cambodia is calling

Angkor Wat is one of the few places in the world where real life looks like the movies and where even the highest expectations exist only to be exceeded.



Our late night arrival in Siem Reap definitely lived up to our expectations in that it was hot and tropical and the absolute opposite of where we'd spent the weekend before. (Freezing our toes off at an ice festival in Northern China.)



On an Angkor Wat visit you quickly discover that there is driving that needs to be done. In fact, the temples of "The" Angkor Wat are but one grouping in an area absolutely teeming with beautiful temples. The sites closest to the tourism-fattened city of Siem Reap are a twenty-minute drive away while temples devoured by jungle can take almost two hours to reach.



Travelers can reach these temples in a number of ways. Some rent bicycles on the cheap and spend their days in a dusty haze of fatiguing adventure. Still others take a dusty, and dirt cheap, ride on the back of a motorbike. Others spend a little more cash for a tuk-tuk and battle the dust with a handkerchief held to their mouths. Still others splurge on a car and driver and regret their choice only when it comes time to hazard unpaved roads (in a Toyota Camry) because the driver's worried that without taking a short-cut they won't make it to the next temple before sundown.

You can guess which option we chose.



It's safe to say that this trip to Cambodia really struck both of us as something incredibly special. The experience of seeing the temples - in their varying states of grandeur and decay - was beyond wonderful and belongs on anyone's Life List of Places to See. These structures are of a scale that is difficult to imagine without literally standing at their foundations and struggling to see it all with one set of eyes.



The stones - and therefore the temples themselves - are covered in finely carved illustrations. They seem too beautiful and too well-preserved to be real. Different temples have different stories to tell but the imagery throughout the sites is consistently gorgeous. And awe-inspiring. Leave me alone for a year with a piece of stone and a chisel and I still wouldn't have a clue how to take a material that is strong enough to build buildings and finesse it into the delicate wrists and ears of Angkor Wat's female forms, the apsaras.



Several of the temple groupings have been unceremoniously ravaged by nature and serpentine tree roots are now as much a part of the structures as the original stones. The effect is mesmerizing because most of us have only seen this sort of thing in the movies or imagined it in fictional fantasy worlds where ancient temples have been hidden from the rest of the world by misty jungles. But these places exist. They're not just in books and movies and on Disney's Jungle Cruise. They are in real jungles, in the very real country of Cambodia, and they will blow your mind.



So will the lives of the people here. If you visit the outlying temples and spend any time driving through the countryside you will share the roads with mopeds, and cows, and shoe-less children riding bicycles that are a head and a half taller than they are. You will see the simple thatched homes - on risers about 8 feet off the ground - under which naked children chase chickens while still other kids play alone in rice paddies and puddles.



These are poor people and they live in very poor conditions - but you'll notice that they still send their kids to school. And these kids make it home along the roads, riding their oversized bikes and balancing brothers and sisters, on their way back to lives that are very different from what most westerners are fortunate enough to consider normal.



This is the poorest place we have ever been and yet it is also one of the best. Truly, one of the best. The treasures of Cambodia, the treasures of these people, are such a bounty of man-made miracles that you can only hope one day they'll bring a modicum of prosperity to those who call this country home. But I'd imagine that as tourism increases, and the numbers of visitors continues to swell, things will have to change or the temples won't last.



When you visit these places now there's a freedom that's difficult to swallow. There are very few barriers or blockades, and the temples become giant three-dimensional mazes. On our visit to Beng Mealea our driver had us climbing over and through the ruins, squeezing into corridors and exploring spaces that seemed straight out of adventurer's tales. I'd be shocked if it stayed this way - this unrestricted - and from what our driver told us, the numbers of visitors are only increasing.



During your visit - depending on the hour of day and which temple you're visiting - you can sometimes find yourself with a few minutes alone in a quiet corridor or maybe catch a perfect photo sans other tourists wandering through. But turn up for sunset or sundown at one of the traditional places to watch the occasion, and you will find yourself surrounded by an international gaggle of surprising proportions.

