Thursday, October 29, 2009

fringe benefits

One of the nice things about travelling is that in other countries, MTV actually plays (gasp!) music videos. It's totally mesmerizing...I can go entire hour-long gym workouts just watching (probably very old) videos of Beyonce and Kanye and Coldplay and Katy Perry, singing songs that I've heard a billion times, that I've never seen on TV.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Egypt & Egyptians

Egypt Air was fairly disappointing and made Thai Airways look good. On our first flight we departed an hour late, and on the second we departed half an hour late. The first airplane was super crappy and the service was not great, either. The best moment of the flight was probably when a guy fell asleep and started snoring in the next row before takeoff.

We discovered quickly that Egyptians are big fans of President Obama. He visited Cairo University to give a speech this year, and it was a huge deal; the first speech by US president in an Islamic capital. He also visited some mosques and schools near the Citadel, which our guide mentioned several times.

There were people everywhere selling things on the street. There were the usual postcards and touristy trinkets, of course, but there were also women on bikes with freshly baked pita bread, and men with boxes of tissues at stoplights, just like the people selling the fragrant flowers in Taipei.

Hotels in Cairo have extremely tight security; there were metal detectors at every entrance, bomb detectors and/or bomb sniffing dogs, and a hotel guest manifest listing guest arrivals and departures.

Health care and education in Egypt are free, all the way up to university, so a surprisingly large percentage of the population goes to college. (I forget the number.)

I didn't realize it rained so little in Egypt; we asked our Upper Egypt guide what the annual rainfall total was, and he said it rained "every couple of years". I'm not sure if maybe he meant a couple times a year, but anyway it seems it rains very little. Consequently, the Nile is the source of nearly all freshwater; outside of the valley Egypt is just a giant desert. It's actually very striking, the line between the dry sandy desert and the lush green valley, with abundant palm trees and other vegetation. I confess I always thought Egypt was just desert because the Pyramids are built on the sandy part. It turns out the pharaohs built their tombs in the high, dry areas on purpose, as it was great for preservation.

Tipping is rampant in Egypt, and the nuances are not that easy to understand. You are definitely supposed to tip in bathrooms and for porters and waiters. If you take a photo with someone they'll want a tip too. However, there are also lots of cases when people will ask for tips to which they aren't entitled; for instance, street kids will sing songs at you and ask for money. Our tour guide in Cairo was constantly tipping security guards and parking attendants, and got really good service. Egyptians also are fond of handshake greetings; I wonder if it's cause-and-effect, as the tipping is all done very smoothly via handshake.

I'd known before, but hadn't fully comprehended the extreme oldness of everything in Egypt. The mosques which were built over a thousand years ago, and the churches which were built in the Roman area, are all considered "new", compared to the relics of the pharaohs. We were at an alabaster factory and they were selling scarabs and other artifacts that were hundreds of years old, but they were considered "family possessions" rather than antiques. It's also mind-boggling that we can still see paint on carvings that are thousands of years old.

It turns out that Egyptians have lots of yummy food. Of course there's baba ghanoush and tahini and the yogurt dishes, but we also enjoyed a beef stew called tagine, the omnipresent rice mixed with pasta, and D liked their roasted eggplants. For breakfast, they have a mashed bean dish that is bland and starchy and meant to be eaten with assorted side dishes and condiments. D likened it to congee, and ate it nearly every morning. The dates, on the other hand, I think are an acquired taste.

Lots of things in Egypt seems to have been built (accidentally or on purpose) on top of other things. For instance, there was a mosque built on top of Luxor Temple, the Hanging Church is built on top of part of a Roman fortress, and Ramses VI's tomb was built on top of King Tut's (which is why it was fortuitously never found by grave robbers).

I think that there's almost too much to see, and it's all too close together, in Egypt. When we went to the Egyptian Museum, I felt that all of the items were clustered closely together, without much explanation. I remarked to D that it seemed that as large as the museum was, it needed to be at least twice as large to properly display everything. Later on we discovered there are several new museums in the works, including a new Grand Egyptian Museum at the Pyramids, and many of the artifacts will be doled out to those new museums. Similarly, when we were at Luxor, we were very impressed with the Ramsesseum (temple of Ramses II) but there were only three or four other visitors there, while the Valley of Kings and the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut were covered in people and tour buses. People go for the big name attractions, I guess.

