Everest (basecamp) or Bust

Okay, I got behind on my blog again.  It’s been a whirlwind, here’s a quick recap of the rest of my time in India:

I saw the Taj Mahal.

I snuck into the now-abandoned ashram where the Beatles lived for a while in the hippie enclave of Rishikesh

Milked a cow during a rural homestay in Sikkim, India

Went on a Himalayan trek to see the 3^rd tallest mountain in the world, Kanchendzonga!

Said “see you soon!” to my incredible friends and travel companions on Pac Rim during an all night event…

After my Pac Rim program ended on May 6^th, I flew to Nepal.  Going to Nepal was a little scheme I cooked up nearly a year and a half ago, and it was really strange to be away from my big, loving group at first.Luckily, I was with my friend Audrey for the first two days, but then she went off to meditate at a monastery, and I was all by my lonesome for the first time in nine months. Kathmandu was the busiest, western-iest, and strangest city I’ve been to in a while.  I visited some important Buddhist sites, had some battles with cockroaches, met a few fellow solo travelers (my favorites were the Canadians and Germans, but I had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting one incredibly racist and cocky New Zealander), and watched a whole lot of movies and tv shows on my computer when the power worked. I also learned that I like to be with other people when I travel.

Well, because of that little fact, it was GREAT that my friend Tom decided to come visit me in Nepal!  Unfortunately, the morning of his arrival, I got INCREDIBLY sick.  As I picked him up from the airport, I was vomiting out of the cab window.

I was sick for about five days, where I was unable to eat anything and got to watch everything of substance evacuate my body.  It kind of sucked, and then my trek to Everest Base Camp started.

Before we left our hotel in Kathmandu at 6 am, I was feeling very sick and very unsure of whether or not the trek would actually happen.  But we boarded our tiny prop plane headed for one of the most dangerous airstrips in the world, and hoped for the best.

For the first day of hiking, I literally had to stop every 30 minutes to relieve myself.  But then somehow, my body pulled through (or maybe the cipro I was taking finally kicked in), and

on the third day I was finally able to keep my food down and eat more than just steamed rice.  The rest of the trek was incredible– Nepal is unbelievably beautiful. The mountains are amazing, and photos don’t really do it justice.  While we were hiking, we stayed in neat teahouses and lodges, and we even had pizza for dinner a few times!  It was pretty plush.  We started in the hot and humid rhododendron forests, and slowly wound our way up to the higher altitudes with great mountain views.  We spent two days acclimatizing at Namche Bazaar (11,300 feet), a surprisingly big town just two days’ walk from Lukla.  I was still pretty sick at that point, so I spent most of my day resting, but Tom went on a day hike up to a town that has a yeti scalp!  After Namche, the climate got much more arid, and we began to see some incredible mountain views.  My personal favorite day of the trek was our acclimatization day at Dingboche (14,000 feet) where we went on a day hike to the base of Ama Dablam.  We met with only a few other hikers on the trail, and the mountains were incredibly clear.  Then we climbed up to the REALLY high altitudes, which my body didn’t like a whole lot.  Despite my initial sickness, I did fine with the altitude– up until we spent two nights at 16,000-17,000 foot elevation.  I had a massive headache, but it was completely worth it.

 

 

 

 

We stopped by Everest Base Camp, which was basically a gravel and ice wasteland, and got to see the terrifyingly giant Khumbu glacier.  The high point of our trek was the next morning at 5 am on Kala Pattar, standing at 18,192 feet, and basically a rocky molehill compared to all of the high, beautiful mountains surrounding us.  There is a quote that goes, “Mt. Everest is a grossly fat man in a room full of beautiful women,” and it kind of rings true when you actually see it.

 

In the photo above, the tallest mountain in the world is that rocky, black triangle peeking out behind the other awe-inspiring, snow covered peaks.

Sunrise over the Khumbu

Well, as we descended from the high altitudes, the weather got pretty rainy and bad.  When we arrived to Lukla (the place you fly into to do the trek, and also one of the most dangerous airstrips in the world), it was very cloudy and no planes had gone out in five days.  Basically, it was a whole town filled with tired trekkers with bad cases of cabin fever.  Well, the weather held out, and our flight was canceled, and basically we had two options for how to get back to Kathmandu.  We could either pay $600 each for a helicopter ride, or we could hike about 30 miles in two days, then take a 20 hour jeep ride through the mountains back to the city, and barely make our international flight home.  Naturally, we decided to opt for the hellish hike and sketchy jeep ride.  But then, the next morning it was miraculously clear, and two planes were able to leave the airport.  But there were a couple hundred people fighting for spots on those two planes, so we didn’t make it on.  BUT, we had missed our window for being able to hike out, so our only option was to helicopter out.  Through lots of phone calls, running around town, and some haggling, we managed to hitch a ride on a cargo helicopter that was dropping off climbing gear for only $300 each.

