reality bites, or robert downey jr. is a "loose card"

a full 24 hours in l.a., and we've accomplished nothing. it looks like typhoon nuri took a detour through our apartment, leaving cat hair, dusty old boxes, library books, and sandy, glorious beach clothes in its wake. i discovered today that this 6-day-pack-up-after-returning-from-nam plan was totally ridiculous as knox and i cannot be trusted to get anything of significance done - we got down to work at 3, only to lie down "for a sec" at 4 and wake up again at 6, when he left to do the laundry and i tackled our closet. my chore was a simple one - make a goodwill pile of my old clothes. this naturally required trying on a whole slew of "potential paris" outfits and vintage pieces that i don't wear but will not throw out because they are vintage (and thus rad!)... it took waaaay too long. knox returned from the laundromat to find me staring out the window and slightly frazzled, dressed only in my bra, a high-waisted gloria vanderbilt jean skirt, and one boot. our room was covered in my clothes (most of which, i've disovered, must go!), but he took it in stride. he just smiled at me (in that "i-love-you-but-you're-nuts" way), hung the laundry out back, then lit the fire for our steaks. how did i land such a man??

so, as day 1 of the packing fun winds to its unsuccessful close and i slip into a food, wine, and jetlag stupor, i leave you with this gem: knox, leaning in from the kitchen (where he is doing the dishes - how did i get so lucky?!?) asks: "would you rather hang out with jack black, ben stiller, or robert downey jr.?" and not missing a beat, i reply, "robert downey jr., not cuz he's hot (though he is) but because he is a loose card."

knox: "wild card? loose cannon? i don't get it, big dan" (he quotes from "oh brother"). what's classic here is that as he corrects my infelicity of expression, he realizes he's failed to rezip his fly from his last potty break. natch.

so much for keeping you posted...

greetings from santa monica, california! knox and i have made it home safely from our little jaunt in asia, in spite of typhoon nuri's rumblings through the region. her bark was a lot worse than her bite, in the end, and by the time we flew through hong kong, she'd long gone. the airport was still way out of whack from the day before (everything from schools to the stock exchange was closed in HK on friday), so we suffered some hefty delays. but i'll take 10 hours extra travel time over flying through 100mph winds any day!

last we left you, we'd just landed in ha noi after our trip to ha long bay. knox had just begun classifying all the bia hois in town (according to price, carbonation, and quality of available bar food) when he was struck down by what we've determined was either dengue fever, SARS, or a new and freakish combination of the two (okay, so really, it was just a simple respiratory funk). he had a couple of feverish days laying low but it didn't stop him from having che (and confirming it was AWESOME), or from hanging out in the circa-1970 cuban "victory" hotel pool, or from paying his respects to uncle ho. i fed him plenty of rice porridge (the vina-equivalent to chicken noodle soup) and left him to rest while i went out for fried tofu with shrimp paste and "young rice" ice cream popsicles.

it's just hit me that i will not be eating rice noodles or fish sauce or fried tofu or gloopy goodness for some time to come... i don't even think we'll make it to little sai gon before we leave los angeles - BUMMER.

wow, judging by how long it took me to compose that last sentence, i think i might need to sign off now. i'm pretty rocked by jetlag. and thanks to the fact that my flight bounced and rolled the whole way over the pacific, my body thinks it's on a boat... in an earthquake. i think that means it's time for bed... or a beer... but definitely not time to blog.

i'll be back soon to post some pics and give the scoop on da nang. then we have to get serious about packing up this apartment - we are out of here on august 31. yikes.

bia ahoy!

knox, in beer heaven
one glass is just under 20 cents

ha long bay

finally, the beach!