Egypt is a poor country (I think?), but things are not cheap. We had a hard time finding hotel rooms at good value, and restaurant meals cost about $12-15 per person, which isn't a lot by American standards but is way more than the $2-3 per person that we were paying in Southeast Asia. I'm speculating that locals don't eat at restaurants, or don't eat at the same kinds of restaurants.

The Aswan Dam seems to have made a huge difference for Egypt. Before the dam, the Nile would flood the valley about 3 months of the year. Now, there are no floods, and farmers can use the water from the reservoir for irrigation.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

three things

It's important when travelling to bring the things you need, but not to end up dragging the entire contents of your closet with you. Over the past two months, there are some things that I've found essential during our trip.

Three things...
- in my pocket: eye drops, lip balm, hair elastic
- on my person: sunglasses, camera, passport in money belt
- in my carry-on: laptop (w/ plug converters!), earplugs, water bottle
- in my suitcase: dri-fits (quick to wash and dry), wrist braces (my camera is quite heavy), travel humidifier

D also swears by his Bose noise-cancelling headphones, convertible pants are quite handy, and we've put our swimwear and goggles to good use, too.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

notes on Dubai

Demographics in Dubai are rather interesting. There are 5 million people in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), of which 1.4 million live in Dubai. Naturalization is extremely difficult (e.g. women who marry UAE men can naturalize, but not vice versa), so citizens comprise only 21% of the population. Over 40% of the population are from South Asia (Indian, Pakistani, or Bangledeshi); most have come for the job opportunities. As a result, the ratio of men to women is over 2:1.

Women wear a variety of clothing; some wear the full black burka, some wear a headscarf, some wear no head covering at all. Some women wear skirts and flowing clothes, others wear jeans and tight shirts. There are even a few women in shorts. When we were at the Burj Al Arab, I noticed several women who were in full burka but with very fancy gold embroidery, and the black cloth itself was obviously very high quality, as it looked shinier and softer than usual. Maybe it's like bedsheets, where high threadcount is a big deal?

Dubai has developed very quickly. Oil was discovered in 1966, and in 1971 Dubai became independent of Britain. In 1980 there was a single highrise building, but there was a massive wave of building in the late 1990's and early 2000's, and now there are skyscrapers as far as you can see.

Originally, much of the economy was based on oil, but these days, only 6% of revenues are due to oil or petroleum ventures. The primary businesses are tourism, real estate, and finance; Dubai has become one of the finance capitals of the Middle East.

The government is very wealthy, so many things are free. Health care is entirely free for citizens, residents, and even visitors; you just don't bother with money or insurance when you go to a hospital in Dubai. Citizens get extra bonuses; for example, when citizens marry, the new couple is given their own residence (probably a condo). 95% of mosques are subsidized by the government.

There are many new projects going on in Dubai even now. The Dubai Metro opened in September but only a few stops are open as of yet. Once the rest are open it will probably help ease the traffic problem quite a bit; we were able to travel a distance by metro in 10-12 minutes that would have taken 30 minutes to drive in "normal" traffic conditions. Currently public transportation is mostly by bus; bus stops are enclosed and air conditioned. "The Palm" is the famous man-made island in the shape of a palm tree; it is nearly complete, but two more are in the works. In addition, there is another man-made island under construction which will be in the shape of a world map, called "The World"; it is currently 10% done. The Burj Dubai (Burj means tower), which will be the world's tallest building, is nearly finished; it will open before the end of the year.

Monday, October 12, 2009

assorted observations

I usually keep a pen and paper in my camera bag as we're walking around, so that I can note random things that I want to blog later. Most of the time those observations fall easily into our daily recaps, but I've been building up a backlog, so I'm going to just jot them down here...

Airport security varies a lot from place to place. I've accidentally gone through security with a full bottle of water (Bali) and I've been asked to shake my Kleen Kanteen metal water bottle to verify its emptiness (Singapore). The security team in Kuala Lumpur made me take out my extra camera lens so they could examine it (no one ever travels with multiple lenses, really?) while many other airports don't even make us separate out our laptops and toiletry bags. Gate-level security checks seem to be popular in Southeast Asia; I'm not sure if it's supposed to be more secure or what, but it is annoying as I'm used to filling up my water bottle after getting through departure terminal security. Practically no one makes us take off our shoes, and if you start to remove yours without prompting, you're basically broadcasting the fact that you're American.

