China--A Beginning

A belated post in honor of Gina, my travel companion in fair China. I never thought I'd be calling it fair China before I went there, but I really did enjoy visiting China immensely. A lot of that is thanks to Gina, but a lot of that is thanks to China, too.

I'm sitting in my new(ish) apartment in South Philly. After work and coffee with friends, I sat for awhile in Rittenhouse Square reading. It's one of those days where it feels like I am really doing what I want, though not all my days are like that. Anyway, an old man sat next to me and started talking to me about books and traveling. I started feeling like I need to write down some reminiscences about China before I get old and forget them. Here are some of them, distorted by the mirror of months at home. But the mind is always a carnival mirror, isn't it? You just hope it's not the kind that makes you look short and fat.

I'm going to try to keep this short(ish) for each place, since we went to so many in our short (and long) three weeks there.

1. Beijing
Beijing has a surprising amount of good, flaky pastry. Gina and I started the very good habit of just getting into any long food line we found on the street, and we ate some great pastry that way. There was also a shockingly long line for sunflower seeds. (We dutifully got in line, but bought nuts instead.) Gina and I went to a hot pot restaurant where you cook your own food in boiling hot water. We totally failed at making our meal delicious, but all the other patrons seemed to be having better luck. The best meal we had in Beijing was Peking duck at a restaurant I was later dismayed to find out is a big-time chain. It was the best I've ever had, nonetheless. They carve your duck tableside and give you a small slice of the crispy skin to sample before you dig in, almost like tasting a fine wine before they pour your full glass. They also number their ducks, and I mailed my parents the complimentary postcard that said I had tried duck number whatever. Beijing has a surprising number of beautiful and quiet parks. At least in the places we went, it is not loud, nor is it crowded. I was surprised by that. There are great car-protected bike lanes, if you're into that. We stayed at a hostel that was in an old courtyard-style house, which was beautiful but very cold. I regret rushing through the Forbidden City because we were too damn cold to enjoy it, but I hope to go back someday. Neither of us had proper winter clothing--not surprising for backpackers coming directly from a tropical country--so we tended to wear all the clothes we had, all the time. We made friends with an English-speaking cafe proprietor who had her nails painted in a cow pattern, with the thumbs being the cow heads.

2. The Great Wall
Wonderful. Surprisingly up-and-down aerobic. Shockingly crumbly in places. We went to one of the more ancient sections, which was less touristed for being over 3 hours away from Beijing. Gina is afraid of stairs, it turns out, which made the wall terrifying for her at moments. But that girl has the heart of a lion and laughed her way through it. A bitingly cold north wind gave us the gift of smog-free views here and in Beijing proper, but nearly killed us.

--Cheap, amazing high speed train ride that puts America to shame and makes me think we probably, maybe are doomed--

3. Shanghai
A beautiful, European oasis in China. Our first night, we stayed at a hostel and took ourselves on a self-guided dumpling walking tour. Oh, the street dumplings of Shanghai! The best was a halal dumpling that tasted like Indian food and Chinese food and Middle Eastern food all in one hot street dumpling dripping with beef in a bright yellow sauce inside. We also ducked into a tiny wonton soup shop where the owners were making mountains of dumplings by hand right there. The soup was incredible, the dumplings light and delicate, and we couldn't have been more smugly self-satisfied for finding such a non-touristy joint. We took in the skyline at night and avoided being scammed by young "English students" who offered to take our picture and ultimately wanted to lure us into overpriced tea shops. Gina scammed the scammers with aplomb, however, and held them up for a good ten minutes while cheerily taking their picture with their camera, commanding them to take all different cheesy poses before we walked away unscathed. Genius. We also took in a beautiful, if overwhelming, art museum that had everything from ancient pottery that boggled the mind in its intricate detail to simple brush drawings of mountain scenes. I instantly regretted my absolutely zero knowledge of Asian art and art history, and hope to learn more. (Theme of this trip: Liz realizes she has huge gaps in her knowledge about many fascinating things. Then realizes how many fascinating things there are out there that she didn't even know she didn't know. Gets overwhelmed, resolves to learn, maybe someday will.)

