The best of Bali

My body has been back from my Bali yoga retreat for a week and a half now, but my spirit is still very much there, sitting on my terrace in a bathrobe, drinking the hotel’s special ginger tea and waiting for the woman from the spa to come get me for my afternoon treatment.

A week and a half later, my part of my mind refuses to believe that no one will gently ring a bell outside my door to wake me up; that the toughest decision of the day will not be which color tank top to wear with my black yoga pants; and that the loudest noise I’ll hear today will be neither the rooster next door nor the laughter of my retreat-mates. (Either of which would be a much-welcomed respite from the constant drilling outside my window.)

And so, to come to terms with the fact that, yes, my idyllic vacation is officially over, I offer you some highlights, which are also illustrated by this set of photos. (And this one, though these were taken by others.)

The hotel itself. It’s a magical place, designed and built by the second prince of Ubud. It’s a place of winding paths through lush gardens. Statues of gods and demons are everywhere – as are offerings of flowers, candles and burning incense sticks. It’s made even more striking by the staff’s attention to details. Everyone greets me by name. When I return to my room after the morning yoga class, the bed is made and the curtains open. After dinner, the curtains are closed and a candle burning. Someone always comes along to turn out the outside lights after I go to bed. There is always fruit available, along with coffee and the hotel’s special ginger tea. You never have to think about anything yourself. It’s impossible to hold onto your outside life, making it that much easier to relax.

Participating in a purification ritual at Tirta Empul, a sacred spring pool. During the day, the place is crowded with tourists, but at night, it was just a handful of locals, a few stray dogs and us. It didn’t matter that I had no idea what the priest was saying or that I had never before been to a Hindu ceremony. It was a soothing, welcoming place, and I left feeling better than I had when I arrived.

Spending a day in silence. Napping, journaling, painting a bit, but not communicating with anyone beyond a smile and a nod.

Doing sun salutations as the sun rises over Mt. Batur, an active volcano, then breaking the silence of the day before at a lively communal breakfast.

Feeling the wind in my face as I race downhill on a bicycle, trying to avoid the chickens and dogs that run across the road. Stopping for a tour of a traditional Balinese village or two, waving to children who ran to the roadside to greet us, and coming upon a town preparing for a mass cremation ceremony.

Wandering through the rice fields, then having lunch at a local organic restaurant. The meal started with fantastic grilled vegetables and baba ghanoush and ended with fried bananas drizzled with coconut sugar, but the true highlight for me was a ginger-mint drink. Light and cool and completely refreshing.

Drinking my first true Javanese coffee.

The best massage of my life: After two and a half hours and a whole liter of oil, sitting and staring at the rice fields while the masseuse washes my feet and legs with flowers. Need I say more?

Sitting around the dining room table during a blackout, drinking Black Russians and laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.

Doing my first unassisted shoulder stand.

Watching a traditional dance class in Ubud.

Writing down the things about my life that bother me on slips of paper, burning them, and sending them down the river with a handful of flowers.

And finally, a Hong Kong highlight: The afterglow. On my first day back in the office, a mere 24 hours after leaving Bali, a coworker looked at me, cocked his head, and said, “You’re glowing.”

I seem to get less caught up in the frantic pace of the city these days. Even in the midst of rush hour, with taxis honking and people yelling into their cellphones, I manage to find a stillness. That alone would have made the retreat worth it.

This is what I get

Why did I ever switch to a digital camera? I've spent most of the day toning and resizing photos from my recent trip to Bali, and, while I've had fun looking at the images, I've started to miss film a bit. I miss running to Wal-greens the instant I return from a vacation. I miss the thrill of opening the envelopes, waiting to see what turned out. Most of all, I miss letting someone else do the work. In an hour. Four hours later, I'm barely halfway through my Bali pictures.

Is it any wonder I still have pictures from China that I took last October sitting in iPhoto? Not to mention pictures from trips to Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. Maybe the problem isn't that I started using a digital camera. Maybe the problem is that I travel too damn much. If I stayed home more often, I certainly wouldn't have this problem!

But the upside to putting photos online: Flickr stats. I've developed something of an addiction this afternoon. I like seeing how many visitors I've gotten, what photos they've looked at (so far, the two most popular are one of a sunrise at Mt. Batur and one of a salad), what sites sent them to me.

