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.

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.

Vietnam, A to Z

I got back from a trip to Vietnam with my friend Liz and her grandmother Karen a couple of weeks ago. I'd planned to do this post with photos, but I've been a bit slow on toning them. (Surprise, surprise. Some are on my Flickr site, though.) I'll add pictures to this post sooner or later, but, in the meantime, I'd like to share some highlights of my trip.

I'm using the same format I used for my trip to Taiwan several months ago. It takes the pressure off – You get the highlights relatively soon after the trip, and I'm not worried I'm boring you with all the details.

So, here we go: Vietnam, A to Z

A is for áo dài, the traditional Vietnamese dress. (It's said kind of like ow-yai, at least in the north.) We saw lots of women wearing them, though few were walking down a Hanoi street.

Mostly, we saw them in one context: it's the uniform for Vietnamese schoolgirls. They're white – shockingly, so. They do an amazing job keeping them clean (especially since, one of our guides told us, the boys do what they can to mess up the girls' clothes…) It's a nice change from the school uniforms in the U.S. (khaki or black or navy pants; school-color polo, etc.). It's also quite fun to see flocks of girls riding their bikes to or from school – and just as fun trying to snap a photo of them from a moving vehicle on the same road.

B is for bread. Really tasty bread. In fact, it's the first decent bread I've had since I moved to Asia. It's got a thin, crackly crust – like the best baguettes I ate in France – but it's also lighter. The secret (as I understand it) is a combination of rice and soft wheat flours. Another bonus: It's still soft the next day! We bought a loaf on the way to Halong Bay, and then left it in the car. We gave it up as lost, thinking it would be as hard as a rock when we got back to it the next afternoon. It wasn't!

C is for coffee. Really tasty coffee. In fact, it's the first decent coffee I've had since I moved to Asia. It's strong, good hot or iced, and brewed perfectly at a street stall. The most popular way to drink it: iced, with a dollop of condensed milk. Perfection in a glass.

D is for durian ice cream, which Liz ordered at the Rex in Ho Chi Minh City. I had hoped it wouldn't have that awful smell durian has, but it did. And it tasted like rotten onions. (But Liz ate it all!)

E is for embroidery. Liz bought a giant one that the woman at the shop said took about five months to complete.

F is for funeral rites. It's complicated, but part of it involves burning paper things that the dead will need in the next life. This includes things like money and food, but also things like bicycles and cellphones. Karen, amazed by this, had to buy a paper cellphone to take home. (She really wanted a paper BlackBerry, but they were sold out.)

G is for a glass of frog-egg tea, consumed at an organic garden in Hoi An. (Our cooking school guide, Susu, explained: "In Vietnam, we eat everything.") Actually, the "tea" – a mixture of frog eggs, ginger, mint, sugar and water – was quite refreshing. And it only reminded me a bit of seventh-grade biology.

H is the letter of the trip! It stands for Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hoi An, Huế and Ho Chi Minh City, the places we visited. In 10 days.

I is for iPhone, which Liz was never without. Also, when our cooking school instructor saw it, he told Liz he'd cook for her for life if she'd buy him one. She thought it'd be a pretty good deal… It's also really, really making me want an iPhone.

J is for … just go on to the next letter for now. (Maybe I'll fill this in later.)

K is for kayaking, which I did for the first time in Halong Bay. (I even got to steer!)

L is for Lan, the worst tour guide ever. We knew things were going to be bad when we arrived at the Danang Airport at 9:30, hot and exhausted, and Lan was far too cheerful. The woman was useless! And we all wanted to strangle her at one time or another. She has two insanely infuriating tendencies: rushing us through things and disappearing. Our visit to a museum of Champa sculptures was one of the fastest museum trips I've ever taken: It wasn't a big museum, but we were in and out of there in 20 minutes. And I lost count of how many times one of us would look up from taking a picture or studying something to say to the others, "Where's Lan?" Never have I been so glad to see someone go.

M is for motorcycles, the transport of choice for most people in Vietnam. (When we arrived, Zum, our guide, said: "Welcome to Hanoi: a city of six million people, and three million motorcycles!) And people load them down with everything…

N is for Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan, whom we saw at the Tu Duc Tomb in Hue after two days of missing him at various places. We also saw his motorcade in the Mekong Delta. (The man was stalking us!) It was my first (and probably only) brush with royalty.

O is for the Old Quarter of Hanoi, through which we took a cyclo ride. At rush hour. I'm still amazed that we shared the road with as many cars and bikes and motorcycles as we did without getting so much as a bump.

P is for pagodas, of which we saw many. (We often said, only half joking, that we were pagodaed out.) The best one by far was Thien Mu pagoda in Hue, where we saw a Buddhist prayer service.