The little helicopter that could…

After waiting on the airstrip in Lukla for a few hours, we climbed aboard a definitely overweight and old helicopter, flew to another random airstrip in the middle of nowhere, where we waited for another hour.  Then the pilot picked up another load of gear in Lukla, picked us up, and flew over Kathmandu.  It was quite the harrowing adventure, but we made it back after only three days stuck in Lukla!  We had a few more days in Kathmandu before we began an epic journey flying back around the world, including three planes, nineteen hours of layovers, and far too many in-flight movies.

Other highlights of the trek included:

Before

After– a little crazier and a lot more smelly

Pondering the map one evening

Our friend, the mighty yak.

Being a high-altitude zombie at the top of Kala Pattar

Buddhism in India

Though the original Buddha was officially born in Nepal, Buddhism was made famous, and spread across the entire Asian subcontinent, because of India.  It is interesting, then, that in the modern era, Buddhism has essentially died out in the country.  The only Buddhists in India today are a few thousand converts, and the large Tibetan Diaspora population.  After the invasion of Tibet by China in 1949, and the fleeing of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Dharamsala in 1959, Tibetans have flocked to India as political refugees.  I was lucky enough to spend over a month in the Tibetan enclaves of India—first for two weeks at Rato Monastery in Karnataka, then two weeks with a host family in Dharamsala.  It was an incredibly eye-opening experience for me, and the type of learning that is only possible on this program.

 

RATO MONASTERY: Feb. 11-25^th 2012

In many ways, my time at Rato felt like summer camp.  The monastery, located in the hot, desert climate of Southern India, was surrounded by a bustling Tibetan community and many other monasteries.  Though much hotter and much more dry, this small city in the state of Karnataka was a home away from home for the Tibetan population.  For two weeks, we stayed in the monks’ dorms, ate incredible Tibetan food, and studied Tibetan Buddhism.  However, I think my best times were spent getting to know the monks.  One monk, Tommy, was born in southern California, and acted as our translator, tutor, and friend for our entire stay.  Each night, we stayed up late playing cards with the monks (monks can get INCREDIBLY competitive), learned about Tibetan history and culture, and even had a movie night where we watched the lame-but-awesome Amanda Bynes flick, She’s The Man (the monks LOVED it).  Though my days at Rato were always busy, I can’t really remember what I did every day—which I consider to be an indicator of time well spent.  Like I said, it felt like summer camp.

However, I did manage to write my 30-page research paper there.

LOSAR FESTIVAL

We were lucky enough to spend the Losar Festival (Tibetan New Year) at Rato. Losar is typically a big event, but because of many recent self-immolations and increased violence in Tibet, the Losar festivities this year were toned down.  However, I did get to wake up early and attend the Losar prayers at 4 am, as well as help the monks make traditional Losar cookies.

THE DEBATES

 

Though I spent four years on my high school’s debate team—I was even an officer for the team my senior year!—nothing could have prepared me for watching Tibetan Buddhist monks debate.  We happened to visit during a time where the monks were having their exams and debating daily.

After watching just two hours of a marathon debate one night, I was convinced that being a monk is incredibly hard work.  In order to advance to the next level of study, and eventually receive their Geshe degree (basically, a spiritual PhD with about triple the amount of work for a regular PhD,) the monks must debate to prove their knowledge of Buddhist scripture.  To be a successful debater, a monk must be able to recall thousands of pages of philosophical texts, while sitting in an assembly of dozens of other monks that are constantly heckling, clapping away ignorance, and asking difficult questions.  I even saw the beginnings of a wrestling match between two monks who both wanted to ask the debater a question!  Though I couldn’t understand a word of it (and even if I spoke Tibetan, I’m sure I wouldn’t have understood the complex philosophical concepts that they were debating,) the monks’ debates were incredibly captivating.

The MONKEYS

I also had the joy of playing with the adorable and incredibly rambunctious young monks.  The young monks, or as I called them, the “monkeys”, were all age 6-7 and very wild.  They had only become monks a few months earlier, when the abbot made a trip to Nepal and was convinced by a few families to bring their young sons back to India.  Basically, they were inexhaustible wild things in monks’ robes, looking for attention and bored with studying and chanting all day, and always fun to play with.

Oh yeah, I learned one more thing—though they are monks, some were incredibly into western music.  I discovered this when I was walking around the monastery one afternoon and I heard a few monks listening to Taylor Swift on their cell phones.  That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, even monks love Taylor Swift.  Though I got the sickest of my entire trip while at Rato (and coined our program’s catchphrase, “Pac Rim 2011-2012: Out Both Ends,”) it was still an incredibly memorable time.  Buddhists are some of the nicest people on earth, and I was lucky to spend two weeks with such kind, welcoming people.

 

DHARAMSALA: March 3- 28^th 2012

After a short stint in North India (Jaipur, Taj Mahal, blah blah blahhhh… we’ll get to that later,) our group took an 8 pm- 3 am train and a three-hour, torturous bus ride to Dharamsala.  For the first time on Pac Rim, I found myself in the foothills of the Himalayas.  Immediately, I knew I would love Dharamsala.  On my very first morning, I groggily wandered around at seven am, before the city really had a chance to wake up, and soaked up the incredible view of the mountains, the kind faces of Tibetans setting up their shops, and the prayer flags fluttering on every store, house and hillside.  Dharamsala is the capital of the Tibetan Diaspora and the home of the Dalai Lama, and nearly 90% of the residents are Tibetan refugees.  It was the closest to Tibet I may ever be, and I enjoyed every moment of it.

