Our Great Asian Adventure

Some Photos to Illustrate the Last Post

2010-09-07T13:50:00.000-07:00


Morning Vietnamese coffees

Visiting the Forbidden City in Hue

Josh, the hair salon celebrity, receiving a surprisingly round haircut

Breakfast at Pho Hoa in Saigon. Look at that fried dough. Perfection.

Leaving Pho Hua a very happy camper

Visiting the Jade Emperor's Pagoda

Happy communists!

Celebrating Vietnamese Independence Day under the smiling shadow of Uncle Ho

Statutes at one of the temples in Saigon's Chinatown

Miscellaneous rice crepe dumplings sold by the woman behind EB. She deliberated extensively in providing us with the best assortment possible for all of 50 cents.

Ho Boy, That Was Pho-un

2010-09-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry readers, but the puns just write themselves. Just be glad there isn’t an audio portion to the blog where you have to listen to me (EB) sing the entirety of Miss Saigon, which Josh has had to endure since we touched down in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) two days ago. I mean, when it is swelteringly hot, it is basically impossible not to say the Heat is on in Saigon. And the rest just goes from there. [Photos to come, btw - we're on a slow and time-limited connection in Bangkok]

To round out our visit to Hue, our last morning there began with a visit to our now regular coffee spot on the corner a couple blocks from our hotel where all the tiny plastic stools faced out to the watch the traffic pass through the intersection. Turns out even Vietnamese people like to watch the amazing things that can be crammed onto motorbikes and cyclos. We then headed over to the Forbidden City, which was the home of the Nguyen emperors in the 19th Century. Filled with temples, houses, beautiful ponds and lawns, all built on a symmetrical grid in a very celestially auspicious location, Hue’s Forbidden City was reminiscent of Beijing’s, though in substantially worse shape having been the site of fires, floods and fighting in the Vietnam War. Our guidebook (which Josh graciously endures my constant reading from – always about learning) detailed for us the many Nguyen court rituals and the great importance placed on the (their words) “haughty” but “meritorious” “Mandarins” – those who had ascended the highest ranks in civil or military society. In the future we intend to strive to be described as both haughty and meritorious.

Back to the hotel to check out and then we had a couple hours of wandering ahead of us before we had to leave for our flight. We stopped to check the prices at a motorbike shop – we are really getting into Vietnamese life but I’m not sure Josh is going to be zipping his way to Hackettstown on a Vietnamese two-wheeler anytime soon – and then found our way to lunch at a Hue beer garden. Lunch was great – noodles with pork and beef with veggies – but probably the most fun was enjoying our new favorite local beers (Huda for Josh, Festival for me) and watch the others around us work their way through cases of their own. Josh gleefully observed his first examples of serious Asian flush in the group of men at the table just behind us. It happens here too!

After lunch we decided that it wasn’t fair for me to be the only one who received a beautifying treatment while in Hue, so we selected a “salon” for Josh to get a haircut. Though populated only by women with no sign they had ever cut a man’s hair before, we chose this spot because it was the only shop we saw where there was any activity at all – one woman had her hair plugged into some very elaborate machine that looked sure to electrocute. Though the haircut may have been a bit shorter and rounder than Josh had hoped for, the experience was great. Lots of women buzzing around the place, watching Josh in fascination, clearly talking about us in not so hushed Vietnamese. After the cut, Josh asked for a shampoo, which resulted in a washing/scalp massage/face whacking with hands held together as if praying while making an amazing noise that lasted twice as long as the cut itself. And once he had paid, the gaggle of women could resist no longer, asking in broken English where we were from, how old we were and, when it was revealed that we are married, jubilant cheers and applause. It appeared we were a hit!

Freshly shorn (at least one of us), we headed back to the hotel and then were off to the airport. And before we even knew it, we had arrived in Saigon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we came prepared for our day and a half in the city with about two weeks’ worth of food recommendations, and we were ready to dive in. And dive in we did. The food in Saigon was terrific! If Hue was a bit of a disappointment (OK food, nothing amazing) Saigon really knocked its socks off. This is a city that likes to eat and we are always happy to oblige.

Our drive to the hotel gave us our first taste of the famous Saigon traffic. Otherwise known as absolute, total and complete motorbike-filled chaos in which it is an absolute miracle that families of four riding on a motorbike together make it through the intersection together let alone from point A to point B. The motorbikes feel sort of like a river that is flash flooding its way down the street. When the light goes green, hundreds, thousands-even of bikes swarm all around the cars, pedestrians and buses. They go on the correct side of the street, they go into oncoming traffic, they go the wrong direction down a one-way street. They cannot be stopped – they are everywhere! There is really nothing quite like being in the left lane (the lane for cars) and trying to make a right turn into an endless stream of motorbikes. It feels like the driver just closes his eyes and hopes to God, but somehow it all works out. Crossing the street was a similar adventure, but luckily a bit of the New Yorker mentality combined with good luck meant we made it unscathed.

After checking into the fancy Caravelle Hotel (got a good deal on hotels.com), we headed out to Quan An Ngon, a restaurant with a hip atmosphere that serves sort of shmancier versions of street food. The restaurant was buzzing with people – Vietnamese and tourist alike – and the women who were making the food stood at tables ringing the outside of the restaurant. It was cool, probably the most “scene-y” of the places we visited this trip. (Once again we haven’t done the best job of working our way through the nightlife section of the guidebooks. But now that we’re old and married we suppose it’s OK to be lame.) The food was great – pork and “broken” rice, best springs rolls of the trip, rice crepes – with the only dud being the salad with chicken in which the only green was super pungent Thai basil. Good for adding to your noodle soups in small doses, maybe not for chomping down instead of romaine. After dinner we walked to a multi-story ice cream shop with décor that looked right out of 1950s suburban America for a shake and an ice cream sundae. I kept looking around for Archie to be sharing his banana split with Betty and Veronica at a table nearby. No luck. Back to the hotel and off to bed.

Wednesday began with the quest for the best pho in town. We had heard positive things about Pho Hua in District 3, so we headed there in a cab in morning rush hour traffic. The pho did not disappoint. The place was packed with diners all slurping their soups and I was thrilled to rediscover finally the fried dough sticks we had first enjoyed in Hanoi three years ago. Rip them up, toss them in the soup, and it’s like getting the go-ahead to have a giant french fry for breakfast. YUM. A morning of wandering all around Districts 3 and 1 ensued, with a brief stop for Josh to learn how to make Vietnamese coffee from a helpful shopkeeper. (Turns out, surprisingly easy.) We visited a couple of pagodas and then found our way to lunch at Hong Hahn, another place we had read about in the helpful food blog. We waited out (most of) the torrential rain storm enjoying rice crepes with pork and mushrooms and rice paper wraps of veggies, pork and shrimp.

Thus fortified, we headed to the War Museum, telling the story of the Vietnam War (or American War of Aggression as described there) from the Vietnamese perspective. The exhibits were very sobering and after a thought-provoking discussion about capitalism, communism and the different societies they create (I clearly won the argument, three years of law school must have taught me something about intellectual pontificating about rights and values and other stuff like that, though for Josh’s sake we’ll call it a draw), we then strolled home. A visit to the beautiful central post office, some cookies from a woman making them in a Vietnamese pizzelle maker-equivalent on the street, and a Luxe-guide directed shopping stroll down the street near our hotel were our only final diversions.

For dinner, we hopped a cab over to Com Nieu Sai Gon, a restaurant we had read about that apparently also appeared on Anthony Bourdain’s show when he was in Saigon. The food was all very yummy – eggplant with pork and tofu, spicy grilled pork – with the highlight being the restaurant’s signature grilled rice. The rice is cooked in a clay pot which the waiter then breaks in the middle of the restaurant to free the rice. To cool the rice (and impress the diners), he then flings the puck of rice across the restaurant to another waiter, who catches it on a plate and serves it to your table. It was tasty, and the experience even more memorable. A short stroll and then a cab back home and another day of eating was behind us.

Today, September 2, is Vietnamese Independence Day in which they celebrate the triumph over the French in 1945. There were lots of posters around town with Uncle Ho’s smiling face on them, but sadly no big parades to watch. And so, to truly celebrate Vietnam’s independence, we decided to spend our day with the two nations that had done the most to limit Vietnam’s independence, namely China and France. First off, we headed to Cho Lon, the city’s Chinatown. Though the main market was closed for the holiday, people were still selling meat and veggies on the street, and we were able to sneak in two breakfasts – first miscellaneous meat/fish-filled rice dumplings from a cart and then grilled pork over rice from a small street-side grill. We wandered through Cho Lon’s temples and watched as worshippers came to pray and burn incense before the many gods. Highlight of the Cho Lon temple circuit – when I so helpfully read a description from the guidebook of the temple that I believed us to be in (a description which seemed very accurate and enlightening) only to discover that temple was actually several blocks away and we were instead in some totally random one. It didn’t otherwise seem like all the temples were the same, but I guess that at a certain level of description one could make just about anything work.

Our Chinatown wandering complete, we hopped a cab over towards the center of town where, with a quick stop at a food vendor selling a dessert we had been advised to try – banana stuffed into sweet rice and grilled, then covered with coconut milk and tapioca, good though the description sounds sweeter than it actually is – we transitioned to the French portion of our day for fruit smoothies and a crème caramel at Au Parc, a lovely French café on the Park near the Cathedral. A sweet and wonderful way to end our time in Saigon. Back to the hotel and then we were off on our marathon journey to the next phase of our adventure – this time in Europe.

Right now? Well, dear readers, we write to you while enjoying a 6 hour layover (7 pm to 1 am) in the Bangkok airport. It’s our own “One Night in Bangkok” – unsurprisingly I’ve been singing that, much to Josh’s embarrassment – though really more like half a night in the Bangkok airport. Highlights of our short visit here include having Thai Pad Thai (interestingly enough not called just Pad) and the sign at immigration that asks you to take off your sunglasses, hats, etc. for the picture they take of you upon entering the country. The image of a cap with a line through it? Why it was none other than a Yale graduation hat from 1958! Namely a blue baseball cap with 5Y8 on it. Pretty awesome.

Though we are sad to leave our Asian adventuring behind, fear not blog fans, as we are off for a weekend of fun, marriage and likely a yummy Greek meal or two in the coming days. Let the European escapades begin!

Voila!

2010-09-01T19:12:00.000-07:00

I (Amy) am officially off the continent and back in Los Angeles, and I haven't had a croissant in over 24 hours. I feel lightheaded. We were sorry to leave but glad to come home to Harry, and since we now have all sorts of technological gadgets, I hereby present a selection of photos not pirated from the internet.

The view from the front of Chateau Fretoy.

Inadequate dogs, Chateau Fretoy, France.

Shortly before French newlywed game at amazing wedding dinner. Congrats to the bride and groom!

Just a castle and some grapes, whatever.

Vending machine at a deserted train station in Autun, France. Nicely done, Josh.

Revenue generating use of archaeological site in Geneva, Switzerland.

Jet d'Eau no the wind is changing!

Future home on Lake Geneva

Wondering how an unemployed lawyer affords said future home.

Same, this time in Paris.

Triumphant stairs.

Dear Los Angeles,
Please see above.
Regards, Amy

Inadequate dog, Latin Quarter, Paris, France.

That's more like it. California, United States

And with that, au revoir for the time being. Looking forward to more from Vietnam!

Getting Hue From It All

2010-08-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

Yay, posts from the Continent! Vive la France! So long as it steers clear of the whole colonialist aggression bit.

Since we’ve last reported, a number of notable things have taken up our time, both in Hoi An and lately, up the coast a couple hours in Hue. We’ve spent a long and exhilarating but ultimately tiring day in the sun, though (life is hard in vacation-land), so we’re simply going to list these notable things with the best intentions of going back to fill them in later. A few pics included below to make it a bit more worth your while:

Saturday

Pho on the street across from the hotel, followed up with breakfast part 2 at the hotel proper (street food wins again, but just about everyone around here makes damn good coffee)
Tour of one of the Chinese assembly halls. Think that maybe Hoi An hasn’t really changed so much in 400 years. Used to be that the foreign merchants came to town to bring back the goods of the Orient to local markets. Now foreign tourists shop in the same shops for souveniers. Different goods – same basic game? Made me feel better about the tourism, somehow.

Stroll around town, stopping for some spring rolls
Tailoring, fitting #3
Taxi out to the gorgeous white-sand beach (bathwater, wonderful); hanging out under the umbrella with a frightening thunderstorm on the horizon, chatting with but not buying from the persistent vendors (“Son Son is Number 1!”)

Tailoring, fitting #4
Stroll through a different part of town along the water, very residential. Most everyone is either hanging in the streets or eating together on the living room floor (mostly in front of the TV); run across at least two gentlemen belting out karaoke alone in their living rooms. Houses all painted a kind of teal inside that glows out into the street. We stop for a bahn mi

Tailoring, fitting #5. Amazingly not yet feeling like they’re sick of us. Our sales clerks are doing a good job of advocating on our behalf to the tailors, who reluctantly agree to this or that change. To my untrained ear, every minor change they agree on would seem to imply a total reconstruction of the clothes; nonetheless, they seem to have a better way and never need more than an hour or two to turn something around

Refresh at the hotel
Fancy Vietnamese food at “Secret Garden” for dinner – amazing water spinach salad and Num (fresh spring rolls), grilled pork and fish

Sunday

Bicycles through town, which seems to have the Vietnamese equivalent of a lively Sunday brunch scene (maybe just like this everyday). Stop at a couple of the busiest places for Bahn Mi Op La (sandwich with veggies and spicy fried egg, among other things), and for Pho Bo (Beef soup)
Tailoring #6 – all is done!
Hotel for breakfast and all-you-can-drink coffee (how much sweetened condensed milk is too much?)
Beach, lovely
Mystery of the day: when it's 100 and humid, why is it that so many local ladies are wearing not just long pants but sweatshirts and gloves, even on the beach? Only answer we could get: they don't like to get tan. Plausible.

Check out of hotel and wait for our bus to Hue, only to be picked up and driven one at a time by scooter – with our giant luggage, to boot! – to the bus station

Bus (with stops) to Hue, with storms. Four hours and ~140km later, we're there.
Wandered the streets a bit before landing back in backpacker town, where a mediocre dinner was saved by delicious lime sherbet
Iced coffees in a covered pavilion, avoiding the torrential rain

Monday

Walked the morning market, stopping for mediocre breakfast soup, and then for better breakfast soup on the other side of town
Joined a crowd of men for street watching and coffee (with the requisite side of green tea)

Boating adventure to the Nguyen Emporers’ 19th century pleasure palaces/mausoleums – beautiful places, a bit like touring the Rockefellers? Or the Bush ranch?

Headed over to the local market, only a mile away but off the beaten track and a bit closer to the local action. Bought a Vietnamese coffee maker and then a mélange of snacks/dishes at 5 different vendors/restaurants: Potatoes with peanuts and coconut, bahn beo (dumplings), red bean marzipan, pound cake, com hen (salad with chopped mussels), fried rice and sesame crackers, bun bo, some kind of rice mix, two beers. Total: 113,000 Dong ($5.80)
Mani/pedi for EB, with three attendants and locally vibrant colors: 110,000 VND +20,000 ($6.70)

Now off to sleep!

Bonjour! (better late and with photos from the internet than never)

2010-08-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

The pressure of describing an entire week in France. Where to begin. How about by noting that I (Amy) have no ability to transfer photos from our camera to this computer, so I will be populating the blog with photos of others (strangers) because some photos are better than no photos.

We arrived in Paris a week ago today and headed immediately for the Gare de Lyon train station (above), where thankfully both croissants and english-speakers abounded. A highlight from the hour or so we spent there was my attempt to translate for a man who spoke only spanish. As he told me in spanish, his problem was that he didn't have enough money to buy a train ticket to Barcelona. Specifically, he had one-half the price of a train ticket. I dutifully explained this in english to the information clerk (who, like just about everyone here, claimed to speak little english but spoke fluently), and together she and I tried to come up with a way to explain "you're SOL" in spanish. Hopefully he made his way to an autobus. Moments later, we were on the TGV to Le Cruesot, which is sort of like the maglev in Shanghai but slower and frencher.

Upon arrival in Le Cruesot (a little town in Burgundy) our friends (the bride and groom) picked us up, and we were off to the Chateau, where we stayed until yesterday. What's that? You'd like a photo of the Chateau? Ok:

Yes, it's as awesome as it looks, and yes, it's haunted. We were met by a fantastic spread of vin and fromage at le chateau, and later went to a nearby town for a truly incredible welcome dinner: foie gras (3 ways, who knew), boeuf (Matt), fish (me, and no my french hasn't substantially improved), chocolat (as if I'd fail to learn that one) and of course, again, fromage. They're really onto something here. And by "onto something" I mean my pants no longer fit. Literally. I hope there's such a thing as a "welcome cleanse" in Los Angeles, which, now that I think about it, is a pretty good business idea. Employment may be in my future yet. Anyway. Following the great dinner, we all went back to le chateau, where I woke in the middle of the night to a thunder and lightening storm that could not have been more cinematic or terrifying: doors and windows opened and slammed shut, our room lit up and then plunged into darkness, ghosts appeared, etc. The week included innumerable references to the forthcoming horror movie "The Chateau" (and of course, since we were there for a wedding: "Chateau Deux: Le Marriage").

Aside from the initial terror, the french countryside was (surprise) absolutely spectacular. The wedding took place on Tuesday at the Chateau (gorgeous), with a fabulous dinner at an 11th century restaurant in nearby Couches (cleanse me). A real highlight (among many) was a sort of newlywed game played at french weddings: the bride is blindfolded and then must select, based on feeling a single body part (here, knee), which of five men is her groom. The game is then reversed, and the groom must do the same based on the noses of five women (or, here, four women and one hilarious friend of the groom's). Luckily the newlyweds were able to identify one another, hooray! And no, I wasn't one of the four mystery women, at the specific direction of my adoring husband, who said "you're not playing." Funny.

The remainder of the week was a combination of chateau-ing and touring around, with day trips to Autun and Geneva. One piece of advice for those of you visiting Geneva: going under the Jet d'Eau is fun and worth doing, but keep an eye on the way the wind is blowing -- we found ourselves under a wall of water when the wind turned. Oops.

The final day at the Chateau we went on a wine tour in Burgundy, on which I learned lots of things about Burgundy wines. Interesting tidbit: they use no irrigation or additives of any kind, so the wine can change dramatically year to year, whereas in California many (if not all) of the vineyards manipulate the wine by irrigating and adding acid (or something). When asked what she thought of California wine, our host said "I think California wine is not just wine." Zing.

Overall, the week could not have been better -- we were thrilled to be there for the beautiful wedding, and it was such a privilege to be at the chateau. Merci boucoup to our hosts!

And now, we're in Paris. We spent yesterday walking to, um, everything in the city: started in the Marais (where we're staying, love it) to the Louvre, then on to the Arc d'Triomphe (and up its 287 stairs to the top), over to the Tour d'Eiffel (no idea how my spelling is working out here), a stop at a neighborhood brasserie over there somewhere, back along the river by the Musee d'Orsay, over by Notre Dame, and back. My legs hurt this morning. As does my head, as a result of a vin-filled dinner with some of our chateau friends last night. So I'll leave it at that for the moment. No, I'll paste a picture from the internet of the Arc (just pretend it's me instead of her in the photo) and then leave it at that. Au revoir!

Ciao, Laos; hola Hoi An!

2010-08-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

Greetings readers. Or as they say here in Hoi An….oh wait, we don’t know how to say hello in Vietnamese. After becoming great experts in the Laotian word “sabaidee” which means hello, goodbye and just about everything in between, we are at a total loss to learn any of the 6 tones of the Vietnamese language in order to communicate. Fortunately nearly everyone we have encountered thus far in Vietnam has spoken substantially more English than we speak Vietnamese, so all is OK.

To re-cap the past couple of days, yesterday we started off our last day in Luang Prabang with another pre-6 am wakeup to watch the procession of monks receiving alms one last time before we left. It was really a sight and something we wanted to catch once more before leaving Laos behind. Then we wandered to the morning market, a somewhat smaller version of the giant market we had gone to with our cooking class.

There we succeeded on two fronts – we bought none of the live ducks, blue chicken feet, or whiskey soaked eel that was on offer AND we had delicious “nem kao”, rice pancakes with pork and mushrooms covered in fried shallots, from a vendor that we had read about online. An excellent Lao treat to kick off our last morning. Back at the hotel after a stroll through town in the rain, we naturally sat down to second breakfast of waffles and homemade pastries. With that on offer, who could settle for only one pre-9 am meal?

