Headache in Laos

Our passport pages are starting to be real works of art and a major source of pride to us travellers as we have entered our third country in south-east asia. the thais are extremely giving with their stamps and flourished signatures and free visas, while the cambodians and lao authorities have been suitably giving for the amount of visa fees we have paid them. alp is creating quite a sensation and not a little bit of disbelief in immigration officials with his burly mustache, who cannot quite comprehend that the starkly handsome young turk's photo in his passport is actually the same fellow with the mustache, the grin, and the straw hat they see before them. after scooting out of phnom phen into the land of fast cars and highways, 7-11s and tom yum that is bangkok, we took a classy sleeper train all the way to the north of thailand. we spent three days in nong khai, dozing and attempting to do a puzzle while recieving the news that we picked up a case of dengue fever as a souvenier from cambodia. it is not severe, just a bit like the flu. and yesterday we passed the friendship bridge over the mekong river into laos and its capitol vientiane. it is pleasantly more of a large town than a city and the weather has been drizzly and delightful. we enjoyed the tastiest pain au chocolat, almond crossiant, and coffee in our experience in southeast asia yet and are preparing ourselves for more baguettes and pate. next stop this afternoon is the backpacker/countryside village of vang vieng where we plan to spend more than a few days doing little and eating mulberries.
ingrino

ps for the kin who might worry, we got blood tests done in nong khai and the dengue fever is not the hemorraging kind.

pps click the title for our cambodia pictures

ppps it is the year 2548 in thailand!

You try being a Turk and see how it is

It is very hard not to start every blog with "We", and this is a last attempt at trying not to do that. But we are in Phnom Phen, the capitol of Cambodia and haven't been to the killing fields or the holocaust museum, maybe we will go tomarrow maybe not. Our plans to go to Vietnam have been cancelled by my turkishness as I had to jump thru some bureaucratic hoops that we dont have the time, patience, will, or money to do. So we will head back to Bangkok and then head for Laos. We can get a 14 day tourist visa on arrival there and then... After Angkor there is not much to do in Phnom Phen and it is a big city and the people have gotten a bit ruder around tourist circles. There is still and open invitation to meet in Manali in May and ride motorcycles thru Ladakh and Leh, the highest motored pass in the world. Also if there is interest to meet in Turkey in the fall, we plan to get there by September. So if there is an itch that we can scratch, let us know.
love all who read this blog, and trying to love others who don't,
alp

Angkor What?

Three day temple tour extravaganza~score! our hopes for ruins galore were not disappointed by Angkor and its vast park of buildings and rubble. starting our first morning by motorcycle-drawn rickshaw, we came to Angkor Wat and its huge promenade over a massive moat before dawn. it was eerily exciting to approach the huge three-domed temple as each moment the light increased, not knowing a thing about what we would see. we climbed all the way to the terrifying top, enjoying the wind and the statues of large-bosomed dancers with hairstyles reminiscent of anime characters, while most of the tour groups below sat at the base, waiting for their perfect "sunrise over Angkor Wat"photographs. The famous temple was majestic but I was personally most impressed with the wackiness of the Bayon, another renowned building with tens of humongous faces carved out of dark stone, peering in different directions with mona lisa smiles. Likewise, the jungle-temple of Ta Prohm also was gorgeous, as it was left by the french to look as it had when it was first found in the latter half of the nineteenth century by an explorer searching after butterflies. there were massive trees towering out of buildings and spilling over walls. the last two days, we decided to cycle around the ruins, which turned out to be a rather serene way to enjoy the scenery. we were even blessed with some fabulous weather this morning as the sky broke into an impromtu mango rain (the rains that proceed the monsoon season and herald the beginning of the mango season) for ten minutes and clouds shaded our path for the rest of the day. Ruin tourism is probably my favourite form of cultural sightseein; it encourages independant exploration, gives one an appreciatation of the landscape of a place, and makes one feel awe for the mysterious collapse of civilizations.
Ingrid

