Taiwan was different from the U.S., but Cambodia is "different" on an entirely different scale. So many new sights and sounds today - it will be hard to cover them all. I think we took 300 pictures today, and that's only because mom forgot her second camera battery and ran out mid way through the day.

First thing we visited Angor Wat. This place was built in the 1100s. It's the largest religious structure in the world, and has been used as a place of worship continuously since it was built. So you can see why Cambodians are so proud of it, and why I thought we had to come here. And yes, it's cool. But after hiking around it in the hot sun for an hour or so, we were all done. Sacriligious, I know, but true.

My favorite part was the monkeys. When I heard monkey sounds, I took off across the grass toward them, hearing Meg saying behind me "I think it's OK to venture off the path at this temple. I'm pretty sure they've cleared the landmines here...." Needless to say, she was right.

Next we went to Ta Prohm, the temple that is being overgrown by the jungle. Our tuk tuk driver dropped us off, and once again we joined a mass of tourists following a broad path into the jungle to the sounds of crickets and the drumming from the land mine survivor band. You can probably imagine the cricket sounds. If you're curious about the band, we're bringing back CDs we bought from them. They've got bands playing all over the place. Some band members are obviously missing limbs, though I didn't check them all.

One of the biggest challenges of being here (aside from the heat) is the overall poverty. People in this area flock to tourists, seeing pots of gold above our heads. And it is completely true that we have lots more money that most Cambodians. But it gets exhausting. Vendors come up to us as we get out of our tuk tuk (or even while we're in transit) offering to sell us things, and they aren't easy to discourage. It's actually been too bad sometimes - we might have bought things if we didn't know (from painful experience) that buying one thing brings 5 more vendors over. At first, I avoided eye contact and moved on. But then we tried making LOTS of eye contact, and that seems to work even better. I'm not sure if the vendors feel like we actually notice them, or if it's just rude to stare, but they'll often back off. Our hotel has a pamphlet about the issue and has some good suggestions, starting with donating money to charities in the area rather than giving it out to the (plentiful) pitiful looking kids.

After a Cambodian lunch, we headed off to see the floating village. We'd heard that it was often overcrowded with tourists, but so were the temples. The drive down to the dock was the best. Sitting in the tuk tuk with the wind in our hair, seeing and smelling more of the "real" Siem Reap was a delight.  Many of the houses we passed were very simple. Built on stilts, the top level was often constructed of bamboo or wood. Families used the area below, usually with a dirt floor, to hang hammocks and take midday nap.

From the dock, we took a very slow boat down the rive to the Tonle Sap. Along the way, we saw people fishing with nets, naked kids swimming in the muddy water, and people working on boats. The village itself was more interesting than I expected. It's like a cluster of houseboats anchored near each other out in the lake. But these house boats don't look much like any houseboats I've ever seen. These looked more like boats turned into houses, and extended with all sorts of materials. I liked the floating pig enclosure, and the floating house plants.

Tonight we walked into town, where mom and Meg stayed to shop and get foot massages while I came back to work on this post.

90% Tourists

In Taiwan, most people we saw were Taiwanese. Some were tourists, but mostly from China and Japan, and most of the time I couldn't tell the difference. Not so in Siem Reap. This place is like going to the Grand Canyon. It's packed with people, and they seem to be from all parts of the world.

We had quite a day of travel today. Barbara was right - Cambodia really isn't anywhere near Taiwan. It took a taxi, a 3 1/2 hour plane ride, another plane ride, and a tuk-tuk ride to get to our hotel.

The second plane, the 50 minute flight from Phnom Phen to Siem Reap, was the most entertaining. The whole thing was more casual I could imagine. When we asked about checking in at noon, they said we should come back at 1:15. The flight was at 2! We finally got checked in a little before 1:30. Security was quick - it was just the three of us plus one other guy. No one was waiting at the gate when we got there. Finally they led us across the tarmac and up the back steps onto the plane. The front "door" was the luggage compartment. And sure enough, we left soon after 2.

Arriving in Siem Reap, we were met with a guy with a sign. He led us over to a minivan, but it turned out that he was actually driving the tuktuk next to the minivan.

Tuk tuks are a kick. They're a little trailer pulled by a motorcycle. Ours has two benches, facing each other, with a canopy on the top. Our tuk tuk driver carefully manuvered us from the airport to our hotel, not being phased by the cars and buses that honked and passed us. Tuk tuks are not particularly fast, and our driver is slower than most - I bet we go about 15 miles per hour. But they are delightful. We get all the smells and sounds of the area. When air conditioned tour buses pass us, we feel sad for those people. After all, they don't get waved to by all the school children on their adult bikes! It's a kick.