LB here, back in northern viet nam after our quick trip to cambodia (happy to report, by the way, that i breezed through passport control with no problem at all). as knox mentioned in his two posts, we really enjoyed our time in cambodia - warlords and disneyfied cultural heritage sites aside. i was also very uncomfortable with the fact that i couldn't speak the language and have now put "learn khmer" on my official list of things to do - because it would actually be relevant to my work and because i like to torture myself.

as soon as we landed in ha noi, we got on another bus and headed out to ha long bay, one of the most marvelous places on earth. neither the photos nor my description will do this place justice, but i give the former anyway:






in addition to some very pretty pics and a priceless comment on knox's part ("this is the most beautiful sky i've ever seen" - does it get any better than that??), we also came away from our overnight in ha long bay with a belly full of fresh seafood, a jellyfish sting, a scary-looking rash, and a pretty healthy inner-conflict about non-sustainable tourism and the slow destruction of world heritage sites. check, check, and check.

the vietnamese government certainly knows what a treasure ha long bay is, and i just hope those in charge will take their eyes off the immediate prize of tourism dollars, which are coming in by the bucket these days, long enough to put some preservation measures into place. maybe start with an anti-litter campaign? because it really is upsetting to see a coke can floating through such gorgeous waters...

enough of that. we're in ha noi now for a few more days before we return to the beach, this time in da nang. i've been dragging knox all over the city and have even gotten him on the back of a motorbike! and he tolerates my non-stop itinerary in exchange for a cold beer here and there. he has found his people among the sidewalk-stall-beer-drinking northerners, by the way. he is completely taken by their preservative-free, made-to-be-drunk-quick light beer, and they are fascinated with his big, hairy body and love his jovial nature - two days and we've already got a regular bia hoi joint! it's a match made in heaven.

"Holiday in Cambodia" – Part 2 Angkor Wat, 8/10-8/12

Angkor Wat at sunrise

So in my last post I was aiming for a distraught Western tourist vibe. Before continuing with details on our sojourn in Cambodia in this post, I'd like to first express my utter astonishment and delight at Vietnam, especially Hanoi. Walking the streets of this place with Leslie, I've had the thought several times: "there's absolutely nowhere else I'd rather be." The place is intoxicating and invigorating at the same time. And I just love being among the Vietnamese people themselves. When you consider their experiences in recent decades, it's simply mind-boggling and commands a kind of deference as you walk among them. As many of you know, Leslie and I are both stupidly nervous fliers. But flying Vietnam Airlines on the way from Siem Reap to Hanoi, I thought, just since 1940, these people took care of the Japanese, the French, and the Americans in succession in the name of national independence, before bailing out their neighbors the Cambodians from their disaster in the 1980s and fending off the latter's Chinese "allies" in the north: I trust their airline.

Ok, so back to Cambodia, and on to Angkor Wat. Though the name Angkor Wat refers to a specific temple, the name is often used for an area that is hundreds of square kilometers and includes hundreds of temples. The town of Siem Reap is the starting point for access to Angkor Wat. As a result of its high tourism quotient, it has become somewhat Disneyfied – which makes for a stark contrast with Phnom Penh. We had some good meals, and a good beer at a backpacker bar called "Angkor What?" We declined the two pitchers of Vodka Bull which would have scored us a t-shirt and settled for a glass of beer a piece as we ogled young twentysomethings who had come to Asia to "find themselves" only to find each other.

Thanks to Max and Jess Norman, we scored a great guide for our two days exploring the temples. Ratanak and I are pictured below:

Knox and Nak

Ratanak was a fount of information and a generally charming presence. The best part of having him around was that he set the pace for us. Keeping us moving along from temple to temple, but giving us time to take in what we were viewing. He had a good command of English, but it was clear that somewhere along the way an instructor had told him that the following three expressions are basically interchangeable in English: "that's right" "of course" and "why not?" This made for some strange exchanges. Examples:

Leslie: "So these Hindu temples became Buddhist when new kings took over in the sixteenth century?"

Ratanak: "Why not?"

OR

Knox: "So that tasted like fish in my lunch but I couldn't quite place the flavor..."

Ratanak: "That's right."

At any rate, the temples were amazing sites. My fave was Banteay Srei built in 967 AD, way out in Malaria-town, a good 40km from the center of things. This was the place Andre Malraux looted in 1923 before being busted by the colonial authorities waiting for him in Phnom Penh. Kind of hard to hide stone bas reliefs under your shirt, I guess. Definitely wouldn't fit in your carry-on.