Not that the gaggle doesn't come in handy. Especially when someone neglects to bring a flashlight for crossing Angkor Wat's moat at the pitch-black hour of 5:00am and still doesn't have a flashlight when it's time to locate the lotus pond from which to watch the sunrise. (Note to self: bring flashlight next time.)



Then as the sunrise comes and both Angkor Wat and the gaggle are illuminated, it's a toss-up over which of the unveilings is more awe-inspiring. Angkor Wat and it's very recognizable silhouette? Or the large number of people who will quietly huddle around a lotus pond before dawn just to see that silhouette?



Cambodian cuisine is also worth a try and might best be described as the sweeter, milder cousin of Thai food. Siem Reap is teeming with good restaurants although visiting the town market might give you pause in all matters food-related. Vendors sit foot-to-gill with tubs of squirming fish while sharpening their blood-caked cleavers. There are piles of parts better left unidentified, and vendors catch catnaps between bags of separated egg yolks and small walls of bok choy.



But this is Cambodia. Cambodia with its tuk-tuks and its temples in the trees. Cambodia where it's hot and sticky and there's always dragon fruit for breakfast. Where temples have giant faces and flights of stairs so steep and so thin that you need to prostrate yourself to climb them. Where there's dust and there's beauty and there are more stones than you can count.



This is Cambodia. And this is one of my favorite places in the world.

Harbin is cold and icy

At one point during our visit to Harbin, Stefano-shi turned to me and said exactly what I'd been thinking: "This is the coldest place we've ever been." We were standing on a frozen river at the time and the wind was driving past us in snow-tinged gusts. Horses pulled sleighs along the surface, confirming that the ice was indeed solid, and people used what can best be described as fireplace pokers to propel themselves around on metal chairs doubling as sleds, assuring us that frozen rivers are meant to be fun.

It's worth noting that world famous ice festivals don't exist without ice and frozen rivers notwithstanding, cold temperatures in Northern China are all relative. For this time of year - the MLK long weekend - we were actually experiencing a veritable heat wave as air temps didn't plunge below zero.



In considering the geographic hand the city was dealt, Harbin deserves credit for the sheer unadulterated grandeur of its thinking. This city has affectionately taken its biggest drawback and amplified it into a full throttle advantage. Go ahead and name several cities where ice won't melt between December and February. Excellent, now of those cities, how many have responded with multi-storied ice palaces and full-sized ice pirate ships?

Workers scrape ice off the highways with squares of plywood nailed to boards and if you spend any time indoors your boots will quickly be resting in a pool of melted black slurry. Historically, Harbin was a Russian railway stop and so this Chinese city also has an unmistakable Russian flair. Much of the architecture is distinctly European, wooden nesting dolls are the easiest souvenirs to find, and the frigid airport is filled with underdressed Russians transiting through after vacations in warm places. The chemically-red cherry on top of Harbin's scenic milieu was the unmistakable pair of nuclear cooling towers we noticed on our way out of town.



Nuclear cooling towers and sandal-wearing Russians aside, Harbin's ice festival is one of the wildest things I have ever seen. The sheer scale of the ice sculptures and the intricacy and quality of the work is absolutely mind-blowing. This is also the most fun I've had outdoors in wintertime. Ever shot down a four-story ice slide with only your winter coat between you and the cold, smooth ice? I have, and it was awesome. All four times.



The festival has three main sites around town, each worthy of as many hours as your frozen toes can take. The biggest park felt like a small town populated by the world's most famous cathedrals, temples, and palaces - all made entirely of ice. The open spaces and paths of a second park were lined with gigantic sculptures made of packed snow. And a third park smack in the center of town was sponsored by Disney and its ice creations all referenced Disney's internationally recognizable repertoire.



The scale of the structures at all three sites was magical and the experience of being in the middle of these ice and snow cities was worth every flight of ice stairs we had to climb. Yep, even the stairs were made of ice - apparently you can still do that sort of thing in China.



It's hard to get photos that really do justice to the experience, partly because your camera keeps freezing and partly because photos can never really show just how good a pair of toe warmers feels on a cold Harbin night. (Among other things I credit our toe warmers with allowing us to join a very long bunny-hop on the ice field under Milan's Duomo, and with letting us hang out with a little Chinese girl who kept asking us - in English - to go down the slide with her.)

