Unlike at the end of many holidays, where I’ve been a little depressed to return to ‘real life’, I am totally thrilled to be back in Suzhou. I’m only one week into the new semester and I’m already finding work challenging, rewarding and fun. The number of students who greeted me by jumping out of their seat and cheering blew me away. How did I end up working for a school with students this cool? I don’t remember ever loving teachers enough to cheer for them!? These kids are just so great…and it helps that I love teaching Drama and writing…and even Food and Nutrition (when I’m in the classroom!!!).
My 7th grade all-girls class. They have improved so much in the kitchen, learning how to clean properly and how to make safe food
One of the girls was looking for extra point on their final exam at the end of last term. It says ‘Love Marie’ in Honey Dill sauce!!
Anyway…after 30 days away from home, Poe and Hugo are very pleased to have us back! Poor Poe was very anxious from us being away, I think, and our first few nights back were sleepless. She needs constant reassurance and is always worried that we’ve left. She wakes us up in the middle of the night…seemingly just to see if we’re there. I wonder what she went through at that shelter to have so much to worry about! Hugo, on the other hand, could not be more relaxed. Although he’s the one missing a leg, you’d never guess that he’s seen a moment of trauma in his life. Nothing phases him…I guess cats are like people in that way…some handle stress better than others.
Hugo, cuddled up and purring like a mad-man
You better not be thinking about leaving me!!!!
I have such a derpy cat!!! lol!!! If this isn’t total relaxation…what is!?!?!?
Hey Guys…where are we going!?!?!?
The following few posts I’ll be putting up will be about some of the most incredible parts of our trip. It felt as though writing about these things from my tablet wouldn’t do them justice…not only because the internet was constantly a struggle and my photo editing tools are all on my laptop (which we didn’t bring along), but I wanted to be able to write about these things with some distance from India. Our trip had a lot of ups and even more downs, but I know that with some distance, things won’t seem as though they were so bad. The following two posts will be about our time in Agra and our time in the Thar desert…and they are both stories that deserve to be to told without residual frustrations tainting otherwise beautiful experiences.
Suzhou’s most iconic building: The Pants
Goodness, I missed Chinese food!!!
I hope you enjoy reading about these adventures as much as I’ve enjoyed documenting them through both writing and photography.
I have fallen very behind in my writing because although Goa is beautiful and relaxing, the internet there is the worst we’ve seen. Still, tonight it was behaving for a while so I began the process of uploading pictures into wordpress…whether or not the internet holds out well enough for me to actually finish my post tonight, is another affair entirely… (it didn’t…I’m now in Mumbai, finishing the post!)
We finished our time in Rajesthan in the city of Jodpur. Nicknamed ‘The Blue City”, Jodpur is famous for the massive fort that sits above the city. We stayed in a gorgeous old Haveli-turned-hotel and had a stunning view of it. As I wrote my last post (Jaisalmer), this was the view I had to admire while I worked.
We were pretty shopped-out by the time we reached Jodpur, so the markets were of no interest to us. Still, we wound up in one, only to buy some water and be asked at least 20 times where we’re from. We’ve realized, over the course of our stay in India, that people here think Canada is made up of 2 parts: The French Part and The English Part. They’re always very confused when I say that we live in the ‘English Part where many people also speak French…and German…’.
The salesmen here were EXTREMELY pushy! Several tried grabbing us by the arms. One convinced me to ‘follow him upstairs…where he had the kind of shirts I was looking for’. He didn’t. He had button up t-shirts…They were for men…
The clock tower, where all the action is at in Jodpur proper
Someone following Dave around, telling him which stores to go to (his) and which ones not to go to (the ones that weren’t his)
I’ve realized, since we left our driver behind, that Prama is like wine…he got better as the trip progressed (not a lot better…but better…). Because the fort was so far from our hotel, we weren’t able to get around on foot and were sort of at Prama’s mercy when it came to what we would see. But, instead of bringing us to Emporiums (where he’d make commission off of any of our purchases)…he brought us to a lovely (free!) park! We saw monkeys, beautiful gardens and eventually stumbled upon some beautiful old temples that reminded me of Ayuttaya in Thailand.
It was such a nice walk. We saw countless dogs and lots of monkeys 🙂
A garden of temples in Jodpur
There were also some very beautiful flowers in the park. I made use of my new camera and got some really pretty shots.
I feel like Jamie, my bff, is really going to like this picture!
This is where I’m going to make note of something I realized while walking along the temples in this park. In many temples (especially active ones), you must remove your shoes if you wish to enter. In warmer places this isn’t an issue, but in Delhi it drove me nuts because the stone was so cold under my feet that my legs were cramping. We missed out on a lot of temples because I just couldn’t deal with the pain in my leg (my leg is doing much better these days…but it still has its limits). In Rajesthan it wasn’t too bad so we took off our shoes and toured the old buildings. When we were on our way back through the park though, we saw this….
That’s all garbage…
I took this picture about 5 minutes away from the temple where we took off our shoes to show respect and to avoid tracking dirt into Hindu sacred space. Seeing yet more garbage in a beautiful park made me wish that Indians treated their country the way they treat their temples. For people who are so profoundly religious and deligent in their duties to the gods (not eating beef, treating animals with respect, the most devout are vegetarian or vegan), they completely ignore their duties to nature. The number of times we’ve seen garbage like this has been depressing! India’s current president, Narendra Modi, is putting a lot of effort into cleaning up the country, but he has a long road ahead. It’s a good thing he works 18 hours a day, because I can’t imagine how he’d get anything done if he didn’t!! (Jay, from Jaisalmer, is a big Modi fan. We learned all sorts of things about him! I have hope for this president!).
Ok…I digress…
A worthy digression if ever there was one…
Our next stop was to the big site to see in Jodpur: The fort! We’ve seen several in Rajesthan and it seems like every city has both a fortress and a palace to tour, but Lonely Planet spoke especially well of this one, so we paid the 500 rupees each (50 for locals) and the extra 100 rupees for our camera (free for locals) and we took the tour. It was honestly worth the money…There was lots to see and the audio tour was very well done. My only complaint was the hoards of Indian tour guides that all insisted on shouting above one another and pushing anyone who wasn’t paying them out of the way…I was nearly knocked over at one exibit, while looking at the ornate elephant seats from Jodpur’s history.
Like most of the beautiful things we’ve seen in Asia, the fort was built over the course of many years…being added onto every time a new king took power
the different colours seen here are because these two areas were built in different times and of different materials
one of the innner rooms in the palace
Ornate rooms where Kings met with royalty from other parts of the country
The audio tour was awesome…it told us the history of the fort. I learned that it has never been taken by an enemy and I even heard the stories behind the cannon holes in the walls. There was a lot of battling between the Kings of the different Rajesthani settlements back in the day. It was neat learning their history.
The red circle is around a hole caused by Jaipur canons. The king of Jodpur had been offended by the neighboring royalty, so he ordered a carivan of wedding gifts to be seized on its way to Jaipur. Jaipur retaliated by (unsuccessfully) trying to take Jodpur fort.
Also interesting were some of the artifacts in the museum part of the fort. In addition to the elephant seats, there were also carriages that carried the kings and queens of Jodpur. You can tell which carriages were womens’ because they hid the women away behind curtains and stained glass. In the past, women in India lived in Purdah…only to be seen by their immediate family. Women often hid in seperate rooms when guests came to the house, to keep themselves from the ‘prying and lustful eyes of men’ (my favorite line from the audio tour). This particular carriage was of significance, because it belonged to the queen that was alive during the Brittish take-over of the country. The Brittish were very interested in the royal families and wanted to know what the women looked like, but all they ever got to see was a flash of the queen’s ankle as she walked up the steps of her carriage.
This carriage
A photographer managed to get a picture of that ankle and a story was suppose to be published the following day in Brittish newspapers but the royal family intereceded and the pictures never went to print. A little different from our culture, where Kim Kardashian can ‘break the internet’
The only picture in the shoot where she was still wearing any clothes….
Our final stop in Jodpur was at the ‘mini Taj Mahal of Jodpur’. A king had it built for his queen, when he heard of the Taj Mahal being built. He thought it was a beautiful act, so he wished to do the same. It isn’t as grand or as semetrical as the Taj Mahal (more on that in the future!), but it was beautiful in its own way!
I’ll leave you now with some pictures of our hotel/Palace! This was probably our favorite hotel in all of Rajesthan, not only because of the great restaurant, but also because of the gorgeous view and the beautiful rooms. For anyone reading this and looking for a great place to stay…Krishna Prakash Heritage Hevali is where it’s at!
Ornate walls in our Jodpur hotel
our little balcony
we had to go up a little set of stairs to get to our bathroom. it was so cute!
And the grounds were beautiful too!!
The grounds at these hotels were also beautiful
Next up will be Goa! We seem to have better internet in Mumbai, so I should be able to post again tomorrow! (Unless we are out exploring…)
Thanks for stopping by!! Anyone visiting my blog with questions regarding any of the places we have been can feel free to leave me comments in the questions section! I will do my best to answer any and all that are asked!
The world is a funny place. All I have wanted to do, for as long as I can remember, is to travel. And I have. In the 29 years I’ve lived so far, I’ve seen 6 Canadian provinces, 5 US states and 9 Chinese Provinces (plus Hong Kong and Macao, which don’t actually count as Chinese provinces but sort of are…). I’ve also visited Cuba, Thailand, Cambodia and now India and I’ve gotta say…everywhere I go, people are pretty much the same.
We all basically have the same needs, no matter what our religion, ideology or race may be. We all want to feel safe and to have a place that we can call a home. We all suffer defeats and achieve our goals and feel defiance and pride and a great deal of other emotions. We all have families and loved ones and we all want what’s best for them. Everyone you meet is looking for the same basic things you are…but it’s hard to remember that when you are in the face of a strange culture where you are ‘the other’.
A store selling Indian rugs. None of them can fly…
I made a new friend in Suzhou recently. He found a good job as a chemist in China and is currently dealing with Culture Shock. When he was at our place a few weekends ago with his girlfriend, he mentioned that nobody ever writes about that stuff in blogs. Everyone writes about how lovely travel is; how rewarding it is to learn about other cultures. I laughed and said that although some of my posts can be downers, most of the time, i try to put a positive spin on my experiences. Mostly I do this because I find it helpful to look for a positive when I’m in a negative situation. But if I’m being perfectly honest with myself, part of me really wants to hang onto that idea that travel is all lollipops and rainbows…
Nobody talks about the line ups you wait in so that you can go see an overpriced attraction. And nobody wants to talk about the traveller’s diareha! It’s real and it’s awful!!!