Most of Angkor's high quality structures were erected by the king Jayavarman VII. Angkor Wat, Bayon, and the Angkor City plus a wealth of other structres. What makes the style of this king so apparent, other then the higher quality rock used, is the topless women relief carvings on almost all the walls of the buildings. The man had a harem of coutless women and put their carvings everywhere. What is fascinating is that in a place like Angkor Wat which is located on a kilometer square, making it the largest temple in the world, there are hundreds of these women carved on the walls. The wat is the funerary temple of this king who apparently believed in an Egyptian style afterlife idea. The wat is really impressive with a moet around it that is 150m wide. The circumference of the temple has a wall that has bas relief carving of their creation myth, battles from ramayana and so on. It might take us a while to upload pictures, but we wil let you know when we do.
alp

The Ripping Fields

Well were we wrong. After the thai border, we journeyed six or seven hours on a road that reminds you of the outback. No asphalt with plenty of holes and bumps. And this of course excited us seeming like we were going to a place less travelled. When we arrived in Siem Reap what we saw was a different picture. Plenty of giant and fancy hotels and civilization. There is an airport in Siem Reap which apperantly brings plenty of tourists with dough. So far we have not ventured to the Angkor Wat, mainly getting ourselves adjusted to carrying three currencies and finding the cheap and authentic food. The latter is proving to be problem as we are overcharged for everything from water to bread. It is a hassle and brings an annoying quality to this town. Unlike Thailand everyone speaks english, at least enough to rip you off. The tourism in this town has made it perfect for tourists and frustrating for the traveller. Tomarrow we buy our three day ticket to Angkor Wat which will make it worth the hassle. And we hope as we venture further into South-east asia this place will be the most touristy place we have visited.
alping

Its like buddha baby

in honour of our leaving the clean water and cinema halls of thailand for the minefields and temples of cambodia at seven tomorrow morning, i thought i should take some time to catalogue those eccentricities of this fine nation that we have otherwise failed to relate to you all. a) thais, young and old, are addicted to menthol and camphor inhalents and it is possible to see them being shoved up noses everywhere! i want to embark on a nation-wide campaign to inform people of their addiction but i think they are too nasal-cavity-fixated. b) there is a handy bum-sprayer in every bathroom, so that you needn't ever worry about being caught without toilet paper (already an obsolete item to my man and myself... we gave that stuff up months ago and you should consider making the switch yourself. do you really want to rub that shit in?) c) transvestites and androgenous people are an accepted part of the fabric of thai society. we have seen some damn pretty men. most thai women and men have the same body type anyways~ no asses and similar faces. d) even monks don't finish their food, which we think is a crying shame! everytime we approach a table just vacated by a thai party, there is enough food remaining to feed the two of us. e) thailand caters to the hardly exclusive category of male "sex tourists," who come here to DATE their prostitutes and can be seen shopping with them nearly everywhere in bangkok. there are also neighborhoods full of go-go bars, in which dozens of waifs wave their bodies around like leaves, looking exceedingly bored under coloured lights. f) as we have told mimi and jason, there is the charming tradition of spirit houses, which are miniature houses built for the fairies of the premises so that they don't disrupt the proceedings of the main building. some are very lovely looking, so go the Bangkok photos to see an example of them. g) unlike india where the depiction of phalluses is very abstract, thais prefer the more life-like approach and are alarmingly realistic, albeit often times huge. they are fertility symbols and are present at shrines, temples, and even in amulet form. h) we are very fond of the park over the canal from our guesthouse, which daily hosts a gang of people evidently practicing to be in the circus (i.e. juggling, poi, and playing with sticks), gender-bending breakdancers, and a massive aerobics course instructed also by an androgenous lady-man. have you got a clearer picture of why this is such an interesting and enjoyable place? we hope so. cambodia may be a bit behind in the internet revolution so you may have to wait a few weeks to get the next installment of notes from us. you can always rerun our previous episodes. we never did.
with jungle love~
ingrid