Eager to see a bit more of the surrounding landscape, we then headed down to the Mekong River, where we negotiated with a boat man to take us down river a bit for a cruise and to visit a nearby village where they make pottery. Turned out the boat, which was surprisingly nice, was also where the man lived, so his wife and young son joined for the adventure. Cruising on the Mekong was lovely, with the occasional rain only adding to the scenery of clouds hanging low on the rolling hills. We stopped at a little village known for making pottery and though we were only 10 minutes away from Luang Prabang it felt like another world. The village’s dirt roads (more like road) were totally muddied from the rain and it seemed like a car had never been there – it’s not clear a car could even travel the bumpy terrain. Chickens and children roamed freely in the mud with the occasional adult scurrying them along. The houses were very modest and there wasn’t much going on – though we did see some people making pottery and were offered fried chicken feet for sale. Like every good village in Laos it did have a monk and a temple which we briefly visited before heading on our way. Sobering to get a sense of life in Laos even just outside the main cities.

Back in town we did one last swing through one of the more elaborate monasteries, grabbed a quick lunch and were off to the airport for our flights to Hanoi and then Da Nang. The flight to Hanoi was uneventful (except for a cute little Italian kid in the seat next to us looking out the window and saying, "Ciao, Laos!"), though the tiny Luang Prabang airport was buzzing with excitement because apparently the King of Thailand was about to land just after we left. The flight from Hanoi to Da Nang was much more exciting as it seemed that other than us, just about everyone on our Thursday night flight was decked out in their best clubbing attire for a big weekend of going out in Da Nang. Our driver to Hoi An sort of confirmed it for us (moderate translation difficulties), but it seemed like Da Nang is a place for trendy types to hang out at resorts and maybe casinos. In any case, everyone on the flight looked very chic and walked right off the plane when we landed, having checked no bags for a weekend of partying. We adventurers looked a bit scruffy as we waited nearly alone at the baggage claim. A 40 minute drive later and we had arrived in Hoi An.

Friday morning began with a walk to the morning market, filled with women selling fish, veggies and meat and delicious Vietnamese breakfast. We opted for Cao Lao, a local specialty of rice noodles, pork, veggies and pork skin croutons.

It was an excellent way to start the day and we mostly avoided embarrassing ourselves in front of the Vietnamese women, except when Josh trying to be helpful passed fish sauce to a woman to put in her glass of water. Not quite what she was looking for. Interestingly, a walk through the market (while enjoying a delicious avocado shake) quickly revealed distinctions between Vietnam and Laos. Everything looked just a bit more prosperous in Vietnam. The veggies were presented in baskets rather than simply in piles on a tarp. The fish was packed with ice to stay fresh. The women fearlessly chopping meat sat on stools rather than on the chopping block itself. Little differences, but definitely noticeable. (Interestingly/dorkily, the stats we [Josh] dug up suggest the difference isn’t as much as it feels – GDP/capita of $1040 in Vietnam vs. $860 in Laos: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=per+capita+gdp+vietnam+laos.)

The town of Hoi An is absolutely charming – filled with two-storey mixes of Vietnamese and Chinese architecture. The homes are built with dark wood interiors, open stone courtyards and are painted beautiful (now faded) tropical yellows and blues and whites.

We strolled in and out of some of the historic homes and met the current occupants who taught us about the advantages of sleeping on flat wooden beds. They did not look comfy. Virtually all the buildings in the old town are of the same, beautiful stock – whether they’re currently put to use as homes, museums, tourist shoppes (many), or in one case, the very official-seeming “Hoi An Department of Managing and Gathering Swallows Nests” (really).

Our big excitement for the day was tailoring and we spent some time in the morning picking out fabrics and patterns for shirts, jackets and nearly anything else we could imagine. Somehow, we ordered what we wanted at 11am and just a few hours later we were back for fittings with many of the clothes taking shape already. Things happen fast here. In between fittings and wandering through town (in the unbelievable heat - it is really warm!) we stopped for some street food and a long-sought meal eaten on the sidewalk on tiny stools. Here they had upgraded to small plastic chairs, but the joy of making our own chicken rice paper wraps was much the same.

We were offered a tour of Vietnam on easy rider motorcycles (we sadly declined) and then headed back to the hotel for a two-wheeled adventure more our speed – bicycles. We rode through town joining the rush hour crew of motorbikes and other bicycles, though they almost always had two to a bike so we didn’t qualify for the HOV lane. Turning off the main road we ended up on some tiny streets which alternated between being paved and dirt and occasionally taking us through a rice paddy. It was nice to get a bit outside the tourist center, though an impending thunderstorm eventually encouraged us to head home to the hotel to wait out the rains.

An hour or so later the torrential downpour was over and we headed out for a nighttime walk through town and dinner. I had grilled pork, Josh the Vietnamese sampler with two kinds of dumplings, more cao lao and some rice paper wraps of his own, and we called it a night.

Stay…Just a Little Bit Luang-er (Wish We Could)

2010-08-25T18:45:00.000-07:00

We’d been worried a tad bit about our flight on Lao Airlines, but for naught – and after all, not much could top our 2008 Costa Rican adventure with a 6-seater landing on a dirt patch in a town with no electricity, right? Anyway, for the record, our flight was on a spanking-new, 100+ person prop plane with full beverage service and even a bag of chips (banana, mango, taro, etc…top that, JetBlue!), and after a quick 40 minute hop over rice fields and jungle and a lot of amazingly brown river, we touched down without incident and began a lovely time in Luang Prabang (Pronounced roughly “Luah Phah-b(ng)ah.” Does that not make it clearer? Neither did asking the locals several times a day.)

We’d decided to splurge and put ourselves up at the swish 3 Nagas hotel just to the end of the main old-city drag – in the executive suite, no less, though we were hard pressed to imagine anyone doing too much serious business in this or any other room in Luang Prabang – and we’ve been well waited-on since we arrived. As for the city itself, we love it – it seems to have retained everything good about French Colonialism (Was there anything good about French Colonialism? If nothing else, how about baguettes, petanque, strong coffee, and elegantly aging villas?) alongside a heavy dose of Laos charm. The old town is a string of temples, each a riot of mirrored glass and gold paint and graceful slanting roofs, each swarming with young monks in bright orange robes either chanting or texting. While most of the old city outside the temples is now dedicated to tourism, the town still feels very much alive, and the setting – on the intersection of the Mekong and Nam Kahn rivers – is amazing.

We spent Monday afternoon wandering around by bike and getting our bearings, ducking into temples and stopping near the river to join a crowd of twenty guys watching another four play petanque. All the businesses did double duty as people’s houses, and we stopped for a late lunch (fried noodles, chicken soup) outside someone’s living room. We chatted up a monk (he told us he wanted to practice his English, but he didn’t need much practice) – one of seven children, eight years in the monastery, studying accounting on the side and planning either to go to Bangkok for Buddhist University or into tourism here in LP. We joined our fellow foreigners for a short trek up the big hill in the center of town to watch the sun set over the mountains and the Mekong (nice) and finally settled down to dinner at our hotel. Dinner was delicious – the NYTimes had judged it the best place to try Lao cuisine. This being the low season though, we were the only people in the room, waited on with great formality by no less than eight people, and both the hotel manager and the chef found time to stop by our table. We slept well.

And briefly. We woke up just before 5am to take part in the daily alms-giving ceremony that takes over the town. I (Josh) still haven’t quite figured out the time, I guess, and so we’d gotten up, found our way out of the hotel, and wandered pretty far through unexpectedly empty streets before we realized that it was actually just shy of 4am (oops). A short snooze later, we tried again and seated ourselves outside one of the big temples, armed with a bowl of fruit and another of sticky rice to give to the monks. There was plenty of chanting and drum-beating, and we got to see the town slowly wake up (roosters and soup vendors first), and then around 6, a line of ~300 monks from all the town’s temples began a slow, silent march through the city’s main streets. Tourists, locals, and country folk waited on the side of the road to place a small ball of rice and whatever else we had into each monk’s bowl – this, along with other cooked food donations from villagers, is what keeps the monks fed, and has historically been a way for families to “make merit” (religious credit), as well as to sustain the temples. For us, it was a bit intimidating (nothing quite like being stared down by the hungry horde) but very cool.

After another nap and delicious breakfast at the hotel (I had the nem kao, steamed rice pancakes with pork etc.; EB had two perfect waffles; we both had a fruit plate with mangosteen and dragon fruit and a cup of jet black Lao coffee), we went to the day’s main event: Lao cooking school. Start to finish, a great time. Our guide took us and our fellow students on a tour of the local market (20+ kinds of eggplant, innumerable greens and herbs, glue made from red ant larvae, pungent fish sauce from fish left to soak for a full year), and then off to an outdoor classroom where we were schooled in the art of jaew (a spicy eggplant based dip), fish in a dill sauce steamed in banana leaves, buffalo stew, and the improbable chicken-stuffed lemongrass. When we heard the latter, we assumed they’d got it backwards – lemongrass is a long, hard stock not much wider than a straw, so we couldn’t imagine stuffing it with anything – but we were wrong, and happily so. All in all, a great day – and it ended in a feast! We rounded out the day with a tour of a few more notable temples – particularly enchanting around 6pm, when the monks gathered in each one to say the nightly chants. We found our way down to watch the end of the sunset along the edge of the Mekong; had a quick, delicious dinner of Lao BBQ surrounded by Lao teens on their Lao cell phones; and drifted off to an early sleep.

If Tuesday was all (mostly) about food, today was all about elephants. We were a bit skeptical about the elephant riding thing (OK, maybe just me, pathologically afraid to admit that I’m a tourist), but it was great. We drove 30km out of town and through villages and jungle (thanking ourselves throughout the bumpy ride for having decided against the 10-hour bus ride from Vientiane), finally landing at a picturesque camp along the Nam Khan and surrounded by foggy jungle hills. We spent a couple hours in a small group with as many elephants and trainers (“Mahouts”) and got a few really memorable rides – including one right into the river on the elephants’ backs!

After lunch, we took a longboat up the river to a locally famous waterfall and spent an hour scampering up the falls, amazed that we could keep our balance with the water rushing around our feet. We spent the afternoon relaxing and wandering through the markets around town, and finished with a tasty meal at one of LP’s poshest restaurants (dinner for two with wine, US$55 – about 10x last night’s BBQ feast). Great day! Now just one more morning left to soak up the Laos vibe, and then off we go to Vietnam.

Let the Lao-trageous puns begin!

2010-08-23T00:09:00.000-07:00

After our misadventures at the KL airport, our arrival in Vientiane was very smooth and we were off to our hotel near the center of the old town. Despite being the capital of Laos, Vientiane is still establishing itself, though an article in the NY Times quoted a Vientiane resident as saying he thought they had really made great strides since taking over the position as capital from Luang Prabang – which of course occurred a mere 450 years ago.

And now, dear readers, we get to the part of the trip you have all been waiting for. The part where we start talking about food and basically never stop to the point that both you and we are so full we might explode. (We learned how to say that in Chinese on our last trip, perhaps we should add “I am so stuffed I will die” in Lao to the repertoire as well.) Once we were checked in to our nice room – beautiful view of the temple across the street from our 5th floor balcony (though it was a walk-up to get there – oops) we then set off for the evening’s wandering. We encountered a whole series of night stalls set up not that far from our hotel and made a mental note of their location. But we were people with a mission. At the other end of the old town we had heard of a fancy Lao restaurant that also featured Lao music and dancing. It was a bit of a tourist spot – there were a couple of tables full of Thai groups – but it was a great introduction to the local food. For a whopping $15 per person we enjoyed 11 courses of Lao cuisines from sour fish soup to spring rolls to chicken wrapped in banana leaves to sautéed veggies in Oyster sauce. It was great. Certainly a splurge, as we also included a $1 big BeerLao (which is all the rage – see NYTimes link), but it was a yummy introduction to the city. A stroll back through town and we were off to bed.

Sunday morning began as many mornings do here in Southeast Asia in August, with an absolute torrential downpour. Fortunately our hotel provided a delicious breakfast (EB had waffles, Josh a croissant), fresh juice and a banana shake, and Lao coffee (aka coffee ice cream served warm and for breakfast, aka if we lived here we would have immediate diabetes because I (EB) could drink this non-stop). Umbrellas and anoraks in tow, we then headed out into the rain. In spite of the weather, which fortunately quickly cleared, the temples of Vientiane were wonderfully enchanting, with elaborate and ornate carvings of Buddhas and dragons and young monks in saffron robes running all over the place. It was like Christo’s Central Park Gates had come to life. Two temples in, we encountered a street with a couple noteworthy French bakeries – and so, thinking only of our dear amis Matt and Amy (and Jon in DC) we naturally had to have a croissant au chocolat. Yum.

Further wandering took us to the morning market, a giant mall filled mostly with cheap electronics knock-offs and t-shirts, but apparently it is where the people of Vientiane go to hang out, so who were we to buck the trend. Josh swiftly sniffed out the food court and another $2 later we were sitting in front of a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup and glass dumplings filled with pork (and small shrimps – fake allergy seems cured). Yes, readers, it was 10am and we were already on to third breakfast.

Embarrassingly full, we headed off to see some of the more well known sites of Vientiane, including their (self-described) version of the Champs-Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe, a concrete arch built with money from the US government that was supposed to build a runway at the airport. They call the arch the vertical runway instead. Next we walked about another mile to the That Louang, the most famous temple in Laos and national symbol. True to all reports, it was about as gold as anything you could imagine (save perhaps for a Trump building’s lobby) and gleamed in the mid-day sun. The reflection of the sun made for a beautiful site and for a VERY hot visit, which naturally called for the OGAA (our great Asian adventure) Asian cooldown favorite – a POPSICLE! It was coconut this time, but we’ll keep an eye out for the “garbage flavor” we so loved while in China.

Next up was a tuk tuk ride, not the most comfortable ride but certainly authentic, to another set of temples and museums. Our favorite was the Wat Sisaket, the oldest temple in Vientiane and the only one not destroyed by the Siamese when they sacked the city in 1828. It was filled with thousands of Buddhas all wrapped in their trademark yellow sashes. More spiritual than beauty pageant, but definitely in the same family.

A walk along the Mekong revealed a construction site – apparently the city of Vientiane is, like NYC, also doing a waterfront improvement project. I left my resume to see if they need a planning project manager, no word yet. We then settled in for a much needed rest at a little spot (tarp roof, plastic tables, grill on the sidewalk) by the river. And, of course, more food. More spring rolls, veggie this time, and a green chicken curry with basil along with a couple of Beer Laos provided us with the sustenance to do a bit more afternoon wandering.

A few hours later we were back at the hotel for a shower – one gets pretty disgustingly sweaty here – and then out to revisit one of the night stalls we had seen the evening before. For a whopping $5 we had a bowl of noodles and pork sausage, pork spring rolls, Beer Lao (natch) and a Pepsi. We love this country. As is often our habit, we then went to check out the local supermarket where Josh instructed me on how great the Mars products’ brand blocking was on the shelves (a sea of yellow Pedigree bags). Even in Laos, there is much for me to learn. We wandered to the very quaint town square where we sat outside at a fancy French restaurant for a coffee and a chocolate mousse, which cost the equivalent of our entire Lao dinner. Still, very full after $10 is hard to complain about.

Today, Monday, we had only a few hours in Vientiane before hopping on a plane to Luang Prabang, our next stop in Laos. After another good breakfast in the hotel, we set out for a few last minute eating spots we wanted to cross off our list. For me, it was a sugar doughnut at a bakery in the main town square. For Josh, it was grilled fish from a stand on the side of the road, followed by an avocado milkshake from a place close to the morning market. FYI: avocado, coconut milk, sweetened condensed milk and sugar – not the worst combination in the world. Our bellies thus full, we explored the side of the morning market we had missed on Sunday, namely the meat and produce. Luckily we were no longer hungry, because the site of some of the meats on offer (brain, intestine, kidneys, head, penis – no joke) was enough to turn anyone into a vegan, particularly with the lovely lady butchers seated barefoot on the carving tables. But not us, brave readers! We will persevere. The beautiful mounds of leafy greens and garlic and peppers reminded us why we like to eat and all was right in the world again. A tuk tuk to the hotel and cab to the airport and our stay in Vientiane had come to an end. Off to Luang Prabang!

From DC to Paris slash Malaysia, Abridged. Seriously Abridged.

2010-08-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

I (Jon) remain in D.C. But even though I'm not on vacation, with a little too much free time on my hands, I do what the travelers do: EAT. I'm currently sitting down to Second Brunch as I type this post. And as my good deed for the day I'll teach Amy some handy French vocabulaire (Amy, that's French for 'vocabulary') while I'm at it.

Gateau (that's French for 'mounds of butter dusted with chocolate'):

Galette (this is how the French say 'yes I ate this whole thing myself last night in one sitting not a crumb left over'):

Cannes (this means what it looks like it means):

Of course the cooking part of eating also serves as useful Husband Hunting practice slash please forward to all travelworthy and eligible bachelors. Merci bcp (French for 'I'm so good at abbreviating French').

LAX to JFK, Abridged.

2010-08-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

How long do you suppose it will take for the copying of Josh and EB's post titles to get old? Oh, what's that? You can hardly get enough, couldn't possibly be more clever? Right, then, thinly veiled plagiarism it shall be.

I (Amy) am writing to report that domestic travel is just as you remember it, plus one chatty Russian cab driver this morning ("Where you go, New York?" "No, Paris actually" "You fly nonstop?" "No, we stop over in New York" "Aha! You go to New York, like I say!" cue disproportionate satisfaction on his part, giggles from me, reluctant chuckles from Matt). And then we went through security, I resisted buying an US Weekly (why, I'll never know), we boarded the plane, envied the people in first class, slept (Matt), read and demanded reassuring about the physics of flying during some turbulence (me), and arrived at JFK, our current locale. We snacked on some freedom fries (sike I mean French fries, j'adore les crossaints! Fromage! Vin! Bonjour!), and then spotted Alexi Lalas. Take that KL! I read no mention of international soccer celebrities, only snacks and markets and malls! Better luck in Laos!

We have just another hour or so before we are truly chateau-bound, and I can promise you that we will be croissanted within mere hours. I have fewer euros than I feel my dollars are worth (travelex needs new management, I think), but surely they can and will yield material more enthralling than a cross-country flight in coach. Time will tell. Until then, buon soire! Cafe! Pain au chocolat! Can't wait to hear about Laos and then write a less interesting yet still exclamatory report from the continent.

Finally, Jon, something urgent and irrational has come up in France. Please handle by boarding plane (equipped with wifi, curse of curses to lawyers everywhere) to Paris asap. Thx.

Malaysia, Abridged

2010-08-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

A local doctor we befriended over breakfast this morning gave us some helpful insights into life in Kuala Lumpur, in between enthusiastic bites of pork dumpling. What does he do with his free time? “Go shopping!” Eating and shopping: that about summed up a lovely 24 hours in the Malaysian metropolis.

We arrived yesterday via express train just a five minute walk from our hotel, where we checked in and checked out our 30th storey view over the sprawl of KL. Back on the street, we hopped a train (true to form, the train station was also a mall) to one of the city’s many mosques, at the center of Little India. We walked through blocks of roti wallahs and vendors stringing together bright and fragrant garlands of flowers, pausing along the way for some fried fish balls on sticks and a chocolate waffle (quite a combo). Strolling through one of the city’s famed street markets, we were nearly run over by men carrying whole racks of black-market shoes and purses, and stopped long enough to try a tasty, salty Chinese chicken noodle dish at a long-running food stall. Though it had only been a couple hours, and barely a full meal, I was already losing the battle with jet lag and we had to move on – so many things to try next time! Really liked the style of the satay vendor who kept neat stacks of his various meats and sea creatures in notches along a six-foot block of ice, among others.

Anyway, as I was already nodding off whenever the opportunity presented itself, we rushed off to complete our itinerary grab a quick dinner (two, actually) at another major market – this one the night market at Jalan Alor. The NYTimes led us right, for a big plate of delicious roasted chicken wings with a sweet-and-spicy dipping sauce, and then a bit wrong, for a gooey plate of beef noodles. I can’t tell you much more about it, sadly, because I was mostly asleep (at the table, in the cab, etc.), but I know that I woke up some hours later a happier man.

With only a few hours this morning, we taxied straight away to a fantastic old-style coffee shop , where we shared a table with our doctor friend (“KL’s like New York City – all the families live out in the suburbs, like in Westchester.”) and had a range of greasy spoon delicacies, from a fried pork chop drowned in gravy, onions, peas and carrots (looked straight out of 1956, tasted heavenly) to toast with sweet coconut jam, to a very spicy fried rice (guess you don’t often get that at a greasy spoon?), all washed down with a syrupy black coffee with sweetened condensed milk, more dessert than drink. We took the subway to the Petronas Towers, which didn’t quite look like they were among the tallest buildings in the world, but were impressive nonetheless. And while it was too late to get tickets to the viewing station, it was just the right time to check out the massive luxury mall at the base (the whole thing was very Time Warner Center). Not content with a one-mall experience, we walked a few blocks (past at least five other malls) to yet another, where we managed to find a highly-recommended bakery tucked into the home furnishings section of a fancy department store. Extravagant chocolate-banana cake in hand, we hopped the monorail back through town to our hotel to begin our trek to Laos.

