Denver, CO.

After 50 hours of transit, a night layover in Hong Kong, a missed connection in L.A., and heroics from a friendly United representative - we are home in Denver safe and sound. Feeling a mix of relief, disorientation, happiness, and exhaustion.

Thanks for all of you who have been reading and checking-in. Its been a lot of fun writing this.

Pictures from the Grand Finale

Click here to see pictures from Bali

Click here to see pictures from Gili Meno

Click here to see pictures from Kuta Beach in Lombok

Click here to see pictures from the Monkey Forest in Ubud

Almost home, we can't believe it!

At Last, A Beach Vacation

During the last two weeks we have been lucky enough to relax thoroughly in some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable. A quick update.

Our longest and most otherworldly stop was the small island of Gili ("small island") Meno, where we spent a week. For most of the 4 hour boat trip from Bali we suffered from some very severe sea sickness, due to stormy weather, but we both rebounded quickly once we reached land and had perfect weather for the rest of our stay. It takes about an hour to walk all the way around Meno, which has a population of about 300 and is surrounded by gorgeous beaches and coral reef. Jeremy learned to snorkel, despite suffering a bumped shin, and we spent much of our days exploring the varied fish life and stunning coral practically within arms length our of beach bungalow. In the evenings we ate fresh grilled fish and watched Mount Rinjani (Lombok's active volcano across the shore) erupt.

After this indulgent and peaceful week we visited yet another beach,, near Kuta, Lombok, with crystal-blue bays, white-sand and apparently almost no one to enjoy it.

Compared to these near-utopias, Lovina beach, a black sand beach we'd visited in Bali, was a bit shabby. However, the dawn dolphin-watching trip we went on was not. Our boat and about twenty others chased hundreds of dolphins for several hours and watched in delight as they appeared in between the waves.


Our first stop after leaving the monkeys of Ubud was Munduk, a tiny mountain village. Heavy rains, cool temperatures, and fog confined us to the comfy balcony attached to our room where we could read and watch the valley below. Ali never wanted to leave.

A Small Monkey Story

As we were approaching the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Ubud, which houses several Hindu temples and a few thousand monkeys, Ali dashed off to take some pictures of a particularly cute mama monkey and her baby cuddling on the side of the road.

Jeremy, meanwhile, had been instructed to remove all food items from his bag before entering the forest, and was busily munching away on the first of several leftover chocolate chip cookies. Even outside the sanctuary, though, the monkeys wasted no time in locating the source of the scent.

With one cookie to go Jeremy suddenly found himself surrounded by about 10 menacing-looking monkeys, who seemed prepared to take his cookie by force. An attack was imminent, and he morosely threw his cookie into the crowd before fleeing the scene.

This was an ominous start to the day. While Jeremy enjoyed watching the little critters in their various forms of play, ripping apart whole coconuts, biting each other's tails, tending to each others wounds, and otherwise vying for dominance, he kept a measured distance.

Ali, however, found amusement in befriending small monkeys who came to sit on her lap. They would clasp her hand, grab at her dress, and then bound off to rough house with their friends. When a slightly larger monkey jumped on her lap (see below picture), Ali was a little hesitant, but did not protest. It monkeyed around for a little while and then quite unexpectedly reared on its hind legs, bared its teeth, and grabbed ferociously at the tie to Ali's dress. Luckily Ali was quicker than the monkey and had only recently taken a martial arts class, so she was left unscathed.

Welcome to Bali: Island of the Gods

After a night spent sitting in a concrete patio outside the Densapar airport, leaning against a wall that cockroaches and red ants also claimed as their home, we proceeded gratefully to Teba House, a sweet little guesthouse located up a small hilly road in Ubud. A province comprised of 14 small villages, Ubud has an unearthly concentration of massage parlors, dress boutiques, health food cafes, art and dance venues, and toned, tanned wheatgrass-drinking, yoga pants-clad expats. These new-age types (what is it about new-age soul-seekers and Hindus??) have become all the more abundant in the past few years due to the immense popularity of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love where she writes about how she found healing, meaning, and love in Ubud. The local population here seems to hold a certain derision towards this book.

Still, the Balinese and the tourists and ex-pats seem to get along well enough. Life in Ubud, amidst rice paddies and monkeys, is pretty relaxing and the Balinese religion and culture--a mix of animistic and Hindu beliefs that, for a variety of reasons, is a very popular topic among academics--is beautiful and intriguing. A Hindu island in a sea of Indonesian Islam, Bali isn't shy about it's differences; people set small offerings of flowers and incense outside their shops and homes every morning and engage in all kinds of bold artistic endeavours.