I'd like to take a moment to thank the readers of hair-removal-cream-hairremovalcream.blogspot.com and usabestloans.com for leaving such riveting reading material to glance at my humble vacation photos.

I think.

I'll share actual photos in this spot soon. In the meantime, take a look at my Flickr stream to see them.

Crisis mode

It seems an earthquake off the coast of Japan has broken the Interwebs (or at least the wires I use to access them). My e-mail is down. Facebook is erratic. Google is achingly slow. The new episode of "True Blood" is inaccessible. They say this could last weeks.

However will I survive?

Plus, the elevator has decided to stop working. I live on the top floor, six flights up.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm breaking out a good book and a glass of wine. I'll upload the Bali pictures another day.

Lesson learned

When the rain starts falling horizontally, I start looking for a taxi.

Not that I usually find one before I get to the bus stop, soaking wet. It’s like all the cabs in this town disappear as soon as it starts raining.

And if I have learned one thing in my year and a half in Hong Kong, it is that all bets are off when it comes to getting taxis in the rain. The cab belongs to the person who gets in first. Nice guys get wet.

The Australian woman who called me a fucking bitch tonight as I got into the cab outside the office obviously has yet to learn this lesson.

She left the building soon after I did. We stood several feet apart in the shelter of the highway overpass, umbrellas wobbling in the strong wind. Within minutes, I had managed to flag down a driver. And when he stopped, she stepped out from behind the pillar, obviously expecting she would be the one to get in.

But I got in first, and she started screaming at me. I slammed the door, shrugged at the driver, and gave him my address. She stood there fuming.

It doesn’t matter that, technically speaking, she was farther up the road. I was there first. I flagged him down as soon as I saw the “for hire” light. He stopped in front of me. It was my cab.

Get your own, bitch.

On boredom and buses and a mild obsession with Molly Wizenberg

A friend recently called me out for not writing enough on this blog. A slacker, she called me. (It was meant lovingly, I know, dear.)

Well, that friend was right. I am slacking off. Considerably.

But I'm not lazy. Not really.

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of being boring. Despite my love of food blogs, I do not particularly want to read about what someone had for breakfast this morning. People don't come here for recipes, so I assume that my readers – all five of you – don’t really want to know what I ate this morning, either. (Besides, all of you should know me well enough to know that I’m not really a breakfast person. In all likelihood, I turned off my alarm and overslept and rushed to leave the apartment at 12:40 to make it to the office on time and somewhat put together.) And so, instead of writing something boring, I write nothing at all. It's easier that way.

I'm afraid of being boring.

My life is out there for all the world to see. And I want people who come to this blog -- whether they're loved ones who come here on purpose to check up on me or people who stumble here accidentally -- to like what they read. I want them to be entertained. And, because it's my name up there in lights, I'm the entertainment -- if not with my day-to-day life, then certainly with my perspective of Hong Kong. After all, it's a wildly exotic place for some girl named Anna.

Isn't it?

I’ve spent more than a year waiting for culture shock to hit me in the back of a head with a 2x4, but it hasn’t happened. I expected Hong Kong to be wildly different from anything I’d seen before. In some ways, it is, but mostly, the patterns of my daily life are largely the same in Hong Kong as they were in the U.S. My work is the same. The people are different, but the ones who have a major role in my life here are, for the most part, American. Every once in a while, I’ll see something strange and snap a picture, thinking I’ll maybe write something on it later. But most days, the only sign I live in Asia is the presence of a lot of Chinese people.

Hong Kong is funny like that. The best description of this city I’ve ever heard is “The world’s largest Chinatown.” It looks like China and sounds like China and feels like China – in the right neighborhoods – but it’s not China. China is easy to find here, but it’s just as easy to get away from. My daily life mostly happens in those non-China-like areas. And I've been happy with that, content with the pattern and the routine and ease of using English.

Because of that, I haven’t really made much of an effort to get to know the other Hong Kong. I haven’t even made a serious effort with the language. I’m a creature of habit and routine. Why learn more than basic Cantonese when English works just fine? Why would I want to wander around some other neighborhood when I know mine so well?

I know. Slacker.

Excluding trips to the airport, I can’t remember the last time I made it off Hong Kong Island. And that’s a shame. Hong Kong is a vibrant, exotic city, and I should make more of an effort to get to know it.