ingrida and i were appalled today at the restaurant of the natural history museum where three monks left their table with enough food on it to feed three other monks. this we have been seeing from other thais and had mostly thought that it was due to city ethics. well apart from these shameless monk what i want to say is, organized religion is the same everywhere, buddhism is no different. at first i couldn't figure out why anyone would convert from buddhism to islam, and i am sure there were not so willing conversions but the idoletry here is up the roof. a lot of temples there isn't just one image of the buddha but there are dozens if not hundreds, and it sort of looks meaningless. the feng-shui of a lot of temples is really whack. i can see how a mosque is much more tranquil then a wat. but ofcourse i am not defending one religion over the other allah and buddha know that i love them them both the same. the organization of the religion is really what kills the spirit of the religion. just like organized government but i will not go into that right now, suffice to say that anarshi is the best way, because it is not a description of a way. get the tao?
alp

Southern Comfort

We are back in Bangkok where the internet is more affordable and sitting in an air-con internet cafe is a more desirable event. We traveled in the Krabi province first going to Lanta island where we were too cheap to go on a snorkeling trip and came back to Krabi for more inexpensive and authentic food. Rented a bike and traveled for a day. Afterwards we took a longboat to Hat Tonsai which is the climbers central in Thailand. We somehow got the best bungalow for the cheapest price on the peninsula where we had a stupendously good time, resting, reading, and coming up with solutions to future problems. The Noam Chomsky book Hegemony or Survival is a great book for getting perspective about American actions, highly recommend it although it is bound to put a fire into your system. On our way back to Bangkok we stopped at Khao Sok National Park hoping to find the largest flower in the world that smells like rotten meat but to no avail. Now we are back in the big city and enjoying it, our plane tickets are scheduled for May 13 now and we will head for Cambodia in a few days. We were going on tuesday but in light of Jean Pierre Jeunet's new film A very long engagement opening on March 17 we will overstay our visa two days to see that and the Motorcycle Diaries, as we will probably not find those movies in our travel ahead and they are worthy for bigscreen. In the meantime we will get our Cambodian visas here in Bangkok instead of at the border which will save us some money in compansation for the twenty dollar fine we will pay for overstay. We have put our pictures up for those with pictographic memory. I miss all of you out there and we will go motorcycling in the himalayas in May particularly Leh, Ladakh and Kashmir if we can, anyone interested in meeting us in Manali? The bike rental is about $5 a day and accomodation will be reasonable since most people don't go that far up north. You can see where we want to go in the photoalbum manali, it will start with Rohtang La and go further this time. I doubt there will be much interneting that we can do until Vietnam once we leave Bangkok so till then,
alp

Liver river diver

We have arrived in Krabi and waiting to get on the boat to Ko Lanta. The bus ride last night was strange, we got on at 6:30 and they showed a preview of a movie then turned the TV off then the lights off at 7. We thought they were fixing something but the lights didn't come back on until 10 when we stopped to eat. It was a complimentary dinner which was rice in goopy water and some dishes to put in and eat with the rice. There were 4 Thais on the table and all of them barely touched the other stuff and just had their rice. We found this very peculiar because the rice dish didn't even have salt in it. The hole thing was pretty tasty but they wanted none of it. We also noticed that the people on our table left before anyone else, it was sort of a twilight zone affair. Thais also don't seem very big on finishing their food so we thought Walt ought to come here and give them a lesson, maybe he can even convince the King to sponser a nationwide campaign.
alp

coming from india, thailand seems a remarkably organized and prosperous country. its tourist base is greater than that of any other country i have visited, yet very few people speak english at all. alp and i utilized almost every mode of transport in bangkok, including canal boat taxis, tuk tuks (high-octane versions of the rickshaw), bus, skytrain, subway, and river boat. as admitted by miriam's former exchange student guest Goy (who we met our last night in bangkok and ate a special chinese dessert with), the main entertainment in the capitol is shopping. despite never going to Fashion Square Mall at home in charlottesville, alp and i went no less than three times to a seven floor megamall called MBK and watched movies, looked at cell phones, and desperately tried to join in the extravaganza. interestingly, most of the food we have eaten in thailand has been from street vendors, who are everwhere and each specialize in something. the main problem is we often just don't know what that something is (unless you point) because their signs are all in thai. nonetheless, our favourite place thus far was a fish/tom yum soup stall down the road from our guesthouse, which was open until the wee hours and allowed us to sip beer chang along with our fish niblets. and for your information, thais are the world masters of two domains: iced beverages (shakes, cold coffee, etc.) and takeaway food. it is perhaps funnest when these two talents are combined, like when one gets a mango smoothie in a plastic bag with a straw!
swimmingly yours~
ingie