MY PALA WAS A POLITICAL PRISONER

The most memorable part of my stay in Dharamsala was my host family.  For the first time this year, I was able to stay with a host family for two weeks.  My host family consisted of my pala (father), my amala (mother), and my host-uncle, Trisong, as well as three children who were away at boarding school.  Living with a Tibetan family was a completely unique experience.  Their tiny apartment had two rooms separated by a curtain, a bathroom, and a little kitchen, and somehow the entire family was able to share such a small space.  I slept in the shrine/living room with my host “sister” Emma, and the close quarters allowed me the opportunity to really get to know my host family.

My family was pretty different from some of the other host families in Dharamsala—while most had moved to India when they were very young, or had been born in Dharamsala, my amala and pala had only fled Tibet eight years earlier.  After growing up as nomads and herders in Amdo, they left their entire family and to escape Tibet.  Their two children were barely able to walk when they made the arduous, month-long trip over the Himalayas to seek refuge in India.  What was even more unique about my family was that from 2006-2009, my pala had been a political prisoner in Tibet for attempting to fly a Tibetan National flag in Lhasa.  On my second day in their home, I was amazed to learn that my goofy, ever-smiling, and sweet host father had been in a Chinese prison camp for three years of his 30-year life.  The story goes that after meeting the Dalai Lama and spending a few years as a refugee in Dharamsala, my pala was inspired to peacefully protest the Chinese human rights violations and political oppression in Tibet.  At the time, his wife had just given birth to his third son, but he made the trip through Nepal to sneak back into Tibet.  Once he reached Tibet, the organization that was helping him organize his protest, Radio Free Asia, informed him that he was being watched by the Chinese police, so he fled to his home province of Amdo.  However, upon his return to Lhasa, he was arrested and tortured into confessing.  Though he only spoke a little about his time in prison, he was tortured on a regular basis and continues to feel pain from his injuries from prison.  Upon his release in 2009, my pala had to make the incredible trip over the Himalayas for a third time to escape back into India.  His final escape from Tibet was the most dangerous because they traveled through the Everest region of Tibet, an area that is constantly being monitored by the Chinese police.  However, he made the trip back, and upon his arrival received a private audience with the Dalai Lama.

Back in Dharamsala, my host father’s life is much more tame, but he is still incredibly politically active.  We were in Dharamsala for Tibetan National Uprising Day, in which the entire Tibetan population marched through the city with Tibetan flags and protested.  There were also many self-immolations in Tibet while we were in Dharamsala, and there were candlelight vigils for the victims bi-weekly.  Walking around the city with my pala and hundreds of other passionate Tibetans, I couldn’t help but be inspired by their continued peaceful protest and endurance for the Tibetan cause.  For the entirety of the two hours that we marched, my pala sang the Tibetan National Anthem at the top of his lungs and held his flag high.  I don’t claim to understand the intricacies of US foreign policy with China, and I must admit, before coming to Dharamsala, I was a little pessimistic about whether or not Tibet could ever be free.

After 50 years under China, the movement of a large, ethnically Han population to the Tibetan plateau, and China’s growing stance as a primary global power, this issue is much more complicated and difficult to solve than slapping on a ‘Free Tibet’ bumper sticker on your car and posing a few facebook statuses.  But I will say this: I was inspired while in Dharamsala. The eternal optimist in me has to believe that sooner or later, the world has to listen to the pleas of Tibetans, and change can occur.  Maybe these things always seem impossible before they get better.  Look at South Africa and apartheid, or the United States and slavery—there is historical evidence to prove that the impossible can happen.  With the renewed Tibetan protests, I sincerely hope that the world begins to listen, and that Tibet can become a free nation.  They have certainly gained my support.

MEETING HIS HOLINESS

I couldn’t post a blog about Dharamsala without including this moment.  In terms my 20-year life, meeting His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama is definitely one of my top-five best moments of all time, forever.  When we came to Dharamsala, I knew the Dalai Lama was in town, but I had no idea we would be lucky enough to actually meet him.  On March 8^th, we attended his yearly teaching on the full moon after Losar, and just being in his presence was an amazing experience.  Then, on the morning of March 10^th, which happened to be National Uprising Day, word was spread through our group that we were given a private audience to meet His Holiness.  We spent about two hours waiting at the monastery beforehand, and the meeting was just a very quick handshake and picture, but I will never, ever forget what it was like to stand right next to the Dalai Lama.  I am not one to pick up on “energies”, but being in the presence of His Holiness brought me to tears.  I consider the Dalai Lama to be one of the most compassionate, intelligent, and inspiring world leaders of all time, and he is now my all-time hero.  At the time, I had just finished reading his autobiography, My Land and My People, and getting to shake hands with His Holiness was just about the greatest thing of my life.  Ever.  I feel incredibly lucky, and it is a moment I will never forget.  When my host father found out that we met His Holiness, he was almost beside himself with joy.  He shook my hand for about five minutes, and recounted when he met Dalai Lama with his young son after returning from Tibet.

