Saturday 20.02.2021 No rain today, so it is the Cañon tour day. The bus collected the guests from different hotel and we had a bit more than an hour ride. The group was an interesting mix. I spent the way talking to Jenny from Switzerland, Agnieszka from Poland and Harold from Sweden. We arrived to a small port where we took a small motor boat with a guide and we set in the river in the canyon for around two hours.It was a magnificent natural formation of two mountain chains separated by a river. You feel hugged but also very small and vulnerable. We are small and insignificant. Oscar our guide stopped in different sides to show us crocodiles, monkeys and stone formations. With strong wind against our faces and somehow cloudy sky, I was immersed in imprining the view in my memory. Since I also have trust issues with my memory, I took a couple of photos.
Floating Supermarket 😀
Here is also a video from Youtube of a drone-video of the Canyon
Canyon de Sumidero
I thought about all these years I have not seen such a wonder. First, I didn’t know where such things exist. I also didn’t know how expensive it is to get there. This is why I would like to share with you a simple plan to experience this. First you need a flight to Mexico. Either to Mexico City or to Cancun. From Europe the flights are very cheap currently. For between 300 and 400 Euros. Then take another flight to Tuxtla. Could be around 40 euros. Then get a couple of nights in a hotel or a hostel. You can easily manage with 10 to 20 Euros per night. The tour itself including the transportation, the boat and the guide would cost around 15 euros. When your eyes are happy, satisfy your taste buds with delicious tacos for between 2 – 4 euros. I think such a trip combined with all the things you can experience in this great country is something for the bucket list.
***
After the tour I detached from the group and took a taxi to the airport to fly to Cancun. In Cancun, I spend some time having action with taxi drivers that tried to rip me off. I was pretty pissed off when I went to my very cheap hotel. The hotel was so basic that they didn’t even have a lift. The poor room service lady had to push the cleaning cart on a very long ramp between the floors. I was glad that I didn’t have to do this. I went to bed early that night. The next day, Sunday, I will reunite with Marika who has discovered Merida on her own and will meet me tomorrow.
I flew in the morning to Tuxtla Gutierrez with a layover in Mexico City. I didn’t visit Tuxtla but rather took a direct microbus to San Cristóbal de las Casas, an old city with colonial flair and cubblestone roads. The one-hour drive there was curvy through beautiful mountains. Nature is gradually changing from hot desert to more green and forests. I was adviced to visit it by some friends due to its nice atmosphere. It reminds me of Risihkesh, India and slightly of Bali, Indonesia. It has the most number of tourists I saw so far. Besides, it is full of hippies, barefeet white guys and girls who have rasta hair, probably vegan and give you the impression that shower is not accessible. I have the feeling we have very little in common and often think it is a reaction to growing up in previleged societies. I rarely see this from people who were once forced into minimalism by poverty.
The town is colourful and like many places in Mexico abundant of beautiful corners. This is a nation that likes colours and making things look nice.
Looks like Cuba but it is Mexico I have never been to Cuba anywayI like the pavement
In the evening, I met Ivar, a local couchsurfer who took me for a walk around San Cristobal. Ivar was very interesting. He studies his Masters studying obesity in Indiginous communities and its relationship with gut flora. He hosts couchsurfers to be able to see the world untill he manges to travel outside of Mexico. Well, talking about our experiences in couchsurfing, we figure out that he hosted my friend Nenad. Nenad seems to be everywhere. We met first in Venice in 2010 and then he hosted me in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2014 and finally in Quito, Ecuador in 2019. He has been travelling the world for years and everywhere I go, i find his footprints somehow. You can read about our encounter in Jakarta here.
I have planned a visit to the Sumidero Canyon for tomorrow. It is supposed to be a marvel of nature and a must visit while in Chiapas.
You need to sanitize your shoes
****
Friday 19.02.2021
Eggs with mushrooms, toast and marmelade for breakfast. With eggs they always serve you some hot sauce. They also typically eat enchiladas for breakfast. I have no idea how they can tolerate such spicy sauces in the morning. I tasted with caution thinking about later consequences.