Q is for the quest for the ultimate pho. It's a noodle soup that's pretty much the national dish of Vietnam (it's even on the stamps!), and every place makes it a bit differently. It's hard to beat a good bowl of noodle soup, but I love pho for the things you add in it: pickled garlic and onions, crispy shallot, fresh cilantro and squirts of lime juice. It's heaven in a bowl…

We even learned how to make it ourselves at a cooking class in Hoi An – from broth to noodles. It was delicious, but I think I'll leave it to the experts.

R is for rice fields. The country grows a lot of rice.

S is for the shape of Vietnam: an S! (It's also said to be the shape of a dragon). Zum told us there was a reason the country is shaped like an S: to remind everyone that Vietnam is small, but strong.

T is for tailors. They can make almost anything in 24 hours. I got a dress made in Hoi An that I'm planning to wear to a wedding later this year.

U is for Unesco World Heritage Site. I think "Unesco World Heritage" is Lan's favorite phrase. Granted, a lot of things in the center are Unesco sites (and six of the seven in Vietnam are in the center; the other is Halong Bay), but we didn't need to be reminded of this, oh, every five minutes…

V is for Valentine's Day, which we spent in Ho Chi Minh City. It's a big deal in Vietnam, and that totally took us by surprise. We wanted to have a great last night in Vietnam, but, because we didn't have a reservation, we were turned away from three restaurants. The motorbikes carried young couples, with many of the women holding onto bouquets of flowers. We wanted to end the trip with a drink on the rooftop of the Rex Hotel (it had been closed the night before), but even the hotel was in full-on Valentine's mode. We skipped the roof, for which you needed a ticket, and went to the lounge on the first floor instead. It was packed, mostly with Vietnamese, and featured what Liz called "the Asian version of Barry Manilow." He sang things like "Endless Love" and "Unchained Melody" and "My Valentine." It's enough to make you want to vomit. (Hey! Another "V" word!) We laughed so hard that we cried.

W is for water puppets, which we saw in Hanoi. The farmers from the Red Delta area invented it in the tenth century as a form of entertainment, and it's a lot of fun. The puppeteers stand behind a screen and control the puppets using long bamboo rods, while a traditional Vietnamese band provides background music and sings out the stories being acted out.

I got a kick out of the dragon puppets, which spit fire and water, and the goofy water buffalo.

But the highlight of the show for me: when the hunter cut off the tiger's head.

X is for "Xin chào!" Repeat after me: "Sin chow." Now you know how to say hello in Vietnamese!

Y is for yin-yang. Because there's an S at the center, it's considered another symbol of Vietnam. We saw it on a drum at the Ngo Mon Gate, the main entrance to the Citadel in Hue.

Z is for Zum, the best guide in the history of the universe! I am not making this up. If you're ever in Northern Vietnam and in need of a tour guide, let me know. I'll send you his info.

That's it! Well, that's not it. It's barely the highlights. There's so much more I could say, but I'll end with this: 10 days was not nearly long enough. I know there's more to see and do.

But honestly, I'd go back just for the coffee.

Everyone's an editor

Seen in a bathroom stall at the Ho Chi Minh City Airport:


I saw this in not one but two different bathrooms. (I thought about looking in the other stalls, but I ran out of time.) The Japanese editing, in particular, makes me smile. I wish I knew what it said...

Taipei, A to Z

After a two-week delay, I’m finally bringing you an update on my short trip to Taiwan. I’m borrowing this format from a dear friend. I like that it’s short and simple. Besides, who doesn’t love the alphabet?

(By the way, more photos can be found at my Flickr set.)

So here we go:

A: Asparagus juice!

B: Bubble tea. I haven’t had any since my internship in New York, and, since the stuff was developed in Taiwan, I felt this was a good time to drink it again. It had milk in it along with the tapioca pearls; I’m probably getting a kidney stone as we speak.

C: Chopstick skills. Emily, my traveling companion, and I learned how to cut noodles using our chopsticks. It started at the Peking Duck place; we got soup, and the woman serving it used her chopsticks to cut the noodles. Emily and I decided on the spot that we, too, needed such a skill and promptly started practicing. (It took a bit. The waitress, seeing our troubles refilling our soup bowls, hurried over to help us several times. But in the end, we conquered the noodles.)

D: Danshui. It’s the stop at the end of Taipei’s MRT line. We wandered along the riverside boardwalk, watched Chinese flamenco dancers and saw pigs in the street.










E: Eating. I think it’s the national pastime of Taiwan; I don’t think we ate anything we didn’t like. We barely made a dent in the duck, though.

F: Face masks! The hotel gave them to us when we checked in. Emily models one.

Lovely, isn't she?

G: Giant mammoth. As we were wandering through Chaing Kai-shek Memorial Hall, we heard a bunch of people laughing. They were dragging along a mammoth balloon.

