A Danish Break

The famous Nyhavn port

The CT Lawyer and I try to take international holidays every year. For this year's holiday, we had a deep desire to go to places that were clean and quiet (and low risks of giardia - my own request). We chose Denmark and Iceland on our two-week trip.

It was indeed clean and quiet.

Much of our trip to Denmark was centered around Copenhagen. We had Airbnb-ed a very quaint boathouse on the edge of the city, which meant we woke up to beautiful rays of sun on placid water.

Much of our visit to Denmark was simply walking around the streets of Copenhagen and other towns, admiring the quirky old buildings alongside the sleek new ones. We walked so much mostly because it was really enjoyable and quiet to do so (and we were blessed with great weather). We also unexpectedly walked into Nyhavn, the hotspot port that all tourists orbit, which was indeed a lovely place. I was more fascinated with the port's great many public toilets along the waterway...but the colorful buildings were lovely to look at, too.

We also dedicated a lot of our trip to enjoying the great food in Denmark. I mean, Denmark is known for its amazing culinary renaissance, and we can confirm the truth in that. Even if we weren't eating delicious food at a Michelin-starred restaurant, I loved how vibrant and colorful the food was in most of our meals. I also was so pleased to have so many gluten-free options, including really tasty cinnamon rolls from Landbageriet! I ordered a box of rolls for myself on day one to consume each day we stayed in the country (they were that good).

One day we met up with my friend Martin who lives in Malmo, Sweden (it's only a 30-minute train ride to Copenhagen). Martin showed us around some tourist areas while we caught up and joked about American politics. He took us first to a greenhouse in the city so we could enjoy butterflies, and then led us to the Vor Frelsers church so we could scale the corkscrew steeple. It was a harrowing climb up the stairs - they were so narrow and curvy! It was clear the staircases were old. Once we neared the top of the steeple, we ended up outside, clinging to railings as we stepped up the corkscrew incline!! My fear of heights dutifully kicked in and I waited for CT Lawyer and Martin by the indoor stairs, grasping the building for dear life. The cool thing about going up and down the stairs for the steeplechase, though, were the hodgepodges of assorted churchy things scattered on the different stair landings - a heap of cherub statues lying down on this level, an old organ patiently waiting on the next....it was like hide-and-seek with Christian artifacts!

We then ambled towards Christiania, a micronation within Copenhagen that's all about free love and weed (but we didn't consume any - truly!). The lakeside community was very much doused with hippy paraphernalia...but honestly? The place looked kind of sad and run down. The buildings were worn significantly and there were lots of tourists pilfering magnets and mini bongs out in the open, which made it feel less like an alternative living experiment and more like a region in a dystopian theme park (with some artwork definitely appropriate for unsavory adults). We stopped for a vegetarian lunch (that was actually quite delicious) and headed out to take a quick look at the fun things in the Museum of Design and eat ice cream before Martin headed back home.

Later that night CT Lawyer and I went out for a nice dinner date at Hoest. We opted for a prix fixe dinner that was paired with mocktails. I cannot tell you just how incredible the meal was, but we were both floored by each of the dishes (and there were so many!). One of the mocktails was a tomato juice seltzer, and to be honest it was mind-blowing. I'll be thinking about it for years to come.

The one Michelin-star restaurant we reserved in Denmark (sorry, Noma) was so we could enjoy a Sunday brunch at Den Rode Cottage. When arriving, we found ourselves in a wooded area with a sweet little red house in the middle of a clearing - I was enchanted (...for a price! And the restaurant is out of the city and in a very fancy little town full of tennis courts and high-end shops.) We had a charming brunch that had a mashup of quintessential breakfast dishes for each course (pancakes, toast, eggs, etc.).

After my pants were charmed off at brunch, we cabbed over to a suburb called Fredericksburg to visit the Cistern Museum. The neat thing about this place was that, since it was historically a community cistern, it was underground and inside a bucolic park. The art exhibit in the quiet, dark, musty museum was simple and fun - there were soft balls shuttled around the cisterns on pulleys that would eventually ding one of the many singing bowls in the space, making nice meditative echoes.

We walked back slowly to the center of Copenhagen, making stops for rehydration along the way. Did we visit Tivoli Gardens? No, but we did walk past it! I know, I know...everyone insisted on us visiting Tivli, but while walking past we couldn't bring ourselves to disrupt our relaxing time with the buzz of a theme park.

One of the last days we were in Denmark we rented a car and drove across the country four hours to the oldest town in Denmark - Ribe. When we entered Ribe, we parked at the Viking Museum and explored the exhibitions inside. I have to say, it was a great museum - I highly recommend. After that, we meandered around the old town, admiring buildings that were so old that structures were sagging dramatically. We also visited the old cathedral. It was a really lovely respite from urban exploration.

We got back to Copenhagen in time for dinner. We swung by an outdoor market before they closed.

Before we left the next day, we wanted to make sure we could see a few of the Forgotten Giants hidden in different parts of the country. These art installations aim to get people exploring in nature more. It worked! We had to hike around an industrial park into a grassy meadow to find one; the other one required us parking at some stranger's house and trek up a forested hill. It was fun!