PARAGLIDING

On a completely different note, I also went skydiving!  It was fairly dangerous, but incredibly fun.  I was the first of my group to make the leap, and the guides didn’t really speak any English.  Here’s how it went:

Guide: “Run.  Don’t jump, don’t sit.  Run.”

Me: “Run off that cliff?!”

Guide: “Run.  Run.  RUN!”

(He started to push me, so I just started running…)

Somehow, my parachute caught some air and I spend 15 glorious minutes soaring over Dharamsala.  It was fantastic.  And I didn’t die!  It must have been because I was blessed by the Dalai Lama.

India in Mind

From January 18^th to February 11^th

The Mysore Palace

My life has been a whirlwind since I last checked in, and even though I have been in India for almost two months now, it feels like I have been here for years and years.  People talk about India like it is a living, breathing entity—and being here, I can understand why.  India has this amazing, almost human-like quality.  It is crazy and busy, but it has so much personality.  Somehow, all of the hustle and bustle and poverty and color and life fits together in an incredibly endearing way.  Somehow, it just works.  You know that feeling that you sometimes get when even though you’ve just met someone, if feels like you’ve known them for a lifetime?  That’s how I feel about India.  It is my old friend, who sometimes is so frustrating and set in it’s own ways, but you can’t help but love it for that very reason.  Even in those first few crazy days of being bombarded with busy streets and colorful saris and rickshaws, I knew I would love India.  Who knows, maybe in a past life I was Indian!

BANGALORE

We started our journey in Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley” of India.  It is a big South Indian city with lots of high-rise buildings, businessmen, and crowded streets.  However, we only stayed in the city for three days, most of which were spent wandering around the streets and buying Indian clothing.  I must say, after six months of seeing surprisingly western clothing throughout Asia, it was incredibly refreshing to walk down the street and see women in colorful saris and punjabi suits.

Punjabi suits with my friend and roommate, Kari

India is much more conservative in terms of women’s clothing, and so I had a lot of fun buying a whole new wardrobe in order to look like a real-live (albeit blonde-haired and blue eyed) Indian.  In case you were wondering, punjabi suits are a kurta (or tunic), matching leggings or balloon pants, and dupatta (or scarf).  Saris are the traditional outfit of Hindu women, and are incredibly long sheets of fabric wrapped around and tied in a very difficult and intricate manner, and a matching blouse.

Here is a very kind woman who worked at our guesthouse teaching me how to wear a sari:

Bangalore was in many ways unmemorable, because we were there for such a short amount of time.  However, in addition to the shopping, I did get the chance to visit this very bizarre new-worldy Shiva temple. This temple was very reminiscent of a televangelist church in the US, and it was basically a temple mixed with a religious amusement park, and incredibly cult-like.  It’s a shame that cameras weren’t allowed, because there were some wild attractions at this temple.

MYSORE

After our short stint in Bangalore, we went to Mysore, where we would spend two weeks studying the Art History of the Vijayanagara Empire of the 14^th century.  While Islam prevailed in Northern India, the Hindu kings of the South made their stronghold in Southern India, and they also build really incredible temples.  We stayed at a place called the Vivekananda Institute, which is a very, very cool school that teaches Indian Studies to foreigners and Indian youths.  It is also kind of an NGO, and does a lot to help out the local population in Mysore.  Everyone at the Institute was unbelievably kind, and even though they spoke basically no English, the housekeeping ladies and cooks were some of the nicest people I have met so far in India.

Another cool thing about Mysore is that it is one of the big yoga cities in India.  We had the pleasure of taking daily 6 am yoga classes from a tiny yet tough drill-sergeant of a teacher.  Though it was quite hard to force myself, at 5:45 am, to get out of bed and practice yoga every morning, it was a really wonderful way to start my day.  I came to love my long mornings of watching the sunrise, yoga and meditation, and vegetarian breakfasts.

There were a lot of other westerners at Vivekananda Institute, and I had the pleasure of meeting the most smiley woman in the world, a British lady named Liz, who happened to be in her last year of studying cranial sacrum therapy.  What, you may be wondering, is cranial sacrum therapy?  Well, I don’t exactly get it, but from what she said, it is this incredibly new-agey idea that everything in the universe, even trees and rocks, has its own rhythm and movement, like the ocean.  We humans have fluid running through our spinal cord and brain that goes with our movement, but from time to time our rhythm can get out of wack.  So people who believe in this type of therapy think that when you have really bad headaches, or if you got into an accident and still have a lot of pain, your internal rhythm is messed up and you need someone to fix it.  That is where cranial sacrum therapists come in, and this therapy gets a whole lot more new-agey.