In our short stay in KL, were struck by the diversity of the city - a fairly even mix of the Indians, Malay, and Chinese that make up most of the city’s population, and a stark contrast to many of the other major cities we’ve seen across Asia. There were assorted temples, too, to match. We watched as workers scrubbed dirt off statues of Shiva and applied new paint to a colorful Hindu temple (part of a once-every-12-years consecration, we learned), while at another, elaborately dressed men (priests?) mixed with businessmen on the way home from work, lighting packets of sugar and loudly smashing coconuts into a big tank in offering before visiting the various deities. Meanwhile, it’s still Ramadan, and there were stands of sweets and dinner dishes awaiting the rush of Muslims breaking fast in the afternoon. The malls and restaurants offered Ramadan specials, more festive than I’d expected (Jewelry stores hawked big discounts, and Godiva was decked out a bit like Valentine’s day). Our doctor friend told us that the cities major groups had gotten along pretty well in recent decades, and that spots in the government were unofficially held for one ethnic group or another (e.g., the head of the Dept. of Medicine was always Chinese; the department of Public Works, always Indian).

Anyway, further exploration will have to wait for a future vacation – for now, off to Laos. Our trip was largely uneventful, with one exception. Apparently the main KL airport has two terminals, both part of KUL…but about as far away as JFK and LGA! Fortunately, we’d left ourselves plenty of time to make our flight, and were able to hop a cab between the two with only a little bit of panicked scrambling and still make our Air Asia flight to Laos without a hitch. And here we are! More on our time in Laos next time…

On the ipad and droid at bangkok airport

2010-08-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

16 hours later and almost there. Luckily bangkok had a starbucks and m&ms world ready for us. KL here we come.

Saying Au Revoir to LA

2010-08-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

Harry at the foot of my bed, where I would often
find him when I woke up in the morning.

Well readers, things certainly have gotten more interesting for the return of bloggers Herczeg and Bell (nee Koch). We asian adventurers are most glad for the addition once more of their witty repartee, even if we will be spread across three continents. Let the hunt for the best story of wacky French-inspired antics - in Paris, in a country once controlled by the French or with Fabrice in DC - begin.

Sadly my time in LA is winding down. Tuesday morning began with a lovely stroll to a local coffee shop with Aim and Harry and enjoying some iced teas while sitting outside in the once again perfect LA weather. (Apparently it's hot by LA standards, but after this summer in NYC and my only sometimes air conditioned living room, it feels lovely). Aim then went off to have an important Hollywood lunch. It may have just been for networking/meeting people in LA, but as far as I'm considered every lunch in LA is like those lunches in Get Shorty where people are pitching scripts left and right and ordering obscure dishes off menu. So she probably green lighted three scripts while there. I meanwhile headed to the Grove and Farmers Market, where I explored a food wonderland. While enjoying my second set of pork tacos in two days, I overheard a woman say to her friend that eating at the mexican stand where we were was a quintessential LA experience. Success! Though all the talk about Amy and Matt's upcoming trip to France also required me, bien sur, to have a nutella crepe for dessert.

After a stroll through the shops, Amy and I came home and she headed off to her writing class, where she is in training to become a v. famous Hollywood writer, second only perhaps to her already v. famous husband Matt Bell. (Note to all Hollywood executives reading this blog in secret - there is a dynamic writing duo residing here in West Hollywood. You probably want to hire them.) I then borrowed Amy's car and drove to see a good family friend Hanka Orsten, who came over to the US on the same Army transport ship as Babi and Deda, arriving on Thanksgiving Day 1949. We had a lovely visit. Between Babi and Hanka there are two pretty fabulous 90-somethings putting most 60 year-olds to shame. (I took pics with my blackberry but I am having trouble getting them off the device, so photos to come in a bit - apologies.)

Of particular note in our visit (and especially for blogger Herczeg), Hanka taught me some translations of great Czech expressions about Hungarians. Babi had already taught me:

- After midnight all Slovaks become Hungarian (which I think means they are sloppy drunks)

In that vein, Hanka added:

- A Hungarian will go into a revolving door after you and come out before you
- What's the difference between a Hungarian and a Romanian? They both will sell you their mothers, but the Hungarian will actually deliver

There are definitely getting added to my repertoire.

After such a nice visit, I then returned to Casa Bell and Matt and I scooped Amy up from her class. We adventurous three then went across LA - so many neighborhoods! - to Little Tokyo for some DELICIOUS ramen and grilled pork. The absolutely perfect way for me to get ready to transition to a diet of Asian cuisines for the next two weeks. What a treat.

Harry knows it is important to stay
hydrated when one is hiking in the heat

At the top of our hike

This morning (Wednesday), Amy and I with our fearless canine leader Harry headed off to Griffith Park for a hike up to the Observatory. It was pretty hot and sunny, but the hike was great fun, especially when pulled along by an unbelievably energetic dog. Harry must have known what a nice morning was in store for us, because as soon as we got in the car he started hopping up and down with excitement. Again, slightly different reaction than Harry the bulldog.

This sign always reminds me of the episode
of Mathnet with the gorillas. Anyone?

After the hike we stopped in Larchmont, which apparently also exists here as well as on the Metro-North, for yummy Italian sandwiches. Up ahead for up this afternoon will be last minute errands and laundry, followed by hopefully scooping Josh up at the airport for a quick Bell-Olken double dinner date at a cuban place near LAX. And then, just a brief 16-17 hour flight later (yikes) we'll be in Asia! See you all there!

OUT OF OFFICE

2010-08-17T20:18:00.000-07:00

TO: Readers
FR: Me (Jon)
RE: Fwd: re: URGENT TIME SENSITIVE PLEASE ASSIST!
Attachment: V. Important Document REDLINE -- PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL -- DRAFT

Thank you for your message. I (Jon) am currently not on vacation right now. I do not anticipate being away from my computer, Blackberry, landline, cellphone or desk in the near future. If I do not respond to your email within 10 minutes, please forward the same message to me, only this time mark it as urgent with a red exclamation point so you can be sure I see it in my inbox. If 10 more minutes pass, please call my assistant at [REDACTED] and she will send an email alerting me to your call. Sometimes it helps if your assistant calls my assistant directly with the message that you are looking for me.

In any event, of course I am happy to assist with this pressing matter. Please be advised that I am in the office and not in Paris crunching a baguette or in Hue slurping up pho, though I plan to be out of the office next Thursday recruiting at [REDACTED]; the Acela now has wi-fi so I will be available on a consistent basis as needed. Your email to me that says only "please assist" provides clear and consistent guidance that is in no way vague. I can easily follow the correspondence you forwarded me from [CLIENT] and I can interpret [CLIENT]'s unambiguous request. Though I have no previous experience with this issue or knowledge of the relevant legal standard, I should be able to turn this around without delay by COB yesterday.

In the meantime, I do hope to interrupt Amy/Matt/EB/Josh's posts about vacation adventures with a few short entries of my own. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Me (Jon)

Breaking News!

2010-08-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

Dear reading public, you've been misled. You'll note that at the bottom of this post it says that Jon and Amy are here in absentia. False. Present. I (Amy) am very much here. Or as EB just said "the inmates are in charge." I think I'd prefer something more along the lines of "student becomes teacher."

But Amy, why are you blogging, you ask? Well, let me count the ways (er, reasons):
1. I am unemployed. Yes my numbering is in order of importance. If you are reading, in Los Angeles, and interested in paying me to do something other than be a litigation associate, it's great to meet you and I would love to buy you lunch and I'm a quick learner with a real appetite for reading for pleasure. Surely these things qualify me for something.
2. I am jealous of EBs and Josh and their adventure part deux. Uncontrollably jealous/envious/furious.
3. I will also be traveling in the next two weeks, and though I won't be in Asia, I will be in a former colonial power, and who doesn't love a little mercantilism humor.
3a. If you're now wondering who is to blame for giving me the password to the blog, it was EB.
4. This is mostly just a challenge to Jon to write something hilarious for our benefit. See that, readers? I'm here to help.

On Saturday, Matt and I leave for 10 days in France: first attending the wedding of our friends in Burgundy, and then wandering around Paris for a few days on a belated honeymoon of sorts. EB taught me some french while we were stuck in traffic yesterday, so I'm feeling pretty confident we'll have no trouble at all. I can now say:
-"give me that croissant"
-"I adore wine"
-"I adore you"
-"two coffees please, thank you"
-"where is the Louvre"
-"cheese"

I dare you to think of any other truly essential phrase. Let the adventure(s) begin.

Ladies who lunch (and enjoy happy hour)

2010-08-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Sunday evening was a lovely reunion with the Chapin girls at Bld for dinner followed by the evening's episode of Mad Men at Kathleen's wonderful apartment. Nothing like a night of reminiscing over the high school quote book and gabbing while watching tv to make you feel like it's 1999 again. It's always nice to know that no amount of graduate school, careers or marriage changes the friendships (and the ability to find middle school teachers hilarious) that result from 13 years of all-girls' schooling.

The beautiful Zuma Beach in Malibu

Lawyers on the loose

Monday was another perfect sunny day in Los Angeles. Amy (after she got up very early and went to morning pilates and I snoozed right in - guess I'm not quite ready for LA life yet) and I went on a little beach adventure. We headed out to Malibu where we had a yummy lunch of tacos at the hilariously named Malibu Country Mart (think Nobu and $150 jean shorts not Cracker Barrel and overalls) and then wandered around the shops. Next we were off to Zuma beach for a stroll, dipping our feet in the Pacific. It was beautiful. Though it may only be for a short time of unemployment, we decided we could definitely get used to spending Monday afternoons at the beach rather than in an office. If anyone is looking to hire two law school grads to enjoy leisurely lunches and weekday strolls on the beach in Malibu, look no further.

In front of Bodega, the fashionable wine bar where Mandi and Amy had the good sense to order wine and I got a neon blue cocktail. Oops.

After having the full LA experience of getting stuck in traffic on the way home, we got back to West Hollywood, changed into our evening attire and headed out to meet Mandi at a new wine bar on Sunset Boulevard (it is literally impossible for me to say that without starting to sing the theme song from the musical Sunset Boulevard). We had a great girls' night out- happy hour pricing on cocktails and wine (what a deal!) and yummy bar snacks. Not to mention learning all sorts of secret Hollywood insider gossip about the biz- thank goodness I know someone so connected with what's going on. I can't wait to get home to astound all my east coast friends with what I learned about cool stuff in the film industry. But first I should probably learn some cool stuff about unpronounceable southeast asian cities as well.

A weekend with my nephew, niece and neph-dog

2010-08-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

If my travels getting to LA were a little less than perfect, all that was cured by the joy of spending the weekend with my "nephew" Shepherd, "niece" Ella and "neph-dog" Harry Bell. Bates and Shep had come down from Palo Alto, Ali and Ella had come up from San Clemente and Harry, well, being the movie star that he is, lives in fashionable LA with Amy and Matt in their lovely West Hollywood home.

Saturday morning we had an absolutely delicious brunch courtesy of Amy and her wonderful cooking (though she did snag a recipe or two from this gem of a food blog http://www.alexandracooks.com/). Mandi joined us (that's high powered Hollywood executive Amanda Schweitzer to those of you in the biz) as did Matt's delightful mom Renie visiting from Oakland. After breakfast, the young moms and the "aunties" and Harry the dog went for a walk around West Hollywood, keeping eyes peeled for celebrities at every turn, though no luck so far. We spent the afternoon astounded by the wonderousness of the babies as Ella made clear that she is ready to start crawling (extremely fast learner) and Shep revealed his amazing array of facial expressions, with the piece de resistance being his own adaptation of lobster face. For dinner, Amy once again treated us with a delicious meal, this time the Zuni roast chicken and bread salad. YUMMY! What a successful day.

Sunday began with spooning in bed once again with Harry - apologies to my dog Harry back on the East Coast but this Harry can jump into bed without the aid of an ottoman or a helpful lift. Breakfast with the babies again and then we were off for a stroll to the Melrose flea market. Cute as we grown ups are, Shep and Ella once again were the stars of the show. I think they were offered several trendy LA outfits by some of the vendors, but naturally refused, referring all discussions about what to wear (and what not to wear - they of course read US Weekly) to their managers. These are two celebabies in the making.

Sadly, we had to send the babies off to their respective homes Sunday afternoon, but not before several attempts at kidnapping by their aunties when their moms weren't paying attention. Surprisingly enough, the kiddies weren't psyched about the prospect of stowing away in my bag for a trip to Southeast Asia. Though I'm pretty sure that several of the baby sounds made by Shep and Ella over the course of the weekend were the names of places we'll be going in Laos.

Next up, dinner with the Chapin girls!

Oh you'd like to fly to Los Angeles? How about two days from now?

2010-08-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

No Continental, thank YOU.

Our adventures began somewhat inauspiciously on Friday when I (EB) arrived at Newark airport for my flight to Los Angeles. Upon attempting to check in at an e-ticket machine, I was informed that I could not check in because it was more than 24 hours before my flight. Odd, I thought, given that my flight was in just over 1 hour. But upon further inspection it was revealed that the machine believed my flight was on Sunday rather than Friday.

A swift discussion with a Continental representative revealed that my 3:25 flight had been canceled and I had been rebooked on the 3:25 on Sunday.* Apparently Contintental believed that my primary interest was in flying at 3:25, irrespective of the day. Surprisingly, I informed them that actually what I really wanted was to get to California THAT DAY rather than fly at 3:25 and encouraged them to make that happen. Though all direct flights were booked, after a little persistence they found a spot for me on a flight to Chicago and then from Chicago to LAX.

Well, at least someone was glad I was there.

A couple hours later, I was off to Chicago and all seemed to be well in the world. After a lovely airport dinner in O'Hare and the joyous news that I was being given an exit row seat on the flight to LAX, thunderstorms rolled into Chicago and all flights were halted for an hour and a half. Luckily I had rented a movie on my snazzy new ipad, so the time passed relatively quickly. Finally at 10:30pm Chicago time we took off and at 12:45 am the flight touched down in LA. A quick ride brought me to the wonderful home of Amy and Matt Bell, where a lovely guest room and delightful dog to spoon with awaited me. I had arrived!

* Side note for this story - are there actually people who go to the check in machine, see their flight has been canceled and they are rebooked for two days later, and just shrug their shoulders and go home to come back in two days? Is that really a winning strategy for airlines? I am dubious.

Since last we spoke...

2010-08-13T07:36:00.000-07:00

Before we dive right into our next adventure, we suppose it’s only fair to our loyal readers to let you know what we’ve been up to for the last three years. Since last we blogged, travelers EB and Josh finally bit the bullet and got married. They enjoyed three lovely years in Cambridge, MA (and even found good Vietnamese food in Dorchester!) and have just moved back to New York City. EB graduated from law school and is once again adventuring to Asia in between school and work. Josh left consulting to join the much more exciting and sugar-filled world of marketing for the Mars Corporation, where he reminds us all how important it is to have “small moments of joy” (namely candy bars) in our daily lives. We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for any sign of Snickers in rural Laos.

We’ll also take the liberty of giving an update on our fellow travelers, who may edit as they see fit. While working as a high powered legal mastermind in San Francisco for a very fancy law firm, Amy met (or really re-met) fellow PHSer and generally all-around fabulous Matt Bell, who wisely snatched her up and they were married last fall. Amy and Matt have just relocated to Los Angeles, where their family of Bells has grown with the addition of Harry, the newest four-legged family member. All signs of him on facebook suggest he is one cute dog.

After astounding readers with all that he could accomplish in 24 hours traveling by himself (let’s be honest – we all thought Jon would still be lost in Hanoi asking if someone could pouch him his passport), Jon graduated from NYU law school and swiftly went on to win the 2008 election for President Obama. Now he is a big deal lawyer in Washington DC where in addition to fighting for justice he also was most recently responsible for the summer associate lunch program. Pretty high powered stuff.

Will there ever be a reunion of this fearsome foursome of travelers? Rest assured, dear readers, of course. Once we find Jon that someone special, perhaps a three couple belated honeymoon could be in order. But until then, it will just be the Kelly-Olken pair – heading off to California, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, and Greece. We hope you enjoy the ride!

The return of the blog?

2010-08-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

Josh and I head off on our second great asian adventure in about a week and we are considering resurrecting the blog, though likely much less humorously for the lack of Jon and Amy. But first we wanted to see, does this thing even still work?

There's not a chance this can top Jon's last day in Hanoi

2007-08-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

But it has been obscenely long since we've updated you, and for that we are sorry. Hello public, please forgive us. Also I (Amy) am technologically challenged and can't upload my photos, so you will have to imagine two extremely attractive, evenly tanned, experienced travelers. And then look for two confused awkwardly burnt giggling Americans dodging motorbikes. That would be us. I'll be the one with the hot sauce never more than an arm's length away.

While Jon was sweating (typical) and riding motorbikes (yikes), Halliday and I were making our way to Hoi An. We flew from Hanoi to Danang airport, notable as the landing place of the US military when they entered Vietnam, and also notable because if you say it several times fast it sounds like a twanging rubber band. danaaaaaang. We took a short ride from Danang to Hoi An (not to be confused with Hanoi, or An Hoi, directly across the river from Hoi An), and found ourselves at a cute little guest house we would call home for 3 nights. Our room had a balcony that overlooked the deck below and rice paddies beyond that. We ate breakfast on the deck each morning, including vietnamese heaven coffee...think hot equivalent of coffee ice cream socially acceptable to consume at 7am.

Hoi An was a delightful little town, full of charm and thankfully not quite so full of motorbikes. In fact, there are signs all over the historic district downtown (probably a total of 4 blocks) noting that the area was open only to "pedestrians and primitive vehicles." We took the pedestrian route the first day to wander around and explore, but decided to step it up a notch on the second day. We rented some primitive bicycles for the day (10,000 dong and we were off), think huffy circa 1980 complete with flourescent spray paint job. Best 70 cents ever spent. We spent much of the next two days pedaling back and forth to the beach, about a 20 minute ride away. The ride was well worth it for the near empty stretch of perfect beach with warm water and street food to be had right in the vicinity. An exceptionally nice trip was the one we made at 6am on our final morning for one last dip in the sea. Many of you know how I feel about early mornings (um, they're sacred I love them), and that ranks near if not at the top of my list for best ways to kick off a day. Anyway, enough gloating. Point being once we had bicycles, we were basically locals. Except for the being white and the inability to stop and start without nearly toppling.

What am I forgetting? oh the food. Hoi An has two specialties we particularly enjoyed. The first is Cao Lau, a dish of noodles, roast pork, leafy greens, and often shrimp and/or little hard-boiled eggs of unknown origin. We sampled this on 6 inch stools at several different spots, and found each slightly different but all delicious. The second Hoi An dish is the white rose (I'm sure it has a vietnamese name, but after 10 days here I'm still not quite sure how to say "thank you," so we'll just stick with the english), a shrimp sort of dumpling surrounded by rice noodley dough in the shape of a rose. Cover with roasted garlic chips, dunk in hot sauce, and you've got yourself quite the snack.

After two days of beach-going, town exploring, and yes, occasional tailoring (naturally I selected black and brown items, take that beach), we decided to spend our final day getting some culture. We took a bus to see My Son, a nearby site of relics from the Champa Kingdom. This was billed as a sort of mini Angor Wat, and since we don't have time to make it to Cambodia, we thought this was a great substitute. As it turned out, the relics had been mostly destroyed by American bombing, and those that remained were a mini mini mini Angor Wat. Nonetheless, it was an interesting trip, both for the quick history lesson and for the pleasure of seeing a couple in matching tie-dyed blue ankle length skirts and white tank tops conducting some sort of amateur photo shoot.

We sadly said goodbye to our beach town and flew, after a short delay in Danaaaaaang, to Ho Chi Minh City on friday. We weren't quite sure what to expect here other than a large city no one seems to love, but figured if nothing else there would be some good food. Correct. We got in around 9:30pm and quickly headed out to a do-it-yourself beef barbeque place highly recommended by our guide books. It did not disappoint. They brought out a plate of raw beef marinating in garlic and garlic and also garlic, as well as an open barbeque. We have decided that interactive eating makes everything more fun (see, e.g., dipping, rolling, grilling on open flames), and this was no exception. Delicious.