And then we were off to Iceland

Some final thoughts on Denmark I'd like to share:

• Toilets: The place is SO TOILET FRIENDLY! It's a big deal for me, and I was so pleased to keep finding toilets in almost every situation where I had an urge.
• Bees: We experienced a lot of bees swarming us. Almost every day there was a short period where we were surrounded by either bees or hornets. I'm not sure what that was about...climate change?
• Food: I already said this, but there really is some amazing food in Denmark! Just be warned that it's pricey. The ice cream there is ample and recommended, as well.
• Living vs Touring: While Denmark isn't exactly an exciting place to visit for most tourists, we were so excited about how livable Denmark really is. We read about it in the news a lot, and it was clear how true it was to us. There are so parks everywhere, and we saw many dogs frolicking around with their humans (this is very important to us). Copenhagen is on the water, and we got to use a ferry quite a bit to travel up and down the city, which is soothing. Some of the apartments there even had docks into the water with kayaks and floats stationed for use, which is a new life goal for me. Lastly, we didn't see many police lurking around, and people even honked more pleasantly (aka never)! If we only could figure out how to move there...

A Malaysian Wedding Trip

Murals in Penang

Malaysia was Stop Three on my flight around the globe. Malaysia was originally going to be Stop One, as I was going to join up with a few friends to attend one of our (Denise's) weddings. But then my work trip was tacked on. And here we are.

Jetlag & Confused
When I arrived, I was confused about where I was ("Which country am I am? Who am I?"). I realized while in the immigration line that I had arrived a day earlier than I had thought and realized that the connecting flight I had to Penang wasn't until the next day.

My friends, mystified that I didn't know where I was or what day it was (and that I was a day earlier than I told them I'd be - surprise!), took me out for dinner at an outdoor market. We feasted on all kinds of fish and vegetables and chicken dishes. Eating with friends and soaking in the heat of KL melted my confusion.

I found a KL boutique hotel for the night in Chinatown that was beautiful and had outdoor bathrooms, which was delightful. My toilet and shower were in a private courtyard! There were shades that kept any guest staying above or below me to peek at me. There was rain falling down on the courtyard next to the courtyard when I showered.

The next day I hopped in a car with friends from Colorado for a road trip to Penang. We had decided to remove ourselves from the wedding chaos so Denise could have one less thing to worry about...and so we could travel around the country some.

Once we got out of KL, driving to Penang felt a lot to me like driving through much of the US, aside from the tropical vegetation everywhere. There was a lot of open space with small towns hugging the highway. Much of the drive to Penang was pretty uneventful.

In Penang
We got to the island of Penang and drove in the rain to the UNESCO town of Georgetown and waited for our Airbnb host. Our Airbnb was outside of the tourist areas, which meant that it was quiet and had a nicer view of the water. After we checked in, our host insisted on cramming us into his car and give us a tour around town for a while. While it was a nice gesture, we were starving and really weren't interested in getting a full-on tour. We wanted to gorge on street food, which is what Penang is known for! We finally got let out in a food alley, ravenous and eager to eat something. Anything.

Luckily for us, "anything" in Penang is worth trying. And so we did. We ate a lot of great things while in Georgetown: assam laksa, duck sausage noodles, chendol, laksa regular, nasi lemak, and so many other things of which I don't remember the names. Everything was fresh and bursting with flavor. I didn't know half of what I was eating....but I was pleased as punch with all of the the tastes.

We seemed to arrive there on a quiet day for the town. We saw a lot of tourists (which, with its UNESCO status, isn't very surprising), but things were not open for tourists to do. We managed to find a small museum - the Museum of Glowing Image - where we walked around under purple lights for an hour. It was ridiculous, but we had fun being silly while glowing in the dark.

We were still fighting off jetlag, so we went to a night market for a bite to eat and quickly walked back to the Airbnb to crash hard.

The next day we decided to drive around the island to see what is happening in Penang outside of the tourist-centred area. We visited the local snake temple (it is a temple with snakes in it, and you can hold them!) and got lost driving around because Google Maps gave us directions to roads that didn't exist (or were lost to the jungle overgrowth). That's when we stumbled upon the Tropical Fruit Farm. The title of the farm tells you exactly what the attraction was - a farm of tropical fruit...but we had a blast on the tour, tasting and learning about the plants along the farm.

We spent another day in Georgetown before heading back to wedding ceremonies. It was a supremely hot and exhausting day. We walked around to see all of the tourist sites like the murals, ate some not-so-local cakes, visited the Cheah house, and walked around the port neighborhoods with drop toilets on the edge of the docks. Walking around in 90F degree heat and 95% humidity, though, can be trying on the body. We slept early and hard that night.

Back in KL
The next morning we drove back to KL to get ourselves fitted in saris for the wedding and have amazing ice cream with the bride-to-be and some other international people. The couple had a group of us foreign friends attending their wedding, and we quickly became an international group of friends (I'll call them "The Friends"). We agreed to go touring around the next day to stay out of the couple's way while they ran last-minute errands for the wedding.

Batu Caves
The Friends arranged to visit the Batu Caves in the morning. We got there before it was too hot outside, which to be honest isn't saying much because it was still very hot.

