to Phnom Penh by bus

Travel Truth #3: Happy accidents do happen. Especially at dinnertime. 

My Vietnam-Cambodia hop went off without a hitch. I awoke, dressed, went downstairs, and paid $20 for my laundry, a bottle of water and a ticket to Cambodia. Now that's my kind of trip, right there. The receptionist arranged for a shuttle ride to get me to the bus terminal and before I knew it I was in a tiny, rollicking minivan with half a dozen other would-be passengers, including a sweet old Thai gentleman whose name I shall never be able to pronounce, let alone spell. We boarded our bus at the station, handed over $25 apiece and our passports to be stamped with Cambodian visas, and took off for the border. 

We were on Cambodian soil by 11:20. We made three stops at the border: one to get our entry forms, one to get our visas, and the third for lunch—a spacious open-ended warehouse of a building with a corrugated tin roof and orange tile floors, so cool that a couple of lazy dogs were sprawled down and napping upon it, flies buzzing about their noses. I had chicken and green beans over rice, which I was somehow able to pay for with Vietnamese money (only $2 American). I sat with the nice Thai gentleman and his bent, wrinkled, sleepy friend, who didn't speak a word of English and was wearing a Saigon souvenir baseball cap with the price tag still on it. 

While we chatted, there came a noise like an oncoming freight train. A mild hiss became a rattle, and the rattle an earth-shaking roar. The monsoon rains were pounding down on the tin roof, each drop as big as a .50-caliber bullet, and you could hardly hear yourself think. The Thai gent and I finished our conversation at a yell and then boarded the bus to continue our journey. 

My impressions of Cambodia weren't that different from Vietnam—the two countries looked pretty similar. But the countryside here was dustier, flatter, trashier, poorer, and the people were decidedly more Indian-looking. I saw hump-backed, cud-chewing Brahman cattle, houses on stilts, wells with tin-roofed cupolas, ponds covered with lily pads and filled with garbage, and locals napping in hammocks—hammocks strung between stanchions, between stilts, between fence posts and walls, even between trees at the side of the road. Hammocks everywhere. 

About a half hour before we made Phnom Penh, the bus nosed its ponderous way onto a car ferry and we crossed the broad, rambunctious, muddy Mekong. 

We reached the city at about 3:30 in the afternoon. The outskirts of the town were dirty and dingy, with more of the hollow, crumbling buildings and skewed thoroughfares as Hanoi had possessed—but the Cambodian roads were mostly unpaved and the rotting buildings even dustier and more decrepit-looking. Even the highway from Saigon had been gravel for miles at a stretch. 

I jumped off the bus and nabbed the first tuk-tuk driver I could find. I forked over $5 for a ride across the north-central part of town to my hotel. Five bucks was a bit steep—I overheard other foreigners getting rides for $3—but I acquiesced, as it was the same price I'd have paid for a cab in HCMC. 

My room at the Amber House near Wat Langka wasn't ready for me when I arrived, so I was bowed into a gigantic room with two double beds across the hall. 

The funniest thing was that they had Korean comedy/variety shows on TV. With English subtitles. And as one of my coworkers from Sejong pointed out, they still weren't funny. 

I showered to get the sweat and travel grime off me, rested up for a couple of hours, and then walked to the Independence Monument and the king's memorial and snapped some shots of each. 

I had dinner at the Herb Cafe, a tourist trap of a restaurant and bar just a couple of doors down from my hotel, right across the T-intersection from Wat Langka. I hated myself for even setting foot in it. There was nobody else there but for a young, bespectacled, alarmingly skinny French hipster (perusing a tiny notebook and sipping a cocktail); a tubby, neck-bearded tourist in a black T-shirt and cargo shorts; and an elderly business traveler with a pressed blue cotton shirt and black slacks. I glanced over the menu and picked the first dish that looked good—Khmer amok—plus a whiskey sour. A full meal and an aperitif all for the low-low price of seven U.S. dollars. Zounds. I began to take a (brief) shine to Cambodia. 

I found out later that, quite by accident, I had ordered the country's national dish. Amok is a curry steam-cooked in banana leaves, with thick coconut cream and galangal being integral ingredients. Khmer amok with fish is one of Cambodia's core culinary traditions, though amok can be made with everything from chicken eggs to bamboo shoots to algae. All I can tell you is that the Khmer amok I had at the Herb Cafe near Wat Langka was spellbinding in its spicy savoriness, though (true to my code), I did not take any pictures of it. You'll just have to imagine it. Or better yet, make it yourself and try it. 