We should have taken our new bilingual friend to dinner; she might have been able to save us from our enough-food-to-feed-a-small-village ordering technique. We think the wait staff may have been trying to warn us but our lack of shared language got in the way and we ended up with one very large fish in sauce, noodles, and tofu; a big bowl of chicken, mushrooms and noodles; and about five pounds of deliciously vinegary shredded potatoes. Oh, and beer that we drank out of saucers.



When people walked past our table they laughed. Good naturedly and with big smiles, but they definitely laughed. And at one point in the dinner show performance - this was a restaurant in which costumed performers belt out party songs at ear-crushing volume - the man on the microphone directed all attention in the room towards our table and then said something hilarious in Chinese. I say hilarious because everyone else was smiling, not because I have any idea of what he said.



And that's part of the fun of visiting China - it's one big experiment. You don't know what people are saying. You never really know what you're eating. And you sure don't know how they built all of that stuff out of ice.

eating in beijing

There's something you should know about China.

It's probably going to sound obvious but I consider the following piece of information to be incredibly important.

Chinese food is better in China.

When I say Chinese food is better in China, I don't mean it in that way that Thai food is better in Thailand. Of course Thai food is better in Thailand, but I've also had some respectable Thai food from a storefront restaurant in my old Chicago neighborhod.

But the food we feasted on in Beijing? Not a single meal failed to surprise us in the best ways. We had plates that were light and fresh. Nuanced and complex. Most were steaming, all were delicately seasoned, and none left us starving an hour later. I've never tasted anything like it from a white take-out container.

Our Thanksgiving meal consisted of Peking duck with its luxurious crisped skin, savory sauces, thinly sliced vegetables, coarse sugar that we'd all assumed was salt, and thin pancakes to hold it all gently together. I assure you that no one missed the turkey.



Each morning we would walk around the corner from our hotel and visit a small restaurant run by two young sisters. Each time we came in, the sister with the crimped hair would be snoozing at one of the tables, her head cradled in the crook of her own arm. The other sister would be standing directly under the TV that hung in the corner, staring at whatever drama was playing that morning.

The food that the two sisters would alternately bring to our table was homey and filling. The dumplings were made in a small nook of space near the cashier which was closed in by a wall and the windows, and when the chef finished crafting his savory and wonderful packages of vegetables, or fish, or pork... he would have to leave that space and then leave the restaurant.

He would step out of the front door, turn left, and then walk down the sidewalk past the restaurant's windows. Presumably he would enter a separate door that led to the kitchen. Luckily he could use a small sliding window joining the kitchen and the restaurant to deliver any soup we had ordered. He would pass the bowl through to one of the sisters, its steam leaving a trail.



One afternoon we shared a never-ending lunch best compared to watching a clown car unload. The energetic game of charades we'd played with the waitress to place our order had gone well enough and soon after she left, food started to appear.

And then more food showed up. And then a little more. No one in our party was sure it would ever stop and on several occasions when we thought that it had stopped, we were corrected by the appearance of yet another delicious entrée landing on our table.



We had no real complaints because the food was varied, delicious and dirt cheap. Vegetables were combined with complex sauces but remained light and fresh. Other dishes had a caramelized richness that added flavor but managed not to weigh down the ingredients. There were fish dumplings with coriander, and other dumplings fluffy with the combination of egg and tomato.

We also wandered down a hutong for our second taste of peking duck. The duck was not as delicate as it had been in our first meal but the surroundings were as if we'd plunked ourselves down in someone's back room. The tables were mismatched, the ducks were hanging next to my Mom, and the owner was swatting flies throughout the meal.



Lively surroundings are the accompaniments that make good meals great and China is all about the surroundings. There are people yelling, chomping, and chop-sticking. There are teapots, bicycles, and small pitchers filled with vinegar. You sit on different chairs, you eat from different plates, and the food is - no doubt - better for it.