The Batu Caves are an impressive sight because there is (1) a large, steep staircase to the caves (there are two) that loom above the tour buses and (2) a massive statue of Lord Murugan that guards the height of the stairs. The climbing....was treacherous. Not because of the number of stairs to climb - I mean, I'm a New Yorker and we climb stairs a lot - but because the stairs were narrow and uneven. To make our trip up to the caves more precarious, there was a mound of sand next to the stairs and a pile of small plastic buckets next to a sign requesting tourists to carry full buckets of sand to the top (for construction...which, of course, we did).

Once we reached the top of the stairs and went into the cave temple (the popular cave), we were all appreciative of the gaping hole in the mountain, but I kept thinking "...was this why I lugged two buckets of sand for?!" My travel partners agreed to go to the more sciencey cave (the other, less popular cave) and take a tour that walked us deep into the darkest crevices inside the mountain. We were loaned hard helmets and penlights, and off we went with a tour guide into the depths of the cave. It was beautiful and so well worth the expense. We got to explore different rock formations and got to an area where there was a skylight into the cave that lit up a gorgeous, quiet, mossy nook of the cave that made me think of some kind of magical backdrop to a fairytale.

Upon leaving we saw an armada of tour buses coming to the caves and watched hordes of tourists drip with sweat as they crawled up the stairs. I'm so glad we went early.

Before we made our train back to KL, we visited the only other tourist site nearby - the Ramayama Cave. This cave was ground level, and a wild(ly strange) sight to behold. There, the Hindu community took a natural cave and carved it out so that the inside of cave walls became platforms all along the perimeter to showcase a life-sized 3D display that unfolded the story of the Ramayama. With statues and paintings. Most of The Friends didn't know much about Hinduism, but even my knowing smatterings of the story didn't keep me from being bewildered and amazed.

Once back in KL, another friend of Denise and mine - Alicia - joined us getting our hands henna-ed for the wedding and partaking in essential tourist shopping in Central Market. Later on, she led us to a local restaurant that served Chinese food and ordered us a whole lot of foods that were delicious and fascinating and things many of us had never eaten before - smelly fish soup and congealed pork knuckles. It was family-style and a local hangout. We had so much fun we shut down the shop.

Wedding Time
The big day finally came - the day for Denise's wedding! And it was all day, so it was a big deal. Why was it so long? Because of the cultural mash-up that was going to happen; she is Chinese and he is Hindu, but both are also Malaysian. We had three different chunks of wedding celebrations to experience before the day was over.

The first part was Chinese. We arrived at Denise's family's house before the sun rose. We met a lot of bleary-eyed family members setting up the buffet (it felt so weird to eat spring rolls so early) and prepare the festivities. This part of the day was when the groom had to play games with the bride's family and friends and persuade them to let him into the house to find his bride. This took a few hours and a number of different "obstacles" for him to overcome. It was all in fun, luckily, and he was successful in retrieving his bride.

Once that happened, The Friends (and some of the bridal party) shuttled over to another home to get changed into saris and kurtas for the Hindu festivities, which were scheduled around lunchtime (based on the celestial alignments the Hindu priests deemed appropriate). The sari changing took a while - by the time we were fitted and ready to go we hurredly drove into town to the temple.

Once we got to the temple, we were pleasantly surprised to see one of our other girlfriends (Pritha). She flew just that morning there from India with her husband to attend this part of the weddings.

A few hundred other people also decided to observe the wedding at the temple.

It was fun to watch the Hindu wedding because it was a whirlwind of noise and processions that none of us understood (and apparently not even the couple fully comprehended). There was flowing music and vibrant colors that made it still exciting to witness. AND we all got snack bags during the ceremony. The Friends sat in a clump and were fortunate that a few of the older aunties sat near us and explained in English as best they could what on earth was going on. The rest of the crowd seemed just as bewildered about us being there as we were watching the ceremony.

The public wedding processions ended after a while and people grabbed plates of buffet food before heading off. The Friends slowly shoveled food in our mouths as we sweated it back out again and left for a long break before we rejoined the now-married couple. I napped the entire break

The final part of the wedding was the reception in a restaurant and felt a lot more Western than the rest of the day. There, we ate even more food and danced the night away. We also watched some of the FIFA World Cup game when we needed breaks from the dancing. It was a wonderful ending to the wedding, and more intimate than a lot of the rest of the day.

But I was exhausted and burned out. Not as burned out as the married couple was, of course.

The next day I requested a day alone. I went to the Patronus towers mall (oh the irony of finding quiet time in a big mall). After my break, we met up for dinner one last time with the married couple before my flight out. The dinner was a lot more low key than the rest of the wedding festivities - we hung out at tables in the groom's front yard and talked about nonsense, and caught up on each other's lives. What was so extra wonderful about this trip and wedding was that we ended up making more friends.