Because I had nothing to do when I'd finished my meal (but not my second whiskey sour), I struck up a conversation with the French hipster. As I'd suspected, the tiny notebook in his hands was a handmade Khmer primer. The fellow was trying to teach himself the alphabet while he sat and waited for his Buddhist friends to stop meditating in the nearby Wat Langka. His name was Erwin and he'd been working in financial administration at a local French school for the past eight months. We chatted for a few minutes until I drove him away with my questions, and he packed up and went in search of his friends. I stepped across the road into Samaky, another trendy open-air saloon with liquor bottles arranged on illuminated glass shelves along the back wall. I had a few glasses of Angkor Draft (75 cents each) and stared at the laughing clump of Cambodian ladies in the corner booth and the brooding old white dude with the natty, gnarled dreadlocks hanging down his sunburned, tank-topped back. Then I felt lonely and bored and went back to my deliciously cool room to plan tomorrow's escapades. 

Next up: the first and only full day in Phnom Penh. Prawn shooters are involved. 

Suizen-ji Jōju-en (or, how to pet a carp)

"Now," says the venerable Vaunter, hitching up his trousers, "I've seen my share of gardens."

And he's not lying. I love gardens. I go to 'em wherever I can. Wherever they are, I'll find them. Parks and gardens are as high as museums and towers on my list of must-see things to judge a culture by. They're quiet, peaceful, naturally beautiful places where you can recharge your travel batteries. It's absurdly easy to get a good photograph, and you can get an idea of the importance the local culture puts on landscaping and botanical beauty. I've been to the extensive gardens at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; looked down upon the Royal Botanic Gardens from my remote perch atop Edinburgh Castle, Scotland; strolled through Yeomiji Botanical Garden on Jeju Island, South Korea; and, of course, photographed the eastern portion of the Imperial Palace Gardens in Tokyo, and the grounds of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan.

But out of all of them, Suizen-ji Jōju-en in Kumamoto was my favorite. Take a gander:

Ain't it beautiful? I'm starting to see why Lafcadio Hearn put down roots in this town.

As you may have noticed from that one pic up there, this pond was absolutely bursting with carp so huge that they looked like they'd been mutated by nuclear radiation (sorry, too soon?). I could tell they were accustomed to being fed by passersby, 'cause they swarmed wherever my shadow touched the water, mouths agape.

I took advantage of that fact to cop a feel:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I felt up a carp. In the Suizen-ji Gardens. In Kumamoto. On Kyushu. That's the kind of person your Vaunter is.

Then I kept walking, snapping the prettiest pics I knew how, making a languorous circuit of the reflecting pool:

 

It was on the home stretch that I came to understand how the carp in this pond got so freaking fat. A couple of little old ladies, one of whom looked to be a hundred and two with hardly a tooth in her head, were selling stale breadsticks to park-goers. I bought one and spent a happy five minutes goading the greedy fish into a feeding frenzy.

And then I waltzed out of there, content as a carp with a mouthful of soggy bread. Back to the tram station and a few stops toward the town center brought me to the last item on my to-do list:

KUMAMOTO CASTLE.

You'll notice that's a tad larger than the other post previews have been. That's because Kumamoto Castle is

GINORMOUSLY

FREAKISHLY

HUGE.

You'll see for yourself, if you have the gumption to tune in tomorrow. C'mon and storm a castle with me.

Tsukiji Market and Godzilla

Day One of Tokyo, concluded:

Just so you know, this is the Sententious Vaunter's 500th post. Somebody throw confetti.

So, after I finished with the Hamarikyu gardens, it was time for the next item on my Day-One-of-Tokyo itinerary: sushi. Real, actual, honest-to-goodness Japanese sushi. I've had California rolls, Korean gimbap, and quite a bit of whatever passes for sushi in other countries. But this was the real deal. Tsukiji Market. The largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the entire world. One of the largest wholesale food markets of any kind. The hub of Tokyo's seafood industry. Fishmonger heaven, in other words. And Sushi Central, with any luck.

Tsukiji as seen from Shiodome. Photo by Chris73 at Wikimedia Commons.

I didn't go to the actual market part of the complex, where they do goofy things like slice whole frozen tuna with band saws and auction off dead sea creatures at ridiculous prices. No, I wasn't coming here to bid on a blowfish or see the freshest catches at 4 a.m. Nope, I was here for one thing: SUSHI. All I could eat. Plain and simple.

I meandered up and down the restaurant area (stuck in the northwest corner of the complex, I believe). There were a lot of lines. Either the chefs here were very famous, or the fishermen had caught something particularly interesting that day, or there was a big sale going on, or all three. The waits looked to be hours long. It didn't help that these sushi shops were tiny: some of them basically an aisle with a bench and stools, and a tiny preparation area behind a counter. They'd fit only 10-15 people at a time. So I kept meandering. Eventually I found a larger sushi joint at the far end of the restaurant area that had no waiting time and several hardworking chefs in cylindrical hats bustling about behind the counter. So I stepped in.