I was thinking about that on the bus tonight. I know the route well; I take it home from work every single night. But there’s more than one bus that runs that way. There’s also a minibus. I have yet to ride a minibus here. (See? Slacking again. Mostly, I’m afraid I’ll die in one. But if I live, what a great tale I’ll have for the blog!)

Mostly, I was thinking about Orangette. I’ve been reading the archives lately and loving them. They’re fun because of the subject matter (which often centers on what Molly ate for breakfast. Or dinner. But, since hers is a food blog, I feel like she can get away with that…). But going through the archives this way is even more fun because, after reading several months’ worth of entries, I’m seeing Molly discover her voice and begin to develop as a writer. (A very, very lovely writer she is, too.) I thought about Orangette’s evolution as the bus began to chug up the hill toward Midlevels, and I began to wonder if someday, far, far into the future, some half-crazed fan of mine would be trolling the archives of this blog, noticing the same thing. (If I say hello here to that half-crazed future fan, does that mean I’ve been watching too much “LOST”?)

Of course, for that to happen, this blog needs some, shall we say, um, more substantial archives. And there’s a whole city out there, just waiting to be turned into blog posts.

I’ll try to get on that.

Maybe I should start by taking a minibus.

An ode to Orangette

Lately, I've been reading the archives of one of my favorite blogs, Orangette. I discovered the delightful Molly Wizenberg a couple of years ago, through my dear friend Helen, who had read about Molly's blog (and her then-upcoming column in Bon Appétit) in her kindergarten-class newsletter. (Does your kindergarten class have a newsletter? Mine does not. I have no trouble imagining Mrs. Dobbs lovingly compiling one, however. Once, when home on a break from college, I ran into her in the grocery store. She recognized me instantly. I had no idea who she was.)

Well, it's only lately one of my favorite blogs. Shortly after Helen sent me the link, I bookmarked it (I was on deadline, after all), then proceeded to mostly ignore it, pulling it up only once in a while and reading only the latest entry. I'm not sure what sent me back to Orangette, but I'm thankful for whatever it was. I'm now reading her blog from the beginning, since her new book is not yet available in Hong Kong and I'm not in the States for another month. Visiting a bookstore to buy my very own copy of Molly's book is, oh, No. 3 on "Things to do if I make it through customs," after "Savoring a chile relleno and a margarita at Matt's" and "Going to a store that carries MORE THAN THREE SHOES in my size!" (And that's three actual shoes, not three pairs of them. No guarantee that any of the three will have a mate, either.)

But I digress.

Orangette is mostly a food blog, and many of her current posts involve sharing recipes and stories about them. But it wasn't always so. There's lots of food back in the 2004 posts, like this one that involves roast lamb and a recipe for "evil flan" (that I really, really must try!) but there are occasional gems like this one, with vignettes from her weekend "in reverse chronological order" that have very little to do with food. If only my weekends were as interesting... (Of course, they're really only one day long, and that cuts into the fun.)

I just love Molly's writing. It inspires me to do a bit myself. All good writing inspires me to write. What else should I be reading?

A long time coming...

It's funny, the things that confuse us.

Last Friday, for me, it was silverware.

I spent a long weekend in the Philippines, where I met up with a college friend and her traveling companion. We spent the whole time in Manila, which is, in my opinion, a completely skippable city; if you find yourself in the Philippines, do yourself a favor and get out of the capital as fast as you can. It was a slow weekend, partly because the city is pretty difficult to get around -- the taxi drivers had to stop and ask for directions on several occasions, even when we were traveling within the same section of the city; the traffic is atrocious -- and partly because my friends were laid low by foot-and-mouth disease. It was no fun for any of us.

But sitting in a restaurant, I did have an epiphany of sorts: I have been in Hong Kong long enough for the strange to become the familiar.

When we sat down for dinner, I spent about 45 seconds looking for the chopsticks. I spent another 20 staring at the fork and spoon beside my plate, wondering what I was supposed to do with them. I did a double-take when the waitress refilled my glass. These things never happen in Hong Kong. Actually, I was amazed that we didn't have to flag down the restaurant staff. I actually told my friends, "You never get this kind of service in Hong Kong." It's true: I usually feel like I'm fighting with the waiters...