End Thoughts
The trip to Malaysia had a few themes that I will reflect on more as I continue my life of travel:

• I prefer slow travel. This trip, albeit fun and action-packed, was not slow. A lot of my fellow travelers wanted to see everything, exploring all of the things and walk all of the roads. That path is not for me - I was exhausted so much of this visit. Instead, I like taking my time while I travel. Maybe I won't see everything (read: all touristy things), but I get to go at a relaxing pace and see the things that really mean something to me. And often, I don't find the touristy stuff very interesting. This does mean that I do more research about where I am going before I get there, normally. Oh yeah, and mid-day naps are the best, even when I'm missing out.
• I love SE Asian food. I love the unique flavors smashed together in one dish. I love that the desserts are funky and not chocolatey (even though I love chocolate). I love the comfort in even the spicy soups. I love everything about them. It is amazing.
• Hot and humid is hard. I already knew this from my previous trips in SE Asia, but it bears a reminder, especially after scaling Penang in 95% humidity and 95F heat. Hydration salts are my saving grace on those kinds of days.
• Malaysia? It's Okay. Surprisingly, Malaysia is not my favorite place, despite it having amazing food and some very interesting spots to see. For me, it was culturally not too far away from the US, which to me is a mix of a bunch of cultures to the point where there is a missing keystone to the culture. It is an odd place of rigid laws and lax customs, which is a bit confusing. I can't say I would ever want to live in Malaysia, but I was glad I got to see more of it with my friends and see my friend at a joyous occasion in her life.

Amsterdam Layover

Before the sun comes up

On my way home from Ghana recently, I opted to take a long layover in Amsterdam. This had two opportunities for me: (1) I could visit Amsterdam for the first time and, (2) I could see one of my closest friends on a leisurely Saturday. It was also cheaper than a direct flight to/from Ghana.

When I go out of the airport and made my way to Amsterdam, it was 5am and still very dark and quiet out. It was also extremely cold. After just having spent two weeks in the balmy tropical weather of Ghana, I admit I was unprepared to no longer feel my fingers while walking to my Airbnb.

I rented an Airbnb because I knew I would nap for a few hours before exploring the city. (One thing I have learned while traveling overseas so often and having flights that depart/arrive at peculiar times of day is that, no matter how eager I am to visit a new place, I must take care of my health and nap after red-eye flights.) I rented an Airbnb on one of the canals in the heart of the city - at the very top of a walkup building with just enough space to stand in the bathroom, stand at a sink, and sleep on a single-serve bed. I passed out for a few hours.

Once the sun was up and people were roaming the streets, Marion and her boyfriend (Dutch Wouter) found me coaxed me out to see the city. But before we explored, we had pancakes. Because the Dutch are known for pancakes.

We went to a particular pancake place that had gluten-free options. The restaurant was creatively named Pancakes Amsterdam and had a bustling queue of people outside shivering in the cold for some pancakes. We joined the shiverers. When we finally got a table, we had some Dutch pancakes - thin, crepe-like confections that creep over the edges of large plates with delightful toppings embedded into the dough. Mine had bacon and maple syrup. It was a wonderful welcome to Holland and a comforting meal for a travel-weary lady.

After the pancakes renewed my energy, we went for a walk and chatted the whole day.

A note on walking. If you don't know me or haven't picked up by now, a walk may sound like a small thing - a mile, perhaps. That is not how I travel - I am someone who enjoys scaling a city with my shoes. I like walking around, zigging and zagging maps and finding parts of towns that other tourists overlook. I walk, and I don't stop long for hours. Fortunately, Marion is a 10-plus-year veteran of my walking habits, and Wouter was happy to show me around, answering my questions of all-things-Dutch.

Don't worry, we stopped a few times - after all, it was bitingly cold. Most of the times it was a brief pause where we would warm up with hot chocolate, tea, or street sausages. Once our noses thawed each time, we were back at walking.

We tried to go to the Anne Frank House, but it was too busy (and tickets were sold out well in advance). I decided I didn't have time to wait in line all day to see something I may not have had the emotional strength to explore. So, we walked on.

The canals and streets in Amsterdam are beautiful. Of course, water is so often beautiful to me, but I thought what was so lovely about the canals was how labyrinthine they felt to me in my short stay. I could imagine easily getting lost in the canals because they were everywhere. But I thought it was for the best that way - Wouter knew where we were the whole time, and it allowed me to let go and enjoy finding the little things that become apparent when buildings start looking the same. Like a strange store sign, or a funny-looking window. Or a gorgeous underpass between streets. Or finding a delightful cranny with a convent or inspirational bookstore in the thick of the city. Those kinds of things are what travel is all about.

After we walked around the main thoroughfares, we walked to a museum called Micropia. All three of us are life geeks and going to a museum to learn about microscopic life at a charming interactive museum was an easy sell to us. It's hard to explain the museum other than it was awesome and full of fun games and activities (for adults!). It taught us plenty about bacteria. We also got to explore more information about water bears, which are tiny water animals that can survive in the world's toughest environments. I bought a stuffed water bear in appreciation. I highly recommend it.

Before dinner, Marion and I caught up more deeply over wine and waited for Wouter to rejoin us. We went to an Indonesian cafe (the Dutch colonized Indonesia for a long time and now showcases its cuisine, as many post-colonizers can do). It was probably my first experience eating Indonesian. It was rich and flavorful and filling and I loved the peanut butter aspects of the dishes. I got the Indonesian plate, which had satay and pendang on it.

It was a glorious day, but I had to sleep before my flight in the morning, and we parted ways. It was bittersweet.

On my way back to the Airbnb, I realized how much I miss Europe. I miss the clean yet old buildings. There's a laidback feeling in European cities I don't feel when I'm in NYC or many other US cities. Amsterdam was graceful and vibrant yet quirky and confusing. I loved it.

