100th Post and Photo Extravaganza

This is our One Hundredth Post. Wahoo! Technically we had a handful of posts from our trip to South Korea, but wow, we've still written a lot. We were gone for 86 days on this first half of our trip, so that's
almost a post a day!  Here are a few of the places we've been:

*Edit: We haven't finished blogging about the first half of our trip, China is still to come. We were just too excited about this post*

First official flight of our trip

Starting the Routeburn track in New Zealand

Key Summit on the Routeburn track.  If you are ever in New Zealand, do at least this part of the hike (it's close to one end and doable as a day hike).

Our shadows at Punakaiki rocks in New Zealand

Our footprints at Nelson Beach in New Zealand

Mount Doom!  New Zealand

Sydney Opera House

Great Ocean Road in Australia

In a freaking tree in Australia

The twelve apostles at the end of the great ocean road in Australia

Our first footie game

Sailing the Whitsundays in Australia

A shipwreck on Fraser island in Australia

Eating in Bangkok

Us being birds, like you do.

Riding an elephant in Chiang Mai, Thailand

In a waterfall in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Angkor Wat, Cambodia at sunrise

Our driver Socheat who spent three days with us, taking us around to the Angkor temples in Cambodia

Bamboo railroad in Battambang, Cambodia

End of the day with our amazing tuk tuk driver, Mr Touk

Brenda trying to frame our faces in a heart in Sihanoukville

Biking before the monsoon hit.  Yes this picture is out of focus.

Our motorbike in Kampot, Cambodia

A tuk tuk ride in Cambodia

Some heart thing at the top of Victoria peak, Hong Kong

The Great Wall of China.  It was amazing.

Fotodump Friday

Another friday, another fotodump.  We missed fotodump last week because we had to schedule our blog posts before leaving for China and forgot there should have been a fotodump.

Andy:

This is a mild example of the things people carry on their motorbikes.

An old run down building in Phnom Penh... I'm guessing this is french colonial architecture?

Three fire extinguishers at the indian restaurant in Chungking Mansions... just in case...

A "door" between rooms at S21. I'm curious if this was cut or exploded out.

A picture of the four of us right before biking through a monsoon. We are all out of focus, and I don't really know how the photographer or the camera is meant to focus when it's on auto timer.

Katie:

Saw this on the ground in Hong Kong.  It says "Death Ai Wei Wei" and I have no idea if someone wants Ai wei wei to die or if he tagged this himself.

Taken from Victoria Peak in Hong Kong.  I just like that this mountain is shrouded in haze.

Um, this building had squares on it with measurements inside the squares.  I don't know why.

Proof that I actually ate the squid ink pasta

Chicken feet and cake

When we got up in the morning, we packed up as quick as we could to get the hell out of the Chungking mansions and over to our spacious and clean hotel room up in the Mong kok region of Kowloon.  For lunch we went to meet up with John Erik, a friend of a friend, at a dim sum place.  The place was packed and there was just enough room for us at the table along with two friends of John's and other guests at the restaurant.  John helped us order shrimp dumplings, rice noodle wrapped spring rolls, pork dumplings, bbq chicken feet, and tea.  The chicken feet were quite the experience, having to tear off a toe at the knuckle, then separate the skin from the bone with your teeth.  There isn't any meat on the feet, just skin and tendon, but the bbq sauce was tasty.

After lunch we headed to a little tea shop to drink some excellent chilled sweet herbal tea on some plastic stools on the side of the road.   While sitting on the side of the road John pointed out how quiet the area was.  We couldn't hear the drone of cars or hum of people.  It was peaceful yet in the center of town.  After finishing our tea we walked through Hong Kong towards Victoria peak.  Hong Kong felt like New York but a bit cleaner.

At Victoria peak we took a tram to the top where there was a lookout over Hong Kong and Kowloon as well as some outlying islands.  On the way down the peak we stopped at the (free) zoo.  There was a reptile house with one boa constrictor and one crocodile.  We saw some orangutans, lemurs, gibbons, and other monkey types.