I bet these two guys would make a fine Japanese reality TV show. They could call it Sushi Hour with Goro and Junichi.

I sat down at the counter and perused the menu. I wasn't looking at the words. I can't read a syllable of Japanese (though I would be able to figure out the character for "mountain" by the end of the trip). Instead, I looked at the detailed pictures—and the prices. Ultimately I decided on this little number, for about 1,200 yen ($12):

How's this for a slice of fried gold?

It was delicious. The fish was fresh, the rice lovingly molded, the seasonings just right. I tried to slow down and savor it but I wound up bolting the lot at record speed.

I spent a half-hour chatting with the American couple next to me (turns out they were from Los Angeles, and the woman had been born in Victorville, the next town over from Apple Valley...small world). Then I grabbed my camera, settled up (noting, thankfully, that my Visa card worked in Japan after all) and left the market. After a bit of wandering, and a very nice Japanese man stopping to help me, I walked west for a block, rounded the corner and found the next item on my to-do list. This:

That's right, folks: it's a statue of Godzilla. It was located in a small public square near a Starbucks that looked like it had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, just east of Hibiya Park, near the Imperial Palace gardens.

At the time, I was vaguely disappointed in this statue. It was a bit small, I felt. Diminishing. I mean, I knew it obviously couldn't have been built to scale. But nonetheless I was rather let down. The offices of Toho Studios were nearby, which explains the statue's existence, but you'd think they'd have a bit more respect for the original daikaiju than to just stick a tiny metal version of him up in a park in Tokyo.

Well, that was it! After my visit with Gojira-san, Day One of Tokyo had been completed. I adjourned to the Sotetsu Fresa Inn (just around the corner from my capsule hotel near Kyobashi Station) to meet Miss H and Miss J. We checked into our rooms, went out, had some Subway sandwiches for dinner, and then went to a pub for some sake and fugu. Yes, you read that correctly. Despite the insanely toxic nature of fugu (pufferfish), not to mention some dark rumors of nuclear contamination, I went ahead and gave fuguzushi a try. It was quite rubbery and tasted strongly of iodine. Nonetheless I toughed it out, ate all three pieces (for about 560 yen, I think) and washed it down a bottle of sake. Hang the detractors. Miss H and Miss J just shook their heads at me, but this was something I knew I had to do. We all went home happy and stuffed.

Don't miss tomorrow's post: TOKYO DISNEYLAND...and all that transpired there. Stay tuned, you won't wanna miss this.

birds, fish, and onomatopoeia

                                                                                     This image belongs to Adam Koford on Tumblr.

Sometimes I catch myself wishing that I had a cooler surname. (Sorry, Dad, but it's true.) "Post" seems kind of basic sometimes. It's a one-syllable word, for one thing. It sounds chunky and awkward. Post. Not much you can do with that. Whenever I get into these moods, I wish for a longer last name, one less bereft of imagination or dignity.

I've compiled a list, in case you're interested. Just so you can say them out loud and compare. Heck, I'll even give you my first name. Feel privileged: this is the first time I've shared it on this blog. It's Andrew.

So take Andrew and match it with some of these babies:

• Shackleton — as in Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer.
• Rackham — as in "Calico Jack" Rackham, the pirate; I'd suggest using my nickname "Andy" for this one.
• Livingstone — "Andrew Livingstone, I presume?"
• Sullivan — Ed Sullivan.
• Longstreet — James Longstreet, Confederate general.
• Minogue — I had to throw that one in there, 'cause my mom reads this blog and she'll get the joke. It refers to Kylie Minogue...
• Remington — after Eliphalet Remington, who founded E. Remington & Sons in 1816...yes, that Remington.
• Winchester — 'cause that wouldn't sound too bad either.
• Hightower — after quip-and-quote author Cullen Hightower.
• Hillary — Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest; and while we're on that subject, "Tenzing Norgay" is a pretty badass name too.
• Beckenbauer — nobody in particular, it just sounds cool.
• Faulkner — if you don't know who inspired this choice, I'll smack you.
• Fitzgerald — ditto; there's a film based on one of his books in theaters right now!
• Driscoll — Jack Driscoll from King Kong.

They sound so austere, don't they?

