until 5:00 or so, when it really cools down and gets lovely
again.

phnom penh is quite a change from the palm village... lots of honking!
but i'm planning to go get a massage at a spa during the hot hours, so
that should be nice and restful...

****

i was hoping to be at the palm village swimming pool at this very
moment, but i need to empty out some memory cards and so i'm burning
dvds at the hotel computer, which is really, really slow.

so i'm writing an email while i wait. the past few days have been very
busy and intense. lots of temples, of course. but today we did
something different and took a tour to kompong khleang,a
stilt/floating village on tonle sap lake. we hired it through the 2
dragons guesthouse, run by an expat from the main line. janet and i
went by tuk-tuk with our driver/guide, mr. bunny (pronounced boo-ni).
mr. bunny was very sweet and very knowledgable about the lake and the
village, which was good. he was also a little hung-over... but it
didn't seem to cramp his style much.

it took over an hour to get to the beginnings of kompong khleang. a
chilly but interesting drive, with a stop at a local market in the
village of dom duk. when we turned off the main road just past dom
duk, things started to get even more interesting. more farmland, more
modest houses, more kids who were very excited to wave at us. you knew
you had moved into non-touristed territory when the kids say "bye bye"
instead of "hello." eventually we reached the jumping off point for
getting out of the tuk-tuk and into a boat. this was when things got
really interesting... we started down the tonle sap river and... let's
see how to describe this. the farmers/fishers in this area both plant
and fish. during the dry season (now) their houses are way up on
stilts above the river, they go out to the lake to fish, and they
plants the fields as well as growing plants in the water, which they
use to farm shrimp and they harvest and eat the floers of the plants.
once the wet season comes, the tonle sap lake is flooded by both the
monsoons and overflow from the mekong river (which actually backs up
into the lake. the lake is huge... the largest body of water in
southeast asia, i believe). the houses are now in the water, as are
the farms.

we sailed past people living their life along the river/lake... and
eventually went out into the lake, where there is a floating
village... houses out in the water, where the people use canoes to go
back and forth. little shops... tv antennas on the roofs!... fishermen
way out in the lake, just visible. very peaceful. then back towards
the main town --- kompong khleang really isn't a village, it's a town
--- where we got out of the boat and went fora walk trhough the local
temple and market. by this time it was midday and very hot, so it was
quiet. lots of people taking siestas in their hammocks... we stopped
for a cold drink at a little stall. and then back on the boat, and
then back on the tuk-tuk, and back into town.

once i get back to beijing, i'll post some photos online, because the
day was really something easier viewed than described!

okay, this dvd has STILL not finished burning... and my swimming time
is up and now i need to go and seemy final sunset at angkor. leaving
for phnom penh early tomorrow morning...

an auspicious beginning

Sat, Feb 9, 2008 at 9:36 AM

So we arrived in Cambodia last night. This morning, we woke up at 6:30, earlier than we had planned. We said, "Shall we stay in bed or open up the curtains and see Cambodia in the daylight?" We decided to open up the curtains. And at that very moment, an elephant was walking down the street, on his way to his job at the main temple! A very auspicious beginning!

We stayed at a guesthouse and pub run by an English guy called the Hope and Anchor. The room wasn't great, and it seemed pricey for what we were getting... but the private balcony overlooking the river and the elephant made it all worthwhile! Had a good breakfast at a French-ish cafe, wandered around the local market where all manner of fish were being killed, and then caught our 9:30 bus to Siem Reap, the town where one bases oneself for Angkor.

The bus was comfortable enough, but the trip was long... 5 and a half hours. At first the journey was completely splendid: lush tropical greenery, clapboard houses on stilts, temples on hills, skinny white cows sitting like stones among the rice paddies. But after 2 or 3 hours... But still, a good enough trip.

Our hotel in Siem Reap is actually outside the town, down a dirt road. It's a lovely oasis called the Palm Village. (Google it!) With little bungalows and a lovely pool and lots of jasmine. After freshening up and having something to eat we got back in "our" tuk-tuk (the same driver who picked us up at the bus station is now ours... he is very sweet and a very careful driver!) and headed to Angkor Wat for the sunset. It was beautiful... a ton of people there (many Chinese here for their holiday), but most people were leaving, so we could really wander peacefully and watch the light changing on the buildings.

Then into Siem Reap for dinner... a place called Khmer House, I believe, and it was delicious: amok fish, a green curry-like dish that is a national specialty, banana flower salad, and two very delicious pork chops. Then 1990 (our driver's number) picked us up... it is 9:30 and soon we are off to bed. Tomorrow, a big day at the temples.

The temple festival in Beijing yesterday (was that just yesterday?) was fun. A huge, huge amount of people doing what people do at a Chiense equivalant of a county fair: eat kind of crappy food (lots of kabobs), buy lots of junk (I dubbed it "The Great Wall of Cack"... the vendors of trinkets went on and on), and try to throw balls in hoops to win stuffed animals.

The Chinese also were doing outdoor karaoke on a huge stone platform in the center of the park.

It was bitterly cold, but --- after about 7 hours in transit --- we arrived in balmy Phnom Penh. And saw the elephant.

happy year of the rat!

Thu, Feb 7, 2008 at 9:28 AM

So I arrived in Beijing this afternoon, on the first day of the year
of the rat. The plane coming over was almost completely empty, since
everyone had already travelled home for the holidays. A very nice
thing, an almost completely empty 747!

My friend Janet, who is living in Beijing for a year working with the
Olympics, met me at the airport and off we went to her high-rise, very
new China apartment in the Chaoyang District. Her apartment complex is
called "Upper East Side" --- very fancy. And it is a very nice
apartment, with a great view of... construction and high rise
apartment complexes... which is a great deal of what Beijing is about
these days.

We went out this evening to go to a "temple festival" --- a fair,
really --- but it was closing up when we got there. Lots of gorgeous
red lights and decorations and we plan on checking it out tomorrow
morning. So instead we went to a chic, well-known dumpling restaurant
and had yummy crab and park dumplings and chicken soup with hairy crab
roe meatballs. (It was delicious, and no hair.) Janet and some of her
work friends went out for a drink afterwards, but I came back to the
apartment. Jet lag is hitting me. Tomorrow afternoon, we leave for
Phnom Penh.

Just hope I can get some sleep. There are fireworks being set off all
over the place! You can get a great view from Janet's 38th floor
window! On our way back to the apartment after dinner, we stopped
outside her building and watched some families setting of fireworks...
people set big cardboard boxes full of fireworks out on the street and
light them up! Oh, and there are stands selling fireworks set up
everywhere.

Okay, I'm fading now. Time to put in the earplugs and go to bed.