I also had to remind myself every time we crossed the street that the cars were coming from the opposite direction. And that people don't speak Cantonese. (Not that I do, either. Not really.)

It's funny the things we get used to. It's not that I never use spoons and forks these days -- but I usually use them at home (or in the office, when I bring food or grab a quiche or a salad or something). Of course, there are forks in Hong Kong restaurants -- but usually not the kind that serve Chinese (or Thai or Vietnamese) food. When I eat in a restaurant that serves Asian food, I expect chopsticks. And seeing a fork on that table in Manila threw me for a loop.

Another thing drove home the fact that I've been in Hong Kong a long time: My work visa, which is good for a year, expired yesterday. I'm back in the country legally, but as a visitor.

But this time, I'm a visitor who has an inkling of how things work around here. And that's a good feeling to have.

Like greased lightnin'

Tonight, I timed the Ikea men who delivered and assembled my furniture. (Yes, in Hong Kong you can pay Ikea to assemble the furniture. It was, perhaps, the best $43 I've spent in a long, long time.)

They began at 10:24 p.m. At 10:34, one man had assembled the bookcase, save for putting in the shelves, and another had put together a chair. At 10:40, the bookshelf and another chair were finished. At 10:47, the final chair. At 10:49, the table was done. At which point Ikea guy No. 3 throws up his hands, smiles, and says "Finished!"

Five pieces of furniture in 25 minutes.

Had I just had everything delivered, I would have been struggling with the box 25 minutes after I started. It would have taken me two days to put everything together.

(Actually, had I been doing it myself, I would have been yelling and cursing after 45 minutes, crying after 55 minutes, and abandoning the mess and going to the bar after 60 minutes. Then, I would have waited for my dad to come put everything together for me. Good thing he's flying in tomorrow.)

In Dallas, I did put a similar, much larger, table together by myself. I started cursing at the 60-minute mark and crying at the 90-minute mark -- when I saw that the instructions I had been following ever so diligently by myself now pictured TWO people. Eventually, I got it together. But it was a struggle. After which I swore to never buy anything from Ikea again.

But Dallas doesn't offer delivery and assembly.

God, I love Hong Kong.

Umbrella angst

Today, I hate Hong Kong. Well, maybe not hate. But I spent a good chunk of the day seriously questioning my love for this town (after talking it up to someone in the States). The complaints I have aren’t major things – other than the lack of decent Mexican food. But, these little annoyances have added up over the last eight months, and, today, when FIVE locksmiths refused to make a copy of my apartment key -- including one who made a copy of said key not two months ago (with whom I promptly lost my temper; I kind of feel bad about it now) -- I decided that I had had enough.

Today, I hate Hong Kong.

The rain pushed it over the edge.

This city is absolutely unbearable when it rains. Even if, like today, it isn’t raining very hard. There’s one reason, and one reason only: No one in this city knows how to use an umbrella. They simply weave all over the sidewalk, never really looking at the people around them (particularly this tall white girl who is pretty sure that she will one day get her eye poked out by the edge of an old lady’s umbrella). And, when meeting people coming from the opposite direction, no one tilts their umbrella to either side or moves it up or down. They just barrel through and expect everyone else to get out of the way.

And it doesn’t stop on the sidewalk. Oh, no. Some people (particularly little old ladies) carry this nonsense inside. More than once, I have watched people who have been under cover and completely removed from the rain for several minutes keep their umbrellas up. The chances of this happening increase exponentially the narrower and more crowded the walkway gets or if flights of stairs are involved.

It’s surprising, really, considering how often it rains here. I would have expected there to be some sophisticated, unspoken umbrella etiquette. But no such luck.

There are some other things I don’t understand. Like why escalators are so confusing. Or why people have to rush to get on the MTR before people can leave it.

Soon, I’ll go right back to loving the city again. But I think I’ll just stay inside until it stops raining.

The great milk incident

Feeling the need for a latté (as I do once in a while), I wandered into a well-known coffee chain earlier this week.

A question pops into my head before I order. I ask the boy working the counter: “Where does your milk come from?”

He pulls a carton from the fridge and shows it to me. It’s an Australian brand, he says, and it comes from Indonesia. I ask how long they’ve been using it.