For dinner we met up with even more people in an indoor food market.  I think the total count at the table was 10 people.  We had a blast meeting everyone and discussing jobs and traveling (with the exception of John and two others, everyone was a visitor to Hong Kong).  Someone ordered a bunch of dishes of food that we all shared.  My favorite was the roasted goose.  I also tried squid ink pasta, which was essentially black pasta, but tasted like butter.

Oh and because it was Andy's birthday, we stopped on the way home at a bakery and got two chocolate donuts and a mini chocolate cake.

Chungking Mansions

Arriving in Hong Kong from Phnom Penh we hadn't looked into places to stay or areas to go to.  In Cambodia all the towns were small enough that the tuk tuk drivers would show you to a couple of hostels before having to decide.  In Hong Kong we would be taking public transport and there was a plethora of places to stay and areas to check out.  After looking in our Lonely Planet and reviews online, we decided to head to Kowloon, which is attached to mainland China, as opposed to Hong Kong island.

Our initial destination was Chungking Mansions (from here on referred to as CKM) which had several hostel options in our book.  We didn't realize the scale of chaos that would meet us at the door.  There has been no place in Asia that we have encountered that compares.  From what I understand, the first two or three floors are all merchant shops and restaurants and above that (I think 20 floors in all) were residences that were originally built as apartments but have since been converted into multi bedroom guesthouses.  There are five blocks or sections on each floor which are serviced by a specific elevator, a person could not get from Block A to Block C on the same floor without heading down to the first two floors and switching elevators (unless there are some floors specific to transferring).

Upon walking into the first floor of the CKM a guy held out a business card and told us we should stay at his guesthouse.  We told him we would check out the rooms and then decide.  He loaded us onto elevator E and out we got onto floor 5.  There were probably 6 doors on the floor, one of which led into his guesthouse.  Our room was big enough for a large single bed (or a small double bed), enough floor space for our bags, and a bathroom that was just big enough for a toilet and sink (there was a shower but we would have had to stand on the toilet to use it).  It was surreal.  After we had checked in we immediately used the free internet to look up better places to stay for the next two nights so as not to be stuck in the Mansion again.

For dinner we read about a good indian place somewhere in the Mansion.  Not understanding how the block system worked at the time, we wandered around uselessly on the first floor until someone approached us with a business card for Taj Mahal Club, the exact restaurant we were looking for.  He loaded us onto elevator C and up to floor 3 where we found this little indian restaurant that was hopping.  Almost every table in the room was filled (probably 15 tables).  We had an excellent, although pricey, vegetable curry, rice, vegetable samosa, and garlic naan with a mango lassi and sprite.

This post does nothing to describe the craziness that this building contains.  You could try and look up Chungking Mansion on wikipedia or google but until you experience it, you won't fully understand.

Phnom Penh without Dutchy and Fifi

I discovered the night before that I forgot to get my room key back from Brenda before she left for Thailand.  This meant that all my stuff was locked in a locker with no key.  In the morning the front desk called a locksmith for us.  While we ate breakfast, the locksmith went up to work his magic on my locker and came down with the entire locker door.  He strapped the door to the back of his motorbike, and we assume he took it back to the fort to make a new key for the locker. He charged us $3 for his services.

Greg, the guy we met a couple nights ago came back from work and hung out with us for a bit.  We all went out to eat, wandering the city with Greg as our guide.  Ate at a little noodle place then went to the mall to check it out.  The mall was interesting because instead of individual stores in their own rooms, more like an outdoor market stuffed onto 7 floors.  At the top was a view of the city plus a roller rink and arcade (that was packed).  Headed to the FCC (foreign correspondents club) for a drink then back to the hostel for a bit more food and bed.