A morning walk at 8:00 am is always peaceful. It is dropping very small drops of rain making it in general a very pleasant atmosphere. I went back to the hotel to get to know that the Canyon tour was cancelled because of the weather. I didn’t have plan B. So Marika recommended I take a cooking class. Which I was lucky enough to find in the same day. I booked “cooking with Sofia” experience on Airbnb for the afternoon. Till then I went around the streets strolling and looking for inspiration.
Sofia welcomed me in her kitchen in her cafe/workshop place. Over two hours, she guided me in a culinary trip on preparing chicken tacos as well as her recipes for guacamole and smoked sauce. We cut the ingredients together and she gave me tips on how to choose different ingredients and how to chop or prepare them. Between the steps we exchanged some thoughts and conversations about our lives. She is a very energetic and kind person with passion for food and connecting with people. She also introduces me to pinolillo, a drink based on corn and cocoa. The evening was both enriching and entertaining.
Afterwards I went to meet Blanca and her boyfriend Marco. Blanca is a friend of my friend Aldo and he connected us today. She is a local who loved more than half of her life abroad and now working on a project building a house and hoping to sell it. She is doing it herself. Hiring workers, electricians etc. and telling the what to do. Well, she is originally a psychologist and has a PhD in history. While Marco her boyfriend is Italian who arrived here 9 years ago after other 10 years in London. He opened a coffee shop and also fixes coffee machines and gives Barista courses. We had a few drinks while we got to know each other. Lovely people with kind hearts. We discussed a lot about the pandemic and how each of us coped with it. I believe we have the conclusion that life somehow needs to go on.
Life is a journey where we breath, eat, move and do other things that make us human like love, connect and interact. I see no beauty in extending life per se without all the beautiful things that we can experience in it. What is the point of having a society eating, sleeping and breathing but having no pleasure, no movement and no experiences? A short full life is in my opinion superior to a long boring and depressing life.
Tuesday 17.02.2021.. time flies.. It is exactly 8:00 am and I am waiting in a parking lot for my carsharing ride. Joel was a bit late but he was nice. We both waited for the third passenger. Imagine this with me. A car with a couple came. The guy cmae first with the luggage while the girl stayed in the car. It seemed like masculine announcement of possession! Then he went back to the car to bring his lady, opened the door for her, she stepped off, and after a few steps walking together, he went on his knees to tie her shoes!! I am not sure if this is an act of gentlemanhood or if he simply didn’t want her to bend in public. I understand both motives, in a world where both being a gentleman /a proper lady are forgotten arts of living.
Four hours of driving in the desert among mountains, hills and valleys covered with dispersed cactus trees. Then we were in Oaxaca. The trip was paused here to watch the champions league games. I had both games playing simultaneously on two screens while I enjoyed a typical Oaxaqueño lunch. My afternoon was chilled afterwards. I met Chris from Couchsurfing. A half french, half finnish born in Sweden. He has been traveling Mexico for a year. We spend a few hours around the city eating mediocre cake, tasty street food and looking for some night-time action. We had no luck. Who parties on Tuesday?? Nobody in Oaxaca!
Wednesday 18.02.2021
Given the slow pandemic life, I decided to go with a guided tour, hoping to learn a thing or two, see a thing or two, and talk with person or two. It was evident from the beginning that I was the only non spanish-speaker. Our young guide was repeating everything in a bad English for me. I actually understood the same amount if he spoke English or Spanish. I told him to just go on in Spanish and I will be happy with whatever I get.
Our first stop was Monte Albany. A historical site with ruins dating around 300 BC. The ruins are not really magnificent in themselves. For me the stories around them are more interesting. I drifted with my imagination to how the normal life was in these times. Not hero’s or history makers. Just he regular hi!and like you and me who love, hate, fear and hope.
“Dear Rosa
I am sad I had to leave you in the small pyramid after our last kiss on the monkey day. I am even sadder that this might be our last kiss in case I win the flaming ball game tomorrow. As you know, it is a decisive game. If we win, we will be honored and sacrificed to the gods by our tribe. We will then be Immortal in the next life. If we lose, we will be enslaved by the opponents. It would be a shame. My heart, eternally loving you, is now ready to be placed on the sacred golden plate.
In either case, in glory or in chains, I love you till my last breath.
