Thank you

This episode of the EKO Worldtour is officially over. I am sitting in my good friend Trace's apartment in downtown Chicago, disoriented from lack of sleep induced by a combination of jetlag and this blowout weekend with old college friends.

This trip was great. We rode on or in planes, taxis, pick-up trucks, buses, vans, bullet trains, skytrains, commuter trains, subways, trams, an elephant, a bamboo raft, bumboats, tuk tuks, motos, and bicycles. We visited castles, shrines, temples, ruins, statues, mosques, markets, memorials, parks, museums, and gardens. We ate everything, from the Keiseki to the yakitori, from five-star restaurant to zero-star street vendor, and from early-morning sushi to stir-fried chicken cartilage. We got lost, especially in Japanese train stations. We goofed around in a ryokan. We got weird in an onsen. We brought the peanut-butter-jelly dance far and wide. We challenged and sometimes dominated locals in Street Fighter 2 and Connect 4. We had san beeru. We found epic city views. We saw strange modern art. We went to birthday parties. We played bizarre video games. We karaoked. We stayed up all night with the cool kids in Tokyo. We went to a tech-house dance party in Kyoto. We hung out with domesticated deer. We crushed the best stew ever. We considered the A-Bomb Dome and Peace Park in Hiroshima. We saw sumo and Japanese baseball. We hunted and finished Ron Mexico’s bottles. We tried to learn the synchronized hand dances of the club kids in Singapore. We bartered. We played a lot of pool. We found the beach. We drank too many of the best coconut shakes in the world. We had clothes tailored. We learned how to cook Thai food. We hung out late with models. We lost dance-offs in Kuala Lumpur. And in Kuala Lumpur I finally found mangosteen.

Does that all sound good to you? Me too! In short, we had a lot of fun.

For everything I am greatly indebted to my companions in my travels. Kennon was a great partner in crime for the entire trip. He somehow managed to be a true student of our travel books while also occasionally opening himself to venturing away from the recommendations found in those pages. I knew from our time in Louisiana together that he would bring humorous perspectives and exciting curiosity to the trip, and he did not prove me wrong. I was fortunate, again, to have such a good friend along for the fun. As I said in an earlier post, Schreiner was a great addition to the trip, as well. Finally, our hosts in Tokyo and Singapore showed us unique parts of those cities, and generally made our times there manageable, interesting, and exciting. The trip really would not have been the same without the help, guidance, and friendship of Chris Jones, Miwa, Saya, Minami, Chris Brennan, Berger, Jen, and Samar.

There is something to be said for decontextualizing oneself, being in a place unfamiliar and strange, even if for only a short time. For me, it makes me notice more about the world because heightened consciousness is necessary just to operate in such an environment. I have to examine every detail, and consider what would otherwise be taken for granted. When traveling I search for understanding of other places and cultures, but in this way somehow I learn most about myself. And there is so much to see. These are some of the reasons I recognize my extreme privilege that I may go on these trips.

Tonight I fly to New York City, where I will make my new permanent home and begin my new work. Thank you, again.

The Kingdom of Thailand

I love Thailand. I love the heat of the tropical weather and the juxtaposition of the frenetic energy of its City of Angels with the areas of the country outside that crazy place. And the food. I have not been able to post in the last week because I was there, and we were moving pretty fast. A week is very little time for a country that has so much to offer, so we had to be selective. We spent the weekend in Bangkok negotiating with tailors for some clothes, seeing some sights and the nightlife, and remembering the hard way that the skytrain is the best way to traverse the city. The Chatuchak weekend market, the largest market in the world, was just as overwhelmingly vast and crowded as I remembered, but even my memory could not prepare me for our visit. I emerged drenched in sweat and carrying about five bags of random. As is my typical experience, though, Bangkok was not to be the star of this visit to Thailand.

Chiang Mai is a region in the north of the country, bordering at its extremity with Myanmar. Some consider it a cultural hub of Thailand, and although my last trip was a great one, my only regret was that Mike and I had not made it north due to the weather. This time, the weather cooperated. I found Chiang Mai to be a sleepy town with a pleasant, laid-back sensibility. It was quite relaxing.