Then I remember that some of my favorite people in the world—particularly writers—have one-syllable last names. H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, Howard Hughes, Gustav Holst, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Ringo Starr, Orville & Wilbur Wright, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Thomas Hobbes, Howard Hawks, James Burke, Dave Grohl, Mungo Park, Captain James Cook, and H. &  H. Fritz. (Those last two are my grandparents.) Every single one of my Korean students, past and present, has a one-syllable surname—be it Choi or Han or Lee or Kim. And there's a lot of fictional characters who are near and dear to my heart who have 'em, too: Martin Riggs, Arthur Dent, Bruce Wayne, and (of course) Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones.

I can't forget that Post is my parents' name, too. And my brother's. And all my ancestors, going back to Germany or the Netherlands or wherever the heck they're from. And that's all right by me. I guess "A.T. Post" wouldn't look too bad on a hardback cover in a bookstore.

Speaking of sounding more austere, I did something interesting in one of my free-talking classes yesterday. I have just one single student, whom I'll call Justine. (I always liked that name. I'm angling for it to be the name of my first daughter, but Miss H isn't budging.) We got to talking about animal names, somehow. If it's one thing I'm short on, it's Korean vocabulary. So we started swapping names. I'd come up with an animal and she'd tell me the Korean name. In this way I found out the words for cuckoo (ddak-dda-guri), owl (bu-eong-i), ostrich (tajo), flounder (gajami), eel (jang-eo), oyster (gul), stingray (gwang-eo), and jellyfish (haepari). This was partly for our enjoyment, partly for my education and partly so Justine would be able to impress her future employers with her English vocabulary.

We also talked about animal sounds. I discovered that the Koreans have quite a different set of these, and in many cases, the sound is more faithfully reproduced than they are in the Western lexicon. Over here, mice don't squeak, they say jjik-jjik. (To make this work properly, your Korean pronunciation has to be flawless. Speak the words rapidly in a high-pitched tone, pronouncing the double-j with a grin on your face and barely scraping over the k at the end. The result sounds remarkably like the cheep-cheep noise which mice actually do make. Now, please record yourself doing this and send it to me. Tee hee.)

Cats don't meow, they say na-ong. Try it. Nah-oh-ng. Roll it together with the same rising and falling inflection that you'd use to say "meow" if you were imitating a cat. NAONG! Crazy, eh?

Dogs don't growl, they say eu-reu-reong. (The "eu" vowel sound is manufactured by saying "oo" without making  your lips into an "o" shape. "Reong" sounds like the English word "rung." Blend it all together in a dog-like voice and you'll get the idea.)

We also talked about onomatopoeia. Once I'd conveyed the meaning of this bewildering word to her, she smiled and started ticking off sounds. It seems that, in Korea, old men don't grumble: they say "Jujeol-jujeol." This is what inarticulate kvetching sounds like—sort of what the word "jewel" would be if you replaced the "w" with another "j."

It's common practice, especially among poor male college students and young bachelors, to go down to the convenience store at night, buy a bowl of instant ramen, and prepare it and eat it right there in the store. Most shops and corner marts have a microwave oven and a small counter on-site. It doesn't surprise me anymore when I see a crowd of schoolboys (or even elderly couples on weekends) standing over matching bowls of steaming noodles in a 7-11 or a Mini-Stop, slurping them up contentedly.

The sound effect for slurping is hu-ru-ruk. Again, go real lightly over the k at the end. Don't think of it as a sound, but rather as the place where sound stops. Blur the syllables of the word all together, as fast as you can. Slur it. Better yet, don't use your voice: whisper it. Breathe it in. Try to make a slurping noise with your mouth as you say it, and you'll hear it.

As with other Asian nations, the Koreans have onomatopoeia for states and activities that normally don't even make a sound. I think I've mentioned on this blog that the Japanese (and likely the Koreans) have sound effects for staring (jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii), standing still (shakeen), jaws dropping (gabeen) and falling in love (mero-mero). A lot of these probably come from comic books and aren't in the general lexicon, but you never know. One of the ones that Justine told me about yesterday was kkeunjeok-kkeunjeok. It sounds like "goon-juck," if you say the g and the k REALLY QUIETLY. Bounce over them as if your tongue was a tennis ball oscillating between two rackets. Kkeunjeok-kkeunjeok.

This is the sound of stickiness.

I kid you not. For the full effect, place your spread fingers on a tabletop and retract them as if you were putting them in dried maple syrup, and say this sound. Kkeunjeok-kkeunjeok. You can just hear the sticky.

To me, these noises sound more accurate than the ones I was brought up with. Maybe that's just me, but it's undeniable and it's maddening. I don't know what to attribute the eerie accuracy of Korean onomatopoeia to: perhaps it's because the language is so full of glottal consonants and versatile vowels that they're naturally disposed toward making sounds with their mouths. Or perhaps it's just because the Koreans are an ancient Confucian people that take pride in actually listening to sounds and reproducing them accurately—and have had several thousand years to practice.