The next day, we met our lovely Nordic Couchsurfing host in a Frenchified cafe in the Frenchified French Concession. (Must learn more about Shanghai's history.) He was very kind and introduced us to his amazing local friends, an artist and a businesswoman, who both spoke impeccable English. We visited the artist's vintage shop--she was definitely way cooler than I could ever aspire to be--and went to a delightful (if touristy) alleyway district full of western delights, including mulled wine, which we sampled with delight. We also had some leftover homemade dumpling soup, courtesy of the businesswoman's cooking skills, in the artist's cluttered apartment. We went out to a Belgian beer bar and a lucha-libre-themed margarita place. In the morning, our host took us to the most delicious street breakfast--and perhaps the most delicious breakfast, period, according to Gina--we've ever had. It was basically just a scallion pancake with some crunchy element and something like hoisin sauce, but I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. We walked through different neighborhoods of Shanghai and marveled at the big department stores and marvelously tacky Christmas displays in stores and on streets. With the help of our host, we succeeded in a hotpot-like enterprise. It was a soup place where you select your ingredients from something like the shelves where they keep lettuce in American grocery stores and then it's added to a delicious broth they cook for you. We also went to a wine bar and a jazz club and a cafe that served tiramisu and an organicy, local foody, fresh-baked bread place for lunch one day. I don't even like places like that last one that much at home, but it was heaven to go there in Asia. It was all like a wonderful respite from the East and its oddities and confusions and challenging surprises--but with the delicious and authentic dumplings still included. I don't know how much I would like Shanghai if I traveled all the way there from home, but I loved it in this context. I can't tell you how bone-tired I was of being out of my element, not knowing how things like bathrooms and trains and buses worked, not being able to find comforts I was used to from home.

--A long bus ride that ended with what I thought was a very early dusk but was just a huge cloud of smog that made me think maybe, actually, it's China that's doomed--

4. Suzhou
Yet another "Venice of the East!" Gina and I stayed in a hostel in the old part of town where we heard rats crawling in the walls but ignored it. We walked around the nice canal streets full of red lanterns. I enjoyed it, but the whole thing had a bit of an artificial, over-preserved feel. We attended a Peking opera performance, which was unintentionally hilarious. The singing, with its peaks and valleys of rises and falls in pitch, was bewildering and painful to my uneducated ear. The story was lost on us, despite the translation efforts of our middle-aged Chinese businessman seat mate. We had a dumpling soup breakfast--served with vinegar that we decided to just throw on in--at a little outdoor stall-type place in an alley. The other patrons seemed to be locals, and a cute baby and cute dog were in attendance. Everyone seemed to kind of be laughing at us and/or resenting us for being there, but we enjoyed our soup.

We visited "The Lingering Garden," which got me all fired up for Chinese gardens. I overuse the word "beautiful" in this blog, but it truly was, especially with fall foliage. Why do you only hear about Japanese gardens? Why do I always like places that are beautifully simple, yet fill my own life with clutter? I must stop here because I don't have the heart to select pictures to go along with this, yet I know I must. Another time I'll add pics and keep writing about all our other lovely China destinations.

Burmese Days

Better late than never.

Readers, I'm going to confess to you a weird hang-up I developed. At first I was too overwhelmed to write about my post-grant travels because I was so excited to be home and it was Christmas and I was running around seeing family and friends. Then, when things calmed down a bit, I started to feel like there was too much to write and that it would be an overwhelming task. Then I started thinking that maybe I should wait to write this until I had a full-time job lined up. I don't know why, but it became a weird talismanic way of thinking. I'm happy to report that I start a full-time job next week, so I decided to finally stop putting off writing this. It's going to have to be a whirlwind overview, though I'm sure I'll still find places to be longwinded.

Let's make this part 1: Burma.

I went to Burma by myself for 5 days. I was only able to visit one area called Inle Lake, which is quite heavily-touristed. To get there from Rangoon/Yangon, though, I took a breathtakingly scenic train ride that took over 24 hours. For most of the trip, I was the only tourist aboard the train. For one leg of the trip, I sat next to a kindhearted engineer who spoke limited English but was still eager to talk to me and to help me order from the shockingly good onboard dining service. He smiled at me with disconcertingly beet-red teeth from chewing betel nuts and asked me if I knew who the woman pictured in his open newspaper was. I knew it was Aung San Suu Kyi, but I feigned ignorance out of paranoia about being lured into a political discussion in an infamously repressive country. All he said to me was, "It's Aung San Suu Kyi. This woman is our heart. The Burmese people, she is our heart." Later, I met a restaurant owner who had posters of Aung San Suu Kyi hanging on his walls. He told me that he felt he could express himself more freely in his country now, and that he'd been imprisoned in the past for being involved in pro-democracy groups. He said I was lucky that I could travel and say whatever I wanted.  He said he thought America was a good country (a very rare opinion to encounter on my travels).  He confided in me that he follows the international news avidly as much as he can. I felt pretty ashamed for not following the news closely at all myself, and for not educating myself more about Burma before I came. (And, hell, after.)