So let’s be honest for a moment…
Today was one of those rotten travel days. We’re beginning to realize how much we overpaid for our tour and we’re both getting tired of being treated like walking piggy banks. We had a group of children follow us through the bazaar today, trying to sell us something (we aren’t sure what) and we’ve had countless people grab our arms and try to bring us into their stores to sell us their goods for 10x the price they’d charge a local. It’s exhausting knowing that you can’t really trust anyone when you are travelling….being a tourist can really jade you in that way…
Can you spot the difference? This isn’t actually very surprising or unfair. We don’t pay taxes to keep up these beautiful places so it’s only fair that we pay more than the locals. What’s unfair is that we had been told by our tour operator that all the sights we’d be seeing were free. This one was the cheapest one we could find today…
Of course, we do have some coping mechanisms. Sometimes it’s an inappropriate joke (every tourist makes them). I recognize that it can be culturally inappropriateive or offensive to laugh at Chinese medicine or to make a joke about Ganesh and his giant elephant head, but it’s sort of like laughing at a funeral…sometimes an inappropriate joke is the only thing you can do to relieve the tension that has built up with every encounter you’ve had throughout the day.
Because really, at the end of the day….people suck! We are a sefish group, we really are! We are destroying the earth because we are too lazy to recycle plastic bags or to walk to the store. We allow corporations to treat their employees like garbage because it saves us money on our groceries. We use animals for entertainment when we go to Swim With the Dolphin programs or when we go on an elephant ride.
Disclaimer: This animal was tortured for months so that you can ride on its back!!
And for some reason…we (and I’m referring to all of human kind) think that people from other countries are somehow ‘less’ than we are. Canadians have the resources and space and jobs (yes jobs!) to take in refugees but many are against it, because they think Canadian lives somehow matter more. Somehow we have to fix ALL our problems before we can hep anyone else…why should we all have to be living at 100% happiness before starving children and families fleeing war can be helped? How are they less important??
It’s the same on this side of the planet. I’ve been taken advantage of in nearly every country I’ve visited because of my white skin and my accent. Somehow, because I’m Canadian, it’s ok to take advantage of me because I have ‘so much money’ and I can always make more. I came here with a budget that I need to stick with….so all our tour guide did by charging us 30% more than he needed to, was to take away from what we would have spent on the second half of our trip.
This also means that we have less money to tip musicians and artists who are trying to make a living without begging. These are people I like to support.
And yes, these are trivial problems. I’m sure some of you at home are rolling your eyes and hating me for ranting about my ‘first world problems’…but there are bigger issues too…
I did a lot of research before coming to India because I knew it would be very easy to get sick here Disentary is something many travelers suffer from while in India and I did not want to be one of those unlucky travelers. Basically, the water in India is very contaminated and dirty. So dirty, in fact, that you are told to brush your teeth with mineral water and not tap water.
This means that all raw fruits and vegetables are off limits to us…because if they were washed with tap water (and they probably were), we will get sick. And I’m not talking about a tummy ache….many people need to be hospitalized and are on medications for months if they catch something from the water here. It’s no laughing matter.
We are also on a vegetarian diet while we’re here, because meat is often unsafe. We’re only ordering it in top notch restaurants, and even then, I find myself sticking with Dhal (lentils and chickpeas)
So when I learned that you are suppose to crush your empty water bottle when it’s finished, so that scam artists can’t refill it with TAP WATER and resell it in the market place, I wanted to scream. These aren’t just people who are trying to make an extra buck off of me…I can understand why those people resent me. I am no better than them…i was just lucky enough to have been born in Canada. I can forgive them for taking as much as they can… After all, many of them are supporting extended families as well as their own children.
But there are actually people here who are knowingly getting people sick to make a few extra rupees…. That’s a completely new level of behavior. That goes so far beyond ‘doing what you have to go get by’.
So that’s how it is. That’s what it can be like to travel in foreign countries. Tourists aren’t protected by the same laws we have in Canada here, because let’s face it….their government has bigger fish to fry. The number of homeless people in India is astounding and my tourism dollars can go a very long way to help those people…I just wish so much of that money wasn’t in our tour operator’s pocket…
The number of stray dogs is astounding…you see them curled up in the boulevard between lanes, trying to sleep like this
But I will leave you on a happy note..
We had a lovely walk today through Old Jaipur. We set out early and were walking through as everyone was just getting set up for the day. The crowds weren’t out yet, and we were able to walk along slowly, taking in the Pink City. And the most wonderful thing, was all the smiling. We had several people give us the warmest, most genuinely beautiful smiles. They couldn’t communicate with us verbally (now that we’re out of the capital, fewer people speak English), but they spoke in a way that they could. Indian people, as a whole, are so wonderfully inviting. It’s a shame that the bad apples all flock to the tourist industry, where they tarnish the name of a country that is otherwise, welcoming and vibrant.
The Pink City, where citizens paint their homes pink to honour a special historical visit of kings
selling peas in the market
And we finished our day at Tiger Fort, where we watched the sun go down over the Pink City.
Tiger Fort
And while today i do feel that people suck….my love for animals remains…
Although my next post was going to be about our trip to Hong Kong, I thought that writing about the Holidays might be a little more relevant. The holiday season can be awful or amazing when you are a foreigner in another country. It’s easy to feel homesick and marginalized when you live in a country where Christmas is important on a superficial level alone, but it helps a lot when you work with awesome people and have good friends to celebrate with. Dave and I were fortunate enough to be part of several events with the great friends we’ve made over the last 4 months. And although our Christmas definitely had some ‘downs’, it was, for the most part, an excellent holiday!
The biggest Christmas tree we’ve seen in China. This is right near Xinghai Square; the metro stop we live near
Some polar bear Christmas decorations outside of a restaurant. They made me feel a little closer to Manitoba
The school held several events around the holidays that definitely helped encourage the Christmas Spirit. In addition to the Lao Wai Holiday supper, there was also a spelling bee the week before Christmas and then on Thursday we had the IGCSE New Year’s Gala. All 3 events were great fun and big successes.
I was asked to present the IG1 and Elite Girls 1 with their awards at the spelling bee. I’m lucky enough to teach in both departments, so it was great being there cheering on these awesome kids I get to teach!!!
The Christmas dinner was both delicious and delightful 🙂 I had a bit of a rough time at the dinner because Poe was in surgury that evening, but it was good to have good friends there to distract me.
My boss, one of the greatet people I’ve met in China, singing his speach. Although he is incredibly humble and wouldn’t brag about it, he does a tonne of charity work here in Suzhou and recently won an award given by the city of Suzhou, for being the city’s most important philanthropist. This is the guy I get to work for. It’s so great having a boss I have so much respect for!
One of the dearest friends I’ve made in Suzhou: Alecia. She teaches Spanish at the school (she’s from Spain).
My favorite of the holiday parties though, was the IGCSE New Year’s Eve gala. IGCSE is the department of the school where I work. Suzhou Foreign Language school is huge and there are actually 3 middle schools within the one larger school. IGCSE is the ‘English’ department because when the students graduate middle school, they receive a bilingual diploma from the University of Cambridge. We have some of the brightest students I’ve met in China in this program and I’m proud to be their teacher 🙂
3 of my best IG1 students. I teach these girls English Writing and they always blow me away with their effort and their participation in class. I couldn’t ask for a better group of 13 year olds!!!
The IG2 (grade 8) clas singing a Taylor Swift Song
Some students did a special dance for ‘Ms. Fang’, the middle school’s main administrator. She’s an incredible teacher and person and the students and teachers all love her to bits. The kids decided to put on a special dance for her (they’re all wearing masks with her face on them) and then they presented her with flowers. It was probably my favorite part of the night
I also got to perform at the gala. My boss, Nathan, plays the Ukulele, so he and I chose a couple of songs and performed them for the kids and parents. It went over really well, and when it was done, one of the IG2 students presented me with a bouquet of roses. It was so sweet!
The roses I received when our performance was done 🙂
One of my students, Ken, took some shots of Nathan and I with his Iphone and edited them. I think he did a pretty nice job!
The school hired a photographer for the event, and she caught this picture of me as I walked in. The reason I look so happy is because when I walked through the door all the IG1 kids got all excited and started shouting “Ms Marie’s here!!!!!” They know how to make me feel loved!!!
We look far more professional than we actually were!
The gala finished with Abba’s ‘Happy New Year’, which I may now never get out of my head! They asked Nathan and I at the last minute if we would sing the first 8 lines of the song solo, so I had to learn it over night. I was so stressed about the whole thing (Abba is WAY out of my range) that I lost my voice! Luckily, I found it the next morning, but it was still a bit of a scare!
Nathan and I with all of the IGCSE students! It’s unfortunate that none of the other IG teachers could make it to the event (they all work in multiple departments and couldn’t get their classes changed). I’m glad I was able to attend, though!
But the school was not the only place where I was able to celebrate the holidays (don’t worry, Dave and I DID see each other!!). We were invited to, and organized, several events with friends. Just like we would back home, we ate FAR too much and spent great time with great people 🙂
Isaac and Adam making friends at Bei Jiang; one of our favorite restaurants in Suzhou
Our new friend Amanda ADORED Hugo. He was pretty happy to curl up with her all evening!
Dave and I, while being told to stop being mushy in front of the others at dinner lol
Our Christmas Eve dinner party 🙂
IG Life 🙂
Me with Ivy and Sherry! I work with these lovely ladies. They are both fantastic teachers and some of my closest Chinese friends.
Christmas Day was a lot of fun as well. Dave and I got dressed up and had dinner at the Kempinski Hotel in Suzhou. We ate far too much (again) and then head out to The Camel (a bar in SIP) to meet some friends that I met in Shanghai.
Presley, Sarah, Zoe and I 🙂
The Kempinski. It was great, but we definitely missed the one in Guiyang.
New Year’s Eve was also a nice evening out, though I didn’t take any pictures. We hung out with my favorite Suzhou-Canadian: Jeff. Whenever I miss home, I hang out with Jeff…he is basically every Canadian stereotype personified!
This is basically Jeff
Of course, I can’t exactly say that our holiday season was everything I had hoped it would be. The pollution from Beijing made its way down to Suzhou and Dave and I both got pretty sick from it. My skin was very irritated by the smog and dust and both of our lungs suffered. We really do love our life in Suzhou, but when we decide to move home, it will probably be because of the smog. Coming from small town Canada has left me with high standards as far as air is concerned, and Suzhou doesn’t cut it.
The first of these pictures was taken over the summer, when the pollution was very low. The second was taken when it was at it’s worst. We base the air quality each day on whether or not we can see the ‘Pants Building from our apartment.
We bought PM2.5 masks on Tao bao , as well as an air purifier for the apartment. Of course, neither arrived until the smog cloud had passed, but atleast we’re prepared for the next attack on oxygen!!