One couple, couple of plans

So I will understand if some of you out there might stop reading our blog because we say we are going to do something and almost never do, but isn't it more exciting this way with all the twists and turns? We have been in Bangkok for a week now and have eaten many a different things, seen many a beautiful things and at the same time we have been doing rounds to the Indian Embassy for our employment visas. The first day we were told to bring back financial documents and when we did the main-dude told us to come back in four days as he had to do some research into what kind of visa he might be able to give us. Since we were not going to be paid and even though we had no financial trouble, he said it probably wasn't possible to give us an employment visa. So this morning when we went there he had done nothing in the last four days and did't even remember what he was supposed to do. Were we hurt? Not really, because when he hinted that we were probably not going to get an employment visa our little noodles again started to fantisize, so by the time he crushed our plans by saying he could if we wanted to send our documents to the ministry in delhi which would take 3 months or more we already had another fantasy ruling our lives.
The new plan is to extend our flight until May while we travel in South-east Asia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam you name it we will go! Afterwards returning to India with another 6 month visa and attending yoga school then for a few months. Then heading to China and taking the train through Mongolia to Moscow. From there heading to Turkey passing the Turkic republics. The last leg of the journey depends on me being able to lose a few kilos so I can dogde the military by being "unfit to surve". Either we do it or not it sounds cool right now. But I'am with the help of Yavuz trying to figure out if this is really possible. Other then that we will try to apply to paid military in every embassy on our way. I do not qualify but maybe we will find another incompetent that will not know.
Ecological disaster, political insurgance, bureaocratic incompetence we have seen it all and have not suffered anger nor dispear. We believe fate is showing us the way and we are easily being blown around by it. I should thank here our parents who support us and make us feel that there is comfort waiting for us back home. Yet for now we feel we can get a little more ruffed up!
alp!

ps thailand anyone? click the coorg title to link to the pictures.
ps2 for those of you who have juicy thoughts about travelling but think they will not afford it, our 5 months in India cost us $600 a month for two of us, but we did stay 2 months of that with friends and family.

Transnational Valentines Day

We are recovering from the most exciting Valentine's Day in the history of Alp and Ingrid's lives. A few days ago, Esin sent us off from Mysore and we sat on a train for 42 hours, hurtling towards New Delhi, with the final destination in mind being Kathmandu. However, ten minutes into our two day ride we found out that February 13th was the joyous 10th anniversary of the Maoist insurgency and they were most probably planning on celebrating the occasion with some old-fashioned civil war violence. We arrived in Delhi on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and enjoyed the perfect spring weather that the capitol enjoys for about three weeks a year while waiting for our Korean friends, the Shins, to come home. They are the most delightful hosts and we had a thoroughly tasty Korean meal at an excellent restaurant with them later in the evening. We also discovered that night that Kathmandu was under blockade and virtually no traffic was coming in from the south-east, precisely the direction we would be coming from if we took our final leg of the trip to the Nepali-Indian border in Gorakpur. The next morning we decided to scoot over to Mr. Gupta, my mother's travel agent who specializes in executing last-minute travel plans seemlessly and who also deserves to be called "Mr. Magic" for that reason. After one hour in his office, our breathless anticipation was rewarded with two (cheap!!) round-trip tickets to Bangkok Thailand that very night at 7pm!!! We squealed, we giggled, we were jealous of our own good luck! Following our fateful triumph, we made a trip to Khan Market, the expat shopping center in south delhi, and bought ourselves chocolate and cheese for Valentines, paneer tikka roomali rolls for our intestinal worms, and a Lonely Planet Thailand (though, believe us, we tried our best under the time constraints to NOT support that backpacker mafia publication company). After hastily packing and substantially lightening our packs (including tent, hiking boots, and mats our bags are 22lbs each), we made it to the airport and our flight on Myanmar Airlines went first to the sleepy airport of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), where we ate complimentary cake at a hotel and finally continued onto Bangkok, arriving here at 6am, both without any sleep and Ingrid with a headache. Blearily we made our way to a quiet residential area and a guesthouse, and slept for a few hours. We awoke and finally it sunk in~ we are in thailand, yaaaysss!
scoobydo!
ingrid

