Sunday, December 19, 2010

Going out with a BANG(kok)

Well, I had a FANTASTIC time in Bangkok and Hong Kong. They are both amazing places and I could see myself living in each...which means I loved them. Bangkok was filled with temples and monuments and delicious street food. We took this awesome day trip where we drove about 300km away and rode elephants, a bamboo raft on the river, and visited the Tiger Temple. The tiger temple was a bit disappointing because I felt like the tigers were mistreated, if not just sad but I'm not sure I can commune with big cats as well as I think I can. We also rode the river ferry quite a lot which was a fantastic experience and a fun/cheap way to travel down the river. And on our third day in Thailand we were headed to some very famous mansion when we ran across this huge market. The market was filled with tons of food and stalls- it was awesome! We dinned on a massive amount of free samples and purchased tons of different exciting food items and even some clothing. The market was extremely clean and well-planned. Some of the "stalls" from bakeries had brought in furniture for their customers to sit at and people-watch from. 


I'd also like to note that I FINALLY had some food I considered very spicy. I had green prawn curry at this Thai restaurant. First, I'd like to say it was delicious. So memorable. Second, I'd like to say that my lips were literally tingling HOURS after eating said curry. And I had finished off the meal with fresh mango accompanied by mango and coconut ice cream! In other words, I'd (at least attempted) to cleanse my palette. As us twenty-somethings say, major fail.


Hong Kong is an amazing city. It's part New York, part San Francisco, and a huge part Asian (I suppose it's also quite British but I didn't notice that to any great degree). The Times Square was small in comparison to that of NYC, but there was a 13 story (count 'em) mall in it. I found that extremely impressive/terrifying. We did a good deal of shopping in Hong Kong, which can be done on a budget. We also had a couple culinary experiences, specifically we went for dim sum one morning and had an awesome Japanese dinner (yes, we're talking very fresh sushi here). I liked dim sum much more than the "Chinese food" I've had in America, which mainly features fried chicken in a sweet, thick sauce. Dim sum is a compilation of a huge variety of foods, it may be safe to say most of them are steamed. We had one dish I thought was particularly good which was a noodle dish with big noodles (think ziti here) that surrounded a wrapping of noodle. It's hard to describe but I promise it was AMAZING. Covered in this brown sauce and accompanied by none other than peanut sauce and hoisin sauce. Nomnomnom. As for our Japanese meal, it was filled with soupy noodle dishes and seaweed salad. Now before you get proud and think that you know what I'm talking about, allow me to explain. Seaweed salad is a pile of seaweed (looks just like the stuff you see in the ocean, dark green and salty) with some romaine lettuce surrounding it. It's served with a dressing that looks like ranch but has a large dose of horseradish in it...delicious. And the culinary expert I was with (a friend from the study abroad program who happens to live near Hong Kong at some points during the year) knew to also put her soy sauce (which had an impressive amount of wasabi in it) over the salad. Double good.


Our last day in Hong Kong we visited Stanley Market and the surrounding area, which really reminded me of San Francisco. There are cafes and shops overlooking the water with a very open-aired feel, perhaps Sausalito would be more accurate as a point of comparison. After seeing Stanley, we packed up and headed to the Light/laser show on Avenue of the Stars. It was quite interesting, I had never seen buildings light up in synchrony with music. I have to say at the beginning I was a bit disappointed but by the end I was beginning to be impressed. Perhaps the rainy weather damped the mood and the show itself. 


So I managed to stay up my last night in Hong Kong in an effort to start myself onto America's time zone. Time has shown it's worked! I'm jet-lag free and happy to be home. It's been a very quick three months away, and I enjoyed it tremendously. I'd like to leave you with the lyrics of a song I always play when I get home from a trip abroad, as it seems to always perfectly encapsulate my feelings as I return home. But before I do that, I want to thank you for being my faithful readers and for taking the time to follow me around South East Asia. I've really enjoyed recounting my adventures for you, I only hope you enjoyed reading about them and that maybe that you were able to come out with some sort of cultural appreciation that you didn't have previously. Best of luck to all of you on your own travels, I hope to hear all about them! 


Two weeks away it feels like the world should've changed
But I'm home now
And things still look the same
I think I'll leave it to tomorrow till unpack
Try to forget for one more night
That I'm back in my flat on the road
Where the cars never stop going through the night
To real life where I can't watch sunset
I don't have time
I don't have time

I've still got sand in my shoes
And I can't shake the thought of you
I shake it all, forget you
Why, why would I want to
I know we said goodbye
Anything else would've been confused but I wanna see you again

Tomorrow's back to work down to sanitation
should've run back ?? before I left here
Try to Mama show her that I was happy here
Before I knew that I could get on the plane and fly away
From the road where the cars never stop going through the night
To real life where I can't watch sunset
And take my time
Take up our time

I wanna see you again
Two weeks away, all it takes to change in time around by falling
I walked away and never said that I wanted to see again

I wanna see you again
I wanna see you again 



- Dido, Sand in My Shoes

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