But the smog was the least of our holiday worries. We had Poe scheduled to be spayed on December 23rd, and although she was in heat at the time, we needed to get the surgery done so that she’d be healed in time for our departure for India. We read about it online and everything seemed like it would be fine. The surgery is a little more complicated when a cat is in heat, but vets do the surgery out west all the time. So we went ahead with the surgery.
Our Sweet Poe
A few hours after her surgery was over, we got a call from the vet telling us that she had to go back under because she had internal bleeding. 2 hours later, we found out that the vet had accidentally damaged her spleen during the original surgery (he has apologized profusely for his mistake and has admitted that it was due to his inexperience…inexperience we weren’t actually aware of…). As a result, Poe lost her spleen and we came pretty close to losing her.
They had her on an IV drip. She spent her first day there hiding in the litter box.
She become much more alert when she saw us there
She was so swollen! The stitches look much better now
Now, anyone who is not an animal lover may not understand where I’m coming from here, but Dave and I have really fallen in love with that cat over the last month and a half. She’s such a little ray of sunshine…very affectionate and always purring. She became part of our little family so quickly and we were so terribly worried we’d lose her.
She really is my little sunshine!
The veterinarian did come through for us though, and he saved our little Poe. She spent 3 nights at the hospital and we visited her between our holiday parties whenever we had the chance. The nurse there commented on how much higher her spirits were when we were there, which made us feel like there was SOMETHING we could actually do for her.
Visiting her at the vet
Poe came home on Boxing Day and is still recovering. We try to keep her out of the cone as much as possible so she can get some good rest and feel comfortable, but she’s a cat…so bathing is inevitable. Her spirit is slowly returning and she’s becoming playful again, which is wonderful to see. Hugo rather enjoyed being an ‘only cat’ for the 4 days she was gone, but he’s adjusting to her return. And as much as he tries to pretend he hates that little black ball of fur, he was worried and searching for her the entire time she was gone.
Hugo, unimpressed that the ‘black one’ has returned
Poe, unimpressed that she has been ‘coned’
Poe, trying to block out all the ‘human’ around her.
So I guess our Christmas story had a happy ending. 🙂
The best present I got this Christmas was to have Poe back home safe and sound, but I did score some other shwag as well! The beautiful wallet and book were from Dave (he also got wii controls so we can play on his computer) and the painting is an original from my boss, Nathan, who is quite a talented artist! I also received a lot of chocolate and other goodies from my students. The cat key chain was given to me by Ken…one of the coolest 13 year olds I’ve ever met. My whole class was worried sick about Poe. It was very sweet that they cared so much!
I’ll be back soon with some stories about Hong Kong!
At this point I should probably give up apologizing for the long gaps between my posts. Though my intentions have been good, I’m finding it difficult to make time for the things that were my life-savers last year: blogging, journaling and photography. And, although these difficulties can be partially explained by this blog post, there is another element to our lives in Suzhou that has made it nearly impossible to keep the momentum I had last year. I’m actually happy.
See how happy we are! It’s ridiculous! :p
Last year at this time I was merely trying to find ways to cope. I was trying to make friends with people who didn’t necessarily want to be my friends. I was trying to impress a school that didn’t care what I had to offer and I was trying to force myself to fit into a city that was just very much NOT me. Blogging and journaling was a way for me to stay positive about the things I was going through. This year, I don’t find myself needing the same things.
In Guiyang I sort of felt like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole…
Because Suzhou has been so welcoming and such a good fit for Dave and I, we find ourselves making friends easily and doing things that involve growing a certain amount of roots in this city. In Guiyang, the idea of getting a gym membership seemed too permanent to me. I felt like we could be leaving at any moment (I was honestly afraid of being fired for a long time) so I didn’t think signing a yearlong contract at a gym would be wise. Here, that isn’t an issue.
After receiving countless flyers from several gyms in the area, we decided on the one that had English on the cover
The same thing goes with the newest editions to our home: Hugo and Poe. We ventured down to an animal shelter a few weeks back and found 2 cats that quickly became ours. Now that they are healthy and well-fed, they are quickly becoming family. I would never have dreamed of getting a pet in Guiyang. Moving an animal across the country is stressful and Dave and I both knew that Guiyang was not going to be our last stop in China, so pets were off the table.
Oue sweet boy, Hugo, is missing a leg
My beautiful girl, Poe, who is curled up in one of my arms as i type this (she isn’t exactly making this easy but I’ll forgive her because she’s so darn cute!!!
So I guess what I’m saying is that although blogging is still a project that is very important to me, I find myself being stretched in other ways as well. Improving my health further is high on my ‘to-do’ list this year, so Power House Gym will be getting more of my time. My cats are also high on my priority list. Keeping my apartment clean is essential for my survival (have I mentioned I’m extremely allergic to my cats?). If the fur or dander build up, I can’t breath, so I’m spending a lot more time vacuuming and sweeping than I was last year. And lastly, it’s kind of nice having a social life again! Now that I’m not a depressed, anxious mess anymore, its great going out with some of the teachers from my school. As I’ve mentioned before…I work with some really great people!!
The Jamaican Deviled Eggs that I made for a Thanksgiving get together
My latest food and nutrition dish: Jamaican Pizza
A friend we made on the subway. We were actually on our way to the animal shelter!!
So that sums up the last month. New family members, gym memberships and of course, I’m still keeping very busy at the school (which I still love!!). September and October were their own brands of mayhem that need some explaining. I’ve already written about Beijing, but that’s only 1/3 of our travel in those 2 months. In total, we were on 6 airplanes, 5 high speed trains and slept in 4 different hotels within our first 60 days in China. That may sound like fun, but we also security checks becomes a bore after that many trips…
Trip #1 – Shanghai
2 weeks after arriving in Suzhou, I had to travel to Shanghai for a week to complete a 60 hour TEFL training program for the Chinese government. I had already completed 240 hours of this training over the past few years (through a Canadian company), but still, in an effort to weed out any undesirable teachers, the government requested that I complete their program before I would be granted a fully legal visa. I obliged because the last thing I wanted was to be kicked out of the country after finally finding the right job!
A fairly good depiction of how Chinese Visa requirements can feel.
The training itself was pretty useless. Because I’d already taken several of these courses (3 of them being in-depth training for specific age levels: adults, adolescents and children), I already knew most of the material. I can definitely see how this training would be valuable for anyone who has never taught before, but for me, it was a waste of time. I showed up, did my best not to lose my temper on our teacher (who insisted with raise both hands in the air any time he wanted us to be quiet…) and made it through the week without losing too much of my sanity.
Me doing my practicum class. We visited a local university which was sort of funMy graduating class. I met some swell people here 🙂
The supposed bright side to all of this was that I got to see Shanghai. The reason I say ‘supposed’ was because I didn’t actually like Shanghai all that much. Most foreigners see Shanghai as a haven from ‘old’ China, and in a lot of ways, they are right. There are countless western brands there where you can find everything from cosmetics, to western food to western clothing. Still, this wasn’t all that impressive, given that I’d been in Canada 3 weeks earlier and I was all stocked up on my ‘western’ stuff.
We didn’t actually eat here…but it just sounded SO American!We DID eat here! We were craving Guiyang food far more than we were craving western food!
But Shanghai is simply not my cup of tea. The city is just too much ‘city’ for this small town girl! With a population of 30,000,000 (yeah…that’s slightly less than all of Canada), the subways are always packed, the pollution is nasty and the noise is unbearable. I hate the crowds and there was nothing worse than the metro station where people routinely push their way onto the trains. Our only refuge from the crowds was our hotel room, which stunk of cigarettes and was nearly as noisy as the outdoors.
Construction that was being done right outside our hotel window…until 2am
A delicious meal that we were VERY overcharged for! All was well until we got our bill and saw a 50rmb fee ($10CDN) for the tea we asked for. Asking for tea in China is like asking for a glass of water in Canada…it’s complimentary! But we are white so…..
Of course, it was impossible to get a picture of this train without someone else in the shot, so I finally caved after waiting several minutes, and took this picture, with this random lady posing…
This was the first time we were ‘Shanghaied in Shanghai’. We were sold this train ticket as a tourist attraction…we understood that it was a scenic tour of the city from the world’s fastest train. It turns out that it was a 1 way ticket to the airport…and it never went much faster than the regular high speed trains we take on a monthly basis….
I’m grateful that Dave was able to join me on that trip (the beauty of being able to work anywhere where there is internet access). We had an OK time in the shopping district, walking around and seeing the sights, and we found ourselves some good restaurants and had a nice time down at The Bund. Mostly, I met some really cool people while taking my class, so that was good.
A view of the Shanghai Skyline from ‘The Bund’, a famous walking path by the water
The glare from the neon sighns was nearly enough to ruin this picture!
For National Day, Mcdonalds changed it’s vanilla ice cream into ‘green tea matcha’ icecream. I did not know this when I orded an Oreo Mcflurry…
When the course was over, I was thrilled to head back to Suzhou and get back in to the swing of things at the school. I still hadn’t really had a chance to get my classes in full swing and I still had plenty of ‘beginning of semester’ projects on the go, so it was important for me to be present at the school as much as possible. But of course, 10 days later, National Week arrived…
Trip #2 – Beijing
Beijing was somewhere I had never been but had always wanted to visit. When the National Day came upon us, we had to make a decision: Stay at home for a week with nothing to do…or head to Beijing for a mini holiday. We chose the latter, mostly because I hate being bored…
This was so much better that sitting at home for a week!
Beijing was somewhere I had never been but had always wanted to visit. When the National Day came upon us, we had to make a decision: Stay at home for a week with nothing to do…or head to Beijing for a mini holiday. We chose the latter, mostly because I hate being bored…
Now, I’ve already written about the Great Wall, so you might be wondering why I’d bring up Beijing at all. After all…how much could we have seen on a 4 day holiday? Well…the answer to that is that we saw enough to know that we are happy that we don’t live in Beijing!
Though, we did meet several nice cats!
As some of you may have seen in the news, the pollution in Beijing is atrocious. You can actually taste the pollution in the air and there’s always a bit of a haze to see through…even when it’s sunny. Out on The Wall, we had clean air, but the two days we spent IN the city made me very glad to live in Suzhou, where the pollution is bad at times (it comes down from nearby Shanghai), but where I don’t feel like I’m actually in danger by being there!
