it all comes down to this....

i'm back in shenzhen and already feel settled in my old routine. its a bittersweet feeling as i had such a great vacation, but am glad to be stationary, at least for a little while.
thailand was amazing. we spent about 4 or 5 days in bangkok and about 4 or 5 days on koh phagnan island off the central coast. bangkok was a crazy big city with tons of backpackers and travellers from all over. the beach was the same on one part of the island, but we moved to a quieter, more relaxed beach and it was much more my speed.
because i wasn't able to post that often i made a ton of notes about things i wanted to write about. i've decided to just list things, i learned, saw, felt and hated along the way. most of the time i felt so overwhelmed and over stimulated that it was hard to just relax and focus on what i was thinking about/feeling at the time. so i just made notes here and there and now i will try to convey these thoughts and feelings the best that i can......
~southeast asia is so cheap (including china) i can never pay western prices again.... you guys are seriously overpaying for everything!!
~when you are traveling somewhere in thailand (lets say on a bus) and they say wait a moment, that usually mean 1-2 hours.....
~china has the worst bathrooms of any country i've been to.
~i prefer travelling alone.... i'm not cutout to be around someone 24 hours a day for a month straight... its also more exciting that way.
~i don't really like travelling.... i like living in other/different places. travelling is exhausting
~i saw a cat in a sweater tied to pole by a string in han oi, vietnam... a cat in a sweater!!!
~the poorest areas/families in most western countries will never know poverty like they have in s.e. asia.
~i'm tired of seeing old, crusty western men with young, beautiful asian girls who have no other choice but prostitution.
~prostitution is a HUGE problem/issue/fact in s.e. asia but its different everywhere you go. in china brothels are disguised by massage parlors, in vietnam, they are disguised as karoke bars, in cambodia, there is no disguise, just women (mostly under 18) standing beneath pink fluourescent lights, and in thailand the prostitutes are the disguise, one can never be sure if its a man or woman.
~cambodia is the furtherst from home that i have ever felt. it has also left the biggest impression upon me.
~australians and israeli's are the 2 most common backpackers in s.e. asia
~i saw a kid vomit in the floor at a restaraunt in ho chi minh city and nobody (including his parents) do a damned thing about it.
~the vietnam war was worse than any of us in the u.s. and elsewhere could ever imagine.
~mosquitos like to bite susan more than they like to bite me
~s.e. asia has the craziest drivers.... maybe not thailand and cambodia so much....vietnam and china, insane!
~the foreigner price for things is about 5x's the local price and they will try to screw you in every way possible.
~money affords us many luxuries, especially free time and retirement.... i saw a woman about 70 years old doing construction in thailand. she was wearing a long skirt, flip flops and carrying huge bags of cement.
~i think women run vietnam. i mostly saw the men sitting in cafes while the women were out making the money.
~don't ever ride an elephant in thailand.... i saw a man severely beat an elephant's head when it would not do what the man wanted it to... which was stand still.
~you can hang a mango shake from a towel rack in thailand. they put everything in bags in asia.... including food and fruitshakes, and soymilk. whatever, if it fits its in there. my friend amy and i have nicknamed china "baglandia"
~when thai women are pregnant they drink the milk of a young coconut everyday... it is meant to have the most nutrients for a woman and her baby.
~i appreciate living and travelling in china more now because there are no foreigners and it is much more of a challenge.
~thai people love those menthol nose inhalers.... even children have them.
~did i mention prostitution is everywhere?
"not all that glitters is gold, not all who wander are lost" j.r.r. tolkein

it all comes down to this....