It was one of those moments where I had the totally cliche thought about taking for granted all the freedoms we have in America. Not to worry, I followed it closely in my mind with, "BUT those freedoms are always at risk, aren't they? BUT I have to guard carefully against attempts to make my speech and opinions less free,  even if it's in the name of security! And isn't the 'free' press all owned by big, evil corporations anyway? And the NSA is probably reading my blog at this very moment! BUT America actually sucks in many ways and just provides a sham image of freedom--and don't get me started on justice!" So, you know, that way you could tell I have a college education.

Back to my train ride. I've never felt trains that bumped in so many directions as this one--vertically, horizontally, diagonally, bone-chatteringly--but the scenes of fields and villages, mountain passes, and finally Inle Lake glimmering in the distance made it all worthwhile. I even glimpsed a little boy riding a water buffalo, which was quite a comical sight given how tiny the boy was compared to the huge animal. It looked like he was having a ride at least as wild as my train ride.

Once I arrived at Inle Lake, I did what all tourists do and took a boat ride. I had two favorite stops along the ride:
1. Indein
It's a town on the shore that is crawling with two things: tourists and pagodas. The pagodas are amazing--it's an unruly forest of them, some that look like ancient ruins and some that are currently under construction, all with lake and mountain views. I even found one being built by someone who now lives in California as a tribute to his parents. I spent hours walking around the town, along a river, and through the pagodas, and I found that even though there are a ton of tourists it was still possible to find some solitude just by taking less popular paths. For lunch, I went to the back section of the town market and found a small lunch shack/stall where I had delicious Shan noodles and got to play with the owner's toddler and watch kids and dogs run around.

2. Another village whose name I forget
I went on a rambling walk, where I was briefly befriended by a novice monk, invited to taste some sugar candy when I ran into a family stirring huge vats of boiling sugar cane outside their home, and nearly run over by two stringy-looking cows with bells on them--closely followed by their owner.

Look out for cows!

Hey, sugar.

"Warmly welcome and assist tourists." = propaganda campaign to make tourists forget what really goes on in Burma?

I also walked around the town where I was staying, near the lake, and encountered lots of adorable school children on their way home from school. Most just smiled shyly, some little girls walked across from me for a while and imitated me when I did funny walks, and one little boy asked for money. It was very interesting to see that just one boy had that reaction to the influx of tourists, compared to other places where a lot of children who aren't necessarily beggars will just ask you for money, knowing that tourists will give it. He just said, "Money?" and I said, "No!" and he said, "Present?!" I said no again but thought better of it and gave him a pen. Maybe he'll write a book about how tourists ruined his town--he'd have every right to. (On the other hand, it can only be a positive when a country is no longer forcibly closed to outsiders at the hand of a repressive government--right?)

It was interesting to be in a place that's just getting into the swing of a tourist boom. I noticed that when I went on boat tours of Inle Lake, the boat driver would pull close to the fishermen who are famous for paddling with their feet. It always happened right when we entered the lake. There would be several fishermen there, and the boat driver would turn off the motor--so as not to scare the fish? to give me time to take a picture?--and stay still for a few minutes while I took pictures.

Obligatory.

But on my second trip, I didn't need to take pictures, because I already had on the first trip. The driver seemed uncomfortable and confused by this so I took some just to put him at ease. (Silly, I know.) It's also hard and makes your boat captain very unhappy when you say that you do not want to do shopping on your boat trip. After being taken to an (admittedly kinda cool) floating silver workshop, I insisted that I wanted to do NO SHOPPING and really just wanted to see the sights, much to my boat captain's chagrin and bewilderment. It seems to be a built in part of the tour, probably with some sort of kickback system or at least system of boat captains taking you to their friends' shops, so it really is disruptive not to play along. But I didn't want to.

Another thing I saw that made me think:
I went to an island that was basically occupied only by a Buddhist temple and some hawkers outside. It was very ornate and there were large, golden statues in rooms at each entranceway. Dozens of women were prostrating themselves just outside these rooms, looking in, behind signs that said, "No women past this point." Men walked past the signs to pray. It really put into sharp relief the utter sadness and ridiculousness of women bowing down to and being the driving force behind religions--like, most of 'em--that actively exclude and degrade them. Or what about on a larger level? How many women serve organizations or companies that don't really value their contributions?



On a lighter note, I also went to a hot spring for the first time ever. That was on my bucket list. And this one had a view of the mountains, I was the only customer for the first hour, it was super cheap, and I got to have an avocado salad. This sounds very spoiled. Not denying it.


Miscellaneous photos:

Note the small chicken on the walkway. 

Floating village.

I found my long lost (literally, he escaped) cat,  Montrose,  sleeping peacefully on a wooden structure in the lake. Phew.  Glad he's happy.


