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AdhaMexiCovid 05: Lovely People in San Cristóbal

Thursday 18.02.2021

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 anyway

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.

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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.

Elshähabi Memorandum 04: Hello Cambodia!

“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.

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.

Buonanotte

With Big Buddhaaa
Hong Kong Airport

Elshähabi Memorandum 02: Fish Lips

Landed in Hong Kong after a looong trip. Globalisation makes many airports look similar. While other passengers crossed the immigration smoothly and quickly, we had our “you-are-an-arab” welcome by having the officers close their offices and accompany us another area that seemed reserved for passengers with different shades of brown-skin. Nonetheless, the officers were extremely polite. We had to wait a bit while they checked all the documents and prepared what seemed to be the smallest Visa/entry permit in the world. Morad busied himself with tinder during our waiting. I sat beside him observing his swiping finger that moved to the left in a semi-automatic movement. Welcome to Asia! Left.. left.. left.. Seemed like he was swiping with the same girl to the left in different outfits.

We checked in our hotel in the 28th floor. We hurried up downstairs (:D) to meet Morad’s friend Nelson who flew from Taiwan to meet us. They first met in Taiwan in 2011 and then a couple of times in Europe. Nelson brought his friend Cheng who met his own friend Vincent in the street and brought him along. After greetings and introductions they took us to a restaurant in the 7th floor in some building. We would have never been in such a place using tripadvisor.
Nice conversations over dinner. Nelson is passionate about aviation, Vincent about animals and Cheng about life. They explained to us a lot of things about Hong Kong and Taiwan, the differences with China and some cultural aspects about life and love. The food was delicious, specially a fish cooked with sweet and sour sauce. The table had also shrimps, duck, chicken, jellyfish and shark fins soup (!) which seemed like a celebration of human domination of other earth animals. Check this video 😀

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctPdITtFXFE

Vincent, Morad, Adham, Nelson and Cheng 😀

After dinner, we bid the guys farewell, went to the hotel bar for a drink and chess and a happy night sleep.

Good morning, it is the 11th of October. We woke up and saw the view. Hong Kong downtown is composed of many thin and tall buildings. Like a pack of toothpicks. We found a place for breakfast and got an unusual combination of eggs, chicken breasts and toast plus the coffee that was unexpectedly good. After a short stroll around the city we went to meet Nelson again. This time he introduced us to Saravanan from Malaysia who introduced us all to Marco (from Taiwan). They both work in Cathy Pacific Airlines as flight attendants. They have planed to takes us to eat a local food called “Dim Sum”. Since Morad and I don’t eat Pork, they figured out that a good place for us to try the local food was the a local Mosque :D. We loved how these guys just took us where we can eat even without asking us about our preferences or if it was ok for us. Relaxingly rightly assuming trust. Again, great food with great people. We were exposed to fun stories from the lives of flight attendants as well as hearing about different aspects of living in Hong Kong as a foreigner.
After lunch and a stroll, Nelson took us with the bus to The Peak. A small shopping mall on top of a hill overlooking the islands with a great view over most of Hong Kong. Nelson works in a pharmacy that belongs to his family and is a very relaxed and smart guy. Warm-hearted. I found it entertaining that he met his girlfriend in a bread-baking course 😀 he has now a basic license to make bread. Cool, no?

The view from The Peak, one of these buildings was our hotel.

Nelson had to catch his flight back, we had to change the hotel. After staying the first night in a fancy hotel we moved to a much much much less fancy guest house. The fun started by the comic creature which I believe was a woman at the checkin desk. (S)he communicated to us that we will be sharing a 130 cm bed and that this is a “Standard double room” that we booked. Her not so enthusiastic assistent took us to the room that is probably the smallest room I have ever seen in my life. Morad could touch two opposing walls while standing in the middle. However, the room had an airconditioning, a fan, a hair dryer, a fridge, a small bathroom and even a clock (that does not work). Morad said that we will manage somehow!

It is dinner time and Morad wants to try exotic food! We walked to the Temple street where you find many stalls for handcraft and very dirty looking restaurants. I bought a new chess set (I collect those) and we chose a restaurant dirty enough to feel the local experience. We tried to chose the table but the old Hong Kongi (or Hongi) lady insisted we sit in a particular table. No problem. Morad ordered fried frog legs. I ordered Fish lips Congee (which is like a soup) or something. Us pointing at the english name of the order was the last of our meaningful communication in that place. The followup questions where not possible to understand nor to seek further explanations in sign language. Morad said “Well, whatever will come, we will eat it. Probably we will never know what we ate anyway”. Indeed, came the first dish, we were not sure if it was the fish lips since I imagined a bowl of lips ready to kiss. What came instead was one big fish head with some skull parts and some soft parts. At the beginning we couldn’t tell it was a fish. Morad thought it was the frog. It didn’t make since since there was one hard shell of bone which couldn’t fit any anatomical part of a frog. Unless it was the shoulder plate of some huge frog which I wouldn’t guess it lives in China :D. The second dish came and it was obvious that it is some creatures legs. So everything was sorted. It was delicious. Not as froggy as it sounds. We ate this strange combination, paid, and left to look for a real dinner 😀

Vincent has told me that foot massage is something there. I should be looking for a foot logo. If the foot logo has a smily, that means you can get some sexual massage as well. We went for the non-smily foot, well plus the head, which turned to be a great relaxing and sometimes painful experience. After the massage I felt somehow strange and wondered if the masseur used some reflexology secret tricks to change who I am and play in my personality. I was nonetheless relaxed.

We decided to end the day in a steak restaurant. It was a much earned end for the day. I ordered a mix grill which included beef, a prawn and a pigeon, extending the list of my consumed animals in the last 24 hours.

Now we are both in the room preparing to sleep in the 130cm bed and looking for accommodations in the next days with an eye more attentive to details!