I am a bit conflicted regarding the wealth of options for tours in and around Chiang Mai. On one hand, I am usually reticent to sign up for a tour predesigned and running daily because I think it obscures and in some ways distorts the very culture I seek to understand. On the other hand, I really wanted to ride an elephant. Decisions, decisions.


In the end, we opted for the canned tour, and much of it was great. Riding the elephant, for instance, was fun, and it was a fantastic experience to touch and simply be around these amazing animals. That the elephants had been trained to dance, play soccer and basketball, and paint was ridiculous.

Our tour also included a small exploration of an area of the region closest to Myanmar, including a quick ride on a northern tributary of the Chao Phraya River and a forgettable visit to the Karen that was functionally limited to an opportunity to be sold tourist wares by an ethnic minority group. This last visit was a perfect realization of my frustration with the type of trip we booked. We were sold the opportunity to see the Karen, and I understand that the very existence of the opportunity to visit a tribe in northern Thailand guarantees, just by the traffic it realistically creates, that the authenticity of what one will see will be tarnished by the visitors, but I was perturbed by the lack of information and opportunity to see what life is really like for these people. Perhaps I am searching for something that does not exist because of internal contradiction and inconsistency; I am, in the end, a tourist searching for an untouristy experience. But I do think that I have at other times found closer to the authentic when paving my own way. Who knows.

All in all, I am glad we did the day-trip. If asked for advice, I would say that one should hire a private driver and cherry-pick the highlights instead of signing up for a canned experience. Do ride elephants. Consider spending coin on a more intensive experience where you get the opportunity to learn how to ride alone and command the animals. Do see the elephant show. As corny as it is, it will make you laugh and marvel at the intelligence the elephants possess. Get out on the water. Do an impromptu visit to a more remote hilltribe, or, alternatively, arrange for an overnight trek through the hills. Do visit some temples in and around the city.

One of the highlights of our time in Chiang Mai was a day-long cooking class, where I learned to grind curry paste from scratch and the process of making six Thai dishes. Our instructors were funny and filled with information about each dish, Thai food generally, and where to source the necessary ingredients upon our return from our trip. I have some shopping to do so I can throw a Thai dinner party. Kennon looks pretty strong in the apron:

Again, lots of other stuff has happened in the past week. We had amazing meals for which I will spare you the description, knowing full well that this space is straying dangerously towards becoming exclusively culinary. Michael deserves a shout-out, however, for his recommendation to eat dinner at the Chiang Mai Mandarin Oriental. It was a bit of a splurge, but well worth it as arguably the best food of the entire trip (including the previously-blogged meals). We had countless fruit juices and smoothies. We spent much time exploring the night markets and city of Chiang Mai. We had crazy late-night transport adventures that included, at one time, five farangs on a tuk tuk with yours truly sharing the front single bucket seat with the driver and, at another, riding four-deep on a moto with international friends. Luckily, I lived.

Now Kennon and I are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia enjoying our last day here before heading back to Singapore for a couple nights. Sadly, the World Tour is almost over, and you will no longer have to endure international pictures of KFC.

Found it, again.

I'm sitting in an internet cafe near my hotel in Bangkok, eating my breakfast, purchased from roadside hawkers, of tapioca-filled pancakes, fresh-cut pineapple and papaya, and mangosteen juice, and mentally preparing myself to deal with the tailors who will sell me a three-piece suit and some fresh shirts. That is all a story for another day, though, because I'm writing to tell you about something else: the beach.

The last four days, before leaving Cambodia for good, Kennon and I spent our time in Sihanoukville, a lazy beach town on the southern coast of the country, perched on the Gulf of Thailand. We sought and found a perfect beach there. Otres beach, five kilometers from the "town" proper, is difficult to get to. If you consider that the only access to the area is to cross the border in the south of either Vietnam or Thailand, or, alternatively, to fly to Phnom Penh and take either a three-hour life-threatening taxi or five-hour uncomfortable bus ride south, the last two kilometers over unpaved and quite rocky dirt road is nothing to fret about. You have simply been desensitized from the journey. Those last couple of kilometers, though, past vacant farmland, freely roaming cattle, and a row of tented families living without electricity will make you question your direction and resolve the first time you make the trip. Are we really going the right way?