Yours, always, Antonio”
***
The day included visits to a pottery workshops, a carpet workshop and a fabrique for Mezcal, a typical alcoholic beverage. I have been to similar workshops in many countries so my day in this aspect was not remarkable. Here and there I socialized with the group.specizlly a Columbian couple who lived in Austria and speaks German and a Chilean couple who happened to be doctors as well. For lunch we stopped at a local buffet for typical food. Giovanni told me he also does not eat pork because he gets an allergic reaction from it. We both ordered the same beef soup. It was delicious but I doubted that the pieces of fat swimming there might be pork fat. I just finished my soup and didn’t give the matter much attention. When we left the restaurant, Giovanni reacted allergically with red spots on his skin! My doubts were confirmed.
We also so a hug tree that is around 40m wide and also a similar height. Estimated to be 2000 years old, It is not the biggest, neither the oldest in the world. Still magnificent.
I concluded the day with a fine dinner in Zandunga restaurant. The consistency of the chicken was unmatchable in my experience. I felt peaceful and content. Tomorrow I fly to Chiapas!
I jetlaggedly woke up around 6am, did some morning routine and then went for a walk in Puebla hoping to get some breakfast. Well, I didn’t. Everything was closed till almost 9am. Today is also a COVID solidarity day by the government where shops had to close by law. I honestly didn’t understand this but didn’t care enough to research it either.
Puebla is said to be built in one of the oldest inhabited regions in the Americas. But it is built by the colonial Spanish. The history is intriguing, complicated and full of legends. It is also called the city of Angels. The cathedral is one of the biggest in Mexico.I walked the grid-shaped empty streets. They buildings in the historical center are one or two stories and are colourful with many beautiful architectural touches. I took some bad photos.
The market is always a colorful and interesting place to be. You see the locals dealing, negotiating and buying things that I didn’t know how they will cook. But it is a buzzing environment. I stopped at how they presented the fresh whole chicken with their heads dangling over the counter!!
My first though was that I am happy I am not a chicken. Then I remembered the German song that says “I wish I were a chicken 🐔”. It says: I wish I were a chicken and didn’t have much to do. I would put an egg everyday and two eggs on Sunday, hehehehe.
I wish I were a chicken
Next to Cholula, an adjacent town with an interesting history. It is also where my friend Aldo studied. Similar grid shaped historical center that connects the many churches. This town had so many pyramids among them the great pyramid of Cholula. It is said to be the biggest pyramid by volume in the world. As an Egyptian, I didn’t take this information wekcomingly and I became skeptical without any knowledge or truth-seeking attitude.
The Spanish came, they saw the pyramids and decided to build churches on top of each of them. To do that they enslaved the locals and killed them after they were done. This is why the locals took a looong time to finish the churches and revenged by making ugly angel statues. Well this all is a legend and probably most of it is not true. But this is just a fun blog not a history book, hehe.
As you can see, this is permanently borrowed from alamy.com
It was said that there are 356 churches and the city has as many saints that are celebrated everyday. But this is not really true. They are less than 50. Most of them are now closed because of the pandemic. The streets are empty. I walked a bit then went to have a local Mole Poblano in Frida Kahlo Restaurant. The waitress met me at the door and told me “well, officially we are closed today by law, but I could have you in a hidden table from the backdoor”. I liked the evil illegality and went for it. She even did this evil hand gestures of opposing finger tips like a wave!
The mole Poblano was a nice piece of chicken covered with chocolatey sauce with sesame. It was delicious combined with a refreshing fresh maracuja-Mango juice.
With a full stomach I strolled a bit around Cholula and then went to see the nearby Volcano 🌋 visible from the city. The Popocatépetl. I took a bad photo of it, I leave you both mine and the internet photo as a reminder that real life is not perfect, hehe.
I went back back to Puebla for the night. Tomorrow I go Oaxaca.
The moment I stepped out of the hotel, a reflex smile transformed my face.
Pure blue sky with a gentle warming winter sun. I started walking towards the historical center without a particular aim. The streets here are clean but sometimes broken or irregular. I found this imperfection somehow pleasant. Two thoughts came to my mind. The first was what Marika once said in the streets of Milan; “when there is less order in the street, I feel comfortable when everything is perfect I feel pressure to be perfect as well”. I also remember the code that I have read in my teenage; “chaos breeds life..order creates habit”.