We declared yesterday consumerism day and hit up the shopping near our hotel, and when the daily monsoon struck around 5pm, opted for a cocktail at the 23rd floor of the nearby sheraton. Though the day was a pleasure (of course, is there another kind here?), it didn't seem all that Vietnamese. Yes, I just accused Vietnam's largest city of not being Vietnamese enough. Luckily we remedied that assessment at dinner. After rejecting two perfectly clean and nice restaurants (snooze), we wandered past a place full of Vietnamese people, not a whitey in sight. Perfect, we thought.

We were then presented with menus. Curiously, these menus had english translations. Also curiously, the first page included various preparations of turtle blood. Hmm, no gracias. Next page? Snake heads. Boiled, grilled, in hot pots, with tamarind sauce, etc. Holy yikes. Other options included goat and god knows what else. We selected some seemingly benign options: fried rice (pretty good, prefer not to think about what might have been mixed in), chicken (sounds better than it looked), and soft shell crab (eek). What the meal lacked in style and taste it made up for in comedy. By the time our check arrived we both had our feet off the ground for fear some of the still-living snakes might slither out. Asia. First the yak, now this.

We're off to the airport shortly to fly to Bangkok, so today's recap will be a quick one. We got up early and went to the War Remnants Museum. This museum is one of the city's main tourist attractions, and is difficult to summarize in just a couple of sentences. However one-sided it may be (used to be called the museum of american war crimes, or something along those lines), it was sobering to say the least, and left us both a bit shell-shocked. And maybe it was our imagination, but it felt like many of the other visitors to the museum, particularly the children, were eyeing us with particular attention as Americans. Not quite sure how to feel about that yet. Anyway, we're glad we went, and won't soon forget the horrific images that fill up the exhibits.

For fear of leaving on a debbie downer note, I'll continue...We've loved our time in Vietnam, and can't wait to move on to Thailand. More from there as we round out the adventure. Sorry for the lack of pictures. And to Josh, EBs, and Jon, come back.

Hello, My Name is "Table for One"

2007-08-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

Fresh from our celebration of Halliday's birthday last night (including shrimp and sweet potato pancakes, grilled shrimp with lemongrass, pork and mushroom rice pancake, pork with noodles, snail soup, and a little tofu thrown in -- all with matching Halida t-shirts), Team Asia called it splitsville again. I (Jon), sent Halliday and Amy on their way to Hoi An, HCM City, and the beaches of Thailand. Meanwhile began my 72 hour solo journey back to the U States with a full, and final, day in Hanoi.

Finally free from the restraint of co-travellers, I let loose and broke all the rules. Here's a photo essay of my free-wheeling ways:

Off to an early start, I began the day as usual with a stroll around Ho Hoan Kiem Lake. No sign of tortoises . . . or scammers.

Onward to St. Joseph's church for morning Mass.

Craving a salad for lunch . . . lucky for me leafy vegetables are the treat of choice at Bun Bo Nam Bo.

Who says Americans can't pull off the half-shirt bellyroll?

Missing DC, Potomac Restaurant on the shores of Ho Tay Lake makes me feel at home.

At the seat of power -- the Presidential Palace -- but namedropping Bob Shrum and John Kerry doesn't get me in the door.

Feeling like Tom Cruise, they pulled out all the stops for me and cleared out the plaza in front of Ho Chi Minh's masoleum ala Times Square in Vanilla Sky.

Ngac Ho Market for Slunch (second lunch).

To tired to walk on my little legs all the way to Nha Tho? No problem. I'll just motorscooter across town for only 10,000 dong. That's me in the rearview mirror wondering if I could have put that US$00.75 to better use.

Look mom, no hands!

Holy hell I'm sweaty. Cool down with some iced Vietnamese coffee.

Sleepy after my busy afternoon, I'll take a short nap under my fancy 'ella.

What better way to wrap up my stay in Hanoi than with a Bia Hoi (or three).

A little tipsy from my beer break and eager to extend my stay in Vietnam, I inquire about a position as a Summer Associate.

Learning from the best, the Socialists sure know how to stage an election!

Dinner time. I could really get into a yakburger about now . . . but I suppose I can make do with pork patties in broth.

Night falls the same way morning begins at Ho Hoan Kiem Lake . . . still no tortoises or offers to sing karoake for US$100.

Just Another Day at the Cloud Yard

2007-08-19T04:46:00.000-07:00

The first of two back-to-back overnight train rides under our belt, the three of us hopped in a bus (at around 5am) for the short trip from the Lao Cai train station to the village of Sapa. We arrived in town before most shops, restaurants, etc., opened (especially because it was Sunday), but tenacious travellers that we are, we camped in front of the famous Baguette et Chocolate. Homegrown in Hanoi, B&C is one of the capital's most famous patisseries. We were sad to discover that the Hanoi location was under construction. Thank heaven we travelled to Sapa to try out the second branch! It was worth the wait (and 10 hour trek) for yummy coffee, bonbons, and fresh fruit.

Our morning was off to a great start. In the distance, we spotted a high peak with a radio tower on top. And what else does Team OurGreatAsianAdventure do when there's a mountain/hill/precipice with evidence of human activity at its peak? Climb it, naturally. So we did.

And then we fell for one of the two greatest blunders. The first of which is never start a land war in Asia (learned); the second is never hike to the top of a mountain expecting to see only a radio tower. Instead, the Sapa mountains treated us to all sorts of high-flying excitement: mountain ostriches (no kidding), a mile-high city blasting the lastest in Northwest Vietnamese techno, and a "Cloud Yard" (which is exactly what its name suggests . . . totally incomprehensible).

Ready for second-breakfast, we left Cloud Yard for a bowl of pho bo (beef noodle soup). As we saw no cows and many water buffalo, we're thinking it was "bo" in name only. Stomachs warmed, we left for our second adventure of the day -- a 3km hike to the nearby village of Cat Cat. Unlike most of our hikes, this one was entirely downhill, at an approximate grade of 59321043 degrees. Other than a small run in with a flock(?) of goats, the trip down was uneventful. The trip back to Sapa (think 59321043 degree grade, only this time straight up) was roughly the same, but a bit slower (and interrupted by a short break for red bean/green pea/coconut ice cream). That said, we've had to adapt our motto "No Shame in China" to account for the buckets of sweat Vietnam has squeezed out of us.

To replenish our fluids, we spent our last hour in Sapa sipping Bia Hoi. Our whirlwind tour of Sapa drained us a bit, but we're glad we went. The city and mountains were beautiful, our hikes fun, and Amy was only hoodwinked into purchasing "local" goods once.

A final note: For some reason we can post on the blog but not read it. To that end, we were able to see that Josh and EB posted a last entry before heading back to the U States, but couldn't read what they wrote -- we're glad that had such a great trip and were sorely missed here. Miss you guys -- see you in Beantown!

We're off to board our train back to Hanoi. Our usual hotel had no available rooms for tomorrow night, so we treated ourselves to a small taste of luxury by booking a room at the Hilton. And before Ron gets any wild ideas, it's name is simply: Hilton Hanoi Opera. Tintin, not Jane Fonda, appears to be the main celebrity.

Sayonara from Team Tokyo

2007-08-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

As we (EB & Josh) write this, we are sitting on the first leg of our journey home, the flight from Tokyo to Dallas where we will hopefully go through customs, be permitted back into the country and then wing our way the rest of the journey home to NYC. Before we say our goodbyes and hand Our Great Asian Adventure over to the remaining explorers, we must wrap-up our last day and a half in Tokyo for you, our ever-curious public.

Friday morning we opted out of our usual mysterious ticket machine bowl of ramen at the subway station and instead immediate headed over to Roppongi to see the newest mixed-use mega-development to hit the scene. Following on the footsteps of Roppongi Hills, Tokyo Midtown is a giant complex of towers with office space, hotel, shmancy residences, a cultural facility, a concert hall and an enormous galleria with the nicest shops and restaurants. Though everything appeared to be New York-themed or inspired (bagels, Madison Park hot dogs—though in Japan they are a breakfast food, Gramercy bar), the complex was well bigger and put the Time Warner Center, probably New York’s closest comparison, to shame. We meandered through levels B2 (two underground) to 2F and crossed some skybridges—highly connected as are all things in Tokyo—before grabbing a breakfast of a French pastry, an onigiri and a green tea latte. Very New York meets Tokyo.

The choice then was to take the subway or the lengthy walk to our next stop and, though we weighed the options, we opted for walking in the hopes that our last full day could put us over the 300 miles walked this trip. We’re marginally crazy about the walking thing, but it’s the only way we justify the massive consumption we also fill our days with. Heading through Roppongi to Shibuya, we saw a couple residential areas we had never seen before and, of course, some luxury boutiques along the way. We stopped at a sweet housewares shop in the hopes of picking up something for our new digs in Cambridge, but when the tiny box for cufflinks was $150 (Vietnam crew—that’s 90 million dong for you) we opted against it.

Once in Shibuya we realized we were right smack in the middle of lunch hour and though we had a spot picked out in Shinjuku, we passed a bustling ramen spot that looked too good to be true. And indeed it was. Opting for the tried and true technique of this vacation—we’ll have what they’re having—we selected the same ticket from the vending machine from the man just before us and sat at waited for whatever it was that would appear. Scary fish? Animal innards? Luckily not. Instead what came was an enormous bowl of noodles with tender roast pork and bean sprouts. It was fabulous. Second only perhaps to the world renowned roast pork of my grandmother Babi, this may have been the most delicious roasted pig I have ever had the pleasure to consume.'=

Full of pork and soup, we quickly rushed to the subway to get to Takashimaya Times Square, the enormous department store in Shinjuku with the massive food court in the basement. But I thought you just ate delicious pork soup?, you say. Well this was our last full day in Tokyo and we had no time for pansy-ing out on our meals. We were headed for tonkatsu, fried pork served over rice. Since the last time we had been to Takashimaya things had changed a bit at the tonkatsu counter and though there was no longer any formal seating, we took our lunch boxes to go and sat on some stools near shoppers waiting for seating at another basement luncheon spot. You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that heavily breaded fried pork is tasty.

Nearly defeated by our two rapid-fire pork deliciousnesses, we headed upstairs to the Tokyu Hands department store portion of Takashimaya. Tokyu Hands is a “creative life store” where you can get everything from plates to exercise equipment to construction wear, and we checked out every level. Though we aspired mostly to look, some hilarious misuse of English or otherwise wacky Japanese-ism got us on most every floor.

Our shopping done, we headed back to Shibuya to get thoroughly lost walking the curving, flashing light-filled, retail-overloaded streets along with all the highly made up hipsters teens and twenty-somethings of Tokyo. We did the requisite scramble as we crossed the street and wished that we had something that fun at the corner of Union Square and 14^th Street.

Having asked at least 5 people for directions help (love those Tokyo addresses), we eventually found a recommended izakaya famous for its use of the leek. Yes, the weak onion. This restaurant prides itself on using leek in every dish, and several dishes on the menu were exclusively leek. The premise was odd, but the charcoal-grilled leek with miso sauce and the agedashi tofu were not. We also tried a couple of sakes and pretended to read the bottles but we don’t read Japanese so that was a foolish exercise. Josh took such a liking to the place that we engaged in a serious negotiation with the host to see if he could buy the t-shirt worn by the waiters, but it was to no avail. I guess, as with most things, we’ll just have to wait for that Japanese fashion trend to make its way to the US in a couple of years.

Having had an appetizer nosh, we headed back to the hotel. Before we had left for the day, we gave the concierge two restaurants we were interested in and asked that she make a reservation at either. We were amused, though not totally unsurprised, to return to a message waiting for us that they were unable to make a reservation at either because, naturally, both were closed for the holiday. How foolish of us. We selected yet a third choice, open for some reason (perhaps they have no house at the beach and had alienated all their fancier friends), changed and went back to Roppongi.

The restaurant, called Shinju, turned out to be a huge hit. It was an upmarket izakaya serving beautiful dishes ranging from grilled meats to sashimi to rice and udon noodles. We sat at the bar and Josh got to use his favorite Japanese expression (spelled phonetically): “O sosume wa non deska?” which means “what do you recommend?" Their recommendations served us well and in addition to the treats listed above we had a fried tofu dish, not so dissimilar from agedashi tofu, that may have taken the tofu cake for the vacation. It was a lovely place and an excellent meal to cap off a great trip. Though it was a Friday night, we opted against serious clubbing in Roppongi and instead headed home around 11ish to pack and prepare for our next morning’s big adventure (slash who am I kidding? We don’t go clubbing and the types we saw out in Roppongi were totally the Tokyo B+T crowd. We were far too New York snooty/sleepy for that).

So that brings us to this morning. 4:30 this morning, to be precise, when our alarm went off to rouse us for our second attempt at the Tsujiki fish market. And to keep you in suspense no longer, as I know many of you have been watching closely since our failed attempt two years ago….Yes—the market was open and we finally got to see it in action. This market must be seen to be believed. It is a giant series of open-air warehouses filled with stalls selling some fish you recognize and some that appears to have only been seen by human eyes on Planet Earth, the BBC documentary series. These things were amazing and bizarre. The fish sellers speed around the market at breakneck speeds in these bizarre motorized wagons, carting boxes of fish, shrimp, clams, lobters, crabs, eels—you name it, they sell it. Though it was great to see all the fish on offer, the highlight of the morning had to be the tuna auction when hundreds of merchants gather together to bid on the day’s tuna catch. If you are born and raised in New York City, you may believe that tuna is a round fish that has a metal can exterior and that pops when you open it. Interestingly enough, that’s not totally accurate. Tuna is actually an enormous fish and at the auction today roughly 200 such animals, weighing between 80 and 700 pounds, were bought and sold. The 700 pound fish were easily the largest thing I have ever seen, except perhaps for the fake blue whale at the Museum of Natural History, and these were cooler because they were lying on the ground next to me and about to become my breakfast. That’s because, other than the sight of exotic fish and the thrill of the fish auction, the other highlight of Tsujiki is the unbelievably fresh sushi that is available for breakfast. The queues start forming around 5:00, so we picked a spot with a reasonable line and waited for our bowl of breakfast goodness. We opted for chirashi (raw fish over a bowl of rice), mine coming with meguro and toro and Josh’s coming with six or seven different fish. It was extremely fresh – not surprising, since the fish are basically flopping around next door in the market, and it was by far the best breakfast chirashi we’d ever had. OK, also only.

Raw fish consumed before 7:00 am, we headed back to the hotel and off to the train bound for Narita airport. Which is roughly how we got to where we are now, somewhere over the Pacific without any land in sight. (I’m not that worried though because I feel pretty confident if we need to make an emergency landing that the island from Lost will appear and Matthew Fox will be there to greet us).

And so with this, our final blog posting, Team Tokyo sends our goodbye and thanks to you our great readers. We had an amazing trip and loved reporting on it to you in real time. Special thanks also to our many commenters and especially our grandmothers, who we understand have been following our exploits closely by receiving the print edition of the blog. We also have to send special love and wishes for continued fun to our former travel mates as they continue their Asian adventures through Vietnam, Thailand or (if you’re Jon) the airport of every major Asian capital city. We had a fabulous time with you all and look forward to reading about (and commenting on) your adventures through the blog. And now…on to our next great adventure!

wheeeeee!

2007-08-18T07:17:00.000-07:00

Now that our technical difficulties have been resolved and our competition relocated stateside (safe travels ebs and josh, asia misses you), it seems the responsibility to blog is squarely ours. And blog we shall.

I (amy) am currently horizontal in a 6x5 cube with halliday and jon. Elaborate? Ok. We're in an overnight sleeper train on our way to Sapa, a town in northwestern vietnam we plan to learn about sometime before we arrive. It's supposed to be beautiful and we're hoping the time there warrants the back-to-back overnight sleeper plan. I take that back, we're finding this plan hilarious and it's already worth the trip. For example, when we arrived at the assigned platform, our train had cars 1-7 and 9-11. Which car are we on? 8, obviously. The solution? Wait for an incoming train with a car 8 to arrive, split our train, and add the substitute car 8 to the middle. Inform as few people as possible, insert soundtrack (vietnamese opera, we think, being played from somewhere), and throw in backpackers. Allow to boil.

Actually it was less dramatic, and resolved fairly quickly given the number of moving parts (literally. And pun embarrassingly intended.).

This morning we visited Ho Chi Minh. Having missed Mao in Beijing, this was our last chance to catch an embalmed communist leader, and it was, well, a trip to a masoleum. I'm not sure what adjective to go with. It was interesting to see the number of vietnamese who turned out early on a saturday morning (lots), and also to note the amount of respect and attention he draws even today. And then it was 9:45am and we had a full day ahead of us.

We headed to the temple of literature, followed by some delicious rice pancake snacky things near our hotel (sub 2 dollars for the 3 of us), and lots of other fun. What fun, amy? Well I would love to tell you but I'm afraid I will lose service if I don't post soon, so an update will have to follow.

Oh Yes, We Remember Him . . .

2007-08-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

(Ed. -- Our techinical difficulties have been solved. Remember that these events occurred before those in the earlier entry. Please read in either order with that that in mind.]

You might not know it from the blog (slash we're totallyirresponsible) but when team China (one team one dream) split up, Halliday, Amy and I (Jon) jaunted off to Hanoi. As I write, I'msitting seaside on the roof of an Asian "junk" after a morning of swimming, kayaking, and snacking on dragon fruit in Halong Bay (more below). To get to Hanoi, we flew through Hong Kong -- famous for itsairport shopping -- and used up all our extra Chinese yuan/rmb/zlotys on snacks and American fashion and gossip rags (to catch up on Bradgelina and for photos of clothes to show our tailor in Hanoi).

We spent our first evening in Hanoi doing two things: 1) dodgingtraffic and 2) eating. Once we learned that the trick to crossingstreets in a country with no stop signs/lights and no traffic rules isthat motorbikers also wanted to dodge pedestrians, we were on our way to a spectacular feast. Conveniently (because we are indecisive andalso cannot speak the language and are scared to order without Joshhelping us), Vietnamese restaurants only serve a single dish. In thiscase, the restaurant gave us a card that made as much clear: "We serveonly grilled fish.". Jean Georges Vonvonvonvonbullet, eat your heartout. Grilled fish was one of the best dishes we've had (though we missed EB and Josh terribly). After dinner (maybe it was before), weexplored the lake near our hotel for a bit and then fell asleep -- ok,passed out -- leaving our clothes and the lights on.

We proclaimed the next day in Hanoi "consumerism day" and set our sights on having glasses made (pun embarrassingly intended) and buyingfabric for suits, shirts, skirts, dress-shirts, pants, trenchcoats, and anything else we happened to see on an attractive magazine model.The fabric market was overheated and insane. But the language barrier didn't stop us from negotiating for dirt cheap prices of moderatelyattractive pieces of cloth. Fabric in hand, we grabbed a quick bowl of pho and then rushed to the tailor to have our dreams sewed together from whole cloth. The experience at the tailor was comparable to Shanghai, with a few subtledifferences. For example, when I (still Jon) requested my suit be"skinny" and demonstrated how I wanted my pants to fall on my hips and thighs, the seamstress didn't hesistate for a second to reject mydemand: "I'm not making you women's pants.". Next, I gave her a pairof Josh's pants that he'd asked to be copied. He wanted only two things -- that they be lined and that the pocket have another pocketinside it to hold his cell phone. Oh no, how would we explain"pocket-in-a-pocket" to our tailor. If only our whole experience could be that easy. "I remember this guy," the tailor said. "A 'pocket-in-a-pocket,' I know how to do that now. Do you want one in your pants, too." Nope, I shook my head. Not a chance. (But really, Josh, I think it's nice -- not to mention practical).

We Are Having Technical Difficulties . . . Or How the Dog Ate Our Homework

2007-08-17T05:20:00.000-07:00

After spending two days on an Asian Junk in Halong Bay writing a blog entry about our first few days in Hanoi, we appear to have technical difficulties and the post about our journey from Shanghai to Hanoi through Hong Kong and the delicious food we ate and clothes we had along the way has vanished. We are confident, however, that we can recover it and will post it soon (we hope) albeit out of order. For once, this poor execution was not my (Jon's fault).

Meanwhile, we'd like to tell you about the days following the days that we blogged about but cannot find, and in particular our trip to Halong Bay, which we've decided is part of the Gulf of Tonkin (where we sank no ships and passed no resolutions). Spending several hours at the fabric market and at the tailor (yes, Josh, you are getting a "pocket-in-a-pocket" in your pants and yes, they remembered exactly who you were when I asked for it) got our appetites ready for another delicious Vietnamese dinner. We'd only had two bowls of pho and a pork and quail (fine, pigeon) egg bun, so we were ravenous. Without the guidance of Josh and EB, we were on our own to select a delightful local place. Which is why it was a mistake when we settled on the highly recommended "Hanoi Inn" from Lonely planet. It might as well have been the Inn at Little Washington. We walked up the stairs to see nothing but American and European faces looking back at us. On another trip, that would be fine. But not on Our Great Asian Adventure. We promptly asked for a menu and looked at the offerings. Hamburger, steak frites, meatloaf, and duck a l'orange, but no sign of anything Vietnamese. And so we fled as fast as possible.