Reading:
Burmese Days by George Orwell. Eek, I identified with hateful characters.
The Time of My Life. Terrible selection from the hostel book exchange. By the author of P.S. I Love You.
Before this while on the beach in Thailand I read:
A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Gravity by Tess Gerritsen
The Star of the Sea--SO GOOD. It's a mystery novel aboard a ship full of immigrants, rich and poor, from famine-ridden Ireland complete with primary source selections to start each chapter.

Kuantan: Parting Shots

I'm sitting on my friend Katie's comfy couch in her apartment in KL, biding my time while she's away at work. Generous as ever, she's letting me crash here while I get myself together before flying home. I've packed my bags, eaten a delicious street food lunch, and read my previous typo-filled blog post with great dismay. But now I'm typing on a real live keyboard, reunited with my laptop. 

It looks like I've now totally messed up the chronology of this blog. I want to gush to you all all about my travels in China and Myanmar, but I never made good on my promise to write more about my life outside the apartment in Kuantan. I'd also like to talk a bit about some end-of-year adventures. Selfishly, I have my future self in mind as a major audience of this blog, and I want to write about these things before I forget them and thereby deprive 80-year-old Grandma Liz of any hope of ever reading about them. (Or 80-year-old, never-married, free spirit Liz? Let's just hope I make it to 80, whatever the case may be.)

I. Out and About in Kuantan
Here's how I spent my free time in Kuantan after school:
-Naps. It's really, really, really hot. Even with my limited teaching schedule, trying to be peppy in a baju kurung in consistent 90 degree weather really took it out of me.

Peppy in a baju. Never again.

-Reading. I used to think, when I was younger and before I'd ever seen a prison, that if I were put in prison it wouldn't be a big deal because I could just read all the time. Now I know how dumb that is. In Malaysia sometimes I felt like I had nothing to do but read, and it got tiresome sometimes.
-Roti outings. I went to the roti restaurant on my street so often that I got really friendly with the owners. They are super kind people. Here's some pictures from a going-away dinner they threw at the restaurant for Kara and me, which just goes to show how lucky we were.

-Hanging out with Malaysian friends in Kuantan. I met some amazing people through CS meet-ups, especially my friend Anidha. She has a really interesting perspective on life in Malaysia, is amazingly open-minded and laugh-out-loud funny, and is a genius scientist to boot. As an added bonus, she makes a mean banana leaf dinner. This girl really helped me keep my sanity in Malaysia, I gotta say. I can't find a good picture of us together, which means I'll have to pester her for one.

I also made a much younger friend at the roti shop. A little boy named Firdaus "helps"
his godmother, Shanta, there on the weekends sometimes. (Don't get all het up about child labor, now. He mostly just hangs around and sometimes carries people their tea. He wants to be a chef when he grows up. Call it an internship if it makes you feel better.) When I first met him, Shanta prodded him to practice English with me. I knew he was an extraordinarily smart little boy, not only because his English at 8 years old would put some of my older students to shame, but also because on our first meeting he asked me my opinion on why people dream. After that, I looked forward to seeing him on the rare weekends when I was in town. I ended up getting to know his wonderful family. Here's a picture of them at my apartment after they took me out for a goodbye dinner.

I spent some time with a few teacher friends outside school, usually for dinner outings, but most people were pretty busy with their families.

 Cikgu Aidaa at Satay Zul, a famous satay place in my neighborhood.  Aidaa is a great baker and was kind enough to take me to the Ramadan Bazaar in town and advise me on the best things to eat!

With the school counselor, Jas, her son whose name I can pronounce but not spell, and his nanny whose name I can neither spell nor pronounce properly, at the park. Jas introduced me to yoga class in Kuantan.

-Hanging out with American friends, usually in Cherating. About once every two weeks I'd drive an hour to a beautiful beach to meet my ETA friends from the next town north for swimming and/or dinner. It was a lovely respite, complete with Chinese and Thai food and drinking from fresh coconuts. I'm going to miss fresh coconut water a lot when I go home. Somehow the town of Cherating is a magical place where the rules and sometimes-crazy conservatism of Malaysia don't apply, so you can wear a bikini to swim and there's a bar with a really fun band on weekends and the mood is always relaxed. The one downside is that later in the year, as rainy season approached, I would run into a terrible thunderstorm with torrential downpours every time I drove home at night. On the plus side, I got quite good at driving in monsoon-level rain.

This one is stolen from one of my beach buddies, Annie.

-Yoga/Bollywood dance/aerobics class. Here's me with my crazy-intense teacher, Ameena, on my last day in class.