“Oh, six months. More than six months.” He lowers his voice. “Since long before the incident.”

“The incident,” of course, is the ever-widening scandal of tainted milk. At least four children have died; tens of thousands more have severe kidney problems. (It’s not limited to humans, either: Baby animals in a Shanghai zoo have kidney stones, too, after being fed with milk powder for more than a year.) Chinese dairy products have been pulled from store shelves here in Hong Kong. Melamine-tainted products have turned up in an increasing number of Chinese-made exports —yogurt, ice cream, candy, rice balls, koala-shaped cookies, potato-wasabi crackers.

There have been many, many food scares in China over the years. And, even though the government is promising better regulation, I’m sure this won’t be the last one. I’ve always been a bit wary of food from Mainland China, and it’s easy to avoid here. Though most of the food is imported, not all of it comes from China. Even the produce vendors in the street sell California strawberries and Florida oranges and French zucchini.

But very soon, I’m going to the Mainland for two weeks. As much as I’m looking forward to – even excited about -- the food there, I’m worried, too.

It’s easy to avoid thinking about milk laced with plastic and cookies tainted with lead, but it’s harder to push aside thoughts of and vegetables grown in polluted earth, fish from toxic waters, and pork pumped full of steroids. It’s enough to make one lose one’s appetite.

At least I don't have to worry about my occasional lattés.

Chinese lessons

Sometimes I think I should have stuck with Cantonese class at the office.

Yesterday, for instance. Running late for work, I flag down a cab. (I do this regularly, even though I try to take the bus as often as I can.) I told the driver where I wanted to go, in Cantonese.

I was not trying to be funny -- it's a basic address, after all -- but whatever I said made the guy double over with laughter. I think he was wiping tears away from his eyes as he set the meter and drove away from the curb. I'm sure he's at home now, telling his wife, "You aren't going to believe what this gweilo chick said to me today!"

It took me more than a week to feel brave enough to say my destination in Cantonese. In the relative privacy of my apartment, I've been saying the address out loud over and over while I do housework. I'm not sure it's working.

Usually, my exchanges with cab drivers go as follows: I get in a cab and tell the driver my address in Cantonese; a puzzled look comes over his face. I say it again. He sits there. Finally, I pull out the card with my address on it, if I have one. "Ooooh!" he says, finally understanding. He says it like he's trying to correct me for next time. It sounds exactly like what I just said. Then I hang on for dear life as the driver shoots away from the curb.

It's among the most frustrating things about living here. (I'll relate the two most frustrating things in a later post.) It's not that I'm bad with languages. I try to learn at least a few words of the language to the place I'm traveling. I speak French and had no trouble picking up Spanish and bits of Portuguese. I can say basic things like "hello" and "thank you" and "where is the bathroom" in German, Czech, Italian and Japanese. But none of those languages are tonal. Cantonese has six tones.

I have learned a few things. I know the two types of "thank you" and "hello" and "good bye." If I get stuck at a restaurant with only Chinese menus, I can order one thing: "Sichuan noodles." (The only three characters I recognize.)

But spoken Cantonese? It's eluding me.

At least I'm entertaining the occasional cab driver.

A realization

Something occurred to me this week: I live in Hong Kong.

I live here:


This has taken four months to sink in, and I mostly have Katie to thank for it.

Katie and I went to college together. In fact, because she lived down the hall from me during my freshman year, she was one of the first people I met in college. And since she had never been to Hong Kong before, it was a great excuse to run out and do many of the touristy things I haven’t really done.

I like living here, but I didn’t really see the city for what it is. For me, discovering Hong Kong has been about less about eating noodles and riding the ferry across the harbor and more about finding a place to live and learning how the buses work and picking up some Cantonese and finding the grocery store and generally figuring out how to live in a new city. I left Hong Kong Island only once during the first month and a half that I lived here (and only because I had to go to Macau to get my visa activated). I carried my camera around, but I rarely took it out of the case. Until this week.

This week, Katie and I were tourists. And I finally began to see just how cool this city really is.

Check it out for yourself:

The more things change...

I move halfway around the world, and what do I read at work?

Stories about Texas, the drug war in Mexico and the U.S. presidential election. A few even have the byline of a woman who used to work at The News.

Some days, it's like I never left Dallas. Except there are windows in the newsroom.