Instead, we found in our Luxe Guide what sounded to be the grittiest, noisiest, least-likely-to-be-overrun by people like us restaurant we could. Success: only locals, not a white-y in the bunch. We're not sure what the name in Vietnamese was, but we're sure it translates to "Banana Leaf Cockroach Heaven." Yes, the floor was covered in both. (We actually only saw one tiny bug). We stuck with the motto "It only matters that the cooking surfaces are clean" and dug in to the simple beef, noodle, peanut, sprout, hot sauce, leafy vegetable. Once again, Hanoi didn't let us down. We loved every bite (leafy vegetable included). Satisfied with our delightful find, we followed the locals in our restaurant to another nearby establish that served what looked like Capri-Sun: unidentifiable juice in a plastic bag rubber-banded around a straw. Turns out it was fresh sugar cane juice. Yum and yum.

The next morning (Thursday) we were finally off to Halong Bay. It was beautiful slash our van ride out included as comical an array of visitors as we could have hoped for. First, there was the snooty pair of Frenchies who were living in Bali and taking a weekend in Hanoi. Next, four British boys from "outside Manchester" who claimed to have just graduated university but didn't look a day over 12. Did we mention how they said Chinese and Vietnamese women were "fantastic"? The rest of their tale is not safe for work, or for blogging. Sharing the front seat was a Vietnamese couple on their honeymoon. Cute. The groom had relocated to Colorado and the bride was from Saigon and spoke no English. The perfect pair, except when the groom introduced himself, told us about their 500 person wedding, and added without a second thought: "We'll have to spend the next few weeks getting to know each other." Make of that what you will. Finally, our tour guide brought his father -- age 46.

Halong Bay only got better from there. Tasty seafood, beautiful scenery, great company, and hilarious co-travellers. And in keeping with our style, we saw a pagoda on the top of a mountain and, naturally, climbed it to see the view.

As Amy put it this evening after we returned, drank 3 bia hoi a piece and ate one kilo of lychees among the three of us, "So many great things have happened today it doesn't even feel like the same day."

We're back in Hanoi tonight and tomorrow, leave for Sapa tomorrow night (on the border between China and Vietnam -- yes, mom, we will watch for ice patches and landmines) and return Monday.

Turning Japanese, I really think so

2007-08-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

In many things, we are lucky. Lucky to have such loving families, great friends, and one another as stalwart travel companions. Lucky to have jobs/graduate schools waiting for us upon our return and a lovely apartment in Cambridge. Lucky to be back in Tokyo, a city we love, for yet a second (or in Josh’s case third) time. One thing we are NOT lucky in, however, is major Japanese holidays. For, as happened to us two years ago when we were in Tokyo in March, it is yet again a major national holiday—only this time for a week instead of a day—and nearly everything you would want to visit or place you would want to eat is closed. OK, that is a minor exaggeration, but we have gotten very good (speaking and reading absolutely no Japanese at all) at understanding the signs on the doors of cute little bars and restaurants that we’d love to visit that say something to the effect of: “Down the shore with the fam. Happy memorial day week. Won’t be back until Monday, but that’s OK because probs no one is left in the city to read this. Only losers and Americans would be in Tokyo this week.” The real kicker is the Tsujiki fish market, a requisite stop on every foodies itinerary, that was basically all Josh wanted to see when we were here last (closed) and may now only be open Saturday morning before our flight. So you can bet we’ll be there at 5:00 AM Saturday before we head back to the states.

Suffice it to say, in spite of the hilarity of the holiday closures, we have constructed a busy couple of days for ourselves here. Having been to Tokyo before allows us to focus our energies nearly exclusively on eating and shopping since everything we “had” to do (that wasn’t closed) we did the first time we were here. I know, I know, even in cities we have never been to before we focus exclusively on eating and shopping. But humor me, OK?

The morning view at the Park Hotel yesterday (Wednesday) was lovely as always, though the haze that portended a 100 degree day ahead blocked the view of Mt. Fuji. We headed out and immediately ran into a Doughnut Plant New York shop – one of our faves from a tiny shop on the Lower East Side that has made a huge splash in Japan. When we were here two years ago, we made a special trip to find a Doughnut Plant in a random residential neighborhood; now, apparently there are eight around the city. Clearly the Japanese recognize a delicious doughnut when they see one. Our carb fix met, we joined the Japanese masses at the subway station downstairs and ordered a bowl of ramen from a ticket-dispensing vending machine that gave us no indication of what we’d get. So we crossed our fingers, got a number and brought it inside to the man, who made us a lovely bowl of soba, tofu and scallions.

Two breakfasts down, we hopped on the Yamanote line for Ebisu and wandered through Daikanyama, a sweet residential area we had particularly liked the last time we were here. We did a bit of shopping first in the giant mall complex attached to the subway station and then braved the streets. In our walking, we even stumbled upon the French bakery we had visited before, and so naturally that required us to get a chocolate croissant as a reward for such good location finding. (Breakfast tally currently at 3). We continued our wandering in spite of the astronomical heat through Ebisu and down to Meguro, where we hoped to try a tonkatsu (fried pork) restaurant that had been closed the last time we were here. Lucky for us, closed again through the rest of the week. Fortunately, the kind folks at Skadden Tokyo had given us recommendations for kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi right nearby, so we found the restaurant in the train station and took our place at the counter. It was such fun—conveyor belt sushi may be my (EB’s) all-time favorite way of eating—and the sushi was great. It was a total hit. In addition to the food, we enjoyed watching very small local ladies scarf very large nigiri sushi in a single bite.

Already in the train station, we took a stroll through the supermarket (located one level below-ground, of course; highlights included a $50 bunch of grapes) and then got back on the subway for Harajuku. Yes, like the Gwen Stefani song. There we walked down the main street and enjoyed the extremely questionable fashion choices of the Harajuku set. Right now, girls are into maid costumes and things that make them look like Little Bo Peep, boys are in flavors of punk and bizarre reimaginings of urban wear. From there, we cruised the main drag of Omotesando, which I describe as the SoHo of Tokyo: big fancy shops with funky architecture—think Prada store on Mercer Street. Keeping with that theme, at the end of Omotesando is the fabulous Herzog and de Meuron Prada store that is its own giant glass building with diamond shaped windows bulging in all directions. We feigned interest in the absurd clothes and walked through the store, clearly sticking out like the sweaty, unfashionable two-some we are. We knew we were outclassed when sitting outside a young couple drove up in their Mazerati, handed the keys to the Prada doorman and had him park the car for them so they could shop. Overwhelmed by our own inadequacies, we took back to walking, this time through the lovely homes of Aoyama. We stopped for a macha (green tea) soft serve ice cream, which provided us with sustenance to continue the walking.

One observation about Tokyo—teenage girls will queue up for anything and then shriek. We have observed variations on this theme now no less than seven separate times in two days – once in two separate instances directly across the street from one another. Not once have we been able to figure out the cause of all the hubbub. A new store opening? A Japanese boy-band-heartthrob? Cash prizes for winningest maid costume? Like so much about Tokyo, the trend is clear but the meaning remains obscure.

As it grew dark, we headed to Yurakucho and to an izakaya we had read about under the train tracks, notable for being run by an English expat. We had a nice chat with him and even nicer plates of agedashi tofu, fried chicken and sautéed mushrooms. The food was great, but because he spoke English it didn’t count as a real Japanese meal, so we checked out various other little yakitori like places under the train tracks (nerd city planner note—there were a ton of restaurants under the tracks that seemed popular and super successful. Clearly something we need more of in NYC. But the noise of the train overhead was sort of a pain. Perhaps if we has elevated train tracks but no trains. Like an elevated park or something. That would be perfect.) We had some beer and skewers and with eating occasion number seven for the day under our belt, we headed home.

Today began much the same way, with a pastry and a bowl of soup from a shop with the mystery ticket machine (this time cold noodles with raw egg dipped to be dipped in hot broth), only once full, we headed off for the Ueno neighborhood to the north of us. There we explored the park (saw the outsides of museums, visited a temple) and realized quickly that though it was only 9:30, we were already dripping sweat and the day was going to be a heat killer (final word from weather.com was 97° feeling like 105°). As any normal people would, when faced with sweltering temperatures we headed for a giant outdoor non-shaded market, where we explored much of the junk on offer. We bought a green tea ice cream but nothing more—I think our negotiating skills got used up in Vietnam and China. Also a curious food fact on display in the market: those wiggly paper-thin bonito flakes you enjoy with your misc. Japanese foods come shredded off a fish that has been dried and smoked to the consistency of a rock.

Post Ueno exploring, we headed east towards Asakusa, an older neighborhood with low-rise buildings and more historic character. It was charming, as we remembered, with little temples all over. We stopped in a local spot – just ducked under some otherwise unmarked curtains on an otherwise unmarked building on the street – for what turned out to be a delicious made-before-our-eyes tempura meal. We were the only ones there when we arrived, and so felt a bit ill-at-ease, but we’d been seated for about three minutes when the place became more-or-less instantly packed with locals appearing out of thin air. It was a treat and a perfect little neighborhood experience. We kept walking through Asakusa and visited Kappabashi dori, the kitchenware street where they sell every type of kitchen implement you might dream of, including the plastic food that is ubiquitous at nearly every restaurant in the city. We bought knives a)because it seemed fun—when in Japan, buy Japanese knives and b)because it seems like exactly the sort of thing pretentious foodies like us should come home with. “Oh these little things? I just picked them up in Tokyo. Oh yes, I’m a very serious chef. I cut things all the time. Sometimes I even dice.” Eventually, we gave our feet a rest at a do-it-yourself okonomiaki (Japanese pancake) place. The food was delicious, though the restaurant was a foolish choice for us as it was a million degrees inside (each table had its own grill generating loads of heat) and they expected us to make our own pancake, which we clearly had no idea how to do. Fortunately they took pity on us and made the pancake for us as we sat idly by, doing not a GD thing to help.

Bellies full of not one but two lunches, we walked through Asakusa to the river and then to the subway, where we headed to the excellent Edo-Tokyo museum. There we learned all about the history of the city including our three favorite facts: 1. Japanese commoners didn’t have last names until 1869; 2. In Edo, a typical family lived in an 8 sq meter row house—makes 340 East 11^th Street seem like a palace; and 3.Commodore Perry was sent to Japan by the otherwise forgettable Millard Fillmore.

The museum was definitely worthwhile and we wished we had more time, but we had to rush back to the hotel and to Ginza to meet up with Suzuki-san, our Japanese godmother who housed first Josh on Whiffenpoof world tour and then both of us when we visited in 2005. As usual, it was a delight to see her and we had a nice Japanese dinner at a Ginza restaurant that featured a two-tiered feast of broiled fish, tofu, egg custard, sushi, tempura and soup. She has recently become a grandmother for the second time so we got to see her pictures, though sadly we had no hard copies to show off of baby Sam Olken. We did promise to send her some once we are back, so put on your smiling face baby Sam—we’ll be in Cambridge soon enough.

After saying goodbye to Suzuki-san, we strolled through Ginza and stopped for one last nibble and a sake at a tiny spot underground. The food was oden, or this sort of funny soup thing, but the sake was a treat and the whole scene very Japanese, so it seemed the right way to cap the evening. Another lovely food-filled day.

Destination: Tokyo

2007-08-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

Off on our own (tear), Josh and I headed back yet again to the fabric market to attempt to pick up his shirts for yet a third time. Somehow, the magical tailors made the revisions and the shirts seem OK, so after a little bit of end negotiation to cut the price and pay for the hassle, we were finally done with tailoring and 12 shirts stronger.

Given that we had only a few hours remaining in China, we elected to make the most of it by wandering around the little alleys behind the fabric market, where tons of people were out selling their wares (fruits, veggies, tofu, blood sausage—you name it). We opted for the “if it has sesame, egg or scallion and is fried, we will buy it” technique, which quickly resulted in our having at least 8 different street food treats. Some were weird, but most were absolutely delicious. An excellent send-off.

We headed back to the hotel with a little wander through the French Concession and then were off to Pudong airport where we did our best to burn through our remaining RMBs by buying every candy in sight. Our flight to Tokyo was uneventful (though they did serve salad as part of the in-flight meal. Salad? That we haven’t seen in weeks).

As usual, arrival in Tokyo was exciting if overwhelming. We opted for the cheaper and slightly slower train into the city and then spent much of the 70 minute ride into the city desperately trying to decipher the subway map after 3 people gave us 3 different suggestions of which way to go. We finally hopped on the subway, and made our way close to the hotel. We were immediately reminded of the joys of the Tokyo metro as we got out the wrong numbered exit and so were wandering the streets until we recognized where we were (we stayed at this hotel when we were here 2 years ago) and checked in.

Hungry as always, we changed and headed out for a hip dinner out at Rainbow Roll Sushi in Azabu-Juban, where the chefs create sushi roll creations with amazingly fresh veggies (including shiso leaf, yum). We had tuna, sea eel, salmon, and a rainbow roll creation all their own with many different fish. It was a yummy and funky way to kick off the food-fest that will be Tokyo.

Shanghai Roundup

2007-08-13T17:48:00.001-07:00

We’re a bit behind on our updates (too much fun to be had, too little time for blogging), so we’ll have to resort to something of a more cursory update.

Sunday morning we opted for brunch, Shanghai-style, with a dim sum feast. The place was great—bustling with locals and no other whities in sight—and naturally we ordered far more than we could consume. Veggie dumplings, pork dumplings, rice noodle rolls, durian pastries, a gelatin that tasted like pancakes, beef balls, chive pancake, radish dumplings, you name, we ordered it. The meal was delicious, though by the end we were a bit defeated.

To burn off our full stomachs, we headed to Moganshanlu, a hip artsy area with lots of little galleries that was described in the guide book as the meatpacking district of Shanghai. There was clearly no High Line in sight nor a nascent Whitney Museum, however, so that comparison may not be totally on the mark. We explored artists’ workshops, Josh befriended one of the artists, and felt generally modern arty and chic.

Because too much culture can have a negative effect, our next stop was the massive Qipu market, the center for all things fake in Shanghai. To describe it as a ring in Dante’s Inferno would not be an overstatement. But we persevered, emerging with a couple bags to bring home all our travel purchases, a belt and a wallet.

Outside, we quickly stocked up on some street food (dumplings and delicious bing), and then hopped in a cab for Xintiandi, the open air mall-ish development new to Shanghai. It is alleged to be an urban planning feat of genius so I (EB) was naturally picking up tips left and right. We waited out the rain with some pastries and coffee (they had a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf—we don’t even have them in NYC!) and then walked to People’s Square where we amused for what felt like hours by adorable Chinese children playing in the fountain.

Jon and Amy then headed off to the airport to pick up our newest addition, Halliday Hart, and Josh and I took to wandering. We walked south from People’s Square, bought Josh some trendy Chinese sneakers, and made our way to Taikang Lu, an “art” street that was mostly made up of tiny little alleys that appeared filled with trash, bicycles and old men playing cards, but that at the end were a warren of shops, cafes and other fun little treasures.

Back to the hotel, we met up with the rest of the team—now with Halliday in tow we officially constitute a tour group and Josh is required to carry a flag—and headed off for a pre-dinner drink. For dins, we opted to go back to Jishi, where we went the very first night of the trip, for some more delicious pork knuckle. That was paired with bean curd, chicken with pepper sauce, pork with chili sauce, eggplant and other yummy treats. Once again, it was great.

Monday morning we headed off to the Shanghai Museum to fulfill our cultural quotient for the day. There were learned about Chinese minorities, jade, paintings, porcelain and also the Great Vowel Shift going on in the English language (the last because Josh wanted to share some learnings with the group, not necessarily because it was related to China’s long and storied history on display at the museum).

All that culture certainly builds up an appetite, so we opted to gorge ourselves on soup dumplings (pork, pork and crab, chicken). It was more than humanly consumable, but we polished them off, all $5.50 worth for the 5 of us.

We walked for a bit to burn off the calories from lunch (actually burning them off would take 3 laps of the Earth, minimum) and explored some side streets north of People’s Square. After our own version of supermarket sweep at a Chinese supermarket—never can have enough unfamiliar snacks—we headed back over to Taikang Lu to check out the shops and alleys as a group. A few purchases later, we headed back to the fabric market to check out our clothes. For the most part they came out well, though Josh’s order (12 shirts total) came back with all the collars and bottoms screwed up, so we will be heading back yet a third time this morning to see if they have been able to repair them. Apparently Chinese tailoring is a magical art where they allege that if they mess everything up, it can all be fixed in a couple of hours and you will never be the wiser. We’ll see how that goes.

Back to our hotel to get changed and gussied up, we headed out for our final night in Shanghai and our last night together as Team China. Our first stop was the Cloud 9 Bar at the Grand Hyatt in Pudong, which gave us pricey drinks with a fabulous view of the Bund and the city below. It took three elevators and about 9 hotel staffers to escort us to the top, but the experience from the 87^th floor was totally worth it. Our cocktails finished, we headed to 3 on the Bund for dinner at Jean-Georges. “Jean-Georges?” you may ask. From this street food-loving, dumpling-scarfing crew? Well, for our last night we figured we should live it up and see if in one meal we could equal the cost of every other meal on the China trip combined (we may just have done it). There’s no need to regale you with the wonders of the meal or the fabulous view of Pudong, suffice it to say the meal included foie gras in three forms, and foam of every possible variety. It was an unbelievable treat.

Our bellies beyond full, we headed home for our last night at the Old House Inn.

One last administrative matter—it is with sadness that I report that this blog entry represents the last of the Olken-Kelly-Herczeg-Koch (and most recently including Hart) group adventures. This morning we parted ways, half to Vietnam and the other to Japan. Though we are bummed to part ways, we will all meet up again in NYC, Boston and San Fran in the weeks to come. For you, our blog readers, however, this should mean twice the fun, as the blog moves in two directions and perhaps includes twice the posts. Please keep commenting, as having dueling Vietnamese-Japanese blogs means we are in stiff competition to see who is the funniest. And we, the Tokyo two-some, would like to say to the Hanoi-bound threesome—Bring It On.

You’d like 250 RMB for that? How about 2?

2007-08-12T17:36:00.000-07:00

For our first morning in Shanghai, after a lovely toast and coffee breakfast in the funky restaurant A Future Perfect in our inn, we did what any culture-seeking, history-loving visitors would do: we went shopping. Not just any shopping, but to the giant fabric market where you barter your brains out on fabric and then on having many MANY clothes made for you by a fleet of unseen tailors. We went a little overboard, darting from vendor to vendor, picking out fabric, flipping through style books, pitting tailor against tailor (I, EB, wanted a jacket that was only designed by one vendor but they only had bad fabric so I tried the jacket on and then Josh brought the other tailor over for some stealth viewing. We were, you’ll not be surprised, totally busted and the first tailor was furious and ripped the jacket off me. What excitement.) Three hours later, we emerged having bought fabric, buttons and placed an order for (among the 4 of us) 26 shirts, 2 jackets, 2 dresses, 2 skirts and 2 pocket squares. All told the bill was roughly 4400 RMB, for an average cost per item of $17.37. We should mention that we haven’t picked up the items yet and they may all look dodgy, but the selection was fun nevertheless.

Spent from spending, we wandered over to the Old City – what the colonists called the “Chinese City” – for a lunch break of Shanghai’s most famous treat, the xiaolongbao or pork soup dumpling. A quick description of the xialongbao might be helpful. Made with delicious pork meat, the xialongbao is super-heated and soaked in its own fat, which somehow creates a delicious broth at the bottom of the small package that wraps the pork meat. Yum. (We even saw one man drinking the broth out of his dumplings with a straw).

Appetites ready, we queued up and quickly discovered that the wait would be half-an-hour or more. Savvy line-waiters, we (ok, Josh) decided to use the oldest trick in the book: The Magnolia Bakery line-cut. He struck up conversation with a group of young women from Guangzhou near the front of the line. Would they mind buying our xiaolongao for us? We’d pay them double the price. Great. Only they didn’t understand the whole “we’ll give you double the price” part and instead of buying us eight dumplings they thought we wanted sixteen. Turns out we did.