Note that my shirt is soaked with sweat. Ew.

-Volunteering. I spent an hour once a week with some supercute kids at the Drug Intervention Center in town, but I'd rather not put up any supercute pics to protect their privacy.
-Cafe outings. Our internet at home was not great, to say the least, so I often walked to Old Town White Coffee or Frankie Sandwich--haven of western luxury, good AC, and delicious (by Malaysian standards) chicken sandwiches and salads--to write and research and kill time. Even to blog. I was super lucky in that I lived near a big shopping center and was also within walking distance of plenty of cafes and restaurants, albeit most of them with only three walls. The weather is so consistently hot that the open storefront style of restaurant is big in Malaysia.

Malaysia's Starbucks.

StarCity shopping center.  The second view shows "Sweet Time," the French bakery where I occasionally went for delicious, just-as-good-as-America brownies. If my apartment post made you think Malaysian life is without its comforts, this should make you think twice.

-Once in a blue moon, visits to the mall. My town was pretty modern, with two big malls with all the amenities, including movie theaters, Starbucks, department stores (Malaysian ones), and food courts. Once in a while I'd go to do some shopping or to see a movie, usually as a celebration after an English camp.
-Trips to the beach in Kuantan. I didn't go nearly as often as I should have, since going to the beach always made me really happy. It's a beautiful one, despite the huge McDonald's and KFC marring the beachside view. Who knows when I'll leave near the beach again? I would swim on the section of beach in front of the Hyatt, where you didn't have to be quite so scrupulously modest--though I still almost always wore shorts into the water. Running into my students at the beach always killed my buzz--and theirs, too, probably--though. No one wants to see their teacher in a swimsuit.
-Dinners at 888 Food Court. I lived within walking distance of a great outdoor Chinese food court. I developed a purely imaginary relationship with the old Chinese Malaysian man with the bao (Chinese steamed bun) and dim sum cart. In my mind, he was thrilled to see me and missed me when I was gone, since I was such a reliable purchaser of extra large barbecue pork buns. I often waved to him and received a solemn nod in return. I think the affection was purely one-sided, but I loved that man for his consistent ability to provide delicious buns and dumplings. I was also a big fan of the popiah (Malaysian spring rolls) and rojak (a hard to describe cold salad of fruit in a savory plum sauce) stall and the barbecue pork rice with chili sauce. If I was having a real banner day, I'd splurge on a fresh starfruit juice to go with my food.


II. Ambience shots of my neighborhood

Outdoor birdcages! Popular in Asia. Don't try this at home. 

Just to give you a sense of what the day-to-day landscape in my neighborhood was like.

My street. Dog groomer on the corner, then a Chinese vegetarian restaurant (pretty tasty), roti shop further on, mysterious, bare bones, factory-esque bakery where I bought cupcakes for English camp, and some sort of machine shop at the end. When the Bible study group or the congregation at the church below my apartment started singing in the morning, the dogs at the groomer would start barking. Now there's a delightful symphony to wake up to on the weekends.

Down the block in the other direction. Sign says this place is a photo studio. I never saw anyone go in or out, but I liked the look of it.

Lemongrass Thai, tasty restaurant on a main shopping street in walking distance. 

There are mansions in my neighborhood, kids! The only visible inhabitant of this place was a constantly-shirtless, overweight Chinese man who always wore a jade Buddha pendant and stared at Kara and me menacingly whenever we walked by. As Mother always says, "Money can't buy class." Or, apparently, shirts.

Pedestrian hazards. This isn't the best photo  of it, but there are many grates, gaps in the sidewalk, and uncovered huge holes where you could fall down into a sewer. The skywalk is also very necessary, as crossing the street in Malaysia is a difficult enterprise. Malaysians never walk anywhere, and they were horrified that I walked around. "So hot, lah!" 

Nice tropical trees.

Concrete jungle for kids. Never thought Philly playgrounds would look ritzy.

Drain outside our house. At first I thought Kara's report that two-yard-long monitor lizards live in here was as credible as reports of alligators in the NY sewer system. Until I saw them. Maybe there are alligators in NYC, too. I'll believe anything now.

Fruits of the street: A Photo Essay

Kara made fun of me a lot for taking these photos, but I was amazed by the variety of fruit growing within a five minute walk from my house, so I wanted to share my amazement with all of you.

Mango

Pom!

Exotic fruits of the east edition: RAMBUTAN!

So there you go! It wasn't a bad kind of life, all in all, but I'm ready to go home. I think I can never live anywhere but a really big city again.