As the weather gets colder, the pollution in northern China becomes so bad that school is actually cancelled. It wasn’t this bad when we were there, but at the moment, it’s worse than it’s ever been. And on an interesting note…filtration system advertisements keep showing up on my facebook feed…
You can read more about Northern China’s pollution woes here
But the pollution isn’t the only part of Beijing to leave a bad taste in my mouth (so to speak). Dave and I felt like targets from the moment we left the airport. Everybody wanted our money. Everybody EXPECTED our money. From the moment you step out of the airplane, you are a target…and I can’t think of a group worse than the taxi drivers of China…
Although there are so many ways to be ripped off when you’re traveling, it’s difficult to choose just one…
In western countries, it is expected that the taxi driver use a meter when taking you anywhere. Taxi drivers will still find other ways to rip you off (taking the long way around, for example), but they are still limited by their meter. In many Chinese cities…that isn’t he case.
What’s worse is that people here are so accustomed to this sort of behavior from drivers, that they don’t even question it. Drivers refuse to use their meters and they will not take you unless you agree with their price. Worst of all, most cabbies work for a small number of companies, so they all agree on a minimum price, so no matter which taxi you go to, you are paying AT LEAST double what a metered ride would cost. This is infuriating…especially when there are really no other options at 11pm when you have luggage and have just gotten off a flight.
Dave trying to stay optimistic, while I get ready to slug a cabbie for being rude to me…
But taxi drivers are not the only once looking to make a buck off the tourists…
This restaurant was so awful I actually ran back over here after I had time to calm down, so that I could take a picture to warn future tourists. Unfortunately, this is what nearly every restaurant in China looks like…
The restaurant business reportedly did well over the National Holiday, and nowhere was that truer than in Beijing. One restaurant was actually handing out 1500rmb bills ($300 Canadian) by charging people ‘per shrimp’ in their food orders. It’s sad that we live in a world where this is common place – tourists all over the world deal with this treatment. It doesn’t only happen in China.
It’s even been known to happen in Antarctica!
Our personal experience was at a restaurant near the Forbidden Kingdom. We wanted to have Beijing Roast Duck while in the city (it’s hardly a treat for Dave and I…we have a fantastic ‘duck place’ in Winnipeg…) so we ventured out to find somewhere that wasn’t going to overcharge us.
This is what Peking Duck is suppose to look like
We saw a sign advertising the dish, so we went into the restaurant. It was a bit of a hole in the wall, but we often seek out those restaurants, as they often have the best food in China. We ordered the duck along with a favorite bean dish of ours, and could hear the staff nervously laughing while watching the ‘crazy lao wai’ from their little desk at the other end of the restaurant.
When they served us this canned, slimy, salty duck on a plate…I almost screamed. That’s when we realized that they weren’t laughing because they were nervous at our ‘whiteness’. They were laughing because we were being taken for a ride…
We ate the little bit we could tolerate before asking for the bill…in Chinese. You see, at this point, we hadn’t been given much opportunity to demonstrate that we weren’t their average tourist. We do, in fact, know the difference between real Beijing Roast Duck and the canned, slimy sludge they’d served us…
The staff actually huddled together to see what they could charge us for the meal. I could HEAR them discussing how much to charge us for the meal (the restaurant DID have menus…and we DID check the prices…). When the waiter came over, our conversation went something like this (done completely in Chinese. I am VERY proud).
Marie: Why is our bill so high? Our duck never arrived.
Waiter: Your duck is right here
Marie: THIS is your duck? This is NOT Beijing Roast Duck! Beijing Roast Duck is delicious. This tastes terrible!
Waiter: Well, this is our Roast Duck.
***Moves uncomfortably, shifting his weight from foot to foot***
Marie: Ok, well, even if this IS your duck, our bill should only be 140rmb…why are you asking for 190rmb?
Waiter: Wait one moment please.
***He runs to the back…to speak to a manager, I imagine.
Waiter: The additional charge is because you used our dishes. There is a 50rmb fee for using our plates.
Marie: I’m sorry, but you are a racist.
Waiter: What!? I am not!?
Marie: So, you’re telling me that you would treat a Chinese person this way?
This is the point where Dave wisely gave the man 150rmb and we walked out of the restaurant. We created quite a scene and several customers had quickly paid for their dishes and left. We’d actually even scared some new customers away from eating at the restaurant. I felt good about myself. I also felt angry, so we walked around for a little while longer and then went back and got a picture of the place. I half-hope they saw me take it.
I should also add that this restaurant had a picture of legitimate Beijing Duck on their sign and that they shouted ‘we have Beijing Duck’ at us when we walked by. So I think it’s safe to say that this is an ongoing scam these people run…
The rest of our time in Beijing was less eventful (thank goodness!). We saw some parks and some old buildings. We really weren’t up for anything overly touristy so we never made it down to the Forbidden City or Summer Palace, but some day we’ll head back down there to see the rest that China’s capital has to offer. Beijing is only 5 hours away by high speed train, so a visit would hardly be difficult to organize.
BeiHai Park is definitely worth the visit if you are in Beijing. The willows and the old architecture make for a nice walk in a fairly quiet space. The park is also home to many ‘wild’ cats (probably to keep insect and rodent populations down). I say ‘wild’ because they are all super friendly and nearly all were happy to be pet.You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to get this shot! It’s nearly impossible to take a picture without tourists in it!I love Chinese architectureDave and I in front of a very impressive carved mural
My love for Suzhou is showing through in other areas of my life. I am now obsessed with archways.
Our last grand adventure in Beijing was to do some Christmas shopping. We braved this night market and found some goodies for our family and friends back home. Now we are faced with the challenge of finding a post office so that we can ship these gifts! The strangest things are struggles in China…
I’ll be back soon with Part 2 of this post. I’ll be writing about our trip to Hong Kong! (Spoiler: It was fabulous!)
We had limited time in Cambodia (7 days is hardly enough to experience an entire country, after all!), and had to pick and choose where we would spend our time during our May Holiday. Although there were several places that we wanted to visit, Angkor National Park was our main reason for visiting Cambodia, so we decided to book a 2 day tour with Happy Angkor Tours, instead of the 1 day tour that we allocated at all our other stops.
After all, there are hundreds of temples to see in Angkor National Park. Even 2 days wasn’t nearly enough time to see everything we’d wanted to see.
Dave and I aren’t usually big fans of tours (mainly because we hate other tourists) but this one wasn’t too bad. Our guide had passable English and knew a lot about the Buddhist history in all the temples. He tried very hard to keep us happy, even in the heat, and ended both days a little earlier than had been planned because we were both dealing with pretty awful sun stroke. This meant that we missed the sunset part of the tour we’d booked on the first day. It’s too bad, as it would have been beautiful to see the sun go down behind Phnom Bakheng, but by the time we had finished at Bayan Temple, all either of us wanted to do was make our way back to our hotel to take it easy. Looking back now, I’m kicking myself, but of course, in addition to the heat, we had spent the previous night on a bus and neither of us had gotten much rest, so the idea of an air conditioned room with a comfortable bed was more appealing than seeing the sun go down.
We stayed at Villa Medamrei while in Siem Reap. The hotel was beautiful and the staff went above and beyond (letting us check in about 6 hours earlier than they had to so we could shower before our tour started). If you’re looking to stay in Siem Reap…I strongly urge you to check this place out. Great pricing for a beautiful stay!
And it was a good thing that we got that additional rest, because Day 2 of our holiday started an hour before the sun came up…
Angkor Wat – Round 2
We woke up at around 4:30am, showered (we couldn’t do enough of that in Cambodia!!!) and met our tour guide outside our hotel. It was still very dark out and there was nobody in the streets. A half hour later, we were walking up to Angkor Wat again, though we couldn’t see it against the black sky. Our guide found us a fantastic spot on the bank of the man-made pond, we bought some iced coffee from a vendor who was selling them to tourists who were there for sunrise, and we waited.
At first, we could only see the beehive shaped outline of Angkor Wat
As it got brighter and brighter we realized not only why it was worth waking up at 4:30am for this, but also that we were not the only ones who’d made this trip. The gratitude I felt for our tour guide, who had gotten us here before the crowds, also multiplied as I looked around me.
Eventually, the sun rose completely, giving us this spectacular view to start our day:
Chong Kneas – A Floating Fishing Village
Cambodia has 2 seasons: wet and dry. The wet season runs from May to October and the dry season from November to April. The Mekong River varies greatly between these two seasons, as Cambodia receives 75% of it’s rainfall in the wet months. So believe it or not, this is the same river:
The Mekong as we saw itThe Mekong River at the height of the rainy season.
But human beings have survived for all these years because we are so adaptable. As a species, we survive all over the globe in a variety of environments and conditions, and just like Canadians bundle up into layers of clothes to survive the winter, Cambodia has found ways to survive the rise and fall of the Mekong River.
A Cambodian home in the dry seasonA Cambodian fishing village during the wet season
Entire villages are built on stilts to account of the rise and fall of the Mekong, and we were lucky enough to visit one of these villages. Here, people don’t walk down the street. Instead, they hop into a boat and row to their destination. Even livestock is kept above ground.
The type of boat we took to the villageUs, in said boatThis was a convenience store of sortsThese fishing villages are quite multicultural. Many of the fishermen here are Vietnamese and this is a Korean SchoolA fish trap used by localsWe also got to see some of these traps outside the water. I honestly still don’t understand how this one works haha!This is Sap Lake. There are several fishing villages on it, including the one we visited. It is fed by The Mekong, which begins all the way up in Southern China and flows all the way into the South China Sea
Banteay Srei – The Lady’s Temple
Next, we set off to see another temple…and though I’d never heard of it, it is quite famous within Cambodia. Unlike many of Angkor National Park’s temples, this sight was not built by a King of the era…it was built by a Hindu Brahman who happened to be the spiritual teacher of the king at the time. He had the temple built in honor of the Hindu deity, Shiva, but today it is known as the ‘Lady’s Temple’ because of it’s most unique feature: the temple is constructed entirely of hard pink sandstone. It is truly a beautiful location to visit and I got some amazing pictures while we were there.
The temple is also famous for its intricate carvingsAll windows had an odd number of pillars. This one has 5, but many have 7. Odd numbers are lucky in both Buddhism and Hinduism.
So many beautiful structures in this “small” temple
The pink sandstone was so beautiful! It made the whole temple glow 🙂
Banteay Samre – Our Final Stop
Our last stop of the tour was at Banteay Samre, a temple built in around the same time as Angkor Wat. It was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu and once had an impressive mote surrounding it, that would have made it something to see in its day. The colour of these ruins was gorgeous. Just like at Bayun Wat, I feel like we were too tired to truly appreciate how elaborate this sight is. I guess we’ll just have to go back some day 🙂
There were so many beautiful buildings at Bateay SamreMany of the towers are shaped in the same fashion as Angkor WatThis sight was restored quite effectively a few decades ago, though it hasn’t had any restoration for a while now.The spikes on many of the roofs are what stood out for Dave. I honestly hadn’t noticed them at the time but they definitely added a lot of texture to the buildingsThe back entrance to Bateay Samre
So that wraps up our stay in Siem Reap! Next, I’ll be writing about Kratie…home of the Irawadi Dolphins!! Stay tuned!!!