The payoff is when you come over the last hill, right next to the small community that subsists there, and see the deep green water that awaits. The beach itself, because it is almost completely inaccessible, has very little development. There are probably four serious businesses, willing to give you a hut 15 feet from the break of the water or fresh seafood, coconut shakes, and beers. The water, as I said, is a color of green I have only seen in the Gulf of Thailand, and it is something to behold. The white sands stretch cleanly and unspoiled around the curvature of the coast. The tall trees rise close to the water, providing shade and protecting the coast like sentinels. And the islands in the distance, where you can book snorkeling and diving adventures back in town, frame the scene.

Kennon and I made the trip to this beach two times. The first time, it was almost sunset. The second time, we came much earlier and made a day of it. While I sat eating freshly caught and grilled squid and watched the water brush up against the shore, sharing this beach with only, perhaps, fifteen other people, my only wish was that we had found this particular spot a little earlier.

All in all, I am simply glad I found it at all. It would be easy to miss, with only a small write-up in our travel book. This beach, it goes without saying, is one of the best beaches I have ever seen, ranking in the same category as Kendwa Beach, Zanzibar, Thong Nai Pan Noi, Koh Phangan, Thailand, and Bond Beach, at Railey, near Krabi, Thailand. The four are all unbelievably beautiful; that all are extremely difficult to access may well be concomitantly the source of this as well as a part of the romanticism of finding them. The experience is fleeting, though, as down the beach there appeared that the first luxury accommodation for this section of Sihanoukville is in the works.

Angkor

I'm sweating through the cheaply woven palm frond hat, sold to me the day before by an eleven-year-old hawker for $8 and clearly marking me for further harassment, as I climb the steps of Pre Rup, a Hindu temple built just over a thousand years ago. It is 8:30 a.m.

This was the beginning of our second full-day of privately-guided touring, which, in total was about 16 hours and included trips to Angkor Thom proper, including Bayon, Baphuon, Thommanon, Phimeanakas, Preah Palilay, and the Terraces of the Leper King and the Elephants, Ta Keo, Ta Prohm, Angkor Wat, the aforementioned Pre Rup, Neak Pean, Preah Khan, as well as side trips to Tonle Sap Lake, an artisan vocational school, and the Landmine Museum. Whew.

Much has been written on this place by learned historians more knowledgeable and eloquent than I. So I will let my pictures do the talking. Simply put, though, I was put in awe of these amazing structures; they demonstrate how magnificent the Khmer empire was because of their sheer number and the intricacy of their detail. I've never been to a place that captured so much of the history of a people, and that demanded that you consider what life was like for them when they were supreme. In me it invoked a visceral reaction not unlike those I experienced in other World Tour sites where I could not completely grasp either how or why something was done, namely the terracotta soldiers in Xi'an and the Great Wall in China and Machu Picchu. I have some reading to do. Now, however, I'm going to the beach.

Lunch

Two of the greatest things about Singapore are its location, right in the middle of Southeast Asia, and its history as an important stop in the trade routes that exploited seasonally changing trade winds and the Strait of Malacca. Both, together, have helped create a unique food culture here, a culture influenced by Malaysia, China, South India, and Indonesia. You can imagine how excited I was to get out there and explore (super-duper). The picture you see above is of my companions, Kennon, Dave Berger, and Dave's girlfriend Jen, at the tail end of our walking food safari through three hawker centers. Everyone was quite full after the tour, for which Kennon deserves much respect for the research he organized.

The hawker food centers are comprised of rows and rows of tiny stalls, each with purveyors of varying pushiness selling three to eight dishes. Typically, each of the dishes costs between S$1.20 and S$6 (approximately $1-4 US). It's a little nuts.