Singapore and Malaysia's populations are very mixed ethnically, but all the groups appear to coexist peacefully, at least on the surface. I was amused by the advertisements for "Hari Raya mooncakes" in Malaysia; since the end of Ramadan coincided with the Autumn Moon Festival this year, some marketing geniuses decided to try and sell mooncakes (halal, of course) to Muslims as well. It seemed to be working quite well, actually.

In Malaysia, D and I would generally just start out by speaking to people in English. Most of the time, if the person was of Chinese descent, they would look at us, and respond in Chinese. Occasionally, they would look at us, and respond in Hokkien, which sounds a lot like heavily accented Taiwanese, so that worked pretty well too. It's interesting that they assume anyone who looked East Asian would speak Chinese. I wonder what it would be like as a Japanese or Korean person in Malaysia.

In Chiang Mai, there were many tuk-tuks and taxi drivers roaming the city streets. Most of the time they would try to take us to the Tiger Kingdom, but they would also ask if we wanted to see the "Long Neck Karen". Apparently there is a hilltribe in Burma called "Karen", and the women have artificially elongated necks. They achieve this by adding metal rings to their necks gradually over time, starting at the age of seven or eight. Some have fled the political turmoil in Burma and escaped to Thailand, where they have the dubious choice of living in refugee camps, or being paid to live in "tourism villages" created by Thai entrepreneurs. We chose not to go and gawk at these poor women, but I'm sure lots of tourists who haven't heard about the exploitative nature of the villages end up going. We also decided not to visit the Tiger Kingdom as it sounded similarly artificial; apparently you pay to have your photo taken with a certain age of tiger (most people choose the babies and the adults) and some reviews complained that the tigers looked drugged or otherwise unhappy. However, we did go to the Elephant Camp; despite a few reports which complained about the condition of the elephants, it sounded like the majority of the people who went thought that the elephants were happy, well-fed, and well-treated. After having seen them, my biased opinion is that the elephants seemed fine, but I'm not an animal behavior expert by any means. Anyway, we've discovered that trying to be educated and non-exploitative tourists requires a lot of research!

Sunday, October 11, 2009

checkpoint

We're flying from Bangkok to Dubai today, which means that we're finally leaving Asia and heading to the Middle East. We're also slightly more than halfway through with our trip, so I thought it'd be a good time to reflect on some of the highs and lows of our trip so far.

Starting with the highs...

Best Public Transportation
Bangkok's skytrain wins by a narrow margin over Singapore's subway system. The skytrain comes every few minutes, is super cheap (less than 1 USD per ride), and the trains are air-conditioned and well-maintained.

Best Food
It's too hard to pick one or two, so I'm going to name a top five:
- Tetsuya's, in Sydney, was our best fine dining experience.
- For street food, it's a tie between Penang's delicious hawker stands, and Thailand's fresh green papaya salads.
- Singapore claims the crown for best food courts, with Vivo City's "Food Republic" leading the charge.
- Most unexpectedly delicious were the scones that we had at some random tea house in the Australian outback, outside of Alice Springs. They were large, fluffy, crumbly, buttery, and very very fresh.
- I also have to mention Gugong, the bibimbap place we went to the first week in Korea. Something about it really hit the spot. I think I may like bibimbap better than both tofu soup and Korean BBQ.

Best Critter Encounters
One of my favorite parts of our trip has been all the wildlife that we've seen. My top five:
- The little penguins of Phillip Island were adorable and it was great to see them in their natural habitat. The koala spotting at the nearby conservation center was also fun, but koalas are a bit boring.
- Seeing kangaroos in the wild in the Blue Mountains was also a magical experience.
- I was amazed by the beautiful butterflies at the Penang Butterfly Farm, and had a great time photographing them.
- Meeting the snakes and lizards at the Alice Springs Reptile Center was surprisingly fun, and the reptiles that we held weren't slimy at all. We were also excited to encounter a very large (over 3 foot long) iguana at our resort in Ko Samui.
- I thought there was a chance the elephant ride in Chiang Mai was going to be touristy and lame, but I actually quite enjoyed it.