Around 7 years ago now, I decided to sit down and come up with a bucket list. I decided that there would be 100 items on that list and I knew, even before I began, that a lot of those items would involve traveling. In the last year I’ve been fortunate enough to cross 10 items off of that list, and I plan to be crossing off several more before 2015 ends. One of the things I’ve accomplished this year was our trip to Angkor National Park, which was the main reason we traveled to Cambodia for China’s May Holiday. Although I planned on finishing what I had to say (and show) about Angkor in 1 post, once I went through my pictures again, I realized that that would be impossible. There’s just too much to see and too much to tell to do it all in one post. So this will be part 1 of 2 on our stay in northern Cambodia, where we toured temples, met locals and visited a floating village.
We started our trip in Phnom Penh and then traveled to Siam Reap by overnight bus.This is a night bus. It’s not the most comfortable way to travel, but it was better than the one I took in China. Also, it gave us the benefit of traveling while we slept…we only had 7 days to see 3 cities so time was of the essenceAngkor Wat is so representative of Cambodia, that it is even on their flag
The Cambodian Empire
Angkor National Park is all that remains of the Kampuchea empire, which reigned for over South-East Asia for over 600 years. Covering parts of Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and even Burma, the Cambodian Empire was fierce and wealthy, and as such, its kings erected massive temples both in Cambodia and in its conquered lands. The most impressive group of those temples is near Siem Reap (named after a defeat against Thailand at that location), which is where we visited during our stay in Cambodia. Interestingly, during Kampuchea’s hay day, there was both Hindu and Buddhist influence in the area, so these temples vary quite a bit from one to the next, making Angkor National Park a fascinating visit.
The Cambodian Empire from the 9th-15th centuries…Cambodia now…We saw this Buddha as we entered one of the main buildings of Angkor Wat….But saw these carvings depicting stories from the Hindu Vedas a few minutes later
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Angkor National Park spans an area of over 400kms square and contains over 100 individual temples, ranging from Angkor Wat (an enormous temple with many buildings within its walls) to small ruins that are merely a wall left over from a previous sight that was destroyed.
This is Krol Romeas, one of the smallest ruins left in Angkor National ParkAngkor Wat Temple before sunset, Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Written records weren’t kept at this point in history, and much of what we know about the 9th-15th centuries has come from Angkor Wat and it’s surrounding temples. Carvings in the stone, as well as refinements of past culture still remain in these spots and they’ve told archeologists a great deal about South East Asian history. As someone who studied classical Roman and Greek history in University, I found that aspect of the park to be enthralling. Because of its cultural relevance, Angkor National Park was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is preserved and has been repaired as a result. People flock from all over the world to see these sights, which are some of the most famous and awe inspiring temples in the world.
Apsara are relevant to both Buddhism and Hinduism. We got to see a traditional Apsara dance while in Phnom Penh. This carvings tell a story of the culture in ancient AngkorThe entire interior of Angkor Wat is gorgeous…so many stone carvingsIn this carving, a king is shown being waited on by his servants. It took 30 years to build Angkor Wat, and over 350,000 workers. With the amount of detailed carvings there are in the temple, it does not shock me that there were that many people involved in its creation.Some carvings tell stories about battles that were won (or lost) by the Cambodian Empire
Angkor Wat
Our first stop in Siem Reap was Angkor Wat, the temple after which the national park was named. It spans 1km square and is the home to several libraries, halls and pools. It’s fared well against the test of time and has been restored through the years, where needed. We were lucky enough to visit Angkor Wat twice…I’ll be writing about our sunrise visit in my next post. Our first stop was a very hot one (the temperatures in Cambodia during the dry season go up to 40 degrees celcius…and stay there…all…day….long…), but well worth the trip. Our guide was a decent photographer too, so we even got pictures of the two of us in Angkor National Park, which was nice 🙂
Dave and I outside one of the front pools. During the dry season (we caught the end of it), there shouldn’t be any water left in these pools, but apparently tourists were complaining on Trip Advisor that they couldn’t get reflective photos, so the Cambodian Government decided to fill the pools with hoses. Tourists complain too much, I think…These are just 2 of the many libraries at Angkor Wat. Although they are fairly empty inside now, I loved being in them. It’s some of the only refuge we got from the blistering hot sun.I dislike that our guide chopped off the top of this library. Otherwise it would have been an awesome picture. I still like it though…we both look so purposeful. For me, my purpose was mostly just to get out of the sun 😛Restoration was being done in some of the buildings.These were both taken at the exact center of Angkor Wat. Our guide decided to pop his foot into the picture too hahaThe ceiling here was beautiful.
More intricately carved buildings.The view from the top tower, which in its time, was reserved for the Royal Family alone. Sadly, I was feeling pretty heat stroked at this point so I wasn’t able to enjoy it as much as I would have liked.
The heat definitely played a factor in our enjoyment of Angkor Wat (along with our guide’s underestimation of the amount of water we’d need…we ran out early…), but Dave was brilliant enough to make a video before we got too exhausted:
Ta Prohm
We left Angkor Wat and hopped into a nicely air conditioned van, where we enjoyed the rest of our iced coffees to cool down. Iced coffee is AMAZING in Cambodia!!! Instead of sugar, they use sweetened condensed milk, which gave it a nice flavor. Plus, they get their coffee from Vietnam, which has some of the world’s best :). My favorite part though…it’s served in a bag…
Yes…that bag is full of a bag of coffee haha! (They put it in a plastic bag, put that bag into a paper bag and then put that one into another plastic bag….)
Ta Prohm is, without a doubt, one of the coolest looking places I’ve ever seen in my life. It was built in the late 12th – early 13th centuries and unlike Angkor Wat, which was built under a Hindu King, Ta Prohm was built primarily as a Buddhist school. What makes Ta Prohm so interesting though isn’t it’s Buddhist ties. The fact that the temple has been kept as it was found, wild and grown over by trees, makes it the perfect spot for photos.
The way the trees have grown over and through the temple is why Ta Prohm is so famous todayOne unfortunate thing about Ta Prohm is that it is incredibly tourist. We had to wait almost 5 minutes just to get this photo because Chinese tourists kept cutting in front of us and hogging the area of selfie after selfie…our tour guide eventually told them off so we could get our 1 picture in haha!!
Huge trees!The outer walls are something to see. Most of the stone used to create the temples in this time period is either Lava Stone or Sand Stone. This is Lava Stone.
It’s possible you recognize Ta Prohm from Lara Croft Tomb Raider. This is where it was filmed 🙂
Ta Nei
Ta Nei is one of my favorite spots we visited. It was a long way away from all the other temples, (our driver had to go down some roads that looked like they were just walking paths in the middle of the jungle in order to get us there), but once we arrived, we saw why it was worth the trip.
Not only were there no other tourists there, but the sight is gorgeous! It’s definitely seen better days, and it hasn’t been restored the way Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm have been, but there is such a rawness to this old temple…I got some of my favorite pictures of the whole trip during this visit.
A lot of what’s left of Ta Nei is rubble.
And, like Ta Prohm, there are beautiful trees hereBeautiful and enormous
We loved this sight so much, we even remembered to take a video for it! I love how beautifully quiet it was there 🙂
Bayun (or Bayan) Temple
Our last stop on day one of our Siem Reap Tour was in Angkor Thom, the last (and longest enduring) city of the Cambodian Empire. Although there are several sights to see within Angkor Thom, Dave and I were suffering from pretty terrible heat exhaustion, so we only saw some of them from within the air conditioned vehicle. Our tour guide wanted to save our energy for Angkor Thom’s greatest masterpiece: Bayon Temple (I’ve also seen it spelled ‘Bayun’ Temple).
Bayon Temple from afar
Built in the late 12th century, 100 years after the building of Angkor Wat (our first stop of the day), this is clearly a Buddhist temple. From afar, it is a beautiful sight to see, but when you see it up-close, you realize how fascinating this temple truly is.
Every tower at Bayon Temple has a beautiful Buddha face carved into it.
Each of Bayon’s 54 towers has a large face carved into each of its 4 sides. That means that this magnificent temple has a total of over 200 faces. It made for some incredible photos!!
A photo taken from within one of the many halls. One of my favorites of the trip
I should add that these faces are enormous…here is Dave and I standing directly in front of what is considered Bayon’s most beautiful Buddha.
I was very happy to have a guide at this point, as he was able to point out some of the best shots. There were so many faces everywhere that I could have easily missed shots like these ones:
He also got some great pictures of the two of us. By the end of this part of the tour, we were both feeling like we did on our wedding day…tired of smiling! But it was all worth it in the end! I would have been devastated had I not gotten some of these pictures!!
In of the Bayon’s beautiful windowsBayon in the backgroundThis Buddha was far behind usI like this one of Dave 🙂At the most famous entrance of Angkor Thom
So that was day 1 of our Siem Reap stop. I’ll be back next week with Day 2, where we experienced Angkor Wat at sunrise, a floating fishing village and Cambodia’s beautiful ‘Lady’s Temple’.
We opted for a change of scenery today, and have settled in at Cafe Void for the evening, a small coffee shop in Zhong Tian Hua Yuan. The rainy season has begun in Guiyang, and although the temperature is much better now, we are getting several thunder storms a week. A fairly severe one hit while we were having supper tonight at our favorite hot pot place (it’s never too hot for hot pot!!) when it started thundering. Starbucks is about 20 minutes away by scooter, so we chose to stay close to home instead. Void’s got a great atmosphere anyway, and it’s nice to switch it up now and then anyway 🙂
Now, I know I never got around to finishing all of my posts about Thailand, but I think they’re just going to have to wait. I wrote about most of the major stuff already, and the 2 posts I have left to write (1 on the elephants at ENP and one about nightlife in Thailand) can wait until I’m done with our latest trip: Cambodia!!
Cambodia is bordered by Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and the Gulf of Siam. It’s most famous for Angkor National Park, which I’ll be getting to in my next post 🙂
Cambodia is amazing for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it’s incredible exotic…even for people living in China. Unlike Thailand, which is basically Canada’s ‘Caribbean’, Cambodia hasn’t been open for tourism for very long. They have a rather ugly modern history, and until the late 1990s, people simply didn’t go there to visit. But I’ll get to that in a bit…First, I’ll tell you a little bit about our first stop: Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh
Located on the Mekong River, Phnom Penh is very different from the rest of the country
Phnom Penh is a fairly modern city. It isn’t a rich place, but compared to the rest of the country, it has a booming economy. There are plenty of sights to see in Cambodia’s capital, including several markets, monuments and temples and Cambodia’s National Museum. There’s no shortage of places to visit and we had to limit ourselves to a few top choices as we only had 2 days to see the city.