I don't know what I expected from the food in China, but I know what I'll expect from now on.

beijing for beginners

The most compelling sensation that you will experience in Beijing is the knock-down, drag-out fight between China's past and present. With its 5,000 year history, China has existed for an eternity in comparison to the bright-cheeked newborn that is the United States. Yet China is also throwing itself into the present with such vehemence that it's impossible to tell whether China's greatest glories will be those that jump-started recorded history or the advances that the country is so doggedly pursuing today.



For Americans, China is the other side of the world, an "other" that is represented by Lo Mein in little white boxes and "Made in China" tags on most of our consumer goods. China is a country that communicates in a language most Americans don't understand and cannot read, and is known for something like a billion people on bicycles. We close our eyes and see Chairman Mao, or a defiant silhouette in front of a Tian'anmen tank, or the serpentine wall we're told can be seen from space.



The 2008 Olympics, however, offered an education in what China wants us to see. They pulled the billions off of their bicycles, and organized them in perfect rows of perfect moves on the floor of the Bird's Nest. The structure itself was a confident run past tradition and into trend-setting, and gave the country a new calling card. It's no accident that China is now nearly as famous for its modern architectural choices as for its traditional staples of tea and rice.

Despite these visions of a new tomorrow, tradition can still be found in Beijing. There are the tourist sites and there are the tours, but what is in question is how long the sites without paid admission will last.



One of the greatest pleasures of travel is seeing how other people live; walking down small streets in search of real life. The best place to wander in Beijing is down the dusty honeycombed blocks called "hutong," which are unfortunately being cleared for newly-commissioned beauty.



For a visitor, the beauty of Beijing is found as much in the hutongs as anywhere else. These snug streets edged with homes and small businesses and real people are where you can see life being lived. There's the woman repeatedly slamming a large fish on a doorstep before handing it over to her customer for dinner. And the man selling sweet potatoes from an oil drum attached to his bicycle. And kids playing, and TVs glowing in dark corners, and stockpiles of green leafy vegetables behind red wooden doors.



Beijing's hutong are dusty and different and they are disappearing. I don't live in Beijing and I hadn't been there before, but even I could see China's future steamrolling right through its living past. It's tough because while progress can be picturesque, reality is often even more so.

tofu soup and tea

A couple of weekends ago we headed out to visit the largest and best preserved palace in Seoul but first stopped at a small mom and pop restaurant for lunch. My tofu soup came out rapidly boiling and spicy, and Stefano-shi's ramen hit the spot. Unfortunately when we left the restaurant what had started as a cloudy day had transformed into a rainy one and we were without umbrellas.

Two umbrellas from a subway vendor later and we were back on our way to the palace. But then it started to rain harder and the puddles got deeper and we decided this was no day to tour the many acres of palace grounds. It was, instead, a day to drink tea among Insadong's art galleries.



My plum tea tasted like fruit juice simmered in sweet syrup and had three pine nuts bobbing on the surface. Stefano-shi had a five flavor tea that was bitter, salty, sweet, sour and strange. We shared a plate of rice pastries and watched the rain continue to patter outside. And before heading home we stopped at our favorite arcade for a couple of rounds of couples' video games.

So it wasn't the day we'd expected but I can't complain. I discovered three perfect rainy day accompaniments: tofu soup, sweet plum tea, and couples' video games. Rainy days will never be the same.

our next president

Something big has happened, something absolutely monumental. And to try to say what it means, to try to summarize it in a few sentences, could never do it justice. Here I am, thousands of miles and a handful of time zones away and I could still feel the electric hum of votes being cast and counted, and tipping slowly, steadily, and then all in a rush towards this amazing jolt to history and our times. I will never forget how it felt to be this excited about what an individual could do for our country. And I will always remember the thrill that real hope can inspire, the dizzying sensation that this thing could really happen. And now here we are, in a different place, with a different perspective, thinking of the possibilities that lie before us. And after Tuesday, isn't anything possible?

november 4, 2008

For those of you wondering whether the U.S. presidential election is big news around the world, I give you today's headlines in Korea. I may not be able to read the front page, but I can certainly identify photos of Barack Obama and John McCain when I see them.

Italy is also apparently keeping a keen eye on the election details and when we talked with some Italian friends this weekend they wanted to know what happened with the "zia" of Barack.