Our meal started at the Tekka Mall Food Court, which we stumbled upon looking for the Tekka Temporary Market. We were unsure whether this was what we were looking for, but decided to start eating because we were quite hungry. I started my meal with roast-duck rice, which was basically a medium-size serving of Peking duck, over rice, with a side of cucumbers and clear soup. I followed this with fresh pineapple, kiwi, and dragonfruit and a fresh lime juice. The duck was tender and flavorful, with the appropriate dark hoisin-style sauce, and just enough crispy skin. The fruit was extremely fresh; the lime juice was quite sour, but very refreshing. Total cost for the meal was $6.

I also sampled the dishes purchased by my friends. Jen ordered a "double-taste" noodle.

I'm not sure what the two tastes were, but I liked both of them. The dumplings were roasted pork meatballs inside a chewy boiled dough. The soba-esque noodles were dressed in a dark, sweet sauce. Kennon bought chicken tandoori, with onions, fresh nan, and a delicious curry sauce.

This dish was very good, in my opinion, although it was quite similar to many other tandoori dishes I have had in the past. Dave brought a spicy chicken laksa to the table.

Laksa is ubiquitous at the hawker centers we have visited (this wasn't my first rodeo, y'all), and seems to be one of the favorite local dishes. It's a spicy coconut curry soup, with rice noodles and all sorts of crazy bivalves and bean curds swimming inside. It is an overwhelming experience if you are not prepared for the heat, but well worth it.

From there, we walked through Little India, a bazaar of nick-knacks, woven goods, trinkets, and fruit stands. We needed the walk, because we had clearly purchased too much at our first stop, and our goal of going to multiple hawker centers was in dire jeopardy. Without knowing what we were doing, we actually happened upon the Tekka Temporary Market, our original starting point, but we were too full to order anything except some ABC juice, made from freshly squeezed apple, beet, and carrot. Juices in hand, we hopped into a cab and asked to be taken to the Maxwell Food Hawker Center, in Chinatown.

Dave and Jen were fading fast, and couldn't order any main courses at Maxwell, but Kennon and I had the iron stomachs and fortitude to continue on our ill-defined and unrecommended quest to try everything. Our research indicated that two of the quintessential dishes, available at that food center, were Hainan-style chicken rice and chicken porridge. Although there were some lines to wait through, we were not to be deterred.

The chicken rice was fantastic. The chicken was poached in its own stock, and served over perfectly cooked rice. It was very similar to the roast duck I ate earlier, although the taste was much more subtle. The side dipping sauce of crushed red peppers in vinager really set off the ginger flavor that permeated through the chicken. The highlight of this round of orders, though, was the Chinese porridge. It had tender thigh meat as well as crispy pieces of skin, green onion, and a dark sauce. It had other things in it that I could not identify. I'm fairly certain that my description does not do the dish justice, as it was transcendent. We also got some banana fritters, which were whole small bananas fried until crispy. This simple preparation was great.

Jen also purchased a "mango de longan," a mound of shaved ice with almost a dozen peeled longan fruits, as well as pureed mango and colored jellies for texture. I like longan, but to my unsophisticated palate they seem extremely similar to leche fruits. The dessert was cool and sweet; the bite I had was quite refreshing after everything we had eaten prior.


After leaving Maxwell, we wandered through Chinatown for a little bit. Seeing that we had come to the end of our lunch, I decided to pick up one last snack at a small stall.

The BBQ Pork Pastry was still warm after coming out of the oven. It was flaky and crispy on the outside, with a slight sesame taste. Inside was a chinese-style barbeque sauce with a few pieces of pork shoulder (I think).

I lost track of how much everything cost, but it was an unbelievable value nonetheless. Now I need a nap. The walking food safari was at once overwhelming and a great experience. I am not sure if I will ever eat again, but I do still need to try the fish-head curry and the chili crab. After eating an assortment of satay, chili-fried tiger prawns, spring rolls, and orders of laksa over the last few days, I am fairly certain I could never run out of things to try in this city. No time, though, to eat it all; tomorrow Kennon and I fly to Siem Reap, Cambodia, where other strange foods await.