The national museum was one of our stops. Unlike the grand palace and the temples, there was no dress code here, and with the +40 heat, I was glad to not have to wear long sleeves!I like that they used shrubs for this elephant’s body 🙂Some very nice architecture at the museum!
Still, there is extreme poverty here. Many children don’t go to school and instead beg on the street or sell bracelets to tourists. The city is also very dirty, which is common in poor countries.
We saw this type of thing both in the city and in rural areas. This was a particularly bad area, on a river bank. Nearby is a fishing village built entirely on stiltsThe garbage provides income for families who are too poor to send their children to school. Although education is free (and compulsory) in Cambodia, families keep their children at home to help earn income to keep everyone fed. This young girl was looking for things she could sell in town.Similarly, these children are sifting through plastic and garbage, looking for anything valuable that has the potential to earn them some income.
We met this group of boys in Kratie. They were very friendly and very excited to see foreigners. We saw them on the weekend, so I don’t know for sure that they don’t go to school, but we saw many groups of children just like this during the week, who asked us to buy things from them so that they COULD go to school.
And when it comes to helping the poor in Cambodia, there is a catch 22 for tourists. On one hand, if you don’t buy the things they are selling you feel like a terrible person. $2 isn’t much to a Canadian, but it’s a small fortune for a family as poor as some that we saw. But on the other hand, by giving in and purchasing items from these kids, you are telling their parents ‘yes, sending your children out to sell things is a good idea. I could say no to you, but I can’t say no to them’. I felt awful every time I gave in, but I couldn’t say no, and Dave and I ended up with a lot of bracelets, postcards, books and magnets.
We met these children in Kratie. They were so cute and so shy. I kept making faces at them to make them laugh, trying to get them to come over and say hello (they were hiding behind some boxes trying to get a glimpse of us). I eventually got them to come over and I asked them their names and taught them a little English. When I left, they came running out and said ‘Goodbye, Teacher!!!’. I met another group of girls who were selling flutes. We bought one flute from each of them ($1 a piece…) and I asked them what their names were and how old they all were. They all lit right up when I gave them that little bit of attention. I doubt they have many tourists ask them about their lives. More often than not, they are just shooed to the side.
I’m not sure what’s worse…sifting through garbage, or being treated like garbage…Either way, these kids don’t have the life I wish they did…
But it wasn’t long ago that children in Cambodia suffered a much worse fate than a lack of education. As I mentioned earlier in this post, Cambodia has an ugly past. From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, and the people suffered one of the worst genocides in world history. Millions of people died through starvation, torture and execution and this ugly man was the brain behind it all.
Meet Pol Pot: the world’s 6th most murderous dictator of all time. In just 4 years, he killed nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population.
As North Americans, we grow up hearing about Hitler and his atrocities. The Khmer Rouge, however, was completely foreign to me, which is strange given how recently the Cambodian genocide happened. After all, I consider myself to be a worldly minded person…I read the news and keep track of the big things that are happening in the world. But this one I hadn’t heard of. And that’s probably because so little was done by western powers to stop this man. We can’t be proud of bringing down this assailant, like we brought down Hitler, so Cambodia’s story just doesn’t make the cut in our history books.
One of many famous quotes attributed to Pol Pot. Another depressing one: “It is better to kill 10 innocent men than to let 1 guilty man escape”.
When the the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975, Pot had big plans for its citizens. He believed in a perfect communism that was based on agriculture. Pot thought that anyone educated or anyone who lived in the cities was the enemy and he treated them as such. Many of those people were sent to S-21, one of the many schools that the Khmer Rouge turned into torture compounds. We toured the old school and saw some of the things accomplished there in those 4 terrible years.
This is S -21…the most infamous prison of the Khmer Rouge period. It’s since been turned into a Genocide Museum in an attempt to educate people about the genocide here and give voice to the victims who died in these walls.
There are several buildings in S-21, each with their own brand of horror. Our first stop was a building where high-status inmates were held. This is where they kept people who were suspected of working with the CIA or other foreign intelligence agencies. It’s said that the Khmer Rouge would arrest anyone who wore glasses, because glasses, after all, are a sign of intelligence. And intelligence was not to be trusted.
This is the bed an inmate was given (there was never a mattress). But that was the least of it. The people who were kept in these cells were tortured on a daily basis…water boarding and beatings were a regular occurrence. And the female prisoners were raped and forced to eat their own excrement. All because they had an education…
After seeing many rooms like the one above, we moved to another area of the prison where groups of prisoners were kept. The quarters here were far worse…
Because this was originally a school, S-21 didn’t have cells right away, so the Khmer Rouge had them built. This is one of many that we sawWhen they weren’t being tortured, prisoners were left alone in these cells. It was forbidden that they speak to other inmates and if they were caught,t hey were beaten further.
Cell 18
The last building we saw told stories of individuals who survived S-21. In total, it is estimated that 17,000 people were kept here, tortured and beaten. Of those 17,000, only 12 prisoners survived. We met two of them while at S-21 and bought their books. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to read them. The things we saw here bothered me a lot. I couldn’t sleep for several nights without dreaming about the things I read. The fact that humans could do this other humans is beyond me.
Some prisoners would have been able to see some of the yard from their windows.Stories from the prisoners of S-21concentration camp
Like any camp of this sort, the inmates had to abide by a list of rules set by the guards. Some of them are impossible for me to understand…
“You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.”
“While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.”
No matter how much S-21 bothered me though, The Killing Fields were much, much worse.
The Memorial Stupa in the Phnom Penh Killing Fields
The fields themselves are quite a thing to see. Upon arrival at the Fields, which are just outside Phnom Penh, you are provided with an audio tour (the recordings were very well done and available in many different languages). Everyone has their headphones on and are listening to the stories and history behind the fields. It is completely quiet as you walk through this massacre sight and it feels eerie. If you look up at the other visitors, everyone has the same look on their face. Nobody can quite understand how these things happened. How humans could do this to other humans.
What could be a lovely park, is actually several mass graves where nearly 9000 bodies were found. This is only one of Pol Pot’s many killing fields. In total, it’s estimated that he killed 1.2 million people in fields like this. The other 500,000 people who died under his regime died of starvation and exhaustion in the rice fields.
Since the fields were discovered, the individual pits have been carefully excavated, in an attempt to understand what went on in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Many of the larger bones (skulls and femurs) were removed from the earth, cleaned and examined. Some DNA testing was done to help give families closure, though many families have never found their lost relatives. Once DNA analysis was complete, the skulls were moved into the Memorial Stupa that was built at The Killing Fields to honor the dead.
9000 skulls can be found in this memorial stupa. They all have different coloured stickers on them, which indicate the way each individual was executed. The Khmer Rouge didn’t want to pay for bullets, so most victims were hacked to death with farming tools or with weapons made of bamboo or sugar cane branches. That’s one of the things that haunts me the most about this genocide. These were not quick deaths…
The smaller bones were left in the ground and when it rains heavily, they move up through the soil. As a result, you are often reminded by signage to watch where you are stepping. You can often see bones on the ground as well as the clothing of victims.
The employees at the Fields routinely look for bones and clothes that have come up from the ground and stack them respectfully like this to remind people to watch where they are stepping.They also collect some of the bigger pieces of bones and the clothing and put them in display cases for people to see. Notice on the left hand side, in the front, there is a pair of children’s shorts…they’re hard to miss…
We saw a lot of clothing in the pits.
Some of the bigger pits, or pits that were reserved for ‘special’ groups of victims have been sectioned off. On the bamboo posts used to section the pits off, people have left bracelets to commemorate the dead. Many of these bracelets are recognizable from street kids who sell them in down town Phnom Penh.
This was the first grave we came upon. Over 200 victims were found in it. The bracelets have been left by visitors.Women and Children were found in this grave. They were killed the same as the men…with bound hands. They often had to watch their children die first. They weren’t important enough to keep alive, but they were somehow special enough to have their own burial space. So much insanity on the part of their captors…Many of the victims in this grave were found wearing guards clothing, so it’s assumed that they were people who had been found guilty of somehow opposing the revolution. Perhaps they tried to help a prisoner escape, or showed kindness to a woman or child. Even the people running these camps and killing fields weren’t safe from Pol Pot’s grand scheme.This is the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. This tree is located right outside the pit where women and children were found. This tree was used to murder babies.
It was difficult walking around these fields. I feel sad and depressed about it even now, as I write this post. Nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population was killed during the 4 years that Pol Pot was in power. And because this all happened in the last 40 years, everyone you meet in present-day Cambodia has a story they can tell you. They all have either an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent, a parent or a friend who was killed. The trials against the Khmer Rouge’s top officers are ongoing even today, and Pol Pot was never even brought to justice. He died of old age…he spent his final years with his children and grand children: a right he took away from so many innocent people.
The rest of the world wasn’t listening…and to keep the locals from hearing what was happening every night in this field, the Khmer Rough blasted loud ‘Revolution Music’ from speakers hanging in this tree. The end of our audio tour played that type of music, along with the sound of a generator running in the background, so that we could hear the last thing all those people heard. Talk about making an impact…
It’s taken me a long time to write this post because of how much it bothers me that these things happened. Visiting Cambodia’s Killing Fields would be similar to visiting Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen. What happened in Europe in the 1940s is as horrific as what happened in Cambodia in the 70s, but on some levels, Cambodia bothers me more. Not because of the atrocities themselves…but because of my government’s reaction (or lack of reaction) to the Khmer Rouge. Refugees who got out of the country during that awful time were called liars or were accused of exaggerating. Nobody did anything to help the Cambodians…the world didn’t care because Cambodia is so small and far away.
The number of bracelets left behind by tourists is an indicator that I’m not the only person who was affected by this visit.
And that’s why, no matter how much I don’t want to think about this stuff…I have to write about it. Through ‘knowing’, we can prevent these types of things from happening in the future. Sure, reading the news can be a bummer, but if you know that your government isn’t taking steps to help people in cases such as this, you can write to your government representative and encourage action. There are petitions to sign and protests to attend. There ARE things you can do to help. Margaret Mead’s words are something to live by:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
My next post will be on a lighter topic: Angkor National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Sight, and boy were there some sights to see!!
Well, my second semester at Interlingua is now in full swing and I have to admit it is off to a much better start than the first semester! It’s always difficult taking over another teacher’s classes, but when that teacher is loved by students, management and colleagues alike, it’s a little hard to match up. Somehow I persevered and have proven my abilities.