Anyway, I thought you might find that interesting.

A.T. Post, signing off.

Aurelia aurita

Scratch another one off the bucket list.

Have you ever heard of the Aurelia aurita?

Unless you're a native Latin speaker or a biology professor, you probably haven't.

It's also known as a "moon jelly":

And I can honestly say that I know what they feel like to touch. I indulged in some heavy petting with a moon jelly down in Long Beach last Wednesday.

My folks took Miss H and I down to the Aquarium of the Pacific as a sort of farewell thing. (We're not leaving until February, but we were originally leaving in September, and then paperwork delays pushed that back to December, and the roof fell in, so...here we are. Best to get it done before anything else happens.)

We had a ball. The aquarium was smaller than I remembered, but still chock-full of some mind-blasting exhibits. A giant sea bass the size of an armchair swam back and forth in the main gallery; sea otters broke chunks of ice into small pieces and ate them with relish; the bat rays flopped out of the water for a pat on their slimy noggins; and the moray eels poked their evil heads from their holes, like old men glaring at noisy children on the sidewalk.

And then it happened.

In the middle of the Polar Seas display room was a rectangular basin of water, about the depth of a goldfish tank, but as long as a horse trough. In this tank, pulsating to and fro, was a gaggle of pale, bulbous, semi-translucent creatures resembling nothing so much as ragged, waterlogged pieces of tissue paper. They floated about, drifting with the gentle current, expanding and contracting their mantles lazily.

As soon as I saw the aquarium staff member standing behind the tank and the Purell dispensers on the wall, I understood what was going on. 

A rare opportunity had thrown itself my way. I was going to pet a jellyfish. 

So I rolled up the sleeve of my jacket, took my place in line, stuck out two fingers, and dove in with a relish. 

My rubric for stroking aquatic creatures is not extensive. In my youth, I had handled live goldfish, and I had petted the bat rays 40 minutes earlier. This was the limit of my experience. Thus far, I had observed several commonalities between species: the firmness of the flesh, the coldness of the skin and a general pervading sliminess. The moon jelly, surprisingly, possessed all three. In touching the mantle with the first two fingers of my right hand, I expected a yielding, gelatinous substance, as tenuous as it was transparent. Though undoubtedly soft, the jellyfish was relatively rigid to the touch; I felt as though I would have to poke it much harder to make an impression in the flesh. Fortunately, I had the good sense and the biological politeness not to test this hypothesis. Keeping my hand well away from the tentacles of the onrushing herd of the moon jelly's fellows, I withdrew my hand and sanitized it.

For some reason, I was suddenly hungry.

random travel destinations - Mexico

Just like the Levant, Mexico used to be a place where Americans could go and party in safety. Jet-setting, chain-smoking middle-class folk, armed with gin and vermouth and Frank Sinatra, would fly down to Acapulco or Cancún, get drunk, get high, and party 'til the sun went down.
Nowadays, people still do that (mostly inebriated college students on spring break) but they run the additional risk of being poisoned by the water or abducted by the drug cartels.
The highest on my must-see list is Oaxaca. City, sure. State, most definitely. Problem is, both sit next to (or inside of, depending) the Beltrán Levya cartel's territory. But oh, my stupid side twitters, wouldn't it be worth the risk? For this?
For the record, that's the Ethnobotanical Garden at the Temple of Santo Domingo in the city of Oaxaca. I don't know what "ethnobotanical" means, but I don't much care, either. This isn't the first time I've run across odd names in foreign botanical gardens.
There'd be lots to keep me busy in Oaxaca de Juárez (that's the full name). I could wander in and out of any one of the numerous churches that dot the city, like the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, or the Santo Domingo de Guzmán Church.
I could stare into the waters of the Atoyac River, or people-watch in the Alameda de León plaza.
I could sample the delicacies of the Mercado Benito Juárez.
I might head south, out of the city, to the fishing towns by the Pacific, dive for octopus with the locals, and sample some of the best seafood and mole sauce Mexico could offer me.
Perhaps I'd wander through the countryside, snacking on chapulines (fried grasshoppers with chile).
Maybe I'd climb the Sierra Madre, replete with three-day beard and crumpled fedora, looking for treasures like Indiana Jones or Humphrey Bogart.
I'd round the whole day off with a clay mug of Oaxacan-style hot chocolate, with some pan de yema (egg bread) on the side.
And for the late nights and las fiestas, there's always las señoritas and the local mescal.
That and much more.
I'd just have to duck the cartels.