Nepal

Pokhara Lake

In July Mr. CT Lawyer and I went to Nepal to see two of my friends from grad school (one Nepalese, one American) get married. Since we were going a far distance for a wedding, we decided to also take some time to explore the mountainous country.

Unsurprisingly, Nepal resembled a lot of cultural similarities as India...only perhaps with a more reserved culture. When I think of India, I think of a place packed with people, all shoving and vying for attention and help. Nepal isn't as packed, so I felt that while it had a similar desire/urge for "more" (whatever that means), they had more wiggle room and breathing space.

Kathmandu
I landed in Kathmandu and stayed in Thamel for a few days before heading off for the wedding in the eastern part of the country.

Everyone who had been to Nepal before had only described Kathmandu to me as "dusty". I initially scoffed at this description, feeling like people were not trying hard enough to relay the vibe to me. When I got there, however, I realized that I, too, could only find one word to aptly describe the country's capital: DUSTY! And maybe noisy. The city is coated in a thick layer of dust that permeates everything and saturates the air ". If I could find a way to market dust in a desirable way, I felt that I could definitely help Nepal with part of its economic woes. Without a good business idea for selling dust, Kathmandu survives on many tourism opportunities.

On the first day there, I hired a car to show me the main tourist spots. We started with a beautiful tour of the Monkey Temple, which is covered in peaceful prayer flags and stone steps that lead up a hill overlooking much of the bustling urban sprawl. Of course, there was a colony of monkeys playing and running around the temple area. As the town woke up, we proceeded to visit Durbar Square where I got a taste of how the city may have looked a long time ago without the new concrete jungle around us. Much of the square was damaged after the 2015 earthquake, but there was a lot of rehabilitation activity around the beautiful wooden buildings and temples in the confined square area. There was still a lot to explore despite the construction, and I enjoyed climbing through the little doors and peering through windows into more open areas, discovering little coves of architecture and curious pieces of intricate artwork hiding from the main thoroughfare. Did you know that the Nepali style of columns is the thinnest type of columns? Now, you do!

I was slightly annoyed during my tour and ended it before I was done; I had become somewhat of a "tourist attraction" to a  group of Bangladeshi men who thought that seeing a white girl in the area was amazing and worth stopping her from her explorations for pictures. I tried hiding behind trees and construction boards, but I was found by them every time and found myself being held a little too tightly in their pictures over and over again.

After hiding from Bangladeshis, I was driven to the serene and sacred Buddha Stupa that we walked around clockwise in a big circle. It was peaceful, but the square around the stupa has been very much overridden by tourist shops and hostels. I asked for a quiet, local Nepali lunch with the driver, so we went to get a thakali (which is like a cousin to the Indian thali) in a little house off of a side street nearby. The last place we visited that day was Pashupati - a temple and cremation site locals. It was nice to visit and busy with tourists weaving between locals who were there for meditation or remembrance. For me, though, it was also hard to be there, watching bodies burn on the waterfront (since it had only been a few months after my mom died and was cremated).

The rest of the time in Kathmandu I spent shopping around Thamel for nice artwork, scarves, and hunting down tea shops for reading and momo restaurants for eating.

Dharan
After a day or two in Kathmandu, I took a plane. With the reputable Buddha Air. And I need to pause to talk about flying in Nepal. Finding airlines in Nepal wasn't too difficult - any Google search will show you a list of local airlines there. The challenge was finding an airline without a track record of crashing! When researching, we found out that arguably half of the world's least safe airlines were in Nepal. To be fair, Nepal is a very difficult country to fly around because of all of the different altitudes and treacherous terrain, coupled with small landing strips in hard-to-locate places and cloudy days. Buddha Air had only crashed once in its history; therefore, it was our choice flyer for the majority of the trip. Yeti Air was the second option, as it was popular and had a lot of flights.

Fortunately, all of our flights were successful, and the view of the countryside during the flights was beautiful and was full of rolling green and spiked tops.

Once I landed on my first plane, we drove through a flat area that are part of the Terai plains (I never realized that Nepal was anything but mountains!); the flight was going to the surprisingly flat region of Dharan. From the small airport, I was driven to my girlfriend's house to attend the evening's wedding preparations - I was able to make it in time to join the women's' henna drawing activities and got a delicate design painted on my hand.

The next day was the wedding. It was loud and energetic and confusing and awesome. It was an all-day affair that started at 6am with sari wrapping (I had been given a sari to wear for the day) and makeup...and ended near midnight with dancing and heavy rain that flooded our simple guest house accommodations.

The whole day was an unforgettable experience.

I was surprised that I was asked to be in the wedding - the guy friend from the US didn't have a lot of family on his end who were there for the wedding, so I was asked to represent part of his family. I happily obliged.

The music at the wedding was a cacophony of instruments that mimicked animals sounds - from elephants and monkeys to birds and other animals I couldn't pinpoint. The wedding was Hindu, and as Hindu weddings are typically a few days long; as the wedding had to be packed into a mere day (the US crowd had flights to catch), everyone scrambled everywhere to make sure all of the necessary ceremonies and celebrations occurred. I think we checked all of the boxes by the end of the day - we had rice paste pushed onto our foreheads, we offered plates of food to the right people, we ate ample food, we danced, we respected some solemn marching, and we witnessed a lot of pouring of water on the betrotheds' feet.