i'm back in shenzhen and already feel settled in my old routine. its a bittersweet feeling as i had such a great vacation, but am glad to be stationary, at least for a little while.
thailand was amazing. we spent about 4 or 5 days in bangkok and about 4 or 5 days on koh phagnan island off the central coast. bangkok was a crazy big city with tons of backpackers and travellers from all over. the beach was the same on one part of the island, but we moved to a quieter, more relaxed beach and it was much more my speed.
because i wasn't able to post that often i made a ton of notes about things i wanted to write about. i've decided to just list things, i learned, saw, felt and hated along the way. most of the time i felt so overwhelmed and over stimulated that it was hard to just relax and focus on what i was thinking about/feeling at the time. so i just made notes here and there and now i will try to convey these thoughts and feelings the best that i can......
~southeast asia is so cheap (including china) i can never pay western prices again.... you guys are seriously overpaying for everything!!
~when you are traveling somewhere in thailand (lets say on a bus) and they say wait a moment, that usually mean 1-2 hours.....
~china has the worst bathrooms of any country i've been to.
~i prefer travelling alone.... i'm not cutout to be around someone 24 hours a day for a month straight... its also more exciting that way.
~i don't really like travelling.... i like living in other/different places. travelling is exhausting
~i saw a cat in a sweater tied to pole by a string in han oi, vietnam... a cat in a sweater!!!
~the poorest areas/families in most western countries will never know poverty like they have in s.e. asia.
~i'm tired of seeing old, crusty western men with young, beautiful asian girls who have no other choice but prostitution.
~prostitution is a HUGE problem/issue/fact in s.e. asia but its different everywhere you go. in china brothels are disguised by massage parlors, in vietnam, they are disguised as karoke bars, in cambodia, there is no disguise, just women (mostly under 18) standing beneath pink fluourescent lights, and in thailand the prostitutes are the disguise, one can never be sure if its a man or woman.
~cambodia is the furtherst from home that i have ever felt. it has also left the biggest impression upon me.
~australians and israeli's are the 2 most common backpackers in s.e. asia
~i saw a kid vomit in the floor at a restaraunt in ho chi minh city and nobody (including his parents) do a damned thing about it.
~the vietnam war was worse than any of us in the u.s. and elsewhere could ever imagine.
~mosquitos like to bite susan more than they like to bite me
~s.e. asia has the craziest drivers.... maybe not thailand and cambodia so much....vietnam and china, insane!
~the foreigner price for things is about 5x's the local price and they will try to screw you in every way possible.
~money affords us many luxuries, especially free time and retirement.... i saw a woman about 70 years old doing construction in thailand. she was wearing a long skirt, flip flops and carrying huge bags of cement.
~i think women run vietnam. i mostly saw the men sitting in cafes while the women were out making the money.
~don't ever ride an elephant in thailand.... i saw a man severely beat an elephant's head when it would not do what the man wanted it to... which was stand still.
~you can hang a mango shake from a towel rack in thailand. they put everything in bags in asia.... including food and fruitshakes, and soymilk. whatever, if it fits its in there. my friend amy and i have nicknamed china "baglandia"
~when thai women are pregnant they drink the milk of a young coconut everyday... it is meant to have the most nutrients for a woman and her baby.
~i appreciate living and travelling in china more now because there are no foreigners and it is much more of a challenge.
~thai people love those menthol nose inhalers.... even children have them.
~did i mention prostitution is everywhere?
"not all that glitters is gold, not all who wander are lost" j.r.r. tolkein

homeward bound

busy uploading pictures, so i'm not going to write much.... can only do one at a time, when i'm paying for it... leaving for china tommorrow, oh how bittersweet...
what an amazing trip i've had!!!! i'll write more from work on monday:(
good news you can check out my pictures!!!!
hope all are well
nicole
"a good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving" - lao tzu

bangkok,thailand

not much time to write.... only 6 minutes till my free 30 minutes are up. i am in bangkok now. what a contrast from cambodia!!! we've only been here for a few hours, so i'll give a complete update later.
all i'm gonna say is that we took a bus from siem reap, cambodia and from siem reap to the thai border is a dirt road. 150 km on a dirt road..... do you know how long that takes? 5 hours!!!!!! for like 100 miles! in 35 celisius weather... more later when i'm not exhausted.
america really needs to jump on the metric scale bandwagon, its so much better.
peace, love, and chaos
nicole