Just to put things in perspective, how about naming the president of South Korea... without using google. Extra credit goes to anyone who can name his opponent in the most recent election.

As I post this entry, Americans are waking up and heading to the polls... and making the news that we'll all read about tomorrow.

il vino e il polvo

When we started our dusty trek to the winery, and took those first steps out of La Morra and into the vineyards, we seemed to be headed in the right direction. But then something happened and we went su (up) when we should of gone giu (down). And then giu (down) when we should have gone su (up).

The vineyards seemed to run well into forever, with line after line of grapevines shooting into the distance like pinstripes. Somewhere along the way we lost track of the trail markers and didn't know if we were supposed to go up and over the hill standing in our way or not. Turns out we were.

So, after a long dusty haul - that included going over the hill - we arrived at the Renato Ratti winery, pant cuffs stuffed with yellow silt and shoes that looked like we'd recently undertaken a lunar landing. When we rang the bell and apologized for being so late the voice that squawked out of the call box made sure to clarify..."TWO HOURS late"...and then paused for effect.



I think we gained back some of their respect when we explained that we'd walked to the winery - yes, on foot - and gotten lost in the process. The small piles of dust that sprinkled across their floors in our wake seemed to confirm our story. We even got a glass of water before we embarked on our belated tour of the wine museum.

The tour was short, dank, and musty as Stefano and I followed one of the winery employees through an old monastery. We could make out barrels in the basement (where not all of the lights were working) and came to appreciate the unique shapes of wine bottles from the region. There was a collection of historic wine labels and photos of the man who started it all. In all honesty it was a lot of fun roaming around the small museum - and this was before the wine sampling made everything even better.



The Renato Ratti tasting room overlooks a horizon lined with grapevines and a region known for incredible wines. We sat there, wineglasses in hand, appreciating the fact that our jeans were coated with the very same dust that supported the growth of the grapes we were drinking. And these weren't just any grapes. These were nebbiolo and barbera. Grapes that become Barolo and Barbaresco, the wines people across the world recognize by their first names.



When the wines crossed our tongues in that place and after that walk, they tasted better than they have tasted anywhere else in the world. They tasted like the sun that had slowed us, and the dust that coated us. They tasted of the stories we'd heard, and a little of the impatience that had squawked at us for being late. They tasted like a day in La Morra.

And they tasted beyond perfect after a visiting Canadian cardiologist gave us a ride back to town. He not only saved us from an uphill walk back, but he should also be credited with keeping us from likely getting lost again. His generosity not only meant that we were able to catch the last bus back to Bra, but it also gave us the extra time we needed for a quick pre-bus meal. We had a glass of wine, some cheese, cured meats, a little bagna cauda...



and maybe just a little bit of dust.

burano with a b

The island of Burano is a vaporetto ride from Venice and is not to be confused with Murano, the island whose name is synonymous with glassblowing. Burano - with a B - is the farther out island of the two and is known for its lace making and the vivid hues of its homes. It's also the island to visit when Venice seems a little more crowded than usual, or when you'd like to see just how big Italian mosquitoes can get.



Now, don't get me wrong, there are certainly tourists in Burano - and souvenir shops as well - but there are fewer of both out here. Instead, Burano's crowds are of the brick and mortar variety. They don't surge and they don't run you ragged; they simply stand still and simmer in the sun. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder these buildings are slathered in the red of cherries, the green of avocado skins, and the pink of Pepto-Bismal. They are the colors that buildings never are.

We wandered the pedestrian ways along the canals and tucked into stone backyards where laundry hung. We ran from the mosquitoes, marveled at a tipping tower, and started running again. We drank caffé made by a barista who ran the New York marathon in almost half the time I did and we took scads of photos in front of walls of every color.



Buildings may not usually be these colors, but after an afternoon in Burano you'll finally ask "why not?"

nature in numbers

Don't worry about getting lost on a Korean hiking trail. It's not gonna happen. In fact, don't worry about bears or running out of food or being kidnapped. These are all things that happen if you're alone in nature. And one must remember that being alone in nature doesn't happen in Korea. Especially at Seoraksan National Park in the fall.