The day after the wedding the boyfriend and I tiredly grumbled out of our flooded room and rolled into a car that drove us back to the airport so that we could take 2 more short flights to Pokhara on the other side of the country.

Pokhara
Though the wedding was our favorite experience of the trip, going to Pokhara and the deadly Anapurna Mountains may have been the most breathtaking part. It was a heavily touristy place (we found all of the white people we hadn't seen elsewhere), which made sense because it was so beautiful. We were there in the off-season and the clouds hid the snowline of the mountain peaks surrounding us, threatening rain the whole time...but a few times we were lucky and the clouds lifted to present us awe-inspiring visions of immense crags and mixtures of gray and white. We were staying in a gorgeous boutique hotel with a balcony on the lakeside of the mountain range, so a lot of our time was spent sitting and admiring the rolling and jagged mountains surrounding the town. No wonder a lot of Tibetans find refuge there.

We started our tour of the town with a tranquil row around the lake to see the different views of the hills and mountains. We got off the boat once at a Hindu temple in the middle of the lake and took our time soaking in the beauty around us. We then found ourselves trying Thakali food - a regional type of food - and it was delicious (and spicy).

One day we felt bold enough to go on a car ride to a fancy resort sitting alone on a mountaintop to see the views. The concierge at our hotel politely mentioned that the roads would be a bit bumpy, but I believe he did not sufficiently describe the danger we were putting ourselves in. "Off season" in Nepal (much like India) means Monsoon season (aka rainy season). Unlike some countries with strong infrastructures, Nepal's roads are largely unpaved, and that especially goes for the hillside and mountain rides hugging the higher altitudes. The roads were rough - really rough - and it was clear some minor landslides were in process or had already happened recently. The roads were not wide enough for our Jeep, let alone sharing with the mopeds and busses that slowly navigated around our car. It was death-defying, and I was sure we were not going to make it up, let alone back down.

Once we finally made it to the resort, I genuinely needed a glass of wine to calm my nerves and regain the courage to go back down. I asked one of the staff how they made it to the hotel every day, and she explained that they lived at the resort during monsoon season to avoid the roads. Also, during that period of time most guests seem to arrive via helicopter. Noted.

At least the views of the valley below coupled with the mountains were as dazzling as we had hoped and kept us company until I had regained my nerves for the ride back. Despite the terror of the roads, the view was genuinely worth it. On the ride back we got to see people going up the same roads, only sitting outside on the top of the busses.

We stopped by at Begnas Lake on the way back to the hotel. It felt like a nice community spot that just happened to have breathtaking mountain views 360 degrees. People were swimming and rowing in the lake as the sun started to go down. I could see myself going there with friends for a friendly evening, as well.

Sadly, I had to cut our trip a day short due to a stupid error by the airlines. We scrambled to the airport early and boarded a plane to get us back to Kathmandu. We checked into an iconic hotel for the boyfriend (and for me to shower, feeling irritated I couldn't stay there the night we had planned) and ate a heap of buffet food there before I darted to the airport for my long flight home.

Ghana

Berekum, Ghana

It's been months since I went to Ghana. I've been wrapped up in the grief of losing a parent and the whirlwind of a changing job. I'll try my best to recollect my trip to Ghana, though I'm sure a lot will have been warped with the months. But later is better than never?

I got off of the 10-hour plane ride (riddled with crying babies the whole trip) and found myself walking into a wall of heat. It was like my welcome to the country included an invisible welcome crew who cloaked me in a layer of heat that would stay with me the whole trip. My office's driver met me in the front of a sea of people, looking around confused and tired for their arriving guests. Once he found me, he escorted me to the office truck and shuttled me to the office (because I got in too early to check into my Airbnb).

The office is a large 2-story house, converted into office spaces and hallways for our overwhelmed Ghanian colleagues. It was a similar situation in Rwanda, so I wasn't very surprised that it was a practice elsewhere. People were surprised with me, though, because I was in the office as soon as I landed. I didn't have much choice!

Once I got to the Airbnb place around lunchtime, I did crash into a nap for a healthy amount of time before returning to the office. It was a huge apartment with a few rooms that were rented out to short-term guests like me. The amount of money we were spending per day for such a large (and very polished) place made me feel like we should have insisted on paying more, especially given our living conditions in NYC. The complex where the apartment was had a good-sized gym I paid for every morning so I could sweat on the cardio machines with the other well-to-do Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians before going to work, which was a 5-minute car-ride.

While driving around the area with the office drivers for lunch and dinner, I was highly amused while reading the restaurant names we passed - or rather, most of the storefront names for any kind of business. We got Turkish food that was named DNR (surely, an innocent abbreviation for doner, though still alarming!), God Is Great, and (my favorite) Jesus Made It! Restaurant. This was a constant source of entertainment for me while I floated around Ghana for the 10 days - I was constantly amazed by the inspirational business signs I would see. Apparently, the culture deems shop naming as a way to express religious enthusiasm.

What's more, I was surprised to see numerous healing signs for local witch doctors. These signs were amusing in design (a serious image of a man holding strange objects over people's heads, or simply posing with a drum) as well as the list of ailments that were stated curable by these magical people. The signs would range from topics such as "get rich quick" to "HIV/AIDS problems" or "barrenness". Or even something so medically reasonable as "snake bites".