This is Amanda. She’s very bright and loves learning English (she especially loves hangman!!). At the end of last semester she got really worried that I wasn’t going to come back after my trip to Thailand. I promised her I’d be coming back and she grabbed me in a huge hug thanking me. I love my students!!
Since our return from Thailand, I’ve had several parents come to the school specifically asking for me to teach their children. Mostly these parents are referrals from parents whose children I already teach. I’ve also had great feedback from management at the school, who appreciate my organizational skills and diligent lesson planning. I’ve been asked to extend my contract here and even the other teachers have begun to ask for my help when they are having difficulty with particularly shy students. I feel like super-teacher again!! I can’t even explain how great that feels!!!
These are 3 of my students: Coco, Kyle and Lily (left to right). I introduced them to Dave while he was at the school one day, and when I came back from recess, I found this lovely mural on my chalk board! They’d spent their break making it for me 🙂One of my higher level students, Zoe, made me this bracelet 🙂 When she gave it to me she said “I made it for you by myself (we’d learned that phrase last semester)” and added excitedly “I hope you like it!!”. Clearly, I do 🙂
But none of that can top how valued my students make me feel. My kindergarten students in particular are sweet, affectionate and love coming to my classes. This week I’ve been teaching them family member vocabulary (Mommy, Daddy, Sister, Brother, Grandma, Grandpa…) and then also teaching them phrases that they can use this vocabulary with (Mommy is happy, I have 2 sisters). On Sunday I taught them a new phrase: “I love my ______”. I play a game with them where they have to throw my fuzzy dice at the black board and whichever drawing they hit, they have to make a sentence with it. So if they throw the die and it hits my drawing of ‘mommy’ they have to say ‘I love my mommy’. Of course, I always draw myself on the blackboard as well, so they have a reference as to how these bubble drawings are related to me, and before I knew it, they made it a game of throwing the die at MY picture, so that they could say ‘I love my Marie!!!!’. It was so sweet I could have scooped them all up and hugged ’em forever!!!
This was one of the family pictures I drew. As you can see, I’m quite the artist!! (also…my mom isn’t always sad…I was just getting them to talk about emotions!! “Mommy is sad” and then “Your mommy is sad”. My brilliant little monkeys caught on so quickly 🙂
But I suppose I’ve gushed enough now. (If you hadn’t caught on yet…I love my job)
BACK TO THAILAND!!!
Ayutthaya is located roughly 2 hours away from Bangkok by train. A lovely day trip 🙂
Ayutthaya was founded in 1350AD by a King trying to escape a small pox epidemic. It became the capital of Thailand or Siam, as it was known at the time. Fast forward to 1767, when the Burmese army invaded and burnt the city to the ground. What’s left today are the stone structures that survived the sack of Ayutthaya…
The city Burma left in ruins is now a UNESCO World Heritage Sight
We took the train down to the old city, which was apparently the cheapest way to get there but provided the best views. It cost us a total of 40 Bhat to get there and only 30 Bhat to return ($1.54 and $1.16 respectively), so we definitely didn’t break the bank on the trip. Also, it’s a fairly popular destination, so it was no problem to get help at the train station, even though many of the staff didn’t speak much English.
Waiting for the trainA Thai train ticket. I love their writing 🙂
I had done a bit of reading ahead of time, so when we arrived in the ancient city, we knew our best option for getting around was by scooter. I would have never been brave enough to drive myself (in Thailand, they drive on the opposite side of the road), but Dave is brave that way, and before long we were cruising around the city, in search of some lunch.
Clearly, I was pretty excited 🙂Our scooter for the day. It was smaller than our scooter in Guiyang, but it runs on gas (ours is electric) so it had WAY more power!I got this shot while we were moving. I love it because it shows so much…a tangle of power lines…a line up of public phones (do those even exist in Canada anymore??) and a 7-11….Thailand is a neat place!
We found a tiny little restaurant (we weren’t even sure if it was a restaurant at first!) before too long, and the woman who greeted us quickly set off to cook us something we hadn’t yet ordered. This was probably for the best, as we know basically none of the Thai language and wouldn’t have known what to ask for anyway. What she brought us was delicious 🙂
Pickled peppers and spices on the tableDave, chillaxing at our tableLunch 🙂 Seafood fried rice 🙂 You can’t go wrong with that!!
Next we set off to find us some ruins…
We found 3 different sites, and each was unique in its own way. Three happens to be the perfect number of items to have on a list such as this, so I shall continue this post in list form. Also, I can’t remember the actual name for each site, so I’ve dubbed them by their defining features instead.
Sight #1: Wat Maheyong
I saw the very first elephant I’ve seen in my life as we drove up to this site. It was being ridden, which wasn’t ideal, but it was still there…He was an enormous male, with long tusks. He had 2 people in the chair and a mahout riding his neck. Before long we saw many more elephants, all being ridden around a beautiful scene of burnt stone and open fields.
His mahout stopped for a moment so that I could take a picture…I think he was hoping I’d go pay for a ride if he did. The elephant’s eyes looked sad to me…or at the very least, he looked distant…not present at all, like the elephants we saw at ENP.A neat scene
We didn’t know it at the time, but these were actually the most plain ruins that we saw the whole day…we were still impressed!!
Before long, we decided to see what else Ayutthaya had to offer, so we began to head back to the scooter. That’s when the rain started…
You know what they say though…February shows, allow Marie to make new friends??? We ran inside where there was shelter. Nobody likes scooting in the rain!!! That’s where I met this lovely lady.
This is the first elephant I ever really ‘connected’ with. She seemed much happier than the one we’d met on the trail…probably because she didn’t have hundreds of pounds of weight on her back. One of the staff told us that she is 90 years old, and that that’s why she wasn’t being ridden anymore. From what I learned about elephants at Elephant Nature Park though, I can tell that she’s quite young. She’s also quite small, as elephants go, so I think that THAT’S why she wasn’t being ridden…not because she’s too old.
I didn’t want to ride the elephants, but I had no problem feeding her so that’s where we spent our Bhat instead. Elephants are SUCH cool eaters!!! Their trunks are absolutely amazing!!!
When we ran out of bananas, we bid the sweet girl farewell and wandered over through the market for a while. There wasn’t much to see, but we did run into some tigers that were quite obviously drugged for picture taking purposes. I won’t go into too much detail here (I’m planning a whole post on how to be an Eco-conscious tourist in the near future), but neither of us were disappointed when we couldn’t get pictures of the sleepy animal. Instead, we went and visited some more elephants, who weren’t drugged. They were mostly just curious of us (and hoping we had bananas for them!!)
Perfectly timed photo! He thought my scooter helmet was a basket of fruit, I think!This funny boy kept throwing grass on top of his head. Elephants do this with dirt (it’s a natural sun screen for them), so maybe that’s why he was doing it? Elephants also tend to get a little nutty at trekking camps, which could have had something to do with it. One of the mahouts came over and took the grass off his head and the elephant immediately (and kinda defiantly) threw more back on top of his head. He was a funny guy…
After a run in with some sales people claiming to sell ivory jewellery (see my post: Thailand an Overview Part 1 for more details on that little adventure…), the rain cleared and we left in search of some more ruins. What we found…was more elephants!! (and some INCREDIBLE ruins!!)
Sight #2 – Wat Phra Kam
It wasn’t long after we left Wat Maheyong that we started spotting more elephants. We figured there were probably ruins nearby, so we turned in and found a place to park the scooter.
We watched this poor elephant sit down for a photo op. I thought she was going to fall over during the transition from standing to sitting.We walked through a lovely park on our way to the ruins
There was an entrance fee to this set of ruins, but it was well worth the 50bhat ($1.91) we paid to get in. I’ll let the photos do the explaining…
The entrance into the ruins. I had no idea it would get so much better from here!There are burn marks on a lot of the stone but so much of the structures are still intact. I went so camera happy that I managed to kill our battery before making it out of this park! We had to charge the camera at a little shop so that we could take pictures of the 3rd set of ruins!One of my favorite pictures of this sight. It was such a beautiful day, and the green trees and the red stones were just beautiful together!The blue sky made an excellent backdrop!I am the coolest 🙂
Looking at ruins through the ruins 🙂If this is all that’s left of this place, I would have LOVED to see it in all its glory.This is the main building among many smaller ones. It was huge!A couple offered to take a picture for us up near the top of the structure. We had to climb many stairs but it was worth the photo!!
The remains of a religious artifact
When the Burmese invaded Ayutthaya, they didn’t just burn the city to the ground. The plan was to annihilate the population; nothing was safe. Their buildings were burnt and their culture was destroyed. Not even their sacred places were spared. When I was in Inner Mongolia, years ago, I witnessed the same sort of defilement. When the Japanese army had invaded China during WW2, they destroyed many temples. One particular temple stood out to me…the temple itself is still in Baotou, but every single Buddha that had been carved into the stone (there were hundreds!) had had its nose chipped off. Desecration of religious space is common in times of war.
Sight #3: Wat Barom Buddha Ram
There are so many sights to see in Ayutthaya. Although I’d read online that it was a cool place to visit, I hadn’t realized just HOW cool, so we’d only scheduled a half day to see it all. As a result, we missed out on many of the neat things there were to see. With our tight schedule, we had to pick and choose where we would stop, so after visiting Wat Phra Ram, we quickly zipped over to the most famous sight in Ayutthaya: Wat Barom Buddha Ram. You’ll see why it’s famous in the pictures below.
The setting sun also made for gorgeous pictures! Dave kept trying to move me along, but this Buddha was too gorgeous to leave!!
Dave is the 2nd coolest :pThere were dozens of headless and broken Buddhas here.His lips are still gold!My camera isn’t tilted on this one…the building is!Some of the plaster is still visible on this one. We think they might be restoring it
This is why Wat Barom Buddha Ram is so famous. This fallen Buddha head had a tree grow around it 🙂
So that was Ayutthaya! If you’re ever out near Bangkok, I HIGHLY recommend taking the day trip! Especially if you’re a history nut, like me! It’s a neat city and we didn’t even see half of what there was to see! I guess that just means we’ll have to go back…
I’ll be away until next week (I won’t be popular this weekend…it’s test time!!!), but when I return, I’ll be blogging about The Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand!
Spring has officially arrived in Guiyang! The trees are all in full bloom, the sun is out and the weather is gorgeous! After 3 long months of rain and feeling like my very bones were cold, I am warm, wearing a skirt and am not bundled in 3 layers of clothing! I couldn’t be happier!!!!
Everything is becoming greener again!The tree I posted last week has completely opened up and started shedding its flowers. I get to walk by this at least twice a day 🙂
The warm weather has inspired me to write about the highlight of our time in Phuket. Our incredible Hong By Starlight Tour had it all: breathtaking views, adorable animals and fantastic food! The trip TO the Hongs alone was impressive in of itself, but it all went uphill from here.