Being blessed by a holy, temple elephant

They use their bodies to change the energy around you, and feel your rhythm and get you back on track.  She said she needed someone to practice on, and I gladly agreed.  Basically, the “therapy” included me laying on a massage table, facing up, in a dimly lit room, and Liz and her teacher would walk around me and lightly place their hands on my feet or forehead and talk about what energies they were feeling.  I didn’t really understand most of it, but apparently I am very “wide” and I have a lot of “depth”.  I can’t attest to whether or not any of the therapy actually worked, but I did leave 45-minute long session feeling very relaxed and calm.  India attracts a very interesting type of person, I guess.

Though kind of uneventful, Mysore was a very relaxing and good start to my time in India.  I saw some temples, visited some holy spots, and worked on my looming independent research paper.  All in all, Mysore was a really great place.

 

 

HAMPI

To conclude our Art History course (which started in Cambodia, by the way), we made a visit to Hampi, the ancient capital of the Vijayanagara Empire.  

Our silly group and a religious monument

And after taking one train, missing our overnight train, trying to crowd on to another train at 11 pm and eventually getting a hotel and taking a long bus ride the next morning, we actually made it to the city.  Our time in Hampi was spent looking at lots of amazing temples and monuments, visiting ancient bazaars that still sell anything you could possibly want, and a fair amount crazy monkeys.The landscape of Hampi was really incredible—it felt almost like being on another planet.

It was pretty dry and flat, but there were tons of intricately carved old temples, monuments, and palace complexes nestled in these huge hills of boulders. I think pictures are the best way to show my time in Hampi, and these photos don’t even do the magnificent temples justice.  Literally every surface was carved with incredibly detailed depictions of gods, myths, and events of daily life. So so so so cool.

We also had the joy if getting invited to/semi-crashing an Indian wedding, which was slightly awkward and very fun.  But surprisingly, there was not as much dancing as most Bollywood films would lead you to believe.  Still, it was a really fun event.  Here is a picture of me and my friends Audrey, Kari and Veronica, donning our finest saris, at the wedding.

Angkor WHAT?

When my family and I were in Thailand taking our vegetarian cooking class, we met this really cool family originally from Vermont.  The two kids were a little older than Robin and I, and the parents were finishing up their 15^th year teaching at an international school in Bangkok.  The family had decided, when their kids were in middle school, to move to Thailand for 15 years—how cool is that??  As a “last hurrah” in Thailand, the kids came back to visit and travel before the family moved back to the US.  When I was telling them about leaving for Cambodia in a few weeks, they told me that Angkor Wat would be bigger than I ever expected.  So I left for Siem Reap, expecting bigger than I could possibly expect, and, well… the temples still exceeded my expectations.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as magnificent and awe-inspiring as the castles and churches in Europe are, they’ve got nothing on the ancient city of Angkor.  There are temples upon temples, some dilapidated and some in great condition, gigantic and small, displayed out in the open and nestled away in the jungle.  For our ten days in Siem Reap, we visited the Angkor Thom complex (Bayon and Baphuon), Banteay Srei, Kbal Spean (also known as the “River of a Thousand Lingas”), Ta Phrom and Preah Khan.  What was amazing about these temples was that nearly every surface was decorated with the most incredible, delicate inscriptions.

Every wall, ceiling, doorway, window, and arch had images of apsaras (the curvy and very naked nymphs of Hindu mythology, also known as the “celestial dancers”), meditating ascetics, and scenes from the great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

I was especially enamored of the temples that were falling apart; my two favorites were Ta Phrom and Preah Khan.  Being a History major, I guess I’m drawn to old things.  These two temples were definitely more on the “ruins” side of the spectrum—while Ankor Wat is still in near-perfect condition, these two obviously did not withstand the test of time.  At some points, they were more ruin than temple, with huge heaps of engraved rock that you had to crawl over to explore what was left of the complex.  I like to call Ta Phrom the “tree house temple” because it was completely overgrown with banyan trees.  It was so cool to see how this temple was slowly being reclaimed by nature, and I learned that restoration efforts are actually hindered because the trees are basically holding up the temples now.  My other favorite, Preah Khan, was so great because it was almost completely empty.  On the afternoon that we visited, there were only a handful of other tourists exploring one of the most massive temple complexes at Angkor.  At one point I found myself alone, climbing up the rocks of the temple walls, and somehow I got onto the roof of one of the buildings.  Looking out over the massive expanse of a rundown and somewhat forgotten temple, I experienced one of those very clear and wonderful moments where I knew I was exactly where I should be in the world.  There was a strange, living quality about this neglected temple, and it felt like I could see the temple evolving and taking on a new form right before my eyes.  This place was no longer the temple that housed an estimated 100,000 people in its 12^th century heyday, but through the ruins, new things had grown.  It was a feeling I’ll never forget.

 

Needless to say, Angkor Wat was also amazing.  It was HUGE, and crowded, but completely awe-inspiring.  Say what you will about slavery, but such an incredible feat could not have been build so quickly and so magnificently without slave labor.  And the epic carvings of the Ramayana are, well, bigger than you could possibly imagine.