Vietnam and Bangkok highlights

Ok now officially typing on a kindle touch screen. This is basically a typewriter style blog with no pictures and many typos now till December. Sorry if it's not as absolutely scintillating as usual. I just want to note some highlightsto keep youupdated and jog my own memory when I'm old and gray and hazy on exactly where Southeast Asia is. Vietnam -Ha Long Bay - they call it the 8th wonder of the world fpr a reason. One night cruise was beautiful. I managed to kayak through a cave into a cove without tipping the boat shocking all onlookers and especially Mark, who was in the back of the kayak. Visited an island named after the Russian astronaut who once toured there with Ho Chi Minh. Question : did they wear swim floaties? Amusing guide named Hong liked to say things like "30 minutes to relax and enjoy the life, then to go kayaking." And instructing us to "use the imagination "to see how much everything in Vietnam supposedly resembles mythical dragons. -Ho Chi Minh City - retro style and extensive bunker infrastructure at the Reunification Palace. Ridiculously opulent hotel complete with fake silver moose head and constant Christmas music. Slight stomach flu. -Hanoi - yummy bun cha (noodles broth pork spring rolls) in an alleyway establishment on tiny stools. Other less successful street food like organ porridge, which Mark somehow ate like the champion he is. R oast dog displayed in street like roast duck. Did not partake. Free walking tour with two great young locals c that incled the beautiful Temple of Literature from the 11th century and egg coffee. Like egg nog but coffee. Yum. Super friendly and helpful hostel employee who is ridiculously gleeful about his upcoming wedding. Lots of getting lost. Sitting by a lake with a temple in the center in the middle of town and listening to street musicians.filing past Ho Chi Minh 's preserved body at his mausoleum. Learning from guidebook that the body goes to Russia for two months every year for maintenance. Eerie. Visited the "Hanoi Hilton" prison. All the exhibits about the prison'l When it was run by the French were about how horrible the conditions were and how eve The prison was a tool to oppress valiant Vietnamese revolutionaries. Yet all the exhibits about when the Vietnamese held American POWs there were about what a great time the POWs had decorating Christmas trees and playing basketball. Funny how that works. Thailand Bangkok - hotel with rooftop pool. Souvenir shopping at Buddha market. Briefly becoming regulars at a super cheap restaurant with world's best pad Thai. Meeting up with an ETA friend at a breathtaking rooftop bar with views of the whole huge bustling city. Eating shark fin soup, fried duck tongues, and birds nest in syrup in Chinatown. Have finally met someonewho will eat just as much if not more strange food than me. The rest re: Bangkok i 'll tell you when you're older, gentle readers. -Phuket - here alone. Beautiful day at the beach. Overrun with Russian tourists, interestingy. Loong forward to lantern festival Sunday. A but lonely alone but fear not. Books The book of the courtier, castiglione Revolutionar Burnt shadows The Glass Palace EXCELLENT READ Three Act Tragedy,Agatha christie A super sad true love story, Gary Shteyngart. Hated it. Hate modern life and moderiting.

Ch ch changes

Writing from the free iPad in my hotel room in Ho Chi Minh City. I have officially made the transition from English teacher/cultural ambassador/halfhearted role model to footloose vagabond. I will be traveling for the next six weeks from Vietnam to Thailand to Myanmar to China. I'll have about a week in each of the first three places and three weeks in China. I still owe readers a few posts; I wanted to write one about life outside the apartment, one on crazy animal adventures, and one sappy end of Fulbright post. Alas, the time crunch of settling all my final odds and ends, final meetings,  socializing with dear friends whom I won't see for awhile, and a very badly-timed 24 hour stomach bug have pushed those dreams into the future. I'm traveling sans laptop and therefore can't do much blogging until I come home on December 17. For now I'll say that my emotions haven't quite caught up with me amidst all these big life changes.

 For once I'm staying not at a hostel but at a hotel that can only be described as humorously opulent. I'm awaiting the arrival of my long suffering boyfriend, Mark, who has just spent a few days in Tokyo on his way to meet me here. The revelation of the long distance boyfriend at this point in the blog may seem like a cheap plot device to add dramatic tension, but I assure you I was just too shy to mention him until it seemed unavoidable. That's all for now. Expect sporadic and poorly typed updates via kindle with no pictures. Thanks for reading all these many crazy months, friends.

At Home in Kuantan

I keep promising you all a blog post about everyday life in Kuantan. Since I'm feeling verbose, I decided to turn this into two blog posts. This first one will detail the ins of my life in Kuantan, while the next will describe the outs. I'm afraid, dear readers, that based upon my blog you may think my life is all glamorous travel and excitement. NOT TRUE. Though a Buddhist monk in saffron robes did just walk into the cafe where I'm writing this exactly as I penned that all-caps statement. Ignore that.