After checking in at the hotel, which does have air conditioning (did I mention this place is like a furnace?), we ventured out with our tuk tuk driver again. We got our tickets for Angor Wat for tomorrow, then headed to Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunset. Our driver dropped us off, and we followed the throngs. Hundreds of people headed into the jungle with the cricket-like things hollering away. We didn't exactly know where we were going, but they all seemed to. Eventually we wound up this mountain and came out to see a temple on top. Mom said it was too steep for her to climb, and I had to admit, she was right. Apparently using your hands to climb up is a sign of respect to the gods, so they made the steps VERY steep.

The sunset was nice, but not worth the huge fuss.

Afterward, our tuk tuk driver (and we did find ours among the dozens waiting around) took us to the night market for dinner and a little shopping. We had really good Indian food - it felt like comfort food after all the new tastes we've had lately.

Then we walked through the night market, looking at wares. Usually I'm a good shopper, but a few minutes in there made me want to run away screaming. Hopefully Meg will buy souvenirs from this trip - there won't be many from me!

Lots more to tell about this unusual place, but mom and Meg have got to sleep and I should too.

Yangmingshan National Park

Apparently I have quite a lot of assumptions about what a national park will be like. Today we ventured forth to Yangmingshan National Park, just north of the city. The three of us headed out first thing this morning, with my bright red internal frame backpack filled full of anything we thought we might need all day. We looked even more like tourists that usual! The subway was easy but crowded - standing room only. We transfered to the bus, but it was standing room only also. It wound us up the hillside, out of the city. At the top we stopped at Starbucks. What an odd moment! We walked in and it looked like any Starbucks in the U.S.

We got tickets for the hop on, hop off bus and headed to the first stop (also standing room only), and the trail up the mountain. It was quite lovely to get away from the road. Taipei is quite a bit city, and being in the "wilderness" was very peaceful. We got to listen to the birds and squirrels. The trail was wide, constructed of stone blocks. But instead of switchbacks, they used stairs. Up and up and up they wound. We must have climbed hundreds of staircases worth of steps. After awhile we got tired, so we turned back.

At the second bus stop, we headed down the road to see the hillsides full of flowers that people had told us about. We walked down, and down, and down. Eventually we reached a visitor center, where a woman told us that we still had another 2.8 km to go. Refreshed with cold water and jasmine tea from the vending machine, we walked down some more. After a very long walk on a narrow winding road with cars that threatened to run us over, we suddenly came out to masses of people and buildings. We couldn't figure out where they all came from!

All of the excitement was over this "flower clock," pictured right. We didn't actually find it all that exciting. We liked the little paths and bridges and waterfalls around the buildings much more charming. The azalea and cherry blossem garden would have been more exciting if we'd arrived a week or two earlier.

It turns out that there was a lovely broad sidewalk/path, lined with tents selling ice cream, snacks, and roasted black corn, right back to the bus station where we'd started. By that time we were tired, so we hopped on a bus to head home. We got seats the whole way!

We missed the free sulpher hot springs, and the tea houses. It would have been nice to soak in the springs, but we got a whif of sulpher on our hike, and that might have been enough.

So aside from the first trail we took, this national park wasn't like any other national park I've ever visited before. It was more like a cross between a botanic garden and a street fair.

Now we're packing up. We leave for Cambodia first thing tomorrow morning. I know we're in for some shocks. It will be much hotter. We're also going to have to be much more careful with our things - pickpocketers are quite common. I'm sad to leave Taipei, but the next phase of our trip should be quite interesting as well. Stay tuned!

Chopsticks and Teahouse

I was well trained as a child - I can eat with chopsticks if I have to. But I haven't ever HAD to. Now I do. At each meal, I'm given a pair of chopsticks and a wide, flat spoon. That's it. And with those implements, I've tackled:

• soup
• slippery noodles
• spare ribs
• cabbage salad
• steamed buns
• greens

Mostly it works out OK, but when it comes to dividing a sticky bun, I really miss the knife. The chunks of rib were pretty tough too - Barbara suggested I put the rib on the spoon and use the chopsticks to hold it steady while biting off pieces. I only got a little on my shirt.