Even though the wet season has technically ended, our days have been structured around the rain. Most afternoons feature at least one torrential downpour and a thunderstorm, which we enjoy with tea and rambutans from the patio outside our room (see below picture of the rainstorm in the courtyard).


Bali (and Lombok) is our final destination, and we are trying to soak up this time together as much as possible before spending the next year in different cities (Jeremy at UC-Davis and Ali doing her first year placement for Smith in Denver).

Click here to see pictures from Malaysia and Singapore

An Unexpected Snow

Malaysia has been really hot this past couple of weeks. At 100 degrees and humid we have been waking up at dawn just so we can have some livable hours in which to explore the city.


So imagine our surprise when we woke up this morning to snow. Big, soft, fluffy flakes of heaven. We put on all our clothes and ran out into the flurries, happy as puppies. As we have been reminded again and again, in Asia anything is possible.

Malaysia's City of Harmony: Kuala Lumpur

Neither of us is particularly enthusiastic about museums, especially the underfunded and propaganda-heavy Southeast Asian variety. But it's 100 degrees in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a bustling and relatively young city that is a haven for corporations and immigrants, and besides visiting malls, museums, and ethnic enclaves, there's not all that much for tourists to do. As much as we enjoyed the National Museum, which featured air-conditioning and all sorts of entertaining historical simulations (one, for example, illustrated how Islam spread into Malaysia), the tremendous emphasis on multiculturalism and tolerance aroused in us some suspicion.

In spite of the recent church bombings, KL has a reputation--no doubt inspired by the Malaysian government--as a city of racial and religious harmony. Even Lonely Planet brands the city, emphasizing that churches, mosques, and Chinese temples as well as head-scarved Muslims and Chinese women in mini-skirts all "coexist harmoniously." As we learned from our wonderful "couchsurfing" host, the peace is forced; the large minorities of Indians and Chinese (Buddhists, Hindus and Christians) face institutional discrimination at the hands of the Malay (Muslim) dominated government. Most slots in public universities, for example, are reserved for Malays, while Indians and Chinese who wish to learn are rerouted into expensive private schools. The issue of mixed marriages is resolved by requiring the non-Malay partner to convert to Islam and change their name. Moreover, the Malaysian notion of "Chinese" or "Indian" is plain weird: our host, whose family has been in Malaysia for many generations, is considered Chinese because her great, great-grandfather immigrated from China. By that logic, Ali is Ukrainian-Canadian.

To top it all off, following ethnic/religious violence in 1969, the Malaysian government banned public opposition to the "racial situation." As our host put it, "there's no point talking about it because it's never going to change."

Malaysian Islam may be relatively moderate, but it's certainly in your face. The National Mosque is full of leaflets defending Islam against harmful western stereotypes and, at the same time, instructing foreigners on how to convert (it's very easy). There is even an exceedingly friendly Muslim woman at the entrance to the mosque who instructs all female tourists in how to wear the required purple cloaks (see pictures). The Islamic Arts Museum was full of beautiful and characteristically intricate art, but also sold books featuring theological debates between Christians and Muslims (inevitably, the Muslim scholar won). We couldn't help but feel that the women wearing burqas along with high heels or lipstick, or while sitting in a swimming pool, were pressured to do so.

As it turns out, like in Saudi Arabia, Muslims are under the watch of the plainscloth Islamic police, who have the authority to punish their co-religionists who act outside the boundaries of Islamic law. Still, we were struck by the number of working women--cops wearing headscarves beneath their berets, women in suits wearing headscarves--and by the occasional sight of hooded young women holding hands and laughing flirtatiously with boyfriends (husbands?) on the train or in the cinema. Nothing is as simple as it seems.

Our visit to Malaysia marks the beginning of the third and last leg of our adventure. We've done India and Nepal, we've done SE Asia; it's hard to believe it, but we only have two more countries to see, and we'll be back home in a month. We are definitely tired of hotel rooms and non potable tap water, but are finding plenty of inspiration to keep exploring.

BATTAMBANG!

There are only a couple activities in Battambang, a friendly and dreadfully sweaty town in Western Cambodia. The "Bamboo Train" is a bamboo raft with a motor attached that runs really fast on railroad tracks and the countryside tour allows you to see village families engaged in rice paper making, fish paste fermenting, and noodle pounding. During the five hottest hours of the day tourists can retreat to the friendly shops which serve pancakes and coffee for cheap. Our favorite was the Sunrise Cafe, frequented by American missionaries, which served iced coffee with ice cubes made out of coffee!!! Holy Crap, why haven't we been doing this our whole lives?

Click here to see pictures from Angkor Wat and Siem Reap

Click here to see pictures from Battambang

Click here to see pictures from Phnom Penh

Around Angkor: Wat do we see?