Friday we walked to the riverfront to have breakfast at The Blue Pumpkin, a great little cafe with free internet and a view of the river.  Took a tuk tuk to the Russian market.  Supposedly a great place to buy souvenirs but really just full of usual touristy junk.  Went back to central market to wander the streets while heading back home.  Stopped at a couple of charity stores and bought some real souvenirs made by actual Cambodians.  Met up with Greg at the hostel and headed to the night market (which only occurs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays).  Ate noodles with vegetables and chicken for $1.25 and a bottle of coke for $0.50.  Andy got a scoop of Durian ice cream and chocolate ice cream.  The durian turned out to be better than the chocolate.

In the morning we had breakfast at the hostel then caught a tuk tuk to the airport to head to Hong Kong.

S21 and The Killing Fields

On Wednesday most of us slept in to recover from the karaoke shenanigans that took place the night before. Unfortunately the air-con in our room wasn't on so it got pretty hot in our room. Brenda and Fiona were growing tired of the on and off rain all day, so they took the morning to plan a holiday-within-a-holiday to the islands of Thailand. Around noon we left the hostel to see the must-do S21 Genocide museum and Killing Fields.

I want to preface the next paragraph or two by saying that I'm not nearly a good enough writer to convey what it's like to see these sites. If you've ever been to the utterly depressing Holocaust museum in DC then you will have a general idea.

S21 is a relatively small group of buildings that were once a school but were transformed into a prison, interrogation and torture facility by the Khmer Rouge in the 70's. As you would expect the cells were tiny, prisoners were given an old ammo box to do their business in and there was barbed wire on the upper floors to prevent prisoners from jumping. Some of the rooms also contained pictures of the faces of many of the people killed by the Khmer Rouge. Most of the prisoners were given numbers and were photographed when they were detained. There's plenty more to say about S21, but there's really not much point in doing so here. If you're ever in a particularly depressing frame of mind just google Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge, S21 etc.

After S21 we went to the Killing Fields which is a good ways outside of the center of Phnom Penh. Similar to S21, this was depressing. This is basically a bunch of fields the Khmer Rouge used to torture and kill people. A lot of bone fragments, tattered clothing and the like can be seen around. There are also numerous signs explaining what various parts of the fields were used for.

The courtyard at S21 is actually quite beautiful these days

A view into one of the wooden cells

Who's hungry? After a few depressing hours learning about the heinous acts of the Khmer Rouge we headed back into town and had a late lunch at the Pink Elephant on the river front. Katie and I shared a vegetarian pizza that was surprisingly good (especially compared to the pizza in New Zealand). Before we went back to the hostel we asked our tuk-tuk driver to bring us some place shopping and we ended up at the Central Market (also known as the French Market). We all perused the wares but didn't buy anything.

The French Market

Back at the hostel Brenda and Fiona got ready for their 16 hour overnight bus to Bangkok while Katie surfed the internet and I helped Hin with his computer (naturally). Around 7 we had a sad farewell with Brenda and Fiona and off they went to Bangkok. Katie and I both had chicken burgers at the hostel for dinner. (yum!)

Karaoke in Phnom Penh

On Tuesday we caught the bus from Kampot to Phnom Penh. There was a crazy rain storm when we stopped for a break halfway through (around 2pm) - ask us to show you the video when we get home. We got to Phnom Penh around 5 or 6.  We got a shitty tuk-tuk driver who just wanted us to stay at his guesthouse/hotel and wouldn't take us to Top Banana (a hostel that had been recommended) so we stayed at 88 backpackers. It was nice.  We met Hin (a cambodian who had lived in the US), Mike (who is teaching english in Korea) and Greg (from the US, grew up in Europe, trying to get a job in Cambodia). We all went out to Karaoke (except for Greg who had work in the morning).

We rode in the back of Hin's truck across town. Johnny Walker was buy one liter get one free, we had a  crazy private karaoke room, and the whole outfit seemed to double as a brothel. We sang Bohemian Rhapsody twice. Three hours at karaoke, 1.5 bottles of Whiskey, a couple of cans of coca cola, $15 a person. On the way back we stopped for food, Brenda went looking for a hamburger and came back with a baguette stuffed with god knows what - some sort of processed meat. Back into the truck and back to 88 backpackers.

The music videos were very interesting