The implements also vary by venue. This morning we had cheap wooden chopsticks and flimsy plastic spoons. The other end of the spectrum are the beautiful black laqured chopsticks and stone colored ceramic spoons we had for dinner tonight.

Dinner was at a lovely tea house near Barbara's house. There must be places like this (sort of) in the states, but not many. It was very peaceful. Some people got tea for a whole tea service. We had dinner instead, choosing between tofu, chicken, pork, beef and fish. We each got a full tray of soup, pickled salad, cooked vegetables, entree, and desert, which was sweet potato mashed with bits of apple. For desert, they gave us dried star fruit.

After dinner, we visited the ajacent art gallery. How elegant!

I know I've told a lot about the food, but it's been interesting, different, and yet tasty.

Infection Control

Flu is still a big deal here in Taipei. Some of you may be interested in these details - the rest of you may want to skip this post.

On arrival at the airport, all passengers walked through a temperature scanner. It was fun to look at the monitor and see if we had passed the test (we did).
On the metro today, I ran into this ad. I also heard announcements about flu over the loudspeaker telling people to wear a mask if they had symptoms of flu.

 

Once in the city, we were struck by how many people wear masks when in public. Most use the disposable procedure masks, but others have whimsical re-usable ones. Scooter/motorcycle riders are even more likely to wear them, probably to combat the fumes on the road. Taking pictures of people wearing masks strikes me as intrusive, so I've been practicing the art of deception - pointing a camera toward something obvious while in fact catching a person nearby. Here are some I got:

Unexpected Firsts

Here's something probably none of you know about me. Meg didn't. I've never drunk a glass of soy milk. Yes, we always have soy milk in the fridge, and yes, I've eaten plenty of things cooked with soy milk, but truth be told, I was always scared to just drink it. I thought it would taste wierd.

So this morning Barbara took us out for a fairly traditional Taiwanese breakfast. It was a little hole-in-the-wall place with piles of foods to choose from, and vats of warm soymilk. They had chilled soymilk too, in paper cups labeled "coffee" in English. I was thirsty, so warm, sweetened soy milk it was. The picture shows a bucket of steaming soymilk - probably 3 gallons. They served the milk to us in a wide bowl. We were given flimsy plastic wide spoons to drink it with. And after all that worry, it was fine. Maybe not my favorite drink in the world, but not scary at all! Meg said this soy milk had a much stronger soy taste than the stuff we get at home.

For the rest of breakfast, we had fried turnip cakes (OK), a frybread with green onions (yummy), steamed buns with vegis and skinny noodles (pretty good), and sesame buns with filling (yummy).

After breakfast, we ventured forth to explore an older, downtown neighborhood. We visited a Buddist temple, wandered along narrow alleys with all sorts of things for sale, watched a lovely fountain for awhile, and stopped in a night market for a fruit smoothy.

My second "first" was seeing live birds for sale in the night market. I know, it's possible to buy live birds right there back in Minneapolis, but I've never seen them or done it. So I was startled to see cages below a display of fresh chicken parts. I looked down to see beautiful chickens of all sorts of colors. It's not really out of character - we saw live seafood of all sorts for sale, and some live snakes as well. But the chickens were more dramatic to me.

Our feet started to hurt, so we headed back on the metro, stopping to see the 822 Peace Park and the Chang Kai Shek monument on the way.

Big City

We visited the National Museum today. If you're interested, take a peek at their website: http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/home.htm . You might enjoy it than I did. The museum was mobbed with throngs of tour groups, and after dutifully following Meg around the museum, I was more than ready to head outside to the garden of perfected benevolence to wander the trails and feed the fish. Vending machines sold packets of fish food pellets for 10NT, about 30 cents. The carp, shown at right, massed to get the food. It was very odd to see fish poking up into the air.

The other highlight of the museum was a visit to the tea house on the roof. It was an oasis of peace and quiet. We shared a pot of kumquat tea plus several orders of dim sum: steamed buns with beef, seafood dumplings, sticky rice with mushrooms and lotus seeds, and whole wheat with nut buns. It was all really yummy, but it's a different way to eat. Bites. The tea cups held about a tablespoon at a time, and the dim sum was small when split four ways. And yet it was enough.

Later we walked over to the flower market, which is like a farmer's market for plants and flowers. On the way, we had to cross several large streets. I love watching the cars, taxis, bicycles and scooters pile up at the stop light then surge forward. We saw this guy from an overpass.

I took several amusing videos today, but I can't figure out how to post them. Anyone want to email me instructions?