Foodwise in Ghana, I was always served far more than I could stomach, and the flavors of the country were okay but not always things I enjoyed eating. I went to an upscale local dining place in the center of Accra called Buka for groundnut soup and banku (mashed up/balled up fermented maize) and found that the food was decent, but I am not quite used to the aftertaste from eating gelatinous balls of carbs. This was a common characteristic of the meals I ate. In particular, locals found it especially amusing to watch the random foreigner swallowing down fufu (mashed up/balled up plantains and cassava), which I found rather tasteless.

I quickly found out I was not eating their food appropriately, though - banku and fufu are not made for chewing, they collect flavor from stews and then are supposed to slide down the esophagus in a rather effortless way of filling up. The feeling of not chewing and gulping down something gooey was odd for me (and a bit confusing)...I admit it was not my favorite thing in the world. That said, there was always ample food in my stomach and I was stuffed most of the time.

I didn't spend a lot of time traveling around Accra - I went to field visit some of our stations nearby in outer Accra areas for a day or two, but I didn't tour the city to see what was going there.

In fact, on my weekend I took a domestic flight to Kumasi to visit my graduate classmate Salley and his family. I understood that he lived about a 3-hour bus ride away from Kumasi, but I found out it was more like 6 or 7 hours on the way to his home (closer to the Cote d'Ivoire border than anywhere else) in a rural part of Berekum. It was very hot there in the rural area with chickens and farms hung out. His family was very sweet, and invited me into their house with open arms and hearts. It was simple living there, with unfinished rooms lingering in their newly-purchased plot of land, but we had a nice time.

I will note that foreigners are not a common occurrence in the area, though -we took a trip to the local market to pick up food for dinner, and I turned somewhat into some kind of walking spectacle for the community. People wanted to touch me and interact with me in some way, though I didn't know how to speak with them (they spoke Twee, I don't). I sipped on an apple juice box while we traveled around the area and it seemed to cause quite a reaction with people who stared at the car; some people started to laugh and run with the car, others pointed in shock. I guess it's not common to see random white folk sucking on juice boxes.

On my way back to Accra for another week of work, my plane got canceled due to rain and we got stuck in Kumasi for a night. We walked around the newly-opened mall in the area, which was pretty much the busiest and most chaotic shopping experience I've witnessed outside of Black Friday in the US. We got nearly smothered in a grocery shop - where people were in full gowns there shopping for cheese and tea - and I nearly wept at the number of people who kept on barreling into me as we looked around.

A final note, Ghanaians are some of the nicest people I think I have worked with yet. Whoever I met or approached was extremely pleasant and accommodating to me while I blundered around the hot, new country.

Puerto Rico

Mr. CT Lawyer and I went to Puerto Rico about 2 months ago with his friends for a birthday celebration. A lot has happened since then (my mom passed as soon as I returned) and it feels like ages ago, but it was such a wonderful trip I want to make sure I document somewhere, so if I forget again that I went, I have this place as a reminder.

I arrived in San Juan late and after a turbulent flight. I wanted badly to sleep in for a long tim - and the rain before, during, and after our trip beckoned me - but we had a flight the next day to another island in the region, the naturally beautiful Vieques. Luckily, when we woke up and looked out the window, the mess of the constant rain and annoying flights were erased by the opulent blue we saw at the resort's beach, and all across the horizon.

The next morning, we grabbed our backpacks and took a cab to the small domestic airport in the middle of town. There, we were placed on scales and assigned one of the 7 seats available on the prop plane we were taking to get to Vieques.

A note to appreciate the tiny prop plane we took - our trip there was a delightful float to Vieques. We were below cloud level the whole time, and our 30-minute trip was a wonderful tour of the coast of San Juan and the dazzling blue waters that surround it. Our older pilot was a real gentleman type (with the coiffed hair and dress all in the appropriate classiness), and our little noisy plane dutifully tooted over to Vieques with his attentive switching of switches and watching the radar screen. The flight back, on the other hand, was turbulent and like being in a toy boat during a storm, rocking and zigzagging in the air while we beat the rain and rough low clouds. One of the ladies on the flight back got sick and I prayed for an emergency landing the whole 30 minutes in the air.

Anyways, Vieques.

Vieques is an island that boasts being the least touched by the modern world in a bunch of places (save the nuclear testing happening on one end of the island that kind of ruined parts of the island off limits to others), and we loved it for that. We arrived at the little airport to a beautiful smell of tropical trees and fresh rain, with the temperature being lower than the main island. We took a cab and drove to Esperanza on the southern side of the island (where the small tourist town was) and admired the lush green going past us as we drove. Vieques has a large National Park on it, but even the area where we were staying felt peacefully rural and low key. The roads aren't repaved because of the stormwater runoff impacting the beaches, and there is not a lot of light pollution. There are (what I believe are wild) horses roaming the streets of the tourist area, chilling out in a truly laid back beachy vibe that encompasses the whole island. For the very brief day we visited, we loved it!

Our Airbnb wasn't much to write about, so I won't. And it was raining a lot while we were there so I won't go too much into the tourism there for the one night we stayed there, for there wasn't much that we did or ate (except at a little joint named El Rancho Choli, where we were given tasty but huge portions of local pork and rice).