Coorg, Curd and Kurds

About two weeks ago we set out for the Coorg region on our Enfield and the Yezdi that Esin rented. In the first ten kilometers the Yezdi was stopping frequently and we called Hari and said we were bringing the bike back and as if the bike heard this and stopped to stop. So we turned around and headed again towards Coorg. After we passed the bamboo and teak forest area it started to get hilly and chilly. There was coffee and pepper everywhere and it smelled like honeysuckle on the road and roasted coffee in the towns.
Coorg is a small region with a distinctive language, culture and landscape. There is speculation that their ancestors were the troops of Alexander the Great. Also theories that they might be related to the Kurds in the middle east. I don't think there is a real anthropologic study about this. Well now that I have shown you that I read a few pages from a book while we were there what we were really busy doing was eating good home cooking and hiking around. The first place we stayed at was expensive by Indian standards but really beautiful. We stayed in our tent for the first time since there was only a single room available and we didn't want to open the mouth of the sack too much for a double as it was almost ten dollars. Upon coming to the conclusion that we had giardia we started on antibiotics, but it was really the best place to have it since we had fresh water and good food. After finishing the antibiotics we tried to replenish our bacterias by eating yogurt but they have this curd in Coorg that is really not very good which could be a clue to the fact that the Coorgians are Alexanders soldiers since everyone knows the Greeks can't do yogurt right. It was quite a scene at the estate where all the guests were served dinner and we ate and thrashed American and British politics and politicians. As the only American present for miles around, Ingrid endured the lambasting valiently (amidst blushes galore) and tried to be an example that all of Bush's country brethren are not as evil and culturally chauvanist as he. After a week at that place we followed the bumpy road to another estate close to a national park where we stayed a more humble accomodation for the same price and have home cooking consisting mostly of rice and potatoes for the same price. From there we ventured to a waterfall, of which there are many in Coorg. The first day we didn't realize was a Sunday so there were more Indians than water droplets, but then we went there again next day and even managed to bathe naked! And about the national park, we went but were not let in because we were on two wheelers and there was a chance that we would get trampled by wild elephants. We were up for the challenge but they weren't and we just didn't want to rent a jeep and pay money and see nothing that you can't see on the street already. So we didn't go in. On the way back the Yezdi ran out of gas. Here come closer, listen up, never never never run out of gas on a 30 year old bike!!
We are back in Mysore, right in time because our sandalwood soap was just finished. My elbow is a little screwy from the bumpy road but the bike is running great. Tomarrow we head for Nepal and Esin is taking the bike and heading for Kerala.
All the best to you out there and pray to Ganesh for luck and Laxmi for wealth and Shiva for ganja and Krishna for booty.
alp

I know what you all are thinking~ did Alp just say he and his lil lady were heading for NEPAL? but wasn't there just a total governmental overhaul there? didn't the king just dissolve the parliment and cut off international communication for a number of days? And i would say~ yes, indeed. We are going to Nepal. Probably. Our Indian tourist visas expire in one week and we have been mourning the fact that whenever we decide to go to another country, disaster befalls it. All our planning ahead is no match for killer tsunamis and Maoist rebels and insane kings. the final decision for today rests at our taking the train for two days up to New Delhi and leaving the option for other flights out of the country. Uzbekistan? Burma? Mongolia? Let's take an internet poll everybody! Where should Alp and Ingie go next? Or, more aptly, upon which poor country should God next strike down his wrath? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!
love~
ingrida

ps~ click the title to look at our new lovely pictures~ we is three now! triple the beauty!