siem reap, cambodia

we have arrived yet again, or at least we are in a new town. my friend adria was already here when we arrived, so when we got off the bus a guy was holding a sign that said nicole and susan for jasmine guest house. (i've always to arrive some place with my name on a sign) at first we thought they had just sold our names from the last guest house (which they often do) to try and guilt us into staying at one they are affliliated with in another town, but it was adria who set it up for us. sooooo nice! as soon as we pulled into the bus station the bus was mobbed by moto and '"tuk tuk" drivers saying lady, miss, miss, you need driver?? it so much chaos and commotion you can't even say no before someone else is asking you again, and again, and again... i told one guy no thanks i already have a ride and he said, but i don't see anyone and the guy was behind me and said, its me. quite irritating sometimes. so anyway, it was a relief to have someone waiting for us and we didn't have to pay to get to the hotel. since when is anything free in southeast asia?
since not too much has happened since i last wrote, i think i'm gonna back it up a bit as i keep remembering things i meant to mention before.
for one, in the last email i talked about the horrors of cambodian political history and the s-21 museum.... i had forgot to mention the p.o.w prison in han oi, vietnam. unfortuantely this may be a little depressing like the last one, but i'll do my best to make fun of the bull shit that they had in this museum. (traveling through vietnam was really great since its such a huge part of american history as well).
so there is this museum in p.o.w museum in vietnam. at first it was used as a prison by the french who tortured and killed political vietnamese political dissidents during the french colonial period there. this part of the museum consisted of various stories of torture and abuse by the french on the vietnamese, including pictures and the actual devices used. it was quite interesting and informative, quite sad for the vietnamese who just wanted their country back from the french.
but then..................... one walks across the other half of the museum. i should preface this by saying that i don't know a complete history of the prison, therefore these are solely opinions i have on the bias and absurdity that i saw. anyway, after the french left the vietnamese alone they turned the prison into a state run prison, run by the vietnamese. during the american-vietnam war, it was once again used as a p.o.w prison this time for the americans who won't leave the vietnamese alone.
in the part about the french vs. vn (vietnamese) they made the french seem like torturous brutes and devils and praised all the brave souls who fought for an independent vietnam (this is of course true). basically the french are arseholes, the vn are helpless.
however, in the part where the americans are stored in the prison, it becomes a weird "happy" place where american soldiers were living the high life in prison and thank god for the vietcong rescuing them from the horrors of the war in the jungle....
i couldn't believe some of the exhibits! like i said, i don't know the entire history of the prison or the prisoners and maybe they didn't get medevial type torture as in the days of the french occupation, but my god they made this place sound like the hilton.
they had nice,clean tennis shoes on displays, playing cards, jump ropes, clean silver ware and bowls that the americans "all enjoyed during there stay at _ prison"". according to the exhibits the soldiers not even recieved packages from home, but were given gifts by the "uncle ho's" men???!!! can anyone confirm this for me? susan and i were shocked and angry. it was so absurd the way they tried to make the place sound so nice. of course i now know the extent of the damage the americans did on the rest of the country, but this museum was ridiculous!!
its quite strange traveling in such politically turbulent and unstable countries. me as a foreinger and outside observer can see the bias and bullshit the government tells the people here, but the people can't... well probably some or most can, but they are too afraid of what will happen if they speak out.
as "ündeveloped" and sometimes unstable as these countries are, it is so easy to travel and get around here. i've seen more foreigners here and eaten more western food in the past 3 weeks than i have in the past 6 months in china. i feel priviledged to have the opportunity to see all these amazing places, but with all these people here it seems a little less adventurous and maybe takes away from the beauty and greatness of some of these places. daily life is definitely much more of a struggle than a month in the rest of s.e. asia. don't get me wrong, its still amazing, but if you really want an adventure live and travel in china.... it makes for funnier blogs and a more hectic life!
keep it real
nrj