Let me tell you the big secret of my life in Kuantan: It's boring. Like, incredibly boring. I get up, sweating, put on a baju kurung, sweating, go to school, sweat in front of teenagers, come home, sweating, quickly change into my "I feel like a real person again" clothes, drink water, and sweatily walk down the street to eat some roti. Then, I usually come back, nap for a few hours, try in vain to get good internet access at home and research trips, watch a movie, read a book, or talk on the phone for hours to friends/family from home. Rinse (thoroughly--remember, it's sweaty) and repeat, with very little alteration. I'm usually in bed by 11. Basically, I traded everything I liked about my life in the US--close friends and family, interesting jobs/schoolwork, a bustling, walkable city, museums, performances, seasons, fall-themed beverages, witty conversations about topics other than my ability or inability to eat spicy food, etc. for the chance to travel. The day-to-day stuff here basically kind of sucks compared to life at home, and I often feel listless.

Sure, it has its moments of interest and glory. Having so much free time that I can read without feeling guilty is nice. Teaching has moments of touching warmth and hilarity, but it comes with a lot of bureaucracy. The ETA role itself comes with a lot of ambiguity. And ambiguity, as we all know, can produce mild anxiety. Am I glorified camp counselor? The students' friend and confidante? Just a teacher? Their one beacon of American culture, however mixed my own feelings are about that culture? Am I bad a person if I just want to teach my classes and go home, instead of going to the mall with students?

Here are some photos to help you understand the basics of life at home in Kuantan. I'll start with the most educational section. Suggested soundtrack for this post: "Common People" by Pulp. I'm listening to it now.

Let me preface this whole thing by saying that my apartment is in a great location that is in walking distance of pleeeenty of places to eat, shop, and use the internet (like this lovely cafe). It's really, really, really lucky. And I'm lucky to be in a city and not a podunk (sp?) town. Kara and I have a ton of space for when friends come visit--two spare bedrooms and  a really big living room. We even have a mysterious room full of the landlady's junk that we never go into. Birds live in there. A lot of this post will sound whiny, but it's just that standard of living here is not the same as at home. I wouldn't expect it to be. And I somewhat knew what I was signing up for. So there.

I. The Bathroom
Let me introduce you to the concept of the wet bathroom. In many parts of Asia, a wet bathroom is a clean bathroom. In public bathrooms, that means that you may find a courtesy pair of flip flops outside the door--if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, you will be wading through an indeterminate mixture of urine and water to position yourself over a squat toilet. Next to the toilet, there will be a faucet, a metallic "bum gun" (little contraption kind of like a miniature shower head nozzle), or an unsightly yellow plastic tube attached to a tap for bidet-like purposes. In some cases, there will be a large basin full of water with a little bucket in it that you can use to flush if the flush isn't working. It's not uncommon (but not common, either) to turn on a sink and realize that the sink isn't connected to any plumbing, but just drains right out onto the floor at your feet. Once in a blue moon, a toilet will do something sort of similar when flushed. That's bad news bears.

In bathrooms that include a shower, like my apartment's bathroom, the wet bathroom concept means that there's no need to separate the shower area from the toilet area. The shower head is usually right next to the toilet, with no separating stall or wall. Doesn't that mean the toilet gets all wet and so does the floor and sometimes the toilet paper roll if you're not careful? Yes, friends, it does. Many bathrooms, including mine, also have a hard-to-describe little tub-like area. We learned that this is not, in fact, for bathing babies, but actually supposedly for filling with water in case your water cuts out. (Which it sometimes does with no warning and for indefinite amounts of time--record was 3 days--even in Kuantan. Luckily, my shower is fed from a tank of rainwater above my roof, so we could always shower and could boil shower water when necessary.)

Bathtubs don't really exist outside of the nicest hotels here. I cannot complain, because I at least have a hot shower with good water pressure, which is more than many ETAs can say. There is no hot running water here, by the way. Nor is there really cold running water, so I cool all my filtered water in a pitcher in the fridge.

Oh, funny thing: You may notice my bathroom has no sink. I could put soap in the basin thing, but then the water just runs out onto my feet to get to the floor drain. My bedroom, oddly enough, DOES have a sink. I wash my hands and brush my teeth there.

Take a look. Oh, WARNING: Lots of parts of my house were painted with brown paint, apparently in a big hurry. That means there are drips and drabs of brown paint all over everything, including our squatty potty. It's not what it looks like.

See the little built-in basin area with the taps behind all our toiletries?