When you live long enough in countries with impeccable order like Germany and Switzerland, you forget how the situation in the rest of the world is. But this perfection somehow becomes the norm and you only notice what goes wrong. If the world around you is full of broken and irregular, you become more tolerant.
It is a calm Sunday morning, the street are quite but studded with street-food stalls. I didn’t trust my immune system yet. I need a couple of days before I completely dive in.
Many cafes are serving breakfast for tables on the streets. No inside seating due to Corona. Although I have already had breakfast in the hotel, I needed to re-live some sense of normality! I went for a second breakfast with a small came, a cappuccino and some fun rays. At that moment, I needed nothing else!
I spend the day walking around Mexico City. Moving between plazas and different neighborhoods. I enjoyed particularly the architecture in the historical center. The city is also very clean, even in small poor neighborhoods. My wake was quiet eventful, a group of young girls practicing dancing on the street. Homeless people occupied some main street and filled it with tents, a police raid with motorbikes on street vendors while those just disappeared intwo seconds beforehand..based on an alarming whistle from an informing watchman. This reminded me of Egypt where you are guaranteed to witness some action if you hang out in the street long enough. Chaos breeds life again.
They agreed to dance for you guys!
It is Valentine’s day. Here it is not just loves day but also friendship day “dia del amor y la amistad”. The streets were full of lovers holding hands and sometimes matching T-shirts. Families went to the streets with children and everyone is eating tacos! I ate a couple of meals and hoped that pork was not part of my meals. Not sure since my Spanish is barely enough for survival.
The COVID measurs are strict he and people are conformant. Everyone is wearing a mask even in the fresh air in the street. I only saw a couple of people without a mask. When entering restaurant, they put disinfectant gel in your hand. This gel smells disgusting mostly. One restaurants with spraying people even. Like spraying their clothes. One guy even turned around and they sprayed his ass which left me perplexed.
They also measure your temperature with this thermometer gun.i came to know that my average body temperature was 36! One guy measured me, when I asked how much, he said 33! Fair enough. It reminded me of the guy at the door of the COVID test center in Zurich who asked me if I was in contact with risk groups like kindergartens or nursery homes.I said “worse, I am a doctor and work with COVID patients” this left him somehow confuse and my answer had no consequences! Many of us just follow clear orders literally!
I decided to leave Mexico City for the moment and discover the rest later with Marika. I took the evening bus then to Puebla which seems to be an exciting destination with interesting stories.
I woke up tired after a long shift yesterday.. quickly packed my tiny backpack and headed to get an antigen COVID test before my flight.
Despite all the lockdowns, the restrictions and the blanket of sadness that has descended upon us, I have decided to travel again. It is dangerous indeed. It might be slightly irresponsible. But what is life without living? I guess this last sentence summarizes many of my opinions, also my advices to my patients.
I write these words on my first leg flight to Mexico. A new adventure I am very much looking forward to. I promised myself to indulge it into pleasures of the taste without counting calories.. I would like to re-establish my forgotten relationship with the sun.. and I hope to be enriched by meaningful encounters with special people.
For this trip, I have very few plans for two weeks. The first week I will be on my own discovering what life throws in my direction. The second week I will be joined by my beautiful and special lady Marika. Having received some insider travel tips from my good friend Aldo, I am excited.
Having fullfilled the requirements of the transit in Amsterdam ( 2 negative COVID Tests; one PCR within the last 72 hours and one negative antigen test within the last 4 hours), It is comforting to know that all co-passengers are probably COVID-free. It is impressive how we adapted to this new shitty situation to the degree that we forgot how normal life looked like. I bet you are like me feeling strange when you see a movie and two people come too close face to face, or shake hands. Anyway, I am going to get a taste of another aspect of life in the pandemic, traveling.