Food street with good sesame bread and bad popsicles

Like all cities in China, the “Old City” had a population of at least 7 million, which had swelled to roughly 15 million as a result of it being Saturday afternoon, so after our delicious that-man-with-a-straw-was-a-genius xialongbao, we moved on. We wandered onto a street/alley with vendors a-plenty. From shirtless tailors (thank you for mending holes in our jeans) to bakers (yum, sesame fried bread), there were all sorts of things and services on offer. Unable to resist popsicles in the sweltering Shanghai heat, we made some questionable choices, ranging from lentil (terrible) to corn mint (better but not good). We continued strolling around, taking note of the widespread demolition of old architecture to make way for new high rise modernity. There were a few holdouts, which suggested that people had a bit more leeway with the government than we thought possible – but it’s just a matter of time. We could already imagine the bright-eyed China Daily headline when they finally demolish the home: “Woman Increasingly Excited About Shanghai Improvement District – Clearing the Way for Progress”

From there, we had a significant misreading of the weather, opting to walk across town despite the increasingly black sky and ominous rumblings. Sure enough, right as we got to the old town, we got monsooned. The local 7-11 sold us an umbrella, but it was not enough. We ducked into the Bird and Flower Market, figuring that 1. it’s a cool Shanghai to-do; and 2. it’s indoors. Once inside, however, it quickly became apparent that the bird and flower scene has largely given way to a bustling giant cricket scene (and we mean GIANT), so we rushed out of the insect cacophony and back into the rain. When the puddles got too big to jump across, the rain too hard to see and the lightening a little too close to our umbrellas, we found refuge in a fake goods store (turns out that the limit on feigning interest in knockoff Samsonite luggage is about 15 minutes) before hopping a cab back across town to our hotel.

The rain stopped and we wandered through the streets of the French Concession stopping, naturally, for a brief snack as we meandered. Eventually, we found our way to the famous Face Bar in the Ruijin Guesthouse, another hip Shanghai bar scene. We sat outside on the lawn and had four lovely cocktails (Shanghai can be soooo civilized) before we returned to our hotel for a quick clothes change. Off again, we walked to a highly recommended Hunanese restaurant, Guyi, which once again filled us with delicious and spicy food. We had a cold chicken dish, salt and pepper tofu, diced green beans with pork, double cooked pork with garlic shoots and, of course, and eggplant dish. Though we were well full by the end, Josh decided that no trip to China is complete without some seriously stinky tofu, so he ordered preserved tofu which came to the table black and smelling like death. It was clearly the worst thing that has come our way this trip (yak included).

Post dinner, we headed to People 7, a chic Shanghai bar with trick bathrooms, where we hobnobbed with the Shanghai trendy scene. The space was beautiful and the atmosphere fun, though the drinks were mostly awful. Josh’s tasted like cough syrup and was neon blue. Just one of the dangers of ordering drinks named “Shogun romance” and ‘Broken Hearts.”

Shang-hiiiieeeee

2007-08-11T17:32:00.001-07:00

One more spicy meal under our belts (why wouldn’t the deciding factor in where to have breakfast be that the only English words on the outside of the restaurant were “Pig Intestine Powder”?), we headed off to the Chengdu airport for our flight to Shanghai. This flight was on Shanghai airlines which brings our combined total Chinese airlines to 4, including China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan airlines and Shanghai airlines. It’s a tough call to say which was our favorite, though diverting us (EB and Josh) and forcing us to spend a night in Shijiazhuang, the Detroit of China, may shoot China Southern into the lead.

Post arrival in Shanghai, we boarded the world’s fastest train once again, the mag lev from the airport, and at 431 km/hr, we were at the subway in no time. With a bit of wandering and bag dragging, we took the subway to our hotel, the Old House Inn in the French Concession, and discovered a lovely inn waiting for us with cute little rooms and a funky restaurant. We cleaned up, changed, and headed out for a Friday night on the town, Shanghai-style.

For our first truly authentic Shanghai experience, we took the subway to People’s Square and walked along Nanjing Lu to the Bund. To say the subway was crowded is to understate it massively. You think the 4/5/6 train is tough in the morning? Try the red line in Shanghai at 6:30 on a Friday night. Trying to get off the train, with the sea of bodies pushing out and in at the same time roughly recreated the experience of what it must have been like to be born. Once we were off the train, it was like breathing oxygen for the very first time.

We walked along the glitz and flashing lights of Nanjing Lu and saw many a Shanghai-er and tourist out for a Friday night stroll, then headed to the Bund for the amazing light show that is Pudong. Even for the second time, it was pretty incredible. We returned to the spot we visited our first night, the New Heights bar, for some cocktails overlooking the show (including, of course, a bride and groom taking photos on the waterfront surrounded by a massive crowd. Gotta love Asia.) Our first “fancy” night underway—at a bar at the top of the Bund somehow feels a long way away from yak meat in Xiahe—we hopped into a cab and headed back to the French Concession for dinner at Bao Luo, a giant place with raucous patrons and bustling wait staff.

We went to this restaurant on the recommendation of Time Out and also the author Nicole Mones, who has to get a special shout out here. Ms. Mones wrote the book “The Last Chinese Chef” that I (EB) read before the trip to get excited about our upcoming adventures and the culinary excitement of China. In addition to a lovely book, Ms. Mones also maintains a website with food recommendations in Shanghai and Beijing. We have tried almost every restaurant Ms. Mones recommends and her food and location choices have been amazing. True to form, the suggestions for Bao Luo were no less great.

So back to our meal, after a Tsing Tao – Budweiser taste test (everyone in the restaurant but us seemed to prefer the American classic), we tucked into a series of incredible dishes. First came veggies prepared for monks (some yummy mushroom concoction), then pig hoof (scary sounding but unforgettably delicious), eggplant (definitely one of the top 5 dishes of the trip), river fish (which arrived first at our table flopping around alive in its bucket, yup alive), swiss steak and pork dumplings. It was a feast and a fabulous way to kick off Shanghai.

We strolled home through the French Concession, spotting some trendy bars and restaurants on the way, and even found a string of bars where there were many lovely Asian women happy to make Josh’s and Jon’s acquaintance. Good luck there, ladies.

Do you have anything….spicier?

2007-08-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

Our lengthy day of travel behind us, we woke up early this morning for a walk around our nameless Chinese tourist town (which seems primarily centered around serving as a base for visitors to the national park nearby and to the airport). After another delicious Chinese breakfast (baozi, rice porridge, eggs), we headed off for the famous Jiuzhai Huanglong airport.

From there, we jetted away to Chengdu (50 minutes door-to-door, no unexpected paving, no re-routing to unknown destination). Chengdu is famous for two things: pandas and Sichuan peppers. Guess which we focused on.

Our first stop after leaving our hotel was not the panda reserve, but lunch. We learned yesterday that a romantic date over a bottle of wine is not the Chinese way – here, people prefer hustle, bustle, shrieking and shouting. We proved this theory true at lunch at a restaurant that was “seat yourself” in name only; in reality, it was a cross between the NYSE trading floor and the running of the bulls in Pamplona. All of the roughly 125 tables were completely full, and a group of locals lurked at each of them ready to pounce and take the free chairs as soon as the current occupants finished their meal. Undeterred, the four of us split up and sought out tables that looked close to paying their bills. I (Jon) found a great target. The table had three Chinese women who not only appeared to be finishing, but even offered their fourth seat to me. I took it. A waitress came and cleared away their plates. Yahoo, I thought. I patted myself on the back – what an able Chinese tourist. And then the waitress returned and brought the women their actual meal – the plates that had been cleared away were from earlier guests. Whoops. I fell for the old “take this empty seat at an insane and unnavigable restaurant trick.” Luckily, EB at the same moment had snagged a prime spot. We all sprinted over as quickly as possible to be sure the empty seats weren’t filled during the split second delay. Our hard work was well rewarded. The restaurant’s theme was snack food, and we ordered two platefuls: red pepper noodles, gaozi, wonton soup, watermelon soup, bean curd, black rice cupcake, spring roll, unidentified dumpling, corn bread, unidentified shellfish, beef skewer, and Freon if you were sitting near Amy right beneath the air conditioner.

Well-fed, we decided to burn off our enormous meal at Renmin, or “People’s”, Park. A quick preface is in order. In our week and a half of adventuring, we have seen some strange things, and indeed, the extraordinary has become ordinary. Monks on cell phones? Why not, ni hao. Unpaved mountain roads? Sure let’s see what this minibus can do. Cab drivers breaking out in operatic song? Hardly deserving of mention. (yes, this happened on our way in from the airport this morning). Even so, the People’s Park was quite the scene. Imagine the space of about two football fields, throw in a few trees full of chirping (shouting) cicadas, and then throw in the following with no boundaries therein:

Troop of line-dancers, nearby boombox playing deafening Chinese pop.
“Dance floor” with ballroom dancing, accompanying unidentifiable “dance music.”
At least 4 karaoke machines. Amplified and amateur at best.
Two adjacent operatic/dramatic productions, each with its own crowd of onlookers. Adjacent= within 20 feet of one another. And yes, microphones.

It was the single loudest thing I (Amy) have ever experienced. Oh and also there were children playing (shoeless, I wanted to drench them in hand sanitizer), dudes playing what they might describe as tennis against a wall, a guy flying a kite so high we all nearly blinded ourselves trying to spot it, and of course, women playing mahjong and men playing chess. I’m still waiting to see a woman break into the chess scene. I digress. You might be confused about the date and time over here, let me clear that up: we were at the park on a Thursday from about 2:30-5pm. Apparently when you have a metropolitan area with 15 million people not everyone has to work, and the idle know how to make some noise.

After some tea in the park, we sought peace and quiet on the 8 lane city streets. We wandered up to a neighborhood with some of the old Qing architecture, and, you guessed it, found a place to snack. We sat down at an outdoor café and ordered some snacks with the old “we’ll have what they’re having” technique. Never fails. We ended up with edamame, boiled peanuts, pickled ginger, mushroom with Sichuan peppers, tofu skin with Sichuan sauce, and green beans. (yes, snack. dinner follows, just you wait). Oh and pijos (beer). All were delicious and quite spicy.

We spent the next couple of hours walking around, critiquing Mao’s attire in the massive sculpture in the center of the city (really Mao? A double breasted overcoat in this humidity?), and generally exploring the streets. Unwilling to pass up the chance for more Sichuan cuisine, we declared it time for dinner. Acting on the recommendation from a local, we headed to a restaurant fairly close to our hotel and ordered up a mouthwatering selection of yak-free delights: eggplant with garlic sauce, double cooked pork, mushroom jiaozi (these turned out to be pork dumplings with a trace of mushroom), mapo dofu, noodles with hot Sichuan sauce, and edamame. As usual, we had trouble picking a favorite, and all were delicious. At this point, no one was hungry, but Sichuan is known for its spicy cuisine, and having only one night in Chengdu, it was our duty to explore it to the fullest. We ordered one final dish, billed as very hot by our waitress. Out came a vat of spice with some beef and bok choi hiding beneath the surface. Each of us tried a bite or two, and though it was quite hot, we think it’s safe to say we’ve met Sichuan head on and prevailed. As per usual.

China got our goat

2007-08-09T07:25:00.000-07:00

Plan for August 8th:

6:30 - Stroll around Langmu Si
7:30 - Chinese breakfast
8:30 - Hit the road for an easy trip to Huanglong park
12:00 - Tour scenic Huanglong, taking in the beauty and tranquility of rural China
6:00 - Check into plush hotel
7:00 - Sichuan feast
9:30 - Pass out, happy and full

Actual Events of August 8th:

6:30-8:30 - As planned
9:15 - Tunnel on shiny new road unexpectedly closed (no prior signage); along with miscellaneous other cars/buses/trucks/mopeds/motorized tricycles, head off along the old (unpaved) road on a 45 minute detour through the hairpin turns of a mountain pass. Whee!
12:00 - Come to a sudden stop on the road a mere 50 km from our destination, taking our place among the trucks full of curious-looking yaks. Discover that China, in its continual quest for progress and unceasing drive towards the future, has decided to pave the road ahead of us. The entire road. In both directions. And so we, along with the increasing line of cars and trucks around us, are told to sit tight indefinitely until the paving is done.
1:00 - Paving not done
2:00 - Paving still not done
3:00 - Truck filled with 200 goats arrives. Paving not concluded
4:00 - Hunger takes over in our van. Each member of the group (secretly) decides who would be most delicious to eat. Settle for watermelon instead.
5:00 - Finally, we are given the green light and all cars, trucks and vans make a break for it. After a few stops and starts and one more unpaved mountain road drive, we are en route.
6:00-9:30 - As planned

Top ten things we have seen monks do

2007-08-08T18:54:00.000-07:00

We are blogging now from our van, as we wait for the herd of 500 goats to cross the road, stopping all major highway traffic in both directions.

To catch you up on the past couple of days, we spent our last night in Xiahe eating at a muslim restaurant on the main street (no yak, we believe) and then had the Gansu region speciality warm beers at the hotel across the way. There we were fortunate enough to stumble upon a Tibetan welcoming ceremony, which appears exclusively designed for tourists and involved local tibetans dancing around led by an absurd white man who pranced and flailed like he was Brian Boitano going for the gold.

One more night in our dormitory room and we set off for Langmusi, another monastery town about 3 hours away. En route, we drove through the Sanke Grasslands, which were filled with beautiful rolling hills and wild flowers. Though less mountainous than our earlier drive, the ride was nevertheless exciting as much of it was on unpaved road.

We arrived in Langmusi early enough to enjoy a late lunch and do some exploring. To select said lunch eatery, we went with the surefire olken method of selection: follow the locals. This landed us in a muslim restaurant (menu included the phrase "we are a muslim restaurant and do not serve pork" followed by descriptions of several pork dishes - when asked about, they were unavailable. You decide.) where we had delicious top ramen (handmade noods and all) for the bargain price of less than 50 cents, as well as some other noodle extravaganza and some fried eggplant and pork mini-sandwiches. We do our best to order "chieze" (eggplant) whenever possible for guaranteed deliciousness.

Perhaps a word or two about the town is in order. Langmusi is on the border of Sichuan and Gansu provinces, and features two monasteries: one on either side of the "river." The river is more like a creek, and given some of the things we saw going into the creek, it seems advantageous to be upstream. Like way upstream. That said, we all loved the feel of Langmusi. It's very quiet (spritual fulfillment doesn't make much noise outside of prayer time at the monasteries) and a great place to hike, explore, and of course eat for a couple of days.

After hiking around the monastery on the Gansu side and up into the hills around it, our shoes became so caked with mud that it felt like we had gained 10 pounds every time we took a step. Horsebackriding is a popular pastime in Langmusi, though we opted against taking a ride, led by Jon's conviction that if we came within 3 feet of a horse we were all sure to be killed. To relax our weary feet from hiking, we stopped for tea at a tea house on the main street - the other patrons were all Tibetans in their characteristic all-weather robe-cum-jacket-cum-backpacks and oversized silver jewery; needless to say, they were amused when we insisted on sniffing each of the ~15 teas before buying.

Following our tea stop, we took a short break back at the hotel. This is notable not only because we were staying at a real hotel this time (think private bathrooms), but also because "short break at hotel" has rarely shown up on our daily itineraries. Caked in mud and mysterious odors -- Amy and I (Jon) had been to scared to shower in Xiahe -- we decided to take advantage of our luxurious Langmusi accommodations to clean up a bit. Boy would it feel good to take a nice hot shower. Only what little water came out must have come directly from a glacier. As Amy put it, it was not so much a shower as holding an icicle above our heads and cleaning ourselves drip by frozen drip. Only later did we find out that hot water was available only between 8:30-11pm or 6-8:30am. Of course.

Fresh and clean we ventured out for a traditional Tibetan dinner of yakburger and apple pie at a restaurant called Leisha's -- a tourist trap to the extent that a town populated almost entirely by monks and with only one 500 foot long road can have "tourists" or a spot to "trap" them. The yakburger was surprisingly delicious, and we also had cauliflower, noodles, and fried rice. Each dish came with a choice of vegetables or . . . yak. Not to be too western, we avoided ordering items on the menu ranging from bruschetta to pizza to risotto to burritos.

As dinner was winding down, Josh struck up conversation (in Chinese) with a group of travellers who had motorbiked from near Beijing over 5000 kilometers to places all over China. By "Josh struck up conversation with," I really mean that they overheard us mocking yak, and toasted us (with warm beers) because even Chinese stomachs can only bear so much yak meat. Our new friends took to us so quickly that they ordered a full bottle of baijiu -- a traditional Chinese aperatif/mindbender -- for the seven of us to share. We're fairly confident that biajiu translates to "grain alcohol" or "everclear" in English. To return the favor, we ordered "er" (that means two in Chinese -- I've become a master counter) apple pies, one for us and one for the three of them. Let's just say they didn't like our American treat as much as we enjoyed their Chinese one. After a couple rounds and an exchange of business cards, we stumbled home.

Day 2 in Langmu Si started early with a stroll up one of the high hills near town to a set of prayer flags (looked more like colorful arrows), from which we could watch the morning ritual: monks to morning service, pilgrims circling endlessly around the temples and performing prostrations, yaks and sheep and horses generally milling about. With the mountains rising all around town, it was completely gorgeous. Occasionally one of the pilgrims would wander up the hill, shriek in ecstasy, and throw handfulls of prayer confetti in the air. We watched the monks file out of the main prayer hall and sit for a "lesson," which seemed to involve sitting still and getting sutra-d at.

Back in town, we had a tasty and traditional Chinese breakfast of baozi (carrot and lamb), rice porridge, pickled cabbage, and a fried egg. Yum.

Afterwards, we met our guide for a brief, semi-informed tour of one monastary, during which we were suckered into buying shawls and incense to offer at a temple. We saw shrines to assorted Buddhas (e.g., buddha of eye health), as well as relics of mummified Lamas, and later got to watch the monks in class. It gradually became clear that our guide - who, keep in mind, professionally leads tours to the Tibetan section of China - has no great love for Tibetans nor any particular respect for their religion. Fun. Anyway, that took an hour and he was back to the hotel, leaving us free to wander and graze as we chose.

We spent the rest of the morning on a beautiful hike behind the second monastery where we ventured through streams and up mountain valleys. Back into town for lunch at our favorite muslim spot, we wandered around town and then ended up our day back at the second monastery where we found yet more living buddha relics and some monks doing end of day chanting (which were done in the lowest possible voices imaginable. Isaac Hayes has nothing on these monks). For dinner, we opted to pass on the yak and tried a sichuanese place in town which was good and spicy and hopefully a sign of the yummy sichuanese food to come over the next few days. Though the food was the highlight, the most amusing part of the meal came when one of the large fish in the tank adjacent to our table lept into the air, thereby knocking some piece of electronic equipment into the tank, and in the resulting fall back into the water, take its own life. No one in the restaurant appeared to notice or care.

So, after three full days exploring Tibetan monasteries, we would like to share with you the top ten things we have seen monks do in China:

10. Chanting sutras
9. Swinging a pick axe
8. Eating popsicles
7. Riding in a land cruiser
6. Playing 2x4 (a game where you swing a 2x4 at a passing motorbiker)
5. Flirting
4. Pooing into the main river flowing into town
3. Playing vice city on the computer at the local internet cafe/monk robe store/yak meat emporium
2. Hailing taxis while talking on a cell phone
1. Answering cell phone while chanting sutras

Scratch My Yak*

2007-08-05T07:24:00.001-07:00

One administrative matter to clear up right away. In China, it is difficult to view comments posted to the blog. So in order for us to appreciate your pithy and witty responses, we have to moderate comments, which means we approve them before they go up. Sorry for the delay, but it is the only way we can see what you write.

Back to reporting. So Friday night, following our great wall triumphs, we rewarded ourselves with China-style massages and a delicious dinner (highlights of which included pork with tofu skin and scallions, duck rolls, pork buns like sloppy joes and this amazingly smelly and yummy fermented mung bean paste spread thing). The next morning, up bright and early, we were off to the Beijing airport for our flight to Langzhou.

Points of hilarity from the flight included an incomprehensible live auction and constant updates of "time at origin" and "time at destination." We flew on an airline that operates exclusively within China, and China is all one time zone. Naturally. Upon arrival in Langzhou we met our guide, Michael, and our smiley gentle giant of a driver, Mr. Zhou. We did not, thankfully, stop in Langzhou, which from what we read in our books and saw from the windows, offered little in the way of tourism or color or really anything. Except a population of 3 million, of course.

The next stop was our trip to the Buddhist groto in a tin can on buoys across the Yellow River that we blogged about yesterday. Built during the Tang Dynasty, the groto was constructed around 1 600 years ago. Buddhas ranging in size from a few inches to over 70 feet were carved in the massive cliffs that rose above the river. Like many things in China, a huge number of the Buddhas were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and many buried forever when the government flooded the river to make way for a hydroelectric dam (or something like that).