Kbal Spean or, the “River of a Thousand Lingas”, was also a very cool place.  After about a mile-long hike through the humid jungle, we came to a riverbed carved with lots and lots of lingas—which are the sculpture representation of the god Shiva.  Some people argue that they’re phallic (and I’ll agree, they do look fairly phallic…) but it was very cool to see hundreds of carvings all along a riverbed.  The story goes that through the carvings, Shiva blesses the water, creating the fertile lands below.

My last really cool temple experience was on the day we flew to India.  Four friends and I decided to watch the sun rise at Bayon temple, and it was definitely one of my favorite experiences in Cambodia.  When we got there at 5:30, the temple was pitch black, and we sleepily climbed up into the temple with our headlamps.  We found a place to sit, and slowly, the world woke up around us.  The sun rose, revealing the giant stone faces carved into the temple, and the birds awoke and the bats went back into the nest for the day.  It was a wonderful way to say goodbye to Cambodia.

One thing I found interesting about Cambodia, and very difficult to deal with, was how poverty was very present in Siem Reap.  I’ve visited impoverished countries so far on this trip, in fact, some parts of China and Vietnam are home to some of the most impoverished people in the world.  However, I was always in relatively big cities in those countries, and the growing middle class was much more noticeable to me.  But in Cambodia, the extreme poverty was right at the surface—outside of every temple and restaurant there were children and landmine victims begging for money or selling things.  I had a lot of trouble dealing with this, and I wasn’t sure how to react to the begging.  I was in a constant internal struggle in Cambodia, because though I knew that there are more beneficial ways to donate money than to give a few dollars here and there, it broke my heart every time I tried to say no to one of the many children asking for money.  However, I did get a really good piece of advise from the man who runs the Cambodian Landmine Museum.  He advised against giving to the children selling things outside of the temples and on the streets, because if they make money selling on the streets, then their parents will have even less of an incentive to send them to school.  Most of the girls who aren’t able to go to school are guaranteed to enter the sex trade a few years later in life, and there are much more beneficial NGOs and charities to give to.

A very cool shadow puppet theater we went to!

Likeeee the Cambodian Landmine Museum!  By far one of the most eye-opening experiences of my trip thus far.  Landmines left from the Vietnam War, as well as the Khmer Rouge, are still a huge problem in Cambodia. Why are landmines so horrible, you may ask?  Well, they are meant to maim, not kill a victim, which is completely sadistic.  In war, it’s much cheaper to have a dead soldier than a wounded soldier, so landmines are designed to blow off a few limbs but leave you breathing, which puts an added stress on the enemy’s forces.  The huge problem now is that even though the wars are over, the landmines are still in the ground waiting for an unsuspecting farmer or child to stumble upon them.  There are huge patches of land that could be farmed or inhabited, but because of landmines, it is completely useless.  I was warned that even while walking around the touristy locations and temples, landmines are still a huge danger.  This NGO, aided by an amazing American ex-pat named Bill and his wife, work tirelessly to de-mine the Cambodian countryside, which prevents ghastly landmine accidents, as well as allows families to farm the land.  They also run a school for landmine victims and underprivileged children in Siem Reap, which is awesome.  I was lucky enough to meet Bill while I was at the museum, and he answered a lot of my questions and told me a lot of really interesting things, like how the United States has yet to sign the Ottawa Treaty.  Also known as the “Mine Ban Treaty”, since 1997 nearly 160 countries have ratified this treaty, everywhere from Iraq to nearly all of Africa to the UK and the rest of Europe, as well as all of South America.  The US is among North Korea, China and Russia in not signing the treaty.  Sometimes, when traveling halfway across the world, you end up learning about your own country too.  If you want to learn more about the how completely horrible landmines are in Cambodia, or about how incredible the people are who are fighting to stop the problem, here is their website: http://www.landmine-relief-fund.com/!  Also, here’s a good website on landmine information in general: http://www.icbl.org/intro.php.

Another fun thing I did in Cambodia was donating blood.  I am now in the part of the world where Dengue fever is a big problem for locals and travelers alike, and it can really only be treated through blood transfusions.  Even though I have fairly common A+ blood, it was still nice to give a little something.  And besides, after visiting so many medically risky places this year, it’ll be a while until blood banks in the US will take my blood.  We went to the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital– a really wonderful organization that treats any child who comes in for free!

Cambodia was eye-opening in so many ways, and it has introduced me to a very different way of life than the United States, and even my past semester in Asia.  There are so many problems right on the surface, but what I also saw was so many people doing really great things.  It reminds me, once again, of a conversation I had with Natasha, a woman who works at Matang Wildlife Center in Borneo, Malaysia.  She said, “If you thing about it too much, it just seems hopeless… but because it’s such a mess, there is so much that can be done.”  I believe this to be incredibly true.  There is so much work to be done, but there are also some really incredible people accomplishing so much good.

I just couldn't resist...

Pacific Rim 2011 Video

Some kids on my trip created an AWESOME video that we played at the Christmas Eve party, and it’s now up on the web.  It’s a really great recap of my year so far, I hope you enjoy it!

Pac Rim Video!

 

Hello 2012: Winter Break in Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand

After saying goodbye to Fuzhou and Hwa Nan, we made our way to Hong Kong on December 23rd.  It was very strange to go from a relatively small, isolated Chinese town to Hong Kong, the most international city I have ever been in.  We stayed on a bustling, busy street on Kowloon Island, surrounded by every type of food and streets packed with people of dozens of different nationalities.  It was also a big shock to go out to dinner with two friends, Greg and Jeremy, and end up with a bill of 600 HK dollars (about 90 USD… quite pricey!)  Toto, I don’t think we’re in Fuzhou anymore.

The next morning, Christmas Eve, I met up with my parents and my sister Robin.  My wonderful family made the trip out to see me for Christmas, which I am so thankful for.  My parents had been traveling around southern China for a few weeks before they made their way to Hong Kong, and my sister flew in a day earlier to HK.  That night, our Pac Rim group threw a big Christmas party complete with Christmas carols, meeting all of the other families, and presents galore.  Later that night, Robin and I walked around the streets of Hong Kong, which were PACKED with people, and ended up climbing on to the roof of our hotel (we only had to climb a few ladders and hop a few fences).  Looking out at the city was really beautiful; every building was brightly lit with decorations.  It was like the whole city was our Christmas tree.

On Christmas day we flew to Hanoi, where I played tour guide for my family for four days.  We made another trip to Halong Bay (this time we got to sleep on a boat!) and saw the sites of the city.  It was great to go to Halong Bay with just my family–we got to go kayaking around the islands, and even jump in the water after dinner on the boat!

However, it was significantly colder this time around.  I think my family loved Hanoi just as much as I did, with the delicious food, streets filled with motorbikes, colors, and smells.  After our short stint in Vietnam, we flew to Bangkok.

I must say, I think Thailand is one of my favorite countries.  The food, the people, and the cities were all incredible.  In Bangkok, we visited some really amazing temples, took the river ferries (and saw terrifyingly long water snakes!), visited the Jim Thompson House, and even took a vegetarian Thai cooking class!  Wandering through the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha was like going to Oz– every surface of every building was decorated with gold, gems and mirrors.

Pictures don’t really convey how magnificent this place was, but the Thais definitely know how to build a temple.  We spent a quiet New Years Eve at a rooftop party at our hotel, where we talked, ate, lit off paper lanterns, and looked out at the city below.

We then made it out to Khao Lak, a beautiful, small beach town about an hour north of Phuket.  Our trip there was a little crazy.  We took the overnight train from Bangkok to the coast, but we basically had to bribe people at the train station to get tickets.  They set us up with what we were told would be a “private mini-bus” to our hotel.  After groggily leaving the train at 7 am, we set out looking for our bus.  We eventually found out that our “private mini-bus” was actually many extremely crowded busses.  We took a bus to the bus station, waited for a while in the rain, then got on another bus that took us to a travel agent, where again we waited, then boarded another bus.  When we got on the last bus, we were very relieved—it was big and pretty nice.  But then, the bus stopped and tons of people poured on.  I don’t really know how to convey how crowded this bus was, but there were about 30 people standing in the aisle of the bus.  At one point, a family with two little girls boarded.  The girls were about three years old, and the mother and father looked exhausted standing and holding the children, so I offered to let one of the girls sit between my sister and I.  She was cute, and probably the most laid-back 3-year-old in the world, but at one point Robin and I found ourselves sitting in a two person seat with a little girl, and another women perched on the edge of the end of our seat.  For four hours.  Also, the 3-year-old girl had a meat-filled bun that her mother had given her as a snack, which was fine, except she refused to eat the meat.  Instead, she just held it in her hands and played with it for four hours.  She would drift off to sleep, meat in hand, wake up, play with the meat, spill it on Robin and I, and fall asleep again, but she never did eat it.

But, eventually, we made it to Khao Lak.  Our bus driver dropped us off on the side of a highway and pointed to a street.  We tried to find our hotel on foot for a while, but eventually gave up and found a taxi to take us to our hotel.  All together, it took us six modes of transportation and about 20 hours to get from Bangkok to Khao Lak (overnight train, busses 1, 2, and 3, walking for an hour with our luggage, and a taxi).  Now I know why people fly!  We stayed at the newly opened Khao Lak Blue Lagoon Resort in two really wonderful bungalows about a five-minute walk from the beach.  We were pretty far from the center of town, which meant that the beach was essentially deserted for the entire time we were there.  That evening, swimming in the clear, warm water and watching the sunset over the ocean made our ridiculous travel day incredibly worthwhile.

Bathing beauties... guess who didn't get sunburnt?

Khao Lak was incredibly luxurious—we got massages, ate dinner on the beach, and made the trip out to the Similan Islands to go snorkeling in the clearest water I have ever seen.  Though they were pretty crowded, the Similan Islands were AMAZING for snorkeling, and the beaches were covered in the most beautiful, soft white sand.  On our last night my family and I lit off paper lanterns on the beach.  On our trip home, we were much smarter and just booked a taxi to the train station.