Long flights are boring. I would always prefer many connections rather than one long flight, even though it imposes a higher risk of missing a connection. At least I would move more and have more input. I landed in Mexico City Airport. Crossing the immigration control was smooth and friendly and ended with “welcome in Mexico” from the officer. Me being a holder of an Egyptian passport, it’s not trivial to move between countries. The airport and the metro stations were very clean. I don’t know why this is surprising.. I guess in this trip as well I would be confronting my prejudices. The two metro stations that I saw were interesting. One was almost an exhibition about space, physics, history of the humanity and origin of the universe. They even had multiple diagram explaining the LHC and Higgs boson. The other station had a lot of art paintings and photography of graffitis. The people in the metro seemed to be regular tired citizens. Looking at their hands you could see they had manual jobs. In Arabic we say “Time has eaten and drank on him” or some like this. Which means he has undergone many time- and weather induced transformations, increasing entropy
So that the regular guy understands physics
I went directly to the hotel hoping for a moderate jetlag and not having to try pills. Tomorrow I will think about a plan for tomorrow. Good night for me, morning for most of you.
After a surprisingly not very tiring 6 hours bus ride, we arrived to Siem Reap. During my last trip in Asia, Cambodia was one of the most remarkable places I have visited in how different it was. This is why I recommended it to Morad when we were planning our trip. I usually don’t see everything. I leave some things to see if I ever come back to the same place. It is also a training for me to be in peace with “missing out”. You know the term FOMO? Fear of missing out. Sibylle, my friend, keeps saying: “Oh, you missed a great evening”. It is OK. I am aware I can’t have all the pleasures in the world. I needed to be in peace with this.
Our first itinerary in Siem Reap was the floating village which is some kilometers out of the city. We needed to buy tickets for a boat to take us to the village and back. The guy selling the ticket was the only unfriendly person we met in Cambodia so far. While we were on the counter, Morad told me “I don’t like this guy” in a voice that he heard and was surprised. I then told him directly “we don’t like you! you are the only unfriendly guy we met in Cambodia”. The guy was with minimal reactions. Then we asked a girl on the counter beside him if we could buy the tickets from her and did an unusual transaction where we gave her the money, she gave to him. He gave her the ticket, she gave it to us. At the end, there was no change in the outcome. But he was a “smug” as Morad says.
On the boat, we had a younger-looking 31 years old “Paul” as a guide and a nameless boat driver with one eye that he rested often by sleeping while driving the boat. Morad was asking me if this casual sleep-driving was ok in this part of the world. Paul gave us a historical and cultural account on the floating village. It is a poor place. Everything in this village is floating over the river; The houses, the orphanage/school, a church, a temple, a place for celebrations, etc. It is a community mostly working with fishing from the nearby lake. Paul himself was/is a fisherman but works now in tourism because he knows a bit of English. He told us a sad story about him losing his parents in a Typhoon hitting the lake in 2011, losing his wife (i didn’t understand how) and having his 5-years old child being put in the orphanage since he had problem with drinking (Paul, not the child).
The tour included a visit to crocodile farm and a catfish farm where locals used the crocodile skin and the catfish meat to make a living. The crocodile looked like statues. They were still, on top of each other and with open mouths that we thought they were plastic until some of them moved.
The rest of that day was chilling and enjoying the local food. We had a Cambodian BBQ dinner where they bring you a metal bucket of flaming coal and put it in some hole in the table. They serve then 7 kinds of raw meet, vegetables, noodles and rice. We had beef, chicken, ducks, shark, squid, frog and kangaroo. You then cook them yourself!
yum yum
Unfortunately Morad does not party, otherwise I would have hit the dance floor where that latino music is coming. We went to the hotel and prepared for the next day. Where Morad and I had different programs. I have seen Angkor Wat before. So I decided to chill for that day and go to a nice cafe where I could work on some projects I have been putting off for a long time. Morad went to discover Angkor Wat and wrote his story:
Morad says:
” Siem Reap is mostly a modest town except for one particular street. The modesty starts with the hotels breakfast and its coffee, the coffee was abysmal. We joked a little on how a country famous of coffee production, doesn’t have the culture of drinking “good coffee”, however, maybe they find it good! Today we split again, Adham is going to take care of checking out form the hotel, work somewhere on something while I go on a tour in the rightfully famous Angkor Wat temple(s). Adham has been there before and told me if there is a must see in this country, it is these temples!