After fording the Yellow River we hopped back into our van for the ride to our next stopover city Xiahe, a small (i.e., a zillion people) city of Tibetan monks in Gansu. The scenery and road on the way there were breathtaking and dramatic. Our arrival in Xiahe did not go as smoothly; our hotel had given away our rooms. Fortunately, they had one last "dormitory style" room with four beds available. Josh didn't know what fun was until he got to share a room with EB, Amy and Jon. After settling in, we ventured out for dinner and our first -- but not last -- taste of yak. As Mao once said, "They're real, and the're yaktacular."

This morning we were up and out early as usual, crusing the streets (ok, street) of Xiaha. We had some tasteless fried something or other (yak?), spent some time sniffing around a tea shop, and generally people watched. A quick breakfast at our luxury dormitory and we were off to the Labrang Monastery. Built in 1710, the monastery is the biggest Tibetan Buddhist monastery outside of Tibet. We learned a bit about buddhism at breakfast, and a bit more on the tour guided by an english-speaking monk, but it seems we all could use a refresher. Or fresher. Anyway, despite a slightly larger crop of tourists than we've found elsewhere (sunday outing to the monastery in the middle of nowhere is all the rage), the visit was a hit. We saw some beautiful temples, accented by the already striking mountain scene, and even had a chance to visit the main prayer hall where hundreds of monks were chanting their sutras. The monks range from age 5 (um, adorable) to old, and all wear deep crimson robes. Apparently the extra-super-special monks wear yellow but we didn't spot any of those. As a consolation of sorts, we did see some monks exchanging cell phone numbers.

Next, our guide arranged for us to eat lunch with a Tibetan family in their home (slash tent). It would be redundant to say it was yaklicious, but really it was. We started with yak milk, then learned to make (and ate) yak butter balls (called sampa). Then we had yak baozi, yak with eggplant, yak with noodles, yak with green beans, and yak with cabbage. We finished off the meal with a soup of yak stock and cucumber. Needless to say, we've only seen one live yak and can only assume it's in a state of permanent lactation and terror.

After an afternoon of street-wandering and tea-drinking, we're off to see the nightlife. More soon - next stop, further from civilization in Langmu Si.

*Note: "Scratch My Yak" is the name by which the Herczeg family has historically known Yatzee.

Another great step for mankind

2007-08-04T01:31:00.000-07:00

Just another techie shoutout to the folks who gave us the BlackBerry, and also to the Chinese government (anyone from the Chinese government reading this blog: we totally love you guys!) -- we are now blogging from a speedboat cruising along the western end of the Yellow River in Gansu Province. those of you "In Search of Modern China," take note.

We've arrived in Gansu this morning and embarked on our six-day tour through the Chinese Wild West - maybe a little tamed of late, but wild enough for us. All reports suggest that the food will be mostly yak-based and mostly bad around here, but we are intrepid omnivores and hope to find the best boiled yak meat (LP:"a bit better than it sounds") around.

More soon!

The Great Wall--A Journey in 4 Voices

2007-08-03T01:54:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the northern wall of medium longevity. Sike totally
went to the great wall. And now we're in a cab back to beijing and
have determined that today's blog will be group authored, such that
we can all express our feelings about the wall. I (amy) will begin.
Um, top five most awesome things ever. Possibly top one, but I'm not
ready to commit. We started at Simitai, one of the less touristy
spots, and walked (actually, scaled) to Jianshanling. The 10 km took
us about 4 hours, and for much of that time we had the wall to
ourselves. Except for the periods of time when women wearing
decade-old keds basically danced circles around us trying to sell us
water while we sweated (yes I know that's my second mention of
sweating in as many posts, don't be misled, it's only really relevant
here because the inappropriately attired vendors didn't perspire a
single drop.) In any event, I've learned an important phrase: " bu xie
xie.". That means "please stop trying to sell me water, coke, t-shirts
and all other knick-knacks but might you have a popsicle?" It also
means "no thank you.". Anyway, as you will see from the pictyres, it
was absolutely incredible. I'm hogging the blogging (if you think I'm
not snickering to myself at that rhyme you're wong) so I'll pass it
off.

I (Jon) was the sweatiest Great Wall scaler. I'm crossing my fingers
that that won't be obvious from the photos. Our adventures generally
involve learning as we go; at each new historic relic, we pull out our
guidebooks about half way through and read aloud. In the case of our
10 km march on the GW, this actually served as a good excuse to cool
down with some water. Ok, and to fill up on snacks. A few things we
learned: the wall was started by the Chu dynasty (happy birthday
Steph!); Mao said (maybe) that there is no great man who hasn't
visited the great wall; the great wall is not in fact visible from
the moon (which Lance Bass confirmed on his space tour); and the wall
was not in the end an effective defense against invaders (which became
clear when we saw several 90 year old Chinese women scale parts of
the walll that were vertical without breaking a sweat). The consensus
is that the wall was spectacular and hiking from one section to
another well worth the sense of accomplishment.

Oh look, EB and Josh are both sleeping so I (Amy) willl take a break
from watching our driver tailgate the propane tanker in front of us.
It's a tough call whether this makes me more or less uncomfortable
than basically sitting atop a propane tank at dinner last night
(delicious hotpot, I think Ebs is writing an exclusively food entry so
don't think that's the last you'll hear of the hot-yum- whole
fish-"don't eat the fin" pot). Oh we passed the tanker. Collective
(solo) sigh of relief. Back to the wall. I heart it. And continue to
be amazed at the scale of things here in China, modern and ancient.
It is palpably new and on the rise, yet also steeped in history
beyond the scope of anything we have at home, and in every way
imaginable it is truly enormous. Too sentimental/naive/lame? Sorry
team. What I meant to say was: wow the wall totally ruled and aren't
those olympic friendlies adorable? That's more like it.

My turn now (EB). In case you were not aware, we 4 are athletic rock
stars. We basically won the Olympic gold medal of great wall hiking.
We scaled amazing ascents and descents often requiring both hands and
feet and did so with style. Great Wall--conquered. The scenery was
breathtaking and the hike was unbelievable, even to the point of
disbelief at looking back at what we had already done when were in the
middle of it all and thinking "Did I really just do that? Wow.".
Though basically ineffectual as a deterrent to invaders, it is a huge
hit with me.

Also, since I am chief food reporter, here is what kept us alive on
the great wall--many huge bottles of water, powerbars, oreos, ritz
crackers and chocolate. The only thing missing was FOOT style gorp,
but I don't know the Chinese word for that so we had to take a pass.

Seems like most everything has been said, so I (Josh) will just brag
for a moment about speaking enough broken Chinese to secure us a
reasonably priced ride - and then to chat on a range of complex
subjects including how long it would take for us to get there and how
urgently we needed a pit stop. Oh, and to secure us another potential
driver as well, who showed up at the hotel at 6am this morning
thinking he was taking us less inexpensively to the wall and who, when
relieved of this misconception, taught me a range of new Chinese
curses. Also, I'm right with the others on the great wall, generally -
mind-numbingly long, leg-numbingly steep, and rediculously cool. We
learned (thanks, Jon, for the lesson) that in olden times, a man's
children could be considered blessed if their father had gone to visit
the wall - hopefully our someday little 'uns will be similarly
grateful. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to some of that cheap
Chinese massage.

Beijing - All baozi all the time

2007-08-03T01:51:00.000-07:00

So we have been having such an amazingly stupendously great time the past few days, we have fallen a bit behind on reporting about our core mission--food. To recap briefly the food highlights of this week (along with the assorted historical sites whose significance cannot be overstated, at least not according to the Chinese):

Tuesday
- Lunch of jaozi (dumplings with lamb and some with beef) and a delicious eggplant dish. Our first meal all four of us.
- Various wandering around through Jingshan and Beihei parks, lovely temples, Amy played badminton hackey sack with some old ladies.
- Trendy (and delicious) fruit and tea drinks at S'Silk, a hip spot on Lotus Lane.
- Walked to see the drum and bell towers, closed but nevertheless impressive. They had an amazing plaza in between the two where at about 7:00 when we were there, people came for badminton, soccer, and to walk their extremely cute dogs. We love Chinese pet dogs.
- Wandering around the corner, we found a packed neighborhood baozi (puffy dumplings) spot with delicious pork filled goodness. We also got the requisite soup as a side dish, but that looked like mucus and wasn't delicious, so we mostly gave that a pass. But the pork boazi really were a treat.
- Our bellies full of our first Beijing street food, we meandered through some hip streets and into some bustling hutongs where residents were out to see and be seen.
- Ready for yet another full meal, we headed to Da Dong Roast Duck (thanks Dan for the suggestion) for an absolutely delicious roast duck, beef and veggie feast. The duck (Peking duck for those of you back home, Beijing Roast Duck here) was carved up at our table and served with accompaning veggies, plum sauce, garlic sauce and even sugar to dip the skin in. Yum.

Wednesday
- En route to tour of CCTV building, some fried dough and sweet bean paste breakfast snacks from a small hutong vendor. Tasted kind of like funnel cake, which is very nice for breakfast. Also, Amy's first popsicle of the day.
- Post CCTV: lunch at a hopping spot for business types right across from the Arup offices. We had pork with eggplant, beef with some veggies in a wooden basket with rocks, beef with black bean sort of sauce and weird pancakes. It was extremely rejeuvenating after walking on ladders and cables at the top of a skyscraper in construction.
- Off to the Forbidden City, where after our hot (and also thorough) visit we each had a popsicle. The only interruption to our enjoyment of the delicious icey milk or melon or lord knows what flavored pops were the repeated requests of Chinese tourists to take photographs with us. Again, our celebrity follows us everywhere. - Post a stroll through and minor rest in Tianamen Square, we were off to a delicious and fancy dinner at the Courtyard, thanks to the fam as a birthday treat. We'll admit it was disconcerting to have such a tony meal as we were all in our dirty tourist clothes, but the food was delicious and our attire would not hold us back. Sharing everything, for appetizers we had an onion and cheese tart, tuna+salmon tartare, duck rolls and soft shell crab. For our mains, we had pork chop, cod, duck breast and beef short ribs. And then dessert (including birthday candle) was jasmine tea chocolate cake and ginger lemongrass creme brulee.
- After dinner, not that we could imagine eating any more food, but for the experience we had hoped to go to the night market not far away. Unfortunately the skies opened and the rain was torential. So opted for home instead.

Thursday
- The morning began bright and early with a visit to the Temple of Heaven park to see people doing tai chi, dancing, playing badminton, fighting with swords and (our favorite) catching rings on their heads. Though the park was beautiful and the temples in it were some of our favorites--one constructed without nails or cement--there were limited breakfast options so we resorted to the old Beijing stand by of popsicles. Yet again, a wide range of delicious and bizarre flavors.
- After the park, we headed to Hongqiao market for some hard core negotiating for polo shirts, as well as assorted other items. We now (the four of us) are 9 polos richer, each purchased for something close to 3.5 dollars. But naturally, as assured by the vendors, each one is authentic and VERY high quality. To steel ourselves up for this afternoon of haggling, we stopped across the street for, you guessed it, our favorites of pork baozi and jaozi from a neighborhood spot. Not quite as good as those at the drum tower, but still a pretty unbeatable and cheap snack.
- With all our purchases in tow, we headed off to the Summer Palace to escape the heat of the City, just as Empress Dowager Cixi used to do in her time. Many lovely temples and an elaborate marble boat (built by Cixi in lieu of funding the navy) and a stop for popsicles. This time, Amy had papaya/pineapple somethink, Jon had bubble gum (yuck flavor), EB had orange/lemon and Josh had milk. Along with all the Chinese around us, we are really becoming popsicle connaisseurs.
- Post Palace, we went off to wander around some new hutongs for a couple of hours. Though very simple dwellings, we were impressed by the trendiness level of some of the people inside, including two hips girls who convinced us to stop for some typical uigher street food in the hutong--edamame, peanuts and star anise (surprisingly delicious) and spicy lamb skewers grilled right in front of us. Though we were having dinner in an hour and we had accidentally ordered 4 orders of skewers instead of 4 skewers, we scarfed them all down. They were a little spicy, a little fatty and very good.
- For dinner, we met up with 3 expats who are friends of friends and live in Beijing. They took us to their favorite local hot pot restaurant along a super fun stretch of restaurants on Dongzhimen Street. We had two giant hot pots for the 7 of us, each with a tomato broth and a massive fish plopped in the middle of each. We then cooked up lamb, veggies, tofu and other goodies in the broth and washed it down with beer and almond milk. Our new expat friends were great guides and fed us well. Another food style successfully conquered.

The Pearl Market

2007-08-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

That's where we are. Except its proper name is the "why would you ever pay more than a dollar for a lacoste shirt" market. This will be a short post because I (Amy) am sitting in a corner of what I would call a jewelry store but Jon pointed out is actually an oyster slaughterhouse. We're blogging because we can. And also because we're bad at bargaining (see, e.g., us falling for the old "would you like to see our art exhibit" trick on day 1. Obviously before we had team kelly-olken to guide us. It is literally the oldest trick in the book. Which we own. Called Lonely Planet.). Let's just say there were games and josh olken may have participated. Oh and I had a banana popsicle. No surprise here: delicious. In our next post we'll send photos of Chinese octogenarians tossing rings around Josh's head and the baozi we ate in a "restaurant" where lead paint was falling from the ceiling. Also delicious.

10 Reasons We Heart China Slash We Finally Arrived

2007-08-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

10. Cup of Noodles on the Flight Over

This blog is secretly (or, actually, openly) a food blog, and the fun got started not just in China but on the flight over. Instead of normal airline food, United made it thematic: Amy and I were served Cup of Noodles as our mid-flight meal. As in, we peeled the top half-way back, the flight attendants poured in boiling water, and we let it sit for four minutes. Hilarious start to our food-filled trip.

9. Popsicles

Before I (Amy) address popsicle culture, I’m going to have to correct the errors in Jon’s paragraph above. We were not on the same flight over, and I did not have Cup of Noodles. I think that covers it. Moving on.

Beijing is no San Francisco when it comes to summer weather. And by that I mean it is hot and I have been sweating more or less nonstop since arriving three days ago. Or two. I do not and will never understand the date line. Luckily there are popsicles everywhere. I dare you to find a place in Beijing (which is the largest most sprawling except not “sprawling” because it’s downtown everywhere city) where a popsicle is more than a few steps away. Strangely there are also street vendors everywhere, many without freezers, who carry boxes of frozen popsicles. I haven’t yet solved that mystery. Anyway, I love popsicles, and the flavor choices here are amazing, in an unidentifiable sort of way. I had what can only be described as a milk popsicle yesterday (delicious), Jon had a green pea popsicle (tasted as bad as it looked and sounds. He liked it, naturally.), I moved on to papaya this morning (seems breakfastish) and all of us had some post-FC (forbidden city, duh) that I think were sugar water flavor and cost ½ Mao each. Sorry I just wanted to work in that some small currency units are “maos.”

8. The Forbidden City

Like Beijing, also huge. Our guidebook recommended two full days to appreciate the Forbidden City fully; on Josh’s pace, we were able to fit two day’s worth into this afternoon. Above the entrance to the FC (the Gate of Heavenly Peace) is a giant portrait of Mao. Like all Communist leaders, he looks a little worn out. Once inside, the FC itself is a series of temples and rooms (no food) where the former Chinese emperors lived. Because we enjoy learning, we rented audio guides. As promised, the tours were narrated by ~~Roger Moore~~ some lady who, despite using “r” instead of “l”, taught us a lot of helpful information. China was liberated in 1949. The Boxer Rebellion was only “so-called,” and the Allied Forces used the fake uprising as an excuse to pillage gold from the FC. Most of the temples had fitting names: Hall of Supreme Harmony, Hall of Imperial Supremacy. Others were maybe a bit questionable: Hall of Medium Harmony, Hall of Abstinence (seriously).

After visiting the FC, we celebrated EB’s birthday at a delicious restaurant called The Courtyard. The food was unbelievable and we had a fabulous time (thank you Barbara!!). We particular enjoyed the way upscale restaurants in Asia (this was a first for Amy and me) imported certain aspects of American dining that didn’t quite fit – as Amy put it: “No, I don’t want cracked pepper on my tuna tartar.”

All around a wonderful dinner and a great way to celebrate EB’s 26^th. We’ve pretty much convinced EB to have a destination birthday every year from now on.

7. Friendlies

The Friendlies are cartoon characters created for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. We love them. Google them and you’ll see why.

6. CCTV

“China Central Television.” Also known as TVCC (you can figure out the abbreviation) and Beijing TV. The station hosts over 200 channels, and every show is an amazing celebration of China. “Preparations for the Beijing Olympics exceed expectations.” “Chinese economy booming.”

More importantly, though, EB skillfully arranged an incredible tour of the construction site for the new CCTV building. At first the four of us explored around the base of the site, some of us (EB) trying to learn more about the Chinese construction process: Q: “Do you have to use union labor?” A: “This is China. We’re all in the People’s Union.”

Having not sufficiently put our lives at risk, we hopped in an elevator from the base of the construction site to the 30^th floor. We walked around for a bit, but the general consensus was “too safe.” So we climbed another ladder built out of piping to the 31^st floor. Another consensus: “this floor is too stable and sturdy.” And we walked up another set of stairs to the 32^nd floor where the floor, instead of concrete like the others, was made of mess wire and a steel plate.

The site was pretty incredible – being 200 meters (I don’t know how tall that is) in the air notwithstanding – and at least we were wearing hardhats.

1-5. Ok, here’s what happened: We (Amy) fell asleep and I (Jon) copied her and woke up this morning at 6.30am to go to the Park of the Heavenly Something or Other without having finished blogging. We’ll do the rest tomorrow.

July 28-31th: Constant movement

2007-07-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

So we’re a bit behind on our blog posting and we promise to catch up—it has just been a bit difficult as we have spent the last several days in a state of continual movement – some relaxing, some not so much. First, we took a scenic and mostly tranquil overnight cruise in Halong Bay, a tidy three hour bus ride from Hanoi. And yesterday/today, we spent roughly 30 hours en route from Hanoi to Bejing, confirming by bitter experience that the pleasures and vagaries of air travel are universal.

Day 1: To

Not to be denied a breakfast in the capital, we got up early to grab a couple pastries and Pho Bo (beef soup) before hopping in the minibus to Halong. The trip was a trip. It’s not easy making your way through Hanoi’s clogged streets in a bus nor navigating among the trucks and mopeds that crawl along the highway, and our driver’s primary weapon in the battle was his horn, which he used somewhere between frequently and always. Wayward pedestrian? Honk. Passing a moped on the right? Honk repeatedly. Slow truck blocking the way? Sustained honk. Empty intersection ahead that might just possibly provide an opportunity for someone to cut in? Honk. Cow in the road? Slam on the brakes and honk. And so it went. Our group was a mixed bag of Euros and two Thai women with a German man in tow (we liked this crew – the Thai ladies had orange Lance Armstrong bracelets that said “Long Live the King” and could/did play most of the US Top 40 on their cell phones). As various sources had promised, we stopped halfway to Halong at a “Workshop for Handicapped Children,” where we – along with maybe 50 other minibuses full of trekking Euro and Asian tourists – could buy all the latest Vietnamese souvenirs for a mere 500% markup. No handicapped children in sight.

We arrived in Halong, along with several hundred other minibuses, and got marched like tourist cattle onto one of several hundred wooden junks, jumping and weaving from ship to ship to get to ours at the far end of the pack. We noted the designation by the local tourist authority (see picture) – had that third star fallen off, or been forcibly removed? Ultimately a good symbol of our journey – a sneaky two-star downgrade of a three-star experience. But quite a lot of fun nonetheless!

After sitting around at the dock for an hour and a half for no apparent reason, the boat took off for Halong Bay. The bay itself was, as promised, gorgeous with Dr. Seuss-like cliffs rising straight out of the water. The sun was shining and we sailed along, making a couple stops for a visit to the amazing/surprising cave (these are actually 2 different caves but our medium knowledgeable tour guide called the one we visited both) and for some kayaking. Finally docking for the evening mid-bay, we jumped off the roof of our junk (we’ve all got our junk, and our junk was not that nice but good enough for 2 days in the sun) and swam in the extremely warm bay waters. The water temperature was perfect by Babi’s standards.

We finished the day off after a beautiful sunset and a mediocre dinner by falling asleep on the roof of the junk, amid the stars and the still water (and ignoring the errant cockroach). Quite lovely.

Day 2: From

The morning got off to a tense start. After a meager breakfast of untoasted bread and a little egg (again, cooking was not our boat’s strength), our guide announced that we would be cruising to a beach for a different swim – only to aim the boat a mere 500 yards away from where we’d spent the night. We rose up in tourist rebellion and got ourselves instead a morning-long cruise around the wider bay – which is huge – taking in some of the thousands of islands and observing the local floating fishing villages/villagers at work. Along the way, we picked up a few folks who’d spent the previous night on Cat Ba Island (one of whom, it turned out, had just finished at Oxford, where he had an acquaintance of EB’s for a prof, and was about to start work at Bain), got checked out by the local police, saw a boat full of extremely drunk Chinese tourists (at 11:30 am, mind you), and then cruised back to the dock to meet our return bus toward Hanoi. No major incidents on the return, other than a fuller bus and a second stop at a second workshop for handicapped children.