Best Natural Scenery
One more top five, with the top three from Australia:
- The sunrise walk at Ayers Rock was unforgettable; totally worth the early start and having to brave the morning winds.
- The day that we spent snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef may have spoiled snorkelling for us forever. I was especially struck by colors of the reef itself.
- Sydney's beaches were also gorgeous and we spent a lovely afternoon wandering from one beach to another.
- Although cultivated, the orchids in Singapore's Botanical Garden were still naturally beautiful, with unbelievable variation in shape and color.
- Finally, although not as spectacular as the others listed above, the rice paddies that we saw on our first day in Bali were also an interesting and unique sight.

Best Cultural Experiences
I expected to have a good time watching "The Capulets and the Montagues" at the Sydney Opera House, and I did. A more surprising highlight was the "Barong" dance that we saw in Bali; in addition to showcasing exotic Balinese dances and costumes, it was entertaining, funny, and told a good story.

Best View
It was a pain getting up there, but once we got to the top of Penang Hill, we were treated to an amazing panorama that included Georgetown city, the Strait of Malacca, and the Penang bridge. The view from the Petronas Towers Skybridge was not nearly as good, but we enjoyed the experience of being on the Skybridge very much anyway.

Best Temple/Wat/Ruins
D was most amazed by Bangkok's Grand Palace; we spent several house there wandering through all the intricately decorated buildings and gardens. I also liked the sprawling ruin of Wat Chaiwatthanaram (in Ayutthaya) very much. Finally, despite the rain, the Pura Besakih (Mother Temple) in Bali was very impressive and worth the time and effort (and money) it took us to get there.

As for the lows, I was chatting with a friend yesterday and she asked me whether we had found anything particularly disappointing. It actually took me awhile to think of things that we hadn't enjoyed, but here are a few less-than-awesome experiences we've had...

On our last night in Ubud, we wanted to go out to a non-hotel restaurant, so we went to the extremely popular "Nacho Mama". We spent nearly two hours there, never managed to place an order, and were totally disgusted by the dirty table, not to mention the stray dog eating off the floor. Oh, and it was raining that night, so we got wet coming and going.

On our first domestic flight, from Sydney to Alice Springs, the counter agent warned us that our luggage was overweight. We had a few hours of stress before we figured out our plan of using left luggage services to store extra bags between international flights. We've had to fly with overweight carry-on most of the trip as well (turns out 5kg is really not very much at all, especially when you're carrying three camera lenses and two laptops), and there's always a small bit of anxiety associated with that.

Many of our tour experiences have been awesome, but a few have been mediocre. We had a good time in the Blue Mountains, but the morning was only moderately interesting, so it was really the kangaroo sighting that made that tour worth it. Similarly, our half-day in the Daintree Rainforest was fun, but not amazing. I guess we might have felt differently had we actually sighted a crocodile on our river cruise. Finally, we probably could have done better on our last day in Bali by hiring a driver for the day, instead of doing a private tour, as that turned out to be quite pricey.

We've been lucky for most of the trip, but we have had to deal with rain a few times; notably one evening in Penang, when it took us nearly half an hour to walk through a torrential downpour to get to a hawker food court two blocks away, and in Bali, when we toured Pura Besakih (the Mother Temple) in the rain. Honestly though, I hesitate to complain about merely non-ideal weather, when there have been so many natural disasters in Southeast Asia in the past month.

Overall we've been having a blast, and it's hard to believe that the trip is half over. I'm really not sure I'll be ready to go home when our time is up, but maybe I'll get sick of the food faster now that we're leaving Asia.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

too easy

I've been travelling for a month and a half now, and I keep expecting to get tired of it, but so far, I really haven't. I think if I had an infinite pile of money I could travel for like, a year at a time. I wonder if this is what it's like to be retired? Something to look forward to, maybe.

However, I was thinking this morning that I should sign up for a 5k or 10k or something for December or January, to motivate me to stay in shape. We do hit the gym about every third day, but I'm skeptical that I've been able to maintain my level of cardio fitness, and I'm sure I've lost some muscle mass. I think the daily Thai massages are helping me stay flexible, though.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

exceeds expectations

D and I are currently staying at the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok. We've stayed at some nice hotels during this trip, but this place takes the cake, service-wise.

I went to the hotel gym this afternoon to work out. As I entered the gym, I was slightly disappointed because I didn't see bottled water, only coolers and cups. I shouldn't have worried; the bottles were lined up on each of the cardio machines, and as I chose a treadmill, a gym staffer tore the plastic wrap off of my bottle and handed it back to me, along with a gym towel.