I hired a tuk tuk for the day, after “negotiations”, we had a deal. Not being the most social animal, I realized at our first stop (to buy my ticket) that I don’t even know the wanker’s name. Tey, was my driver. Like almost everyone here, very friendly, smiling a lot and has a laid back attitude. Some of the people here are suspiciously nice/kind, you know, so nice that you question how genuine it is! We drove through the countryside for a few kilometers to the north, the first temple Angkor Wat is an impressive huge group of buildings. To have an idea, the first temple alone is bigger than the actual town Siem Reap!! I wander how much effort, time, mastery and suffering were put into making this place! It’s boiling hot, many people but I think much less than a “usual” day. I needed a few seconds to get to a tower that typically takes a 30 minute queuing! Plenty of people taking pictures, many “professional” photoshoots in the gardens and many couples visiting together. I just walked about not committing to the visit path, my ears catches the odd “fun fact” from local guides giving tours. The atmosphere reminds me of that of the pyramids a little. I left to the second temple, Angkor Thom, the one with the smiley faces. Much much smaller in itself, but I would say it is my favorite. It has that extra attention to details. Everything is a bit more tidy and elaborate. Less people.. better for me. My ears catches some of these info. Germany renovated these stairs.. Japan renovated that floor..etc. Good to see wealthy countries supporting beauty and culture!
We moved on to the next temples which I skimmed through like an “ok” book. They look similar, less fascinating but still nice. It seems that very few people do make it to the last temple. Around all temples, there are dozens of children selling water, clothes,..etc, dozens of tuk tuks.. by the look of it, almost everyone in this town is making their living off these temples and the tourists.
I told Tey we are done, lets go home, he was happy, we didn’t take very long. He was happier when I told him to drop me at the same place where we met, there he hangs out with his other tuk tuk friends. I had some snacks from the supermarket, as similar as I could find to what I had in Taiwan years ago. Then walked my way through the killing heat to find Adham in the Pub Street. He was working on his laptop in a pub and the whole sitting made him look like a drug lord in Cuba, so rich he just does organization from some restaurant in an oven hot backstreet. We chess..”
Thankful is what I feel.
It is the first day in Phnom Penh. In our nice but cheap hotel, we could have breakfast and then a relaxed swim in the rooftop swimming pool with a great view over the city. I must admit, this was a luxury that I really enjoyed. It is always the same thought that comes to my mind: “Why don’t I do this more often?”. I have always waited for such trips when I had more time. More than a week off. So that it is “worth it”. These places are far and the flight tickets are not cheap. However, even if it was just a week, it is definitely worth it. Traveling is for me one of the most important investments. It is not only the knowledge, meeting new people or widening one’s horizon. It is the psychological health that results from unplugging yourself, going somewhere far and reordering your life.
Since I have been to Phnom Penh before, we decided to split and have parallel programs for the first part of the day. Morad went to check the Genocide Museum and I went to some cafe to get some things done.
I walked to the cafe. Reliving and experiencing the package of a third world country.. heat, humidity, smell of sewage leaks, bad infrastructure, dirt and garbage. However, i was in a good mood. Almost everyone I passed by or had eye contact with was smiling. Cambodian people (Khmer) are some of my favorite. I got lost, which is one of my hobbies during traveling. I slowed down, and started observing the scenes around me.
A cart full of durian.. around it 3 young men lying on different chairs in positions and using their smartphones.. A man carrying a stick on his shoulder. From each end of the stick hangs a basket with home made bakery that he is selling. He walked around and eye-contacted me without hope that I buy from him. Another guy riding a bicycle that is somehow also his food stall. One cooked chicken was hanging in the air beside his shoulder and shaking comically as he rode on the bumpy road. On its side was what seemed like a bunch of animal intestine that also was shaking. This is not very erotic.
A scene that accompanied us the whole day was seeing men rolling their shirts up and exposing their bellies. Today alone we saw 6 or 7 people doing this. It is hot and I assume they did this to ventilate their bellies :D. Well, these were not six packs.