Guest blogger here again. From Phnom Penh we took the bus eight hours north to Siem Reap. It was a long ride but I enjoyed sitting next to Ali, laughing, talking and looking out the window. Lots of dust and bright colors.

Each morning we wake up early to go see the temples while it’s cool out and the light slants in low through the trees. I’ve never been an early riser but even I can get up for this. Some of the temples are over 1,000 years old; I’ve taken so many pictures of their crumbling corridors, arches and columns that when I close my eyes that’s what I see imprinted on the backs of my eyelids.

The temple complex of Angkor Wat (the most famous temple at Anchor) was built for king Suryavarman II in the 12th century but many of the surrounding monuments were built for other kings. We found that our favorite temples — Preah Kahn with its mazelike passageways, Bayon with its impassive faces, Ta Phrom with its enormous trees pushing up through the ruins — were all built by the same king: Jayavarman VII. He’s our guy, we decided.

He’s not a modest guy, this Jayavarman VII. Practically every surface of Bayon is covered with giant stone carvings of his face. We wonder who built these temples…not Jayavarman VII. We wonder what their faces looked like.

All around the temples are dozens of tiny, skinny children running after tourists, trying to sell bracelets, coconuts, anything. Some of the children just beg. It’s hard to turn a cold eye but if these kids can make good money at the temples, their desparately poor parents have a strong incentive for keeping them home from school. (Better to give your money to a charity or some socially-forward program.) This is what we’re up against when we tell these children no:

Yesterday Ali, Jeremy and I spent the twilight hours at Bayon. It reminds me of Mount Rushmore with all its ridiculous giant faces. I think Lincoln left to his own devices would never have his face carved all over an enormous rock. Perhaps I give him too much credit. George Washington would be all about it.

In the states temples like these would be roped off. The intricate carvings would be behind glass. I love climbing around the temples as if I just stumbled upon them in the jungle but I know that I am part of their deterioration. In another ten or twenty years these temples will look very different than they do now.

The best thing to do at the temples, I think, is to find a shady courtyard and sit there. It’s great to step back from all the crazed gawking and just hang out in an ancient, quiet place. Of course it’s also around 100 degrees out, so sitting in the shade is as much a physical imperative as a spiritual preference.

At the end of a long, hot day, the romance of the temple wears off. In fact a cold papaya smoothie has much more appeal. I think that by sunset tomorrow, we’ll be just about ready to leave for Battambang.

Into Phnom Penh

After two days on the airplane and a 12-hour layover in Tokyo, I finally arrived in Cambodia last night. Ali and Jeremy were waiting for me at the airport and whisked me away in their tuk-tuk to Kambuja Inn, the gorgeous place we're staying in Phnom Penh. ("I" for the purposes of this blog post refers to me, your guest blogger, and the mysterious newest addition to A Dream, A Chance, A Great Adventure whose identity may remain forever unknown.)

Traveling by tuk-tuk is a good way to see the city, since the rickshaws move so slowly and every side is open to the air. There's a liveliness and happiness to the city here that I felt instantly in the street clamour and motorcycles whizzing around us. The feel is foreign but familiar, or as Ali put it, we could live here. Not for five years, she said, but maybe for a year.

Something magical about Cambodia, I think. And I don't just mean the temples of Angkor Wat. Something about the vibrancy of the people contrasted with the history of the mass killings that took place only a few decades ago. There is little evidence of that dark past in the day to day drum of the city. It's only when you've been walking around for the better part of an afternoon that you notice something, like that you haven't seen any old people all day.

Today we traveled by tuk-tuk to the Killing Fields, one of a smattering of sites where hundreds of thousands of women, children, and intellectuals were murdered under the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge. It was strange, we had some trouble finding a driver perhaps because of a language barrier, but perhaps because the driver we were talking to--and a large group of teenagers standing by--didn't seem to know where the Killing Fields were. Much of the country's bloody history seems to have been buried along with the dead.

At Choung Ek Killing Field they talked about everything in numbers. There were 20,000 grave sites; 1,112,898 executed; 7 survivors. A commemorative stupa was filled with the skulls of victims, and all the bones were neatly sorted by type, and by the age of the people that died. Exhibit A: skulls, women ages 20 to 40. Exhibit B: femurs, teenage girls, ages 15 to 20.

Just outside the barbed-wire fence surrounding the Killing Field, children chatted and sang songs. It was uncanny, these children playing so carelessly alongside tragedy. Maybe it's a testament to the strength of the human spirit, and our ability to stay light even in the presence of great adversity. Or maybe it says something about our phenomenal capacity to heal. Or maybe it's just disturbing...