Lighting off paper wish lanterns on the beach!

After our overnight train back to Bangkok, we took another taxi to the Cambodian border.  Really, the only way to explain my experience walking across the Thai-Cambodian border is through this clip:

Tatooine, Star Wars

My mom and dad with all of their luggage, ready to face the mayhem of the border.

There were men with guns, people gambling, children running around, vendors selling knock-off and illegal goods, and border guards getting bribes from various crossers.  But we made it across in only an hour and a half (we had heard horror stories about it taking 5 hours from other travelers).  We then took a two hour taxi to our hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and began our Angkor Wat adventure!

Cambodia: To Be Continued…

China Take Two: The Halfway Point

“Forget the years, forget distinctions.  Leap into the boundless and make it your own.”

-Chuang Tzu

I first encountered this quote almost five months ago to the day, in Sea-Tac Airport.  We were about to depart on this crazy journey, and my Professor gave us a letter to ease us into the mindset of Pac Rim.  She ended with this quote, and I didn’t quite understand it at the time.

We have now concluded our month in Fuzhou at Hwa Nan Women’s College, studying Chinese Philosophy.  We have examined the philosophies of Laozi, Confucius, Sunzi, Xunzi, Zhu Xi, and Chuang Tzu, among others, in our exploration of China’s immense intellectual history.  Immersed in these ancient texts, Chinese Philosophy has been the lens through which I viewed China.  We have visited Daoist and Confucian temples, and climbed to the top of the Wuyi Mountains, and observed how these philosophers are still alive in Chinese culture today with the help of our Chinese friends.  It has been an incredible way to learn about China’s long philosophical history.  But mostly, I found myself applying these philosophies to my own life.

This is quite a pivotal moment on Pac Rim—the halfway mark.  It is also a huge moment for reflection on my experience so far, and also my experience yet to come.  In the past four months, I have accumulated a hard drive packed full of hundreds of photos, a very basic knowledge of five different languages (and by basic, I mean extremely basic, i.e. “hello”, “thank you”, and most importantly, “I’m sorry”), far too many souvenirs and gifts, and an incredibly valuable sense of the culture, politics, and people of each country we have lived in.  Looking back on that day, four months ago, as I was boarding a transcontinental flight to Korea, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I had no idea how my perceptions of Asia and Asian cultures would change, nor did I have any idea how I myself would change.  And for this reason, I find Chuang Tzu to be the philosopher who most aptly describes my Pac Rim experience thus far.

It seemed to me that the writings of Chuang Tzu can be summed up in the word freedom.  Free yourself from preconceived notions, from the past, and from all prior reference points, and you will truly be able to learn.  Though somewhat rocky at first, that is what Pac Rim has taught me to do—to free myself.  This transformation has been so fluid and gradual that I almost didn’t notice it, but upon reflection I realize how much I have changed.  I recently noticed this transformation when I set out on a bus ride into Fuzhou to find the post office.  Once on the bus I realized that I didn’t quite know where to get off, nor did I have a map, or for that matter any real understanding of the Chinese language.  Yet it was a strange and wonderful feeling to recognize that in spite of all this, I wasn’t scared or stressed, and I knew I would figure it all out.  Getting back to Chuang Tzu, this is another example of the idea of freedom.  If you allow yourself to break outside of your comfort zone, things that once felt very uncomfortable begin to feel comfortable, and eventually the whole world becomes your home.  This is what Chuang Tzu wrote of all those years ago, and what Professor Benard was trying to show us four months ago: that somehow, without our knowledge, we would be transformed through this trip.  We would learn to be free, to be comfortable in even the most uncomfortable situations, and to absorb as much as possible from every country.

Chuang Tzu is a perfect bookend to the semester.  As I pack up my life in Fuzhou, I find myself reflecting on the how crazy, hilarious, terrifying, and amazing the past semester has been.  It’s a great way to start winter break (hello some much-needed R&R on beautiful Thai beaches!) and look forward to our next semester in Cambodia and India.  I don’t quite know what the next semester will bring, but I am ready to make it my own.

P.S.  Okay, so I kind of cheated on this blog post.  It’s not too informative about my time in China, but I have been running out of time, and I wrote this blog earlier in the month for the Puget Sound Pac Rim blog.  So I figured I would post it, even though it doesn’t tell you every exciting thing from my time in Fuzhou China.  If you’d like to take a look at our whole group’s blog, here is the link!  http://www.upspacrim.org/blog/

BUT, to catch you up on what I’ve been up to, here are some pictures!

Thanksgiving at Hwa Nan Women’s College!

My friend Jeremy and I on a train to go to Xiamen.

Rowin’ a riverboat in Wuyi Mountains, home of the 5th centruy philosopher Zhu Shi!

An ancient Chinese school in Wuyi Shan.

Audrey, Veronica and Kristi, the BEST ROOMMATES EVER at Hwa Nan.

My Chinese buddy, Eda, and I at Yu Mountain in Fuzhou.

A Chinese temple

China: The strange mix of old and new.