I finally arrived to the cafe and rested there I met Morad again. He was shocked. Here is his narrative:
“Waking up in a large bed was a joy I missed for the previous two nights, where I could only fit in the entire room in a very specific spot! I might be, as Adham reckons, a spoiled traveler. Particularly when it comes to accommodation. Find a comfortable place to sleep so that you have plenty of your energy and time for activities.
We have different programs for the morning, Adham will do his thing and be reflective and deep. He loves people! almost all of them likes to get to know them and learn from them.
I went to the museum of genocide, a short background, in the 70s, a political group took over Cambodia and anyone who was educated or smart was considered an enemy. The highschool building, turned prison, now the museum, is the place where tourture and killing. It’s one of the most heart wrenching places I’ve been to. Very grimm and sad. Some visitors would pause and cry from what see and hear.
Walking to and from the museum to meet Adham was fun. Batteling the suffocating humidity, I noticed many similarities to Egypt. It’s hot, dirty and loud. People are very kind here. They smile at me, or laugh together at me. A large person walking their street, some even invited me inside (to do what!! :D) others just touched me with curiosity. Being a big man means you are rarely unnoticeable here.
My long walk ended what seemed like a “local Starbucks”, where I met Adham.
“
We relaxed from the hot and humid. A couple of chess games and then a few hours of walking.. to the central market which is just a market with many stalls.. and then the phnom penh riverside. Morad decided to indulge his tastebuds with a few disgusting things. On a cart in the street, there were heaps of fried spiders, bugs, crickets, worms, lizards.. yuk.. He bought a sorted collection of ugly delicacies and we found a place to sit where he can try the taste of each muddafukka.
On the riverside, were some park with gym devices where the public could go and do some exercise. There were many families on the riverside making picnics and having a relaxed time. There was also this woman that was doing a mysterious kind of exercise.
We had a very non local burger before catching our bus to Siem Reap. There the manager was Daniel, a swiss who wanted to travel/stay here for one year and ended up staying for 8 years. We talked a lot about Switzerland and Europe. He gave me also a few advices for the Cambodia trip. I took a super fast Tuk-tuk to the bus station while Morad picked the luggage from the hotel and met me there. We are going to take the sleeping-bus to Siem Reap overnight for 6 hours.
“Adham, wake up! Let’s go to the cable car”.. Morad and I got ready quickly before 9 and went to the street to look for a quick breakfast, checked out and went on our way to the cable car and Big Buddha, or namely Ngong Ping and Tian Tan :). It was a long ride with the Metro and then a long queue waiting for the tickets. When Morad gets bored waiting, he starts punching me in the back. He is passionate about boxing. This was an ice breaker for two american guys in the line, James and Dani, we started chatting. The cable car ride was gorgeous. Around 25 minutes to the hills where the big Buddha sits 😀 I have a photo from the internet for you since we don’t have any better.
Stolen from the internet. It was a bit cloudy bit still gorgeous
In the hill, we met James and Dani again by accident. They are friends since 45 years and now they are traveling together. They stopped here on the way to Bali. James is married to another man since 28 years. They live in NYC and we had such a short but nice encounter. We exchanged contacts. It is a pity that afterwards we fly out.
Dani, Morad, James and Adham
We didn’t have much time to go up and say hi to big Buddha.. instead, we took somephotos and headed back to the cable car, experienced more rudeness from some taxi drivers and then took the bus to the airport. It was all last minute that we had to run in the airport to catch the flight. We made it to the gate a few minutes before the scheduled take off. Then the plane was delayed on the runway for 45 minutes. Normal, no?
It is the national cambodian Lanmei. Morad asked me if it was something like Ryanair since they didn’t serve us even a glass of water in more than two hours. The crew was very nice though. We tried to catch some sleep and landed nicely in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. My memories from 4 years ago were that it is a very poor country. Most of the smart people were killed by the Khmer rouge in the 1990s. A couple of MILLION people were executed. A sad story that still lives in the lives of many cambodians. Crossing the borders was smooth, the airport surprised me by having some really beautiful and modern corners. A taxi ride to our hotel costed $15. On the way you could see minor girls riding motorbikes and seemed to be discussing their nail polish. Put your eyes on the road, girl!! It was a huge contrast between Hong Kong people and Cambodians. Even after few encounters, the people in Cambodia were so polite, so friendly and nice. The taxi driver was very nice and we cracked a couple of jokes and laughed together. The hotel is cheap and great. We sat on the skybar on the roof for a couple of chess games and nice drinks. A few european chicks are also in the hotel but nothing good enough to mobilise our flirting tricks and put them into action. Tomorrow will be a relaxing day for me and maybe more discovery for Morad.