Forgot to mention that my washing machine drains through a hose into the squatty room, through a hole in the wall into the bathroom, and then out through the floor drain under the shower. Fun with plumbing! Such creativity!

BROWN PAINT from the door. This is our squatty. We never use it or go in here, although squatting to do your business is supposed to be good for your colon. My school has squat toilets that I must use every day, but I still haven't mastered the technique. What happens when you haven't mastered the technique? Channeling my grandmother, I'm going to tell you in no uncertain terms: You piss your ankles, kids.

II. The Kitchen

Here are two things you will never find in Malaysia: 

-a full-size oven (of the non-toaster-oven variety)

-a real, indoor stove (of the non-camp-stove variety)

After our one-burner stove broke last week, Kara and I experienced an unexpected windfall when our landlady replaced it with a two-burner camp stove. The luxury! We don't have a microwave, though we probably could have asked for one from our program. We opted instead for a toaster oven. You will now understand why I never cook, given that meals out are so cheap.

Home, home on the range! It's like camping all the time, only with more ambiguity about whether you've left the gas on or off.

Stove on the right and clothesline on the left. A winningly flammable combination. 

Kitchen overview. With authentic teacher clutter.

III. The Roof

Maybe you noticed in that kitchen overview that there is a staircase straight up to the roof. It makes the house very indoor-outdoor, especially when it rains right down the stairs. There's no way to close off this rooftop space, so I basically have a gaping hole in my kitchen. That brings me to a list of animals that live in my house on and off:

-geckos--Cute! Fast-moving! They eat bugs! They also make birdlike chirping noises in the night. 

-cats--One in particular wonders in off the roof sometimes. Have you ever found cat poop in your bathroom in the morning only to groggily realize that you don't, as far as you know, own a cat?

-birds--Sparrows swoop in and out. You'll see why in later photos.

-flying cockroaches--God help us and save us

The rooftop is a lovely place to hang laundry, catch breezes, hear the call to prayer, and read until you can't stand the mosquitoes any more. 

Stairway to heaven.

Alley from the roof. I know what you're thinking: "It's so...so...Asian!" Sometimes I see my students walking along here on their way to a concrete playground just a block over. (Also visible from roof.)

View of a tropical hill and neighbors' water tank from the roof. I can actually see straight into my neighbors' house from my roof, since they don't have a roof covering part of it. It's like watching a Chinese cooking show when the wife is in the kitchen. The husband's hacking coughs and semi-nudity are less welcome appearances. Although I'm sure they see me reading up on the roof, we seem to have agreed not to acknowledge each others' uncomfortably close existence.

Water tank that feeds my shower. 

IV. The Bedroom

The most important fact about my apartment is that it doesn't have AC. Many Malaysians have AC. Why don't I? I ask myself this every sweaty, sweaty night. I never sleep through a night here, due to a combination of having to pee, being overheated, or being bitten by mosquitoes. I keep my windows open, which means that mosquitoes get in. (The concept of the window screen has not made it to Malaysia. I pray that it someday will.) I religiously buy a plug-in mosquito repellent. The concept is kind of like a plug-in deodorizer. It works wonders, but sometimes it stops working in the night. (It's a finicky little thing that needs to be kept at the right angle in the socket. Long story.)  I immediately notice because I wake up from bites over every part of my body that is exposed to the air. So there you go. 

It's actually great having a sink in your bedroom. You may wonder why I have a comforter with Chinese characters. Well, it came with a set. The set doesn't include a flat sheet, though. Those are mysteriously unavailable in Malaysia. It's fitted sheet or comforter. I love having a blanket to cuddle up with, even if it's really hot. Weird, I know.

That fan = lifesaver.

V. The Living Room

The living room is full of humorous decor courtesy of our landlady's dead mother-in-law. Enjoy. 

Everyday life includes Kara napping on the couch in a baju. The living room is kind of her lair, while the kitchen is mine.  Note the rectangular openings above the window. No, they cannot be closed or effectively blocked. Yes, birds and bugs get in. 

Art with a capital A. 

This deceased turtle was hanging on the wall when we moved in. Sort of as if he had crawled up there and died.

Obviously, this post is for diehard fans of high-end interior decorating and simple Asian living. I find it hard to believe anyone but my parents made it this far in reading, but I thought a picture of my life here should include some of the less-glamorous aspects, too. 

READING

Nonfiction bonanza since Wolf Hall. 

Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith. READ. IT. I learned so much. 

A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance by William Manchester. Really fun overview, but not impressive as a serious work of history or anything. 

Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford. I'm making very slow progress on it. The treatment of Italian politics is pretty convoluted and hard to keep track of, but those were convoluted times. 

The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. Light and fun.