Back in Hanoi mid-afternoon, we raced to squeeze in a reprise of all our favorite Vietnamese foodstuffs – the bun ca, the pho, the cha ca, some jackfruit and custard apple, the thick-as-molasses (and tasty) Vietnamese coffee, some fried duck spring rolls, did some shopping and wandering, and collapsed, full and happy, at the hotel.

Day 3+: In Between

It all started on such a good note: we got up good and early (we had to leave for the airport at 6:45), saw a wide range of Vietnamese morning exercise rituals by the lake (from badminton and group tai chi to an impromptu lakeside freeweights session and miscellaneous nonsensical repeated gestures – anyone know the health benefits of whacking your arm against a tree or vigorously rubbing the underside of your throat?), and even squeezed in a last pho run before getting in our cab. The cab ride itself was a caricature of third-world driving – constant beeping, wildly creative maneuvers, blatant disregard for traffic signals and common courtesy, all choreographed by a driver no more than 19, singing along all the while to Vietnamese and then American top 40. At the airport, we got right through the line, more or less right on the plane, and right off the ground on time. And that was about the extent of the things that went right.

Turned out our flight had a stopover in Guangzhou – no problem there, just get off the plane, go through customs, get back on and off to Beijing. Only once we were back on, we sat on the runway for 3 hours (then and throughout the subsequent adventure, we had to press hard for any information). We then flew to Beijing, only to circle above the city for an hour after they announced we would be “landing shortly,” and then found ourselves diverted to…well, somewhere else…to land. An hour of sitting on the ground followed before they let us into the terminal to wait (turned out to be Shijaizhuang, a small town of 3 million about 300 km from Beijing). There, we spent the next six hours in a constant state of anticipation while our Chinese co-travelers got increasingly aggressive and nasty with our airline stewardesses-cum-captors. And of course the bilingual announcements had stopped when we got off the plane, so we got our limited information through my (Josh’s) very limited Chinese and second-hand information from a few kind travelers – a bonding experience between us and the one other English-speaker, a woman who headed UNESCO’s efforts in Vietnam and a bright spot in a dark trip. Finally, around 1 am, they told us we could either terminate our flight and find our own way to Beijing or take a hotel for the night. We opted for the latter, took an hour-long bus ride into the city, shoved our way to the front of the mob to get a key to what turned out to be a truly nasty hotel room, and spent an unpleasant 3 hours (~2:30-5:30) “sleeping” before heading back to the airport for our delayed flight. Just to add insult to injury, that flight was 30 min late off the ground – and when we finally landed, it took them another 30 min to get us a set of stairs and a passenger bus to head to the terminal. But in the end, we succeeded in getting to Beijing, and we couldn’t have been happier as we haggled for our long taxi ride to our hotel.

More on life in Beijing to come in the next installment…

Waylaid in Podunk

2007-07-30T06:08:00.000-07:00

On Saturday and Sunday, we had a lovely outing to the extremely scenic Halong Bay. We have a similarly lovely full blog entry along with photos that we will publish for that.

But in advance, we had to report some late breaking news from Josh's blackberry. Today (July 30) was travel day, as we flew from Hanoi to Beijing to meet up with Jon and Amy. Now, five hours after our arrival time in Beijing, we are instead marooned (temporarily, we hope) somewhere a few hundred kms to the South.

We thought we were on a direct flight, but it turns out we had a brief stop in Guangzhou where we went through customs and got right back on the same plane. After waiting on the plane for an hour, the flight attendants (reporting in both english and chinese) told us that bad weather was delaying our departure for 2 hours and we could not get off the plane. We finally got off the ground, but three hours later, we found ourselves circling...and circling...and circling...and now here we are, along with two hundred of our new non-english-speaking friends, in an airport terminal in...somewhere.

Updates to follow. In the meantime, at least we know that interminable flight delays are a universal form of suffering!

(Note: for any of you worried that we would go hungry, never fear - the airline has provided a fresher version of plane food to keep us at bay)

Days 4-5: Small seats, big appetities

2007-07-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

Two straight days of pacing around the city, and man are our dogs tired. Here's one simple view of the last two days - a list of each of our meals:

Thursday

Coffee and a sweet & sour apricot juice
Homemade munchkins (doughnut-like things from a street vendor)
Fried tofu and rice noodles (served 6" off the floor of a market butchery)
Dragon fruit
Pho ga (chicken)- one local's pick for the best in the city
Bia hoi (Vietnamese beer) and boiled peanuts (As an aside, almost everything we have eaten here has been great. The boiled peanuts are not great. They are mushy and tasteless. It was a bad idea to boil them. FYI Vietnam--let's get the folks from Yankee Stadium to come in here to give some tips.)
Fancy dinner - fresh springrolls with fish, beef salad, chicken and stickyrice cakes, eggplant in fish sauce, whole steamed fish
Buon cun - soft rice crepes with mushrooms

Friday

Pho with a bit of everything including fried tofu sticks that you dip in the soup
Peanut-covered noodles (served in a banana leaf package)
Fried spring roll
Bun cha (grilled pork with veggies and vermicelli)
Creme caramel
Bia hoi, peanuts, rice cracker, grapefruit
Bizarre custard apple fruit
Tofu with green onions, chicken with lemon leaf and pork ribs at a restaurant popular with the friday night crowd
Fried pork stick

Though it does often seem that all we do is eat, we have seen the sights as well. Yesterday (Thursday) we had a quintessentially communist experience, waiting on line for an hour to see the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh. It was a big hit with the many Vietnamese people on line with us, though we found the disorganized standing in line and enormous building devoted exclusively to the glass-enclosed body of the former leader to be a little weird. After Ho we wandered through a couple new neighborhoods and saw the tiny narrow streets where people live (or sleep if it is mid-day--we seem to be the only people crazy enough to walk around in the noon-time sun).

A welcome reprieve from the bustling and horn-filled streets around it, we spent some time in the afternoon in the Temple of Literature, a series of buildings and gardens devoted to recognizing famous scholars in Vietnam's past. We wandered around from the Temple and through some more Hanoi streets just slightly further afield, ending up in the eyeglasses section of town. After excruciating cost comparisons and frame evaluations, we settled on a pair that were prepared for me (EB) and finished today. Another Hanoi shopping perk--cheap prescription eyeglasses.

Today we woke up with great expectations of a communist party celebration, as there have been banners up all over the City proclaiming 60 years of communism and July 27 as a special day. So far as we can tell, none of the 2 million Vietnamese communists (out of a total population of 80 something million) showed up for any celebration, and we are still holding our breath.

Not letting the communists keep us from having fun, we spent today on a major walking excursion, first heading to the middle of the main lake to see the temple (probably the most famous in Hanoi), then going north (or at least up on the map) to a market area and the giant west lake. The market was a wholesale produce market for the most part and though the stuff looked great, it was easily the worst smelling place either of us had ever been too. Once we'd left the market though and were walking by the lake, i was very relaxing and a nice break from the craziness of the old city.

After the lake and its temple, we hopped in a cab and headed south first to another market--this one overflowing with screws and bolts and springs, as well as everything else imaginable and then to a market where Josh bought some fabric for shirtmaking. New materials in hand, we went back to the tailor to get fitted into some of our things such that they can be done before we leave here very first thing Monday am.

Then off to dinner and a street food snack before bed. As Josh has suggested in the title of today, I must make a comment about the seats everyone sits in for eating street food. Carts and vendors set up literally everywhere on the sidewalk and block all traffic with their food prep and seating. The seating usually consists of tiny TINY stools that are roughly 8x8 inches and 6 inches off the ground. And though it appears to work for the Vietnamese, I'm sure the site of the two of us giant whiteys sitting on the stools much be hilarious for anyone who walks by.

Tomorrow morning bright and early we are off for a couple days to Halong Bay, so we may have to take a temporary breather from blogging. We'll be back afterwards, of course, so please stay tuned.

Crossing the street in Hanoi--it's like Frogger, but with Pho

2007-07-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

Today kicked off our first no-travel day of the trip and we hit the ground running. We woke up and watched the bustle of Hanoi's morning traffic from our balcony (credit to the Golden Lotus hotel) before we had a quick breakfast provided by the hotel.

Because on this trip the only thing to do when not eating is to spend money in other ways, our first stop was Co, a tailor who had been recommended to us on Nha Tho street near the cathedral. Though likely a little pricier than some of the other tailors in the area, we believe (or at least have convinced ourselves sufficiently) that Co does a better job with nicer fabric and so is worth spending a bit more money. We'll see. On Sunday they should be delivering two dresses for me (EB) and three shirts and pants for Josh.

Our first major spending of the day under our belt, we set off for an exhaustive tour of Hanoi's Old City (with just a brief visit to a French pastry shop to get us started). We began at St. Joseph's cathedral and walked roughly the lonely planet suggested walking tour in reverse, though with lots of diversions to interesting side streets and markets. The Old City in Hanoi is fascinating. It feels like one enormous outdoor market where each street is a different department specializing in one incredibly specific thing. There were individual streets for towels, tape, shoes, kitchen products, herbs, tin boxes and other metal stuff--basically you name it and there's a street in Old City for it. The streets are very narrow and you have to walk in the road because the sidewalks are filled with some combination of wares for sale, people cleaning and cutting meats and veggies (think chickens losing their heads and crabs losing their legs everywhere) or parked motorbikes.

Early into our walk, we were drawn into a little street food-y restaurant that made soup with noodles, meat of some kind and greens. It was yummy, though we required much help from our Vietnamese neighbors in ordering and figuring out that the little lime-like things you squeeze in the soup are actually oranges. Who knew?

Continuing along our walk we found several multi-story enclosed markets selling clothes, fabric, veggies, meat, china, shoes, electronics--sort of like a vertical version of the Old City around it. Also, much like the rest of Hanoi, it was sweltering hot inside the markets, so it wasn't hard to understand why the vendors were sleeping in every possible configuration (on the wares, under them, leaning up against the wall, prostrate on the meat counter) whenever they could. It certainly gave the shopping experience a more relaxed feel, with no one awake at the helm.

For lunch, we wandered over to the famous Cha Ca La Vong, a restaurant that serves only one dish--a fish fried with turmeric and greens (scallions, dill, etc.) in oil that you eat over noodles and peanuts. It was absolutely delicious. It was served to us at our table over the flame so the oil occasionally spattered out and blinded Josh, but I think he'd agreed it was worth it for the yummy meal.

Back out on the street, I must make an aside about walking around in Hanoi as it is clearly bringing out the New Yorker in both of us. On any given street, red light or not, motorbikes will be whizzing by with minimum 1 maximum 4 people on each going in all directions at top speed. They are mixed with cars, taxis, bicycles and the ubiquitous cyclo, the 3-wheel bike seemed designed exclusively for transporting touristas like us around. Every so often a bus enters the fray, and all in all it does give one an on-the-ground sense of what frogger feels like. Brave little road crosser guy.

After a stroll through a great food market, and a taste of some sort of duck spring roll thing and some jack fruit, we headed over to the lake and to the water puppet theatre for an early evening show. Water puppet theatre, invented in Vietnam 1000 years ago, consists of telling puppet stories in the water with the puppeteers hiding behind a screen. Though clearly a tourist magnet, the show was great fun and we are now huge fans. We're bringing water puppetry to Boston this fall. Plus how could you not love something that is described as follows in the guide book: "[The puppeteers] stand in the water behind a bamboo screen and have traditionally suffered from a host of water-borne diseases -- these days they wear waders to avoid this nasty occupational hazard." The use of waders--genius.

For dinner, we left the Old City and wandered just slightly further afield to Cam Chi, a street with lots of outdoor restaurants, most of which specialized in lau, or Vietnamese hot pot. We ordered one and as became painfully apparent to our teenage waitress, unlike the restaurant Josh and I do not specialize in hot pot and so she quickly took the reins and cooked, prepared and served the food. We did a fab job of feeding ourselves though--that we didn't need any help with. Dinner was yummy and included our first Vietnamese beer (though tomorrow we will go in search of bia hoi--local draft beer).

After a walk back through Old City and to our hotel, our first full day of turbo tourism was complete.

Day 2 - In Which We Once Again Travel Great Distances

2007-07-24T10:42:00.001-07:00

So after what we judged too much relaxation on Day 1 - come on, a whole afternoon and evening in one city? - we end our day twelve hundred miles away in Hanoi, after two subway rides, two cab rides, and two flights. A good day's work.

We started the day off with a visit to the Radisson's swanky pool - isn't it fun when middling American brands go chichi overseas? - before a trip around the block that yielded a delicious streetside Bing (a sort of egg crepe with scallions) and two rounds of pork dumplings.

Porked out, we shadow-hopped our way through the heat and landed at the Urban Planning museum in People's Sqaure. It's a very cool museum - especially if you're willing to suspend all skepticism about Shanghai's rush to progress. Amazing optimism on all exhibit labels - e.g., suggesting that through the new suburbs they are building around Shanghai, "Man reaches unprecedented harmony with society and nature." 5-year plans abounded, with "gigantic steps forward" toward the inevitable end of establishing the city as THE dominant megalopolis for the 21st century. Skepticism aside, they're doing some pretty cool stuff - making changes in the greening of the city in the course of 2-3 years that New York is hoping for in 25, and building miles of new subways and countless residential buildings at the same speed. I guess it's roughly what would happen if the US directed all its energy at "modernizing" New York and LA (my Beijing and Shanghai, for a minute)...and also got rid of all the pesky neighborhood groups and political opposition. Highlight for me was a 360 degree virtual tour through Shanghai 2010, showcasing the bazillions of new developments and whole new cities-within-cities that will make up Shanghai in a couple years - guided by a gleeful fairy thing in 8-yr-old Chinese. Fun.

With our remaining time, we hopped a subway over towards the Old City to a street famous for streetfood and ended up with...more pork dumplings. These were the biggest so far, and pretty good, though we think we've reached our pork limit for the moment.

After a stop back at the hotel, we were off to the airport for our 2-flight trip to Hanoi. Felt quite familiar, really - both flights were delayed and there was lots of moving around. We did get there, however, and in the meantime befriended a Shanghai guy (call me "Harry") who we might meet for dinner when we're back - he helped us hitch a ride between terminals when we thought we were in a rush, and we paid a whopping $2US to give him a ride to his hotel on the way to Hanoi, so I think we're fast friends.

We're now holed up in our hotel (the Golden Lotus) in Hanoi, in the Old City. Quite cute - hotel and 'hood. Though it was 11:30 when we arrived, I (Josh) couldn't let a mealtime go by and so went wandering the streets, where I managed to land a delicious snail soup and a chicken porridge, and where I realized that - lo and behold - I speak no Vietnamese. Should be a fun few days!

[As an aside, we are having a bit of trouble uploading photos but we'll have our on-the-go IT department take a look at it and see what we can do. Apologies.]

we could not possibly be more connected

2007-07-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

Just a brief note to say - maybe to prove? - that we are so totes futuristic that we are posting this very entry from my blackberry while sitting on a plane in guangzhou, about to take off to hanoi. Yay, technology!

Day 1 - Arrival in Shanghai

2007-07-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

After traveling for roughly 22 hours door to door, we arrived this afternoon in Shanghai. The flight was mostly uneventful, save for the two kicking and coughing children sitting immediately behind us for the Chicago-Shanghai leg. But the highlight of our travels definitely had to be the maglev train from the Shanghai airport to the City. The train made almost no noise and sped along incredibly quickly, topping out at 430 km/hour (or roughly 269 miles/hour). It made the JFK air train seem a little sad.

Once settled at our spaceship-looking hotel in the People's Square right in the middle of downtown Shanghai, we quickly headed out for our first culinary treat. A couple blocks away from the hotel we headed for Jia Jian Tang Bao (90 Huanghe Lu), famous for its soup dumplings or xiaolongbao. 15 delicious pork dumplings later, we were off strolling some of the main streets of Shanghai, including Nanjing Lu, also known as the Times Square of Shanghai with many giant shops and restaurants. We also enjoyed some lovely grilled veggies from a street vendor on the way.

Our walk ended up on the Bund, where we got to see the futuristic architecture of Pudong on one side of the river and the historical grandeur (rapidly being turned into georgio armanis and pradas) of the Bund. We snooped around some of the fancier Bund buildings and then stopped off for a quick drink at New Heights, a bar at the top of 3 on the Bund, to watch the lights come on all over the city. It was an amazing show. As if flashing lights aren't enough, the buildings project text, ads and are almost like giant TV screens. That said, the oriental pearl tower building really takes the cake for space-age. It is totally bonkers-looking and apparently serves no real function other than to give tourists like us something to photograph.

After our drink, we hopped in a cab to the French Concession for dinner at Jishi (41Tianping Lu) a delicious Shanghainese restaurant. Based on recommendations we had read and those of the friendly older Chinese gentlemen at the table next to us, we had a wonderful meal of wild herbs with dried bean curd, eggplant, bean curd with mushroom (Josh loved the bean curd--I actually thought it was weird and a little like rubber) and then this amazing pork in a brown sauce that required peeling off about half an inch of fat before you got to the meat.

On our way heading back to the hotel, Josh decided to get that overdue haircut that he didn't have time for in New York. Josh's Chinese served him very well and, after clarifying that we are dating and not in fact brother and sister, he had a lovely chat with the people at the hair salon.
Cut complete, we hopped back on the Shanghai metro--very nice, even by the New York standards of the 4/5/6 train--and came back to our hotel.

All in all, not bad for a day that began by landing at 2:30 Shanghai time.

T-minus 10 hours

2007-07-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

T-minus 10 hours until we (Josh and EB) take off for the first part of our journey. Our first stop is Shanghai, where we will stay for just under a day and then off to Hanoi and Ha Long Bay in Vietnam for about a week. After that, we'll head back to China and meet up with Jon and Amy (fresh off of her domination of the California bar) for several weeks of fun and food in Beijing, western China and Shanghai. Next Josh and I hop to Tokyo for a couple of days of sushi and then back home to New York. And then finally off to Cambridge, our real new home, at least for the next three years or so.

To lay a few ground rules about our blog:

1. This is a group blog. So the "I" will be some combination of me (EB), Josh, Amy and/or Jon. That may be very confusing. Like when the blog says "I had a great time making everyone walk 12 miles through every interesting neighborhood in Beijing today. It was thrilling and everyone loved it." (Josh) is followed by "Today we went on a forced march through the hutongs of Beijing forever and I never got the foot massage I was promised and I am exhausted and hate this trip." (Jon) Just think of it as the real world, only the confessions are published on the Internet instead of shared on video in the closet.

2. This is a blog that will talk about food because eating is ALL that we do when we travel. So if you are looking for an interesting tour of historical China, I might suggest you pick up Jonathan Spence's "The Search for Modern China."

3. Please comment. We would love to hear how life is going back home in the States and what you think of our adventures.

4. Do not feel you have to read this blog. We are writing this so that I (EB) can add "international blogger" to my resume and have something interesting to tell my Harvard Law School classmates in a month and because we know people hate those oppressive giant e-mails about foreign travel. So please read or don't read as you'd like.

I'm off to finish my final bit of last minute clothing weeding out (perhaps 2 t-shirts per day for a month is excessive) and packing, but before I do I want to shamelessly announce the most exciting event kicking off our trip--the arrival of Josh's nephew Sam Olken, born today at 3:09 PM. Ni Hao Sam!! We promise to bring you back a baby panda as a playmate.

oh look it does work.

2007-07-19T13:27:00.000-07:00

I couldn't possibly study for the bar exam that takes place 5 days from now without knowing for sure.

Things I would like to do while in Asia:
1. Hug pandas.
2. Replace all knowledge acquired in anticipation of bar exam with useful phrases (e.g., "please may I have that dumpling thank you") in chinese, vietnamese, thai, and/or whatever language is spoken in cambodia. um, cambodian? anyone?
3. Take at least one group photo involving the great wall and/or forbidden city and some sort of "AOK" or thumbs up gesture. These gestures are universal and will certainly transcend any cultural and linguistic barriers such that we will fit in with the locals. provided there are locals. but really who lives at the wall, or for that matter, in a forbidden city.

Don't worry team I'm totally going to read my guide book on the plane.

Does this thing really work?

2007-07-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

OK, I have created a blog for our great Asian adventure, which kicks off next Sunday. Since we'll be gone for a month and would rather not oppress people with constant massive e-mails about the ancient sites we've seen or bizarre food we've eaten, we have decided to keep a blog. Assuming we can actually figure out how to use it. Well, let's give it a try.