Cambodia is a Kingdom. Its people are Khmer. Which is the ethnicity of around 97% of the people. They are mostly buddhist. The Khmer language is “The language with the most letters is Khmer (Cambodian), with 74 (including some without any current use). According to Guinness Book of World Records, 1995, the Khmer alphabet is the largest alphabet in the world. It consists of 33 consonants, 23 vowels and 12 independent vowels.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_alphabet In the next few days, I shall try to learn these letters or at least to write my name in Khmer.
A bad sleep, we needed coffee. In a local restaurant we got some bakery and toasts. Locals were having the same food they would have for lunch or dinner. It is just the same food and they ate it anytime. Or so it seemed. After breakfast we went to look for coffee 😀 it seems that we repeat meals twice in a conflict between trying the local food and getting satisfied with meals.
A long walk, a ferry ride to another island, a stroll in the turtle-shaped convention center, going to Ocean’s Park but not going inside because it is too expensive and not worth it, going to Stanely market and finding it disappointing, Morad wanting to try snake soup but the shop was closed, Tattoo art gallery that was supposed to be open from 6 to 8 but the gallery itself closes at 7, a Jazz bar that was too loud and crowded for a pleasant experience. It was a day full of us trying to do things and not getting the destinations reached.. however, the journey was more interesting.. Our walks to these places exposed us to many small new things dispersed here and there. Alongside a lot of time for talking. Today, Morad and I had a loooooot of conversations. I am writing this post now at 1:30 after a long conversation for the past two hours or more. We discussed our perspectives on love and relationships, on different countries and cultures we have been exposed to and about different plans and dreams.
Hong Kong with the turtle-shaped Convention Center Morad showing his not-so-special plastic bagWaiting for Morad to use the toilette in a cultural center
It has been only three days.. but somehow it is tiring that in general, the interactions with the locals here have been deprived of manners. No greetings, and if we start, they are rarely responded to. Same with a friendly smile. It is as if we are two different species or two different “things”. Well, actually as Morad says, by observing them with each other, this seems to be a cultural thing.. people bump into each other in the crowded subway and then separate again without any words of pardon or sorry. Like particles bombarding around and separating to go into their ways again. Somehow this lack of beauty in human interaction dries my soul. I realised again how important eye-contact is to me. The little decorations of our days in form of “good morning”, “thank you”, “have a nice day”, and “good luck”. We had many transactions here but most of them were dry and forgettable. Well, we discussed this manner with Vincent and Cheng a couple of nights ago, do men and women flirt in the street or approach each other? the answer was No. This is highly unlikely and it is not in the culture. You never talk to people who are not your friends or acquaintances. Everybody is focused on their way or their phone. Morad wondered why is the body language so minimal? Could it be the that the language is so strong that they need little support of hand or body gestures?
Meanwhile, we saw an italian girl talking in the phone facing the door of the subway. She was talking to her friends and seeing her reflections and using a full-programmed body language that you would think her friend is running outside the subway (dangerous! nobody does that). We still have a few days in Asia.. let’s see how our impressions will develop.
There is a certain charm in signs in a new country. Morad is photographing many of them. In particular we found this sign “no spitting” at the elevator. I find it interesting when there are many other sections in two languages but the “no spitting” part is also specially written in Urdu. Directed message?
Mama, where is dad? he is in jail for not buckling up in the bus:
hmm..
Tomorrow we fly to Cambodia, it is my second visit. I plan to revisit a couple of things and discover new things with Morad. I never thought I would visit Cambodia again.. but here we are, four years later! You can relive my last Asia trip in 2014 through this link: http://adham.elshahabi.com/blog/category/travel-diaries/asia-2014/
Here are some of the photos that Morad took. He posts most of the pictures in his instagram stories:
https://www.instagram.com/moradsays/