A final note: great hotel in Siem Reap, called the Auberge Mont Royal d'Angkor. $30 a night for absolute comfort and a dope pool.

Here are some more highlight shots of Angkor Wat. Look for the next post from the host of fravina on our time in Halong Bay.

Face of the Buddha at Bayon temple


Ta Prohm, also known as "Lara Croft, Tomb Raider"

Banteay Srei

"Holiday in Cambodia" – Part I: the Phnom Penh experience, Saturday 8/9/2008

Ok, first things first. Y'all need to hear this, y'all, before I get started on Cambodia: Leslie's Vietnamese blows my mind. And it blows everyone's mind here. I've listened in on a lot of exchanges that, initially, sounded like gibberish to me. They all start out in some obscure way, with strange sounds and words, and then they inevitably turn into a conversation about how in the EFF this girl from the States knows how to speak Vietnamese. When the vacation is over, this is the only Vietnamese I will know myself because I've heard it so many times.



On to Cambodia. A friend of mind recently described our first stop, Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh, as a "dark, nihilistic place." If I remember correctly, he elaborated by saying: "it's just not somewhere you want to be." This is totally wrong. During my six hours outdoors there, I had only glancing encounters with sex tourism and drug trafficking. Phnom Penh was a delightful place ultimately, if terrifying in spots. But the terror really had more to do with me than the city. Case in point: my "heart of darkness" moment. Riding back from the Sovannaphum dance theater recital Leslie took me to in a tuk tuk, I fell asleep briefly suffering from jet lag only to awaken in a dark alley, in motion, to the sight of a shirtless Cambodian man moving toward me out of the shadows. There was also a sweet smell in the air of some Khmer spice and the night's garbage. Needless to say, this was totally awesome.

But not as totally awesome as my introduction to Phnom Penh earlier that day. We arrived by bus, and two delightful gents took us by car to our hotel. When we arrived, the concierge took us across the street into a dark passageway between two buildings. He then unlocked a padlock on some gate type thing, and then pointed upstairs, indicating our room was there. We went to our room. It was spacious and clean. And tricked out with "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" institutional lighting. "Dark, nihilistic place."

So we go to lunch at the restaurant across the way. It's all good. Seriously. People are nice, food is tasty. Then a rabid dog starts getting pissed across the street. And then some warlord type dude walks by our table, dressed in black, packing a pistola and extra rounds on his belt. Leslie caught the reaction shot:


Good times, good times. After this we took a tuk tuk to Tuol Sleng, S21, the museum recounting the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. This was a valuable experience. I don't know what struck me more, the human element of political terror captured in the photos of the numerous victims of the place (it's a testament to the KR's "confidence" in their project that they had no compunction about recording for posterity the faces of their victims) or the lack of narrative or historical context provided for visitors. This latter feature is likely a result of the fact that today still, Cambodians aren't very interested in making sense of this recent period of their history, largely because virtually all of those old enough were on one or, eventually, both sides of the social experiment called "Year Zero."

I know it sounds rough here, and parts of it no doubt were. But Leslie and I quickly decided this was a place we would come back to. If need be.

fravina welcomes...

knox and ho

greetings from ha noi – hooray! – where knox and i have settled in for a few days after delightful visits to angkor wat in cambodia and ha long bay in viet nam (rad pics to follow). i seem to have developed sympathy jetlag and am EXHAUSTED tonight, so i'll keep this short. we wrapped things up in sai gon last friday, after a looong four weeks of study. i gave an "animated" 10-minute presentation on beauty conceptions and the rise of plastic surgery in viet nam (i believe "animated" here is code for "why do you still speak like a 3rd grader?" but i'm going to let that go) and knox tickled everyone by falling asleep on my shoulder in the middle of the talent show (in his defense, the performing cô was singing a traditional lullaby).

as this is knox's first visit to southeast asia, i decided to start strong, show him what this place has to offer: war remnants museum in hcmc; end-of-program "awards ceremony," talent show, and dinner; 12 hours in a bus to siem reap (to see angkor wat) with an overnight on the way in phnom penh ($20 a night, baby); killing fields... he has held up incredibly well. so well that i've invited him to guest blog on cambodia.

now that we're in ha noi and back in the blogosphere, i promise more regular postings. we've got five days worth of material to catch you up on...