Emily had fun with him.

He was a bit deflated, though.

H: HEAT! We saw one sign with 37 degrees Celsius. That’s a cool 98 Fahrenheit. Fine when you’re inside; not so when you’re wandering around the city.


I: Ice Monster, which is where we ate giant plates of shaved ice. It’s like a sno-cone on steroids: shaved ice topped with mango, condensed milk, and some syrupy stuff. But it’s perfect for those brutally hot days -- I really did feel cooler after eating it.

Now, why don’t they have this in Hong Kong?

J: Jade in unusual shapes, seen at the National Palace Museum. Among them: cabbage and a slab of meat. (I told you eating was the national pastime, right?)

K: Kindness. Everyone we met was so warm and friendly. The loveliest person was perhaps Grace, an English0speaking guide at Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. She came up to us after the changing of the guard ceremony and asked if she could explain Taiwan’s history. Then, when it was over, she gave us gifts. Again, why don’t they have this in Hong Kong?

L: Lin, the crazy cab driver. Who taught us the following:

“Taiwan tea, No. 1
Taiwan Beer, No. 2
Taiwan dumpling, No. 3.”

Chinese tea - “not too good, not too bad, so-so.” Or, in Mandarin, “mamahuhu.” (I googled it; it means “horse-horse-tiger-tiger.” But I don’t see how that translates to “so-so.” )

He also had some rather interesting things to say about Americans and Japanese. I’m glad to be the former, at least during that cab ride.

M: Motorcycles. Everyone rides them. At intersections, they all congregate at the front of the line during red lights, so it looks like a city of dueling biker gangs.


N: Night Markets. We started at Shilin, the most famous one. It was lively when we got there, then, a few minutes later, the merchants started hiding their stuff. The street went from packed to empty in three minutes. A few stalls away, a police officer was writing a woman a ticket. We asked someone about this a bit later, and she said it happens several times a night. The police station is just around the corner.

O: Oolong tea. It’s particularly famous, though not my favorite. We had it once: at a shop owned by a friend of Lin, the vivacious cabdriver. He took us there. After all, “Taiwan tea No. 1!” We paid way too much, but it was a good story to start the trip.

P: Pepper pork buns. Perhaps the best thing I ate in Taiwan. I saw the long line at the Shilin Night Market.

Q: Question: What service vehicle sings in Taiwan? Garbage trucks. We first heard them coming up from the MRT station. Our immediate thought: ice cream! Boy, were we surprised.

R: Red bean dumplings. Yum.

S: Space. There’s a lot of it. Or perhaps it just feels that way, coming from Hong Kong. One of the first things we noticed on the ride into the city from the airport was how short the buildings were. And how much sky was visible.

Even the MRT stations had high ceilings and a lot of room!

T: Temples. Taipei has some lovely ones! The colors are always so bright, the deities so full of character. We walked through one of the largest, Longshan, at night. It was filled with people lighting incense and praying. Outside, a “cleansing waterfall.”

U: Unesco family day. Which got us into a fort in Danshui for free.

V: Very long lines. They mean good food. They led us to pepper pork buns, after all. And there was a long, long line at Din Tai Fung. Both were totally worth the wait.

W: World’s tallest building (for now), Taipei 101.


Among its cool features, the world’s fastest elevator (85 floors in 35 seconds. It takes a minute to get to the top floor in my apartment building: the 6th.); the “super big wind damper,” which stabilizes the building during typhoons and earthquakes...

... some cool mascots known as the damper babies...

... and the coolest mailboxes I’ve ever seen (you can also add your own “postmark” with Taipei 101 rubber stamps...).

Also, some kick-ass views of Taipei.

X: Xaiolongbao, or “soup dumplings.” Eaten at Din Tai Fung, perhaps the most popular tourist destination in Taipei.

They were so good, we went there twice.

Y: I’m skipping Y, dammit. I’ve done all the hard letters until now!

Z: Z’s. We may not have gotten enough, but we were back at the hotel and thinking about sleep about the time one of us would have been on deadline. The hazards of packing in so much in so short a time…

An ode to salad

As seen on the wall of a cafe in Hamamatsu, Japan:

It eats in the meat borrowing and hopeless.
The vegetables, too,
eat and let’s do the good balance having a meal.
You of the living alone.
You who don’t eat vegetables at the house.
It is slightly in luxury as much as the time
of the eating-out and salad how.
Because the person who doesn’t have money has S size, too.

Granted, I haven't spent much time in Japan, but the English translations I've seen have been pretty much spot-on in the wording, if not the punctuation (lots of things are turned into possessives, whether necessary or not).

So I can't quite figure this one out...

What? Don't believe me?


The ode to appetizers is slightly funnier, but I like the line about "You who don't eat vegetables at the house."