At Seoraksan hiking is done in throngs. Great heaving throngs with advanced levels of fitness... shocking levels of fitness. Old women click their tongues somewhere behind you on the trail and before you can get out of the way they will pass you at a trot. Thankfully for the rest of us, these ladies are usually dressed in fuschia and are never seen in groups smaller than 15 so they won't be mastering the element of surprise anytime soon.

I promise that you have never seen anything like this. And unless you've tried it, you can't imagine the pressure there is to keep moving on a hiking trail when half of Korea is breathing down your neck. Literally. Because as you're navigating the stone staircase twisting down the mountainside, they're on the step immediately behind you. And at their pace they're coming pretty darn close to breathing down your neck until they weave deftly off the trail and bypass the meandering amateurs. (Here I add that even the most crowded of Alpine ranges are undiscovered wastelands by comparison.)



The crowds are certainly part of the experience and we had a great time on our visit to Seoraksan. We hiked up, we hiked down. We laughed at warning signs featuring cute bears and their cute bear children. We had a delicious Korean lunch that our friend made. I even said "tasty!" in Korean when I started to eat it. (Not that I knew what I was saying. It turns out that our Korean language teacher has been training me Pavlov-style. She has me say the same phrase - Tasty! - at the start of every lunchtime language class, which just so happens to be when I'm eating my lunch. So now, without even thinking about it, anytime I put food to my mouth, I say "tasty" in Korean. She must be proud.)



We also had a traditional post-hiking meal which means that we went to a restaurant at the base of the mountain, took off our hiking boots, sat on the floor, and ate bibimbap and soup. And yes, the restaurant was full - note the long line of hiking boots at the foot of the raised dining area.

So... Hiking - great. Food - great. Traffic - not so great. It took three hours to get to Seoraksan but five hours to get back. And I can vouch for the fact that the bus driver was using all manner of shortcuts and creative driving to try to avoid the traffic. You don't usually expect that when bumper-to-bumper traffic comes to a standstill you'll be presented with a panoramic view of the hay harvest, but in Korea it's entirely possible.



Stefano-shi pointed out that once we got close to Seoul we crossed the same river four times - more attempts to avoid traffic. It's funny that we spent a total of eight hours on a bus for the pleasure of hiking Seoraksan with a million of our closest friends while our driver crossed the same river four times to avoid these same people.

And one last bit of advice we learned the hard way: hide your trail mix from soju-drinking hikers. Apparently the consumption of soju in the wild outdoors not only emboldens its drinkers, but gives them an overwhelming urge for the trail mix of strangers.

all together now

Sometimes we worry that the uniquely vivid slacks so beloved by Italian males are going unnoticed since we've left Italy. So during our recent wander across northern Italy we made up for lost time... In Treviso. In Venezia and Burano. In Milano and Alba and Bassano del Grappa. The uomini of Italy didn't let us down and even made sure to hang out in pairs so that they would be easier to spot in a crowd. And for their efforts, we say: "Grazie mille. Our trip wouldn't have been the same without you."

Oh, and one more thing: "Punch pants!"

Songni san

Before Saturday's trek we'd heard anecdotally that Koreans like to hike "straight up" and that there's no such thing as switchbacks on the trails here. I understand what they mean now, in the way that only someone who has climbed straight up a mountain without the use of switchbacks can understand.

Our afternoon was one of those sprawling physical quests where after you've poured so much effort into the attempt, regardless of the mounting feeling of impossibility, you just keep going. Putting foot after foot on the stone steps leading up, up, up. Smiling with hope at the people coming back down the trail, looking to them for some sort of inspiration or at least a raised fist and a shout of Korea's national mantra, "Fighting!"

We just kept going up and up, until we reached that top. And once we got there we shared a Gatorade toast, a great view, and the realization that going straight down probably wasn't going to be so easy either.

happy birthday, from scratch

I requested... a three-layer chocolate cake with peanut butter cream frosting and a dark chocolate ganache glaze. I got... the best cake I've ever had in my life.

Thank you Stefano-shi!