When I finished running, as I stepped off of the machine, a new staffer handed me a chilled lemongrass scented towel, and asked me if I would like to use the sauna. I told him that I was going to stretch, and inquired if there was a disinfectant bottle. He looked horrified, and assured me that he would take care of the machine. After laying out a gym mat for me, he cleaned and disinfected the treadmill, put new covers on the attached headphones, and replaced the bottle of water.

I noticed that he watched for a couple seconds as I started my stretches, and I wondered why. When the next person stepped off of his treadmill, he also said he wanted to stretch, and also got a mat prepped for him. He just sat on it for a little bit, so the staffer quickly asked him if he would like any assistance. Upon hearing assent, the staffer (who I guess is also a trainer?) launched into a full set of assisted leg stretches. It was like watching NBA warmups or something.

After I was done stretching, I was (of course) handed another chilled towel, and asked if I would like a sauna or a shower readied for me (I said I'd shower in my own bathroom). The mat was cleaned and put away before I finished wiping my face and drinking my water.

I love this place.

Friday, October 02, 2009

Frangipani in KL

On our last full day in Kuala Lumpur, we decided to splurge on a nice restaurant. We chose Frangipani, recommended by both our tour book and the almighty TripAdvisor.

We arrived a little bit early and apparently there was a private event going on, so we sat at the bar for awhile. I ordered a "Frangipanties" and D had a Ginger Cosmopolitan. My drink was delicious; it had grapefruit and lime and rum in it. D's was too ginger-y for my taste, but he liked it.

After a few minutes, someone came to let us know our table was ready, and led us downstairs to the dining room. There was a large sunken area in the middle of the room, which I thought was just shiny black marble but D realized it was a very shallow lake. It's not very clear in this picture, but there's definitely water in there:

Later on while we were eating, a large party came in, and one of the guests accidentally fell into the lake. Everyone in the restaurant had a good laugh, and he was pretty cool about it. Afterwards it appeared that he (and most of his table) got good and drunk, which is an awesome way to get over being cold and wet, in my mind.

There was a tasting menu available, but it involved a lot of fish, so we chose the three-course menu instead. Each of us selected a "small" appetizer, a "large" appetizer, and a main.

First, we were served a selection of breads. There was a focaccia, a sesame bread, and some kind of darker bread that I couldn't quite identify. They were all quite good; D's favorite was the focaccia, mine was the dark one:

There were two amuses before the first course; an asparagus and tomato soup, and a semolina and mushroom cake with salad. The soup was so-so (then again I dislike asparagus), but the semolina cake was pretty good:


For his first course, D had Hokkaido scallop with mushroom and potato. He says it was his favorite dish all night (it was really too small to share, so I didn't make him):

I chose the prawn carpaccio with cucumber and tomato soup. I'm a big fan of tomato soup and all but I think I would have chosen otherwise had I known the amuse would also be chilled tomato soup. In any case I thought this particular dish was a little weak; not that flavorful, and the different ingredients didn't mesh that well:

However, my next course was excellent; the soft shell crab was delicately crispy and juicy. The sauces were not all that interesting, but it didn't really need sauce:

D had smoked salmon, which he thought was only average in taste. I stole a lot of his salmon roe:

Before the mains came, we were served a palate cleanser of starfruit sorbet with couscous, tomato, and basil underneath. D thought the mix of sweet and salty was strange, but I rather liked it:

My main course was duck breast with bits of crispy duck skin and a cone of mixed grains. The duck was above average but not amazing. The cone was quite interesting and I liked eating it with the sauce:

D had the duck confit, which we both preferred to my duck breast. It came with mashed potato, fried potato chips, and bits of Dijon mustard. In my opinion, it was the mustard that made the dish; too often duck is served with icky sweet sauces. I don't think I've ever had mustard with duck before, but it's very good that way:


We were unfortunately too full to eat dessert, so nothing to report on that front. I'd say the service was excellent, although the waiter's English accent was not as good as I would have hoped (he described the dark bread to me three times and I still couldn't figure out what he was saying). The food was quite good, although nothing like Tetsuya's, of course. The restaurant prices were almost US-level, and the drinks were definitely priced at US-level.

Overall, we enjoyed our dinner experience very much, except when we tried to catch a taxi home, the asshole driver tried to rip us off, but that's not the restaurant's responsibility, and they were quite sympathetic and helpful about it, anyway.

 

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