The karst landscape reminded us both of our Li River Cruise in Guilin.There were gorgeous cliffs and plenty of islands to see.
Now I suppose I should explain what a Hong actually is. We passed many islands during the hour and a half boat ride to the islands we’d be exploring.
Cute little islands like this 🙂
A small number of islands near Phuket are hollow inside, and those are called Hongs. They are only accessible by caves and those caves are only accessible at certain points in the day, dependent on tides. Our tour involved seeing three of these Hongs by Sea Canoe…an inflatable canoe, designed specifically to go through caves. They are very tough and can be deflated if the tide is too high and the squeeze is too tight getting in or out of a cave. They are also unflippable…which is always nice 🙂
Hongs are lagoons, located within an island. The only way to get into one is by going in through a natural cave. These caves can only be accessed when the tide is low.
Though there are several companies who do these tours, we booked ours through John Gray’s Sea Canoe, which has won many awards for eco-tourism and has rave reviews on Trip Advisor, as well as on their website. Of course, we had to experience the tour ourselves to really understand why they’d won these awards.
This is John Gray. He is a very interesting guy who has spent his life trying to save the earth by educating people about the damage we do to it on a daily basis
Talk about a top notch tour! Every aspect of our day exceeded our expectations. The food was fantastic. Not only was it delicious, but because John Gray is all about environmentalism, the fish was net caught (not farmed) and the chicken was free range. This means that everything you are served on this tour is cruelty free and chemical free. A nice touch.
Did I mention it was also delicious???
The staff were also incredible. Not only were they knowledgeable and friendly, but they seemed to really care about the company they work for. They asked us to speak quietly while in the Hongs, to not disturb the wildlife. No garbage was left behind and I actually saw our guide, Ole, pick up garbage that had been left behind by other groups.
Ole has worked for John Gray’s Sea Canoe for 16 years. He is fluent in English and is so incredibly informative! I felt like we were on a wildlife education tour!!
When you add up these elements of the tour, and add in a truly fascinating and beautiful tour destination, you’ve created quite the memorable day trip. So here it goes…I’ll go one cave at a time 🙂
Cave #1 – Diamond Cave and Lagoon
As we approached first island, I could see the small entrance while still in the canoe, and it made me a little nervous. I’m a tad claustrophobic, so the idea of going into that small opening made me quite scared. I made sure to get it on video so you can see what it was like going into that dark space.
I didn’t have zoom on at all through that video and a moment after I stopped making the video, the ceiling was so close that I would have cracked my head on it if I’d even tried to sit up a little. Quite the experience!!!
But then you make it to the end….
Suddenly there’s sky above!
Words fail me here…the inside of these islands is something I hope everyone in my life gets to experience at some point. It was worth every bit of claustrophobia I felt!! And although the scenery alone would have been enough to make my day, Ole had a lot to do with the way we experienced these 2 Hongs as well. He spoke softly so that the wildlife didn’t run away. He paddled softly and slowly so that we could enjoy the peaceful stillness of the Hong. He taught us about the area in a quiet voice and paddled a little behind the other guides so that we didn’t have to be around all the other loud tourists. These were perfect moments.
My first Mangrove Tree 🙂 This is the only tree in the world that can grow in saltwater. They are essential to the ecosystem as they act as a nursery and hiding spot for many many types of fish.We saw this guy crushing a clam up against the rocks. Monkeys, unlike apes, are excellent swimmers, and they will swim from island to island to find food.The entrance to the second HongSuch beauty!!!
The way out of the island was a tight squeeze, as the tide had risen a little. We were the last ones out of the Hong and at some points in the journey back to the boat, I thought we were going to get stuck in the cave and drown. I could hear our canoe rubbing against sharp rocks and kept envisioning it deflating. The cave ceiling was close to my nose even while I lay flat on my back, arms and legs tucked. But we made it through! I was happy to discover later one that our canoes are built with those rocks in mind and that it’s incredibly difficult to rupture one badly enough that it sinks. Still…my mind was racing on our trip out of that island!!
These are some of our fellow tour goers at the opening of the cave, where the ceiling was still high. It got much worse from here. Some of the other guides had actually had to deflate their canoes a little to get out of the cave!!!
Cave #2 – Mangrove Lagoon
After this first stop, I couldn’t wait to see my second Hong! In spite of my excitement, however, I was able to enjoy the moment and take some pictures of our journey to the second island.
This opening looks like a giant mouth 🙂Beautiful islands 🙂I miss the ocean already!!
Our second stop was in Mangrove Lagoon. I managed to get a video of our entrance into the Hong, although it is a little distracted as Dave was as excited as I was and wanted me to take videos of everything at once!! haha!!!!
This particular Hong didn’t have as much wildlife in it, but what it lacked in primates it made up for in foliage. There were over a dozen mangroves in the Hong, all different sizes and different shapes.
I officially love Mangroves!
And we did see SOME wild life!
Ole spotted a mudskipper 🙂 Can you find it??
The mangroves weren’t the only beauty this lagoon provided. The rocks were jacked and beautiful and as the afternoon turned to evening, the light in the lagoon made for some beautiful pictures.
The red rocks were a beautiful contrast to the blue waterOne of my favorite pictures of the entire trip
Our second island was as gorgeous as the first, and Ole proved to be consistent with his tours. He was wonderful yet again.
We were given a break at this point to swim in the ocean, paddle around in the canoes and take some pictures. We took advantage of all 3 options 🙂
Some neat rock formations coming out of the islandWe weren’t the only group there, but there was hardly a crowd. Much fewer people than in any of our other tours!!We enjoyed some swimming beside our boat 🙂 I left the water when a gigantic jelly fish decided to join us!!! Being stung by the little ones is bad enough!!!
Supper Break
Supper break gets it’s own section because it was that good. And no, for once I am not solely referring to the food! John Grey’s Sea Canoe aims to educate its customers and educate they did! Not only did we learn about the wildlife in the Hongs and see for ourselves what sort of habitats these lagoons provide, but we were also taught about Thai Culture.
The Thai Krathong: Proof that it isn’t just Thailand’s landscape that is beautiful
The Loi Krathong festival typically takes place in May. Buddists build these offerings and set them out to sea, both in gratitude for all that the sea provides and in remorse for the pollution they have caused it. Each Krathong is different from the next, but they all share commonalities. For examples, most Krathongs will have marigolds, which represent prosperity. The 3 sticks of incense represent the 3 major parts of Buddhism: The Buddha, The Monk and Scripture. Ole explains:
Ole told us that he has been making Krathongs every year since he was a child, so for him, this creation was no big deal. I was amazed at how so little could look so elaborate!! I took pictures as he worked.
The Thai use every part of the Banana Tree. The round part in the middle is Banana tree trunk. The green things surrounding the trunk are made of banana leavesHe let us help with this part 🙂 The sharper the corners, the nicer the Krathong. My OCD was thrilled at the challenge!!
Next, he placed orchids all around the trunk. Traditionally, they use toothpicks or pieces or wood to fasten them on, but because they take these Krathongs back every night, and don’t leave them out to sea, for our purposes, metal nails were used.Next came the marigolds and candles. We lit the candles once in the third Hong…but I’ll get to that!Every time I thought Ole had finished, he added more embellishments.A close up of the birds he made using prebloomed orchids. I got to keep one. I’ve pressed it and should be able to scrapbook it later!
Sending Krathongs afloat also has another purpose. As you let go, you are suppose to make a wish. As it floats away, the Krathong takes your bad luck with it. Within a few hours it becomes waterlogged and sinks into the ocean, where it provides food for fish and other sea life. I’d love to see this festival take place in November!! It was such a lovely addition to our already lovely day!!
Dave and I with our completed Krathong. I tried to get Ole to take a picture with it, seeing as how he did most of the work, but he was more concerned with our happiness than with taking credit for his work.
Once done making our Krathong, we had some free time before supper. During break, we had plenty of time for photo ops, which worked out well because this break was during sun set. Have you ever been on the ocean for sunset? I hadn’t until our Starlight tour, and wow is it an experience!!!
All the colours changed as the sun set. It was quite beautiful!!This boat was docked the whole evening. It made both Dave and I jealous of its owners. We’d love to retire on a boat and dock somewhere like this overnight!!The skies were clearing so we knew we’d have a nice view of the stars once the sun slipped away completelyTalk about a photo op!!
After eating, it was time to head into our last cave and our last hong.
Cave #3 – The Bat Cave!!
Unlike in China, where things are given names that make no sense, this cave was named perfectly. Yup! It was full of bats! I didn’t get many pictures because at this point our camera was dying, but some of these bats were as big as birds! We saw hundreds of them once in the cave, but don’t worry, they were sleeping!!
As the last bits of light disappeared with the setting sun, we head into the bat cave…
By the time we made it through the cave and reached the Hong, it was almost completely dark outside. We could see stars above and we were the only tour group left so it was quiet and peaceful moving slowly through the water in the dark.
On the canoe. Ready to set out Krathong into the water
Ole lit the candles of our Krathong and we set it in to the water where it floated calmly. The rest of our group were setting theirs into the water as well and when we looked around, we could see fire floating on water all around us. It was quite the scene.
Ole told us to make a wish as we let go of his piece of art, and we had a hard time thinking of anything more we could want in that moment. So we wished for a happy life for all 3 of us. What more could we want?
The tour was nearly over and it was time to make our way back out through the cave. It was completely dark now and the stars were shining above us brightly. We were able to stay sitting up while we slowly paddled through the Bat Cave; it has high ceilings and the tide was low. Ole had one more surprise for us, but it couldn’t be caught on camera so I’ll have to tell you about it instead.
For anyone who has seen Life of Pi…we got to see the real thing.
He told us to reach into the water and move our hands, and as we did, little specks in the water lit up. We were surrounded by Bio-luminescent Plankton, that light up when the water is disturbed. We put our feet and hands in the water and watched it light up! Then we splashed water onto the walls of the cave and watched THEM light up! This plankton can only be seen in the dark and I think it was so cool that we got to experience it while in Thailand!!!
Only special cameras can catch these creatures on camera. Here’s something I found on Google. It doesn’t come close to showing how cool it was, but you get the idea!
Before long we were back on the boat, on our back to Phuket. I felt sad that our Starlight Tour was done, but I comforted myself with the hope that some friends might come visit us next year, and we can all go see this together!! It’s an open invitation, so if you’ve been thinking of meeting us in Thailand…read this post again if you need more convincing!!!
I’ve only got one more post to write for Phuket, and that will be arriving on my page some time next week. Thanks for reading!!