phnom penh,cambodia

susan and i have made it to cambodia and i have to say that getting here was an experience in itself. the bus was ok to the border, but the border was just as i imagined. hot and chaotic and dusty. there were all these women tugging on us to exchange our money for cambodian riehl, men grabbing our luggage to haul on carts across the border and men asking for bribes to get us through customs faster.... susan and i of course stuck $1 bills in our passports (u.s. dollars are like precious gold here!!!), however the guy wanted more. $2 per person, so we said forget it and just did it ourselves, it didn't take any longer and we had to wait for everyone on the bus to get through anyway.... once we were let out of vietnam, we had to walk about a kilometer to the cambodian border and go through customs there. it was really surreal actually, cuz like i said it was just as i imagained.
the bus from the border to phnom penh wasn't so great, actually it was the road, or lack of them that made it rough. so bumpy! there wasn't enough room in the bottom of the bus for our luggage so we had to store it on the bus wherever there was room.... which wasn't much. luckily they played decent western music instead of ethnic karoke as they often do in vietnam and china....
we arrived in phnom penh after fours and a brief ferry across the river. we pulled into the front of a mosque where there were children playing football. immediately they run over to the bus and start begging. one little boy jumped up and was hanging from the window trying to get money from us. that is the hardest part of cambodia, there are so many children begging. in china its mostly physically deformed or elderly, but its kids here and pretty hard to take.
there was one little boy who followed from me the beginning, cuz i usually talk to them instead of giving something. (sometimes i give in) anyway, he found me at the place we were eating, so i gave him some of my sandwich and a couple of french fries. its so hard, cuz really it does no good in the long run, but there are sooooo many of them everywhere!!
we ran into a couple of people here who are also in our program in china. albert and vikki. we all decided to hire a mini bus for today.
i don't know how much cambodian history people know, but i knew only a little about the killing fields and the Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot. in the 70's he set up a prison called S-21 and tortured and killed people who were not for his revolution. including, children. they put the bodies in mass graves after killing them. after this was discovered they turned both the fields where the mass graves are and the prison into "museums". i believe over 9,000 people were killed in the prison and maybe more outside of the prison. anyway, it was the most intense and emmotional "tourist attraction" i have ever seen. more so than anne frank's house which was also very touching. anyway, when they discovered the graves and all of the bones of the victims, they still had clothes on them. they have put all of the skulls and some of the clothes into a "stupa"or memorial. the skulls are just stacked into this temple like structure and the clothes are piled in a glass case underneath. you can see on many of the skulls where the bullets blew out the back of the skull or where they were beaten and their skulls cracked... all this while a parade of children hang outside of the fence begging for just one dollar so they can eat....... as you walk around the fields where the mass graves once were there are still bits of bone and clothes sticking out of the ground.
the prison is of course not much better. there are mugshots of all the prisoners and you can see the terror on their faces. there are also pictures of the dead bloody bodies. very hard to handle. you can also see the cells where the prisoners were kept and there are still blood stains on the floor......
all of this was so horrible and of course much of the regime to this day denies the existence or involvement in the prison. and after all this which was only about 20-some years ago, the people here are so amazing! it may seem cliche, but i don't feel like i'm being taken advantage of like i did in vietnam and do in china. people here are so much more laid back..... its definitely the furtherst i've ever felt from home. such a poor and unstable country, but people just go on living there lives.... quite interesting.
alright, i'm sorry to be so depressing, but that is part of traveling in 3rd world countries. there are the really,really ugly sides to it. (much of the abuse to the prisoners was not unlike the recent events of abu garhib however). so, i've decided to never complain about anything in my life. i'm healthy, i'm traveling, and i get to eat (very well i might add) 3 meals a day.... 6 if i'm greedy!!
í hope this email finds everyone healthy and happy as well... more uplifting ridiculousness later!
nrj