We were in Vieques for a very specific reason: bioluminescence. I have wanted to see bioluminescent waters for a while (since I found out about them, probably), and Vieques is supposed to be one of the best places in the world to see them. So when Mr. CT Lawyer mentioned his friends trip to PR, I almost immediately started to research how to kayak in the bioluminescent bays. We were fortunate that we were in the area for the appropriate time of the month (during a new moon), or else all of our trips would have been for naught. And apparently Vieques can fill up quickly, so we were extra lucky we booked it so early on so as to avoid missing out.

The evening we arrived, we went to a green store and waited for a bus to drive us to the bay for the kayaking experience. We had hired a local eco-tour group (Jak Water Sports), which turned out to be at our benefit as they only do small groups and use minimal light while we are on the water. The friendly staff got us ready to go and rocked us down the rocky road to the water, and at 8pm we headed off into our partner kayaks to experience the bioluminescent plankton.

At first, we didn't think much of the water that lit up gently while we touched our paddles onto it, but the further we got from the beach, the water sparkled like stars around us. We had a glass bottom kayak, and we could see the little glowing specks rushing past us like we were traveling through space at great speeds. We put our hands in the water and they would be covered in twinkling stars. I threw water on my partner and his back shimmered. And we had perfect timing because as we started to kayak back to the beach the rain started to downpour; we were able to run into the bus quickly. As the rain started, though, the light flickered in the water as the drops hit the surface each time. Magical is the word.

After our fun bioluminescent adventure, we returned to Old San Juan and became standard tourists. I don't mean that in the sense that we wanted to be that way, but it was just easier to be that way, because of our large group and our resort deal and the way PR works. There is a lot of tourism-based shopping and tours and places in San Juan - it was hard to not be a standard tourist. It was still lovely.

We had a day in Old San Juan, where we did the routine pilgrimage to the old and beautiful fortresses that hug the coast and tried to get a feeling of the town. We enjoyed looking at the waters through the 16th-century porticos and walking around the old architecture of big defense walls. We carefully navigated old cobblestone streets and tried to get lost down alleyways in a small strip of land that is Old San Juan. The town's buildings were vibrant colors and closely packed on the old Spanish streets. It reminded me of New Orleans a bit, only with more commercial than NOLA's artisanal local shops laced in between tourist traps. We were surrounded by shops like Ben & Jerry's, Adidas, and Coach - not normally what I think of when I think of Puerto Rico. We were clearly not the target audience.

Foodwise, this trip was a lot less gastronomic than many of my trips have been in the last few years. Sure there, were a lot of food options, and the pork and seafood were delicious, but we weren't having mind-blowing meals every time. Which was fine! The one thing I wanted to try, mofongo, my partner had tried before I arrived and had proclaimed to never wanting to try it again, so I didn't have a lot of time (or options) to go for it in the 4 days we were there.

BUT! We did have two awesome meals while we were there. Let me tell you about those memorable meals.

• Cafe Cortes Chocobar is my dream-come-true restaurant because they incorporate chocolate into everything. Take, for example, the chocolate-infused ketchup we had with our waffle fries, or our chocolate-spiced ceviche. And, of course, decadent chocolate shakes with chocolate shavings! The place was bustling, and we only got snack foods to hold us over for dinner. There was a line waiting to be seated before us, and it was worth it. I brought home some hot chocolate bars they had, and I have to admit they've already been drunk in entirety.
• Marmalade was our fancy romantic dinner date for the trip (because every trip has a fancy romantic dinner date), and we were both blown away by the meal. We ordered way too much (they offered dinners based on 5, 6, and 7 dishes - we chose 6, and were full to the point of popping), but each dish was delightful and fun. Most of the dishes we picked were rich and flavorful (our mistake), but there were a lot of lighter and fresh dishes as well. I had a very nice sangria, and finished off with creme brulee (my favorite). I had to walk outside for a while to get some air after our filling meal, but we already talk about going to Marmalade again when we return to San Juan.

Finally, a lot of our trip, when we weren't kayaking in Vieques or scaling Old San Juan, was stationed at the resort. We were, after all, there for a friend's birthday, and for mandatory relaxation. We spent a night enjoying a lovely birthday party under a colorful sunset on a vanilla sky, and one day we went to the spa for a treatment and massage after lounging around the beach and pools for a few hours. That's not normally how I travel, but I think this time it was glorious and (given the events that happened after the trip) necessary.

Delayed Swedish (Chef) Post

Vasa Museum

It has been months since I visited Sweden, and I have only now found the time to recall and describe my visit there. It just goes to show how quickly life can run away from me.

Why did I go to Sweden? Because I was attending a big conference for the global water industry - Stockholm World Water Week (aka, SIWI). I had bought my tickets to go to SIWI before I got employed, but I ended up helping out my organization while I was there to get better involved.

SIWI is essentially the Lollapalooza for water professionals in the world, where developed and developing country people meet in droves at meetings, social events, panels, and other conference-planned fun. Some couple thousand of us attended and took over the city for a week. It was overwhelming and wonderful. I won't be going into the details here about the whirlwind of the conference - just know it was very useful and that I passed out cold every night I approached the bed.

I was also committed to being a full-on tourist between conference events and professional moments. My partner Mr. CT Lawyer also took the opportunity to join me there for his own holiday, which gave us exciