Saturday, June 7, 2014

Peace Out and Love, SE Asia

In my 6 weeks in SE Asia, I had quite the busy itinerary...

5 days in China
2 weeks in Vietnam
4 days in Cambodia
2 weeks in Thailand
1 week in Myanmar

When I was trying to think of the best way to recap it all, I decided that I would make a short-ish list to try to recap some of the highs and the lows of this portion of my trip.  Here are some of the things I've done:

-Tried something new or did something outside of my comfort zone everyday
-Doubled the # of countries I've been to - and drank the local beer in all of them - surprisingly, Myanmar had the best!!
-Sweated more than ever in my entire life, but used the heat as an excuse for a minimum of 2 fruit smoothies everyday :)
-Put on zero makeup 
-Completely changed my semi-paleo eating habits to essentially no protein and 110% white rice and noodles all day everyday while simultaneously re-learning the skill I had back in the days of high school swimming - to eat my body weight of anything free / at a buffet!
-Had only ~7 dinners alone
-Used public transport as much as possible
-Spent more money than I had anticipated
-Was quite busy and on the move - I don't think I slept past 8 for the entirety of SE Asia!!
-Figured out rather quickly that the Asia idea of free size - aka one size fits all - is still not big enough for me
-Always checked the bathroom I was using for roaches before entering :(
-Fell in love with the strong flavors of Thai cuisine and generally ate as much street food as possible regardless of where I was.  I only ate Western food once (a burger at an airport!)
-Meanwhile, I had immense cravings for wine, chocolate, popcorn and cheese - all staples of the sorority life of floor 4!
-Maximized time in places that are more off the beaten path (thanks, Corey, for showing me the article for inspiration...
-Had some interesting challenges with my stomach, and have therefore depleted a lot of my mobile pharmacy
-Got a glimpse at why America can have a bad reputation internationally; nevertheless, I appreciate everything we have so much more (there were times when I was quite aware that the belongings on my body / in my backpack were worth more than many locals would make in many months...)
-Realized the organized chaos is just the norm - so don't plan too much and go with the flow :)


Now I'm off to conquer the lovely Australia with a friend from NYC, Courtney Bannerot, and I couldn't be more excited to see a familiar face and be in a country where I can use the toilets and drink the water :)  Here is a sneak peek from our first few days in Sydney...

Sunset over the Sydney Harbor bridge - best sunset of the entire trip!

Bondi to Coogee beach walk

Bondi to Coogee beach walk

The Blue Mountains

Peace and Love, Asia, more from down under soon!


Friday, June 6, 2014

The Best SE Asia Finale I could ask for - Myanmar Part II

My final stop in Myanmar was a place called Inle Lake, quite literally a 22km lake surrounded by marshes, farm land, mountains and many different local tribal villages.  Inle is an incredibly beautiful, more temperate region of the country famous for its stilt houses, floating gardens and the unique rowing / fishing techniques of the Intha people that live on the lake.

As a visitor, the obvious must-do is to take a half or full day tour of the lake on a long, motorized canoe-ish boat. So, as soon as I arrived, I went with two others I met from my hostel for a half day trip around the main part of the lake.  Sadly, the main part of the lake is becoming well-known (if you read the right travel resources), as one of the biggest tourist traps in Myanmar because after you see the sights, you can be taken to up to 6 different workshops (aka working demonstrations of how the locals make clothing, sliver, cigars, etc with an attached store for you to buy their work).   On our boat trip, we were only taken to the lotus shop where they weave lotus, silk and cotton into clothing and the silver shop where they extract silver (by hand and some chemicals!) to be made into utensils, jewelry, etc.  Despite the claims of it being "touristy", I really enjoyed the experience - come on, it's still Myanmar with a tiny fraction of the number of tourists as the neighboring countries. Here are some pictures from the boat trip:


The famous leg rowing technique...many say that this is just a sham for tourists these days, but I definitely saw it happening when they didn't know we were around...
A man and his wife...
Stilted villages
A pagoda in the distance - just beautiful scenery
Getting a wave from the little cutie
Beautiful

One of the women weaving lotus to make clothing

On my second day in Inle, I figured it would be a good idea to break up the boat rides with some physical activity, so I booked a day hike into the surrounding mountains.  The hike ended up being a ridiculous experience in many ways.  To start off the day, my guide and I set off at 8am and starting climbing into the hills - one thing they didn't share with you was that we were going up and over, (aka we were going from sea level to 1500 meters and in a very abrupt fashion.)  Yes, it's quite possible I've gotten soft, but it was incredibly tough.  I also saw 3 lovely snakes on the way up and was definitely nervous - apparently more people die in Myanmar than any other country in the world from snakebites because they just started making anti-venom a few years ago.  Luckily the snakes were not interested in us, so I can show you some views from the way up:

There was a cave in the side of the mountain and you had to go through the cave to get to a small pagoda...at the exit of the cave was this monk meditating - so cool!




After ~3 hours, we stopped at our first village where we visited with some local women and children and were invited into one of their homes/huts from some tea, bananas and a much needed break.  While we were relaxing, one of the elder grandmothers came in to tell us that a village about 2 hours away was having their annual rain festival and that we should definitely try to make it...so of course we quickly packed up and set off.

A little cutie from the first village

Two hours later, we arrived at what was probably the coolest experience I had in Myanmar...people from villages near and far had to come to partake in the festival involving a religious ceremony with the monks, traditional dancing, lots of consumed rice whiskey, and finally, the launching of "firecrackers" to help kick off the rainy season.  It's pretty hard to explain why this was so cool, but hopefully the pictures below help you see what I was experiencing as the only Westerner to witness a once a year spectacle (hopefully the video below works - not as awesome without sound but still cool)!


Many women and children watching the festivities

Making their way inside before the rain comes

The elder man sitting next to men as we huddled under a tin roof to stay dry in the down pour

Everyone huddled under whatever sort of covering they could find!

A novice trying to stay dry as he ran to go check out the status of the firecrackers

Me with one of my many photo opps
Waiting for the firecrackers to go off post rain storm



After a strong afternoon rain and pictures with lots of the local men (at their request), my guide and I started to head back down as it was getting late and he said it would take 90 minutes to get down.  Things continued to get interesting... My guide said that he knew many "shortcuts" which actually meant that we'd turn around 15 minutes later to trudge back uphill because he was actually lost.  Finally, we made it down the mountain four exhausting hours later and well after dark.  If it weren't for the beautiful sunset that we saw as we descended or the motorbike ride that we hitched-hiked to bring us the last hour from the base of the mountain to my hostel, I would have been quite peeved...but somehow it all ended up fine in the end!

Pre sunset but still great colors

On my final day in Inle, I went on a longer boat ride to a much more remote part of Inle Lake with a girl I met at a neighboring hostel.  Beyond the more touristy part of Inle, there's another, more southern lake that's accessed by a two hour ride in a canal off the main lake.  This extra two hour ride was incredibly cool because there were villages lining the canal the entire way, and the villagers had much less exposure to tourists than those living on the main lake.  What that meant is that many more people stopped what they were doing to wave at you!  My favorite was the little boys who would either blow kisses at you or would try to do a cool front or back flip into the water to impress you.

Once we arrived at the southern part of the lake, we visited a local, quiet pagoda and walked through a village where we had lunch at a local's.  On the way back, we got rained on a bit, but it was simply an amazing day. Here are some scenes from the trip to the southern part:


Friendly Burmese we saw along the way



One of my favorite pics from the trip - caught this little guy mid back flip!

Post trick - all smiles!




Blowing kisses!
Post bath time in the lake - the guy on the left was all about it but his friends on the right were a bit more embarrassed!



Local pagoda and village scenes:



Another one of my favorites from the trip

What they used for farming...
Local markets



Packing up from the market

On my final day in Myanmar, I had a flight back to the big Yangon airport in the morning and a six hour layover before my international flight back to Thailand later that evening.  I was originally going to stay in the airport and finish the great book I was reading, but I decided last minute to head back into Yangon for some final street exploring and my last Burmese meal.  Luckily, I was hitting the city right around lunch time so after an hour of wandering around, I had lunch at one of the busiest street food spots and just took it all in.  Here are a few more scenes from Yangon:

Two little novices

This bathroom attendant guy really really wanted me to take his picture!








With a mix of sadness and excitement, it was finally time to leave Myanmar after a solid, intense week.  The Burmese were absolutely lovely but it was a physically and emotionally demanding experience - but one I wouldn't trade for the world.  Here are a few of my thoughts based on the time I spent there...

Myanmar is changing rapidly as it's a country very much in transition.  In Inle Lake, people were farming and making clothing with methods we used in the late 1800's - seriously.  When you walk down the street in Yangon, you can see smart phones from China on sale right next to sewing machines that were used in the US in the 30's and 40's (I fact checked with google!). While Myanmar is desperately trying to catch up, its still a good 10-20 years behind its neighboring countries.  As they try to grow and expand the tourism industry, however, they're going to have to find a delicate balance...prices for accommodation and transportation have gone up significantly (up 100% in some places) - accommodation in Myanmar is now more expensive than in any of its neighboring countries.

Well folks, that was Myanmar.  Tomorrow I'm going to post some super short, final thoughts recapping the past six weeks in Asia before I start telling you about Australia!

Saturday, May 31, 2014

The Hidden Gems of Myanmar, Part I

To cap off my travels around SE Asia, I decided to spend a week or so in Myanamar, or some of you may know it as Burma.  After decades of significant suppression and economic sanctions, against most of the Western world, Myanmar finally opened up to G7countries for official tourism in 2011.  The country is changing rapidly, but its still thought of as one of the last "undiscovered frontiers" in the region, which is exactly why I wanted to go :)

To start the trip, I took a very early flight from Bangkok to Yangon, the former capital city of
Myanmar, where I had only planned to spend one day because I had heard there wasn't that much to do.  After dropping my bags at the hostel,  I spent the morning just wandering around the streets and taking it all in - the people, the noise and the smells...boy was I completely amazed.  A few immediate, relevant realizations about Myanmar:

-Sanitation and hygiene is fairly non-existent, even compared to other SE Asian countries  There really aren't side walks and there's trash everywhere.  (This is the first place that I walked around in tennis shoes because the roads were so poor). In addition, most men and some women chew on something called Betel, a leaf grown in the region with addictive and stimulant properties.  People start chewing this quite young, and eventually, their mouths and teeth take on a reddish stain and their teeth start to rot.  In the process of chewing, every so often they have to clear their mouths with huge spits of red - if I didn't know any better it would look like splotches of blood on the sidewalk. 

-Myanmar is still very old school compared to the other Southeast Asian countries - 95% of people still wear traditional dress.  For men, it's a long, tied skirt-like piece called a 'longyis'.  Women also wear long, flowing skirts, and they cover their faces with something called 'thanaka' that they get from the bark of a tree.  At first I thought it was a cosmetic, traditional paint, but it's actually to help protect their skin from the burning hot sun.  Because of these things and the lack of other tourists, this was the first place that I opted to dress very conservatively, with a long skirt and covered shoulders all of the time.  As I'm sure you could have guessed, I am not very good at gracefully walking around in a long skirt but somehow I made it work! 

-Given that there are only ~1 million tourists that visit the country/year, and I was going in low season, tourists, and espeically westerners are still fairly novel so you're stared at all the time  (I'm pretty sure my blond hair was also another special add here...)  In an entire day in Yangon, one of the biggest cities in Myanmar, I saw 3 other westerns the whole day, so the toursists really are very few and far between, which I think adds even more charm to the country.  What this meant to me was that I needed to immediately learn basic Burmese (hello, goodbye, thank you, etc) and I had to have my A-game on as soon as I left my hostel because everyone was watching.  I know that sounds quite intense but it was amazing - as you walked down the streets, people would say hello, wave, come up and hold your hand and as where you were from...all incredibly special.

After awhile, I meandered to the Sule pagoda, the original center of Yangon when it was under British colonial rule, and had a look around.  By now, it was early afternoon and I wanted to try to find a tea house to experience the traditional midday tea.  So, I continued venturing until an elder woman who didn't speak any English greeted me in Burmese and pulled up a chair in front of her and pointed for me to sit.  I happily did, of course, and she quickly had her family bring me a cup of tea while we sat and semi communicated using hand signals, yes/no and the 3 words I knew in Burmese.  Definitely a memorable, first tea!

(Sorry for the general lack of captions on the photos below - there are so many and I have to catch a flight soon, so hopefully you still enjoy them :)! )

Scenes from around Yangon:

Sule Pagoda





After quickly stopping at the hostel for a few minutes of rest in the air conditioning, I went to the famous  Shwedagon Pagoda, the largest golden monument on earth described by my guide book as the most magnificent Buddhist pagoda in all of SE Asia - which in my opinion, it most certainly was.  I walked around the temple complex for awhile, admiring how beautiful it was in the sun.  After about 90 minutes, I was getting ready to leave when a friendly monk came up to me and started a conversation.  We had talked for about 10 minutes when he invited me to come back to his monastery (of which he was one of the lead monks) for late afternoon tea!!  I eagerly  accepted his invitation and went back to the monastery where about 40 monks lived.  When I arrived, it was apparently shower time because all of the monks were bathing themselves with huge buckets of water.  While my monk friend was showering, he had some of the English savvy novices show me around the monastery, introducing me to everyone and even bringing me up to the roof so that I could see a view of the entire city!  After a few hours of tea, fruit and biscuits and meeting lots of the monks, they offered to let me stay in the monastery that very night.  When I said I already had a place to stay, they gave me their number so that I could always come stay with them if I ever needed something in Yangon.  Eventually my monk friend walked me back to the pagoda where I figured I may as well stay for sunset since the pagoda was supposed to be beautiful at night as well.  I was unprepared for how truly magnificent it was - the gold contrast with the dark night sky was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen and I ended up staying for awhile because I was so entranced.

Shwedagon Pagoda (From day to night - yes, none of these have been edited or enhanced - its just that awesome!!!):









In addition to many people praying, many were also napping in the various side pagodas...


Me and my monk friend

On the roof of the monastery!!!

The next morning, I took a 6am flight to my next destination - Bagan.  This was also my first time in the domestic airports of Myanmar - needless to say they were quite interesting.  Sometimes they would make you go through some sort of security checkpoint, and myself and a few others had a good laugh because we were 99% sure that the wooden arch "metal detector" was either a) not on or b) not even a metal detector!

The airport!!

First, a little about Bagan...The temples of Bagan are often compared to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  While Angkor Wat certainly wins the grandeur factor, Bagan wins in sheer number and mystique as it is home to the largest and densest concentration of Buddhist temples in the world with many dating from the 11th-12th centuries.  At Angkor Wat, you're also never alone, you're constantly surrounded by other tourists and sometimes clamoring for the right photo if you're not up early enough.  Bagan is much different...there's no English describing the pagodas and it's all a very DYI experience.  While some pagodas are bigger and more popular than others, there were many times when I'd find myself completely alone, a mile off the real road on some sandy path discovering brilliant, isolated pagodas.  To get around, tourists can only rent little, dinky electronic bikes that go no more than 10 mph, but it got the job done. Finally, everyone wants to take pictures with you and I found it quite adorable and endearing when all of the kids and women would wave excitedly from the back of the big trucks they were riding in and would stop to come over to timidly ask for a photo!

Some of my group photo opps:

Not only did we do a group photo, but all of these guys wanted individual ones too!



Anyway, on my first day, I arrived in Bagan nice and early so I could start exploring right away. Before I set off, I rented my little e-bike and even picked up a beautiful, traditional (and pink!) longyis for $5 to wear for the day because my poor sarong was getting quite dirty. Of course, I was blown away by the first pagoda that I visited, but I unfortunately also had a pretty negative "shopping" experience which was a rough start to the day.  Since tourism is starting to pick up , the Burmese quickly discovered (similar to Angkor Wat), that parking their shops right in the entrance of pagodas was a pretty effective way to get business.  To make a long story short, I ended up being ripped off pretty badly and the women were actually quite rude and continually took my shoes and the items I had already purchased from my arms so I couldn't leave, but there wasn't much I could do, and at the end of the day, they needed the money more than I did.  Luckily, there were a few other great shop owners that I met throughout the rest of the day that would spend 20-30 minutes showing me the secret view points or telling me the history of a particular pagoda before gently asking if I would look at their shops (with much lower prices, and yes, I bought from these too!)

Despite being told to do most of my exploring in the early morning or after 4pm...of course I thought I could handle the afternoon heat, but I was again wrong :)  With temperatures quickly reaching 105-110 degrees by noon, I lasted until about 2pm that day when I had to go back to the air conditioning of my guest house to cool myself and take a nap.  After a few hours of rest, I set off for sunset.  There are a few "popular" pagodas where you can get up really high to see the endless landscape of pagodas and wow is it magnificant! 

On my second and final day in Bagan, I was up at 4:30am to see the sunrise from the top of a pagoda!  After that, I was planning on doing lots of exploring while it was still nice and below 95 degrees, but at about 7:30 or so, I felt a sudden change in the handling of my e-bike.  I got a flat tire!  While I was a little bit unnerved, let's just say it could have been much worse...I was luckily only about a 20 minute walk from a big pagoda where I knew there would be people, so I wheeled my bike over there and waited for one of the locals as he tried to fix it.  When his valient efforts didn't work, he called my hotel on his cell phone to get them to come and pick me up (There's absolutely no using anything but a Myanmar specific sim card, so it was really lucky that I could use the phone of a local, otherwise, I would have had a long, long walk back to the hotel).  When the hotel guys finally arrived an hour later, they had two other people and their e-bikes in the bed of the truck, so clearly I wasn't the only unlucky one!  After a lovely buffet breakfast with my fellow stranded travelers back at the hotel, I set back off on a new e-bike for another few hours of great exploring.  I just kept getting drawn into each pagoda - especially the more remote ones.  I would tell myself that I would only keep driving for another 5 minutes before I'd turn back towards the hotel, but then I'd find a brilliant spot and the next thing you know, its 20 minutes later :).  This cycle went on for quite awhile until about 2pm or so when I finally headed back to the hotel for my afternoon rest before going out for my final sunset on the roof of another, more remote pagoda.   Here are some of my favorites from the two days in Bagan...

The temples of Bagan!!
















This little cutie and his sister were slingshotting birds in the trees!






Sunsets and Sunrises of Bagan












After the first 3 days in Myanmar, I was already in love, and couldn't wait for my last destination - Inle Lake.  My days spent here were full of even more surprises, so stay tuned for updates from Inle Lake and a final recap of Myanmar and Southeast Asia - they're coming very soon, promise!