VINAdventures, part deux

adventures in moto-hug:

i decided against renting a bike in sai gon, which has generally proven to be a wise plan. i walk to school everyday and cab to dinners with friends, so i'm not really missing it here. thanks to VINAdventure volume 1, however, i've been back and forth between my hotel and the backpacker district several times now and have opted each time for a xe om, or "motorbike taxi" (literal translation: "moto hug"). you may or may not already know, but i've got a few control issues. basically, i kinda prefer to be in charge. and basically, kinda all the time. taking a xe om across town is a form of therapy for me. aside from the occasional oi troi oi, nhanh qua! ("good god, you drive fast!") or the anh oi, lai cham hon di! ("hey older brother, slow it down a bit") - which they never seem to process - i have absolutely no control over the ride.

case in point: just zipped over to the travel agency to pick up my re-entry permit (which, by the way, is just a piece of paper (already creased, i might add) stamped in red that the agent pulled out of her purse... i'm going to have to zen out on this lest it ruin my trip to cambodia...). and i took a xe om there and back.

first moment of letting go: wearing the helmet provided by the xe om driver. if i think about it too long, my scalp starts to itch.

second moment: pretty much everything else. i don't know if they're mad at me for bargaining (i won't pay more than half of what they initially quote me, and i'm quite certain i'm still overpaying at that!) or if they are simply fearless individuals, but these guys are notoriously crazy drivers. now i remember why i was so quick to get my own bike when i was here before. we were driving almost twice as fast as the rest of traffic, and i'm relatively certain we never once followed a straight path. it reminds me of playing frogger. big tourist bus in front of you? never mind, pass it on the left in the foot of space between it and the curb. oh, it's turning left now? no problem, speed up and zip around in front of it. lady driving a toyota forerunner the opposite way on a one way street? no worries, take the sidewalk. guy carrying a 6-foot tall plate of glass? let's drive next to him. red light? that's just a suggestion.

really, what's a little turbulence at 35,000 feet compared to this?

VINAdventures

adventures in bureaucracy:

no stay in viet nam is truly complete until you find yourself in a tangle of vietnamese red tape. when i first moved here, back in 2000, i was convinced this infuriating mess - the wait, the inefficiency, the back and forth, the shuffling of paperwork, the uncanny experience of having just-awakened-from-her-nap-and-now-rather-surly employee A tell you that your request is impossible and then having just-back-from-lunch-and-equally-grumpy employee B confirm 30 seconds later the exact opposite - was a product of communist bureaucracy. after spending 10 months in paris, however, i now suspect otherwise...

anyway, i've been in viet nam for the last seven weeks on a single-entry student visa. since the plan is to skip over to cambodia for a few days with knox after the end of my program, then fly back to ha noi and work our way back down to sai gon, i need the status of my visa changed. and pronto. being the type A nut job that i am, i naturally jumped on this as soon as i got to town. and yet, as week three in hcmc draws to its close, i find that i have gotten myself nowhere. thought it would be best to go through the "liason" at my school, who, after announcing that it would cost $150 to change my status to multiple entry (what what what??), just yesterday revealed to me that she actually knows nothing about the visa process. right. so i teamed up with another gal in the program to scout the local travel agencies, and between the two of us, we talked to five different places: number one said "impossible," two said "of course, $65," the gal at place number three had too thick an accent to understand, and the last two said "re-entry visa - $35." we decided to go with them.

all you do is pay $10 to get a "permit form," then show up at your point of entry with two passport photos and $25 more... and voilà!

BUT, here's the thing... i'm sorry, what the flip are these people talking about?? how come everyone's got a different story here? am i supposed to bargain with immigration like i do the fruit lady at the market? and what to do when i show up at noi bai airport in ha noi and the ruddy-faced-and-intimidating-though-half-my-size contrôle starts shaking his head and barking at me in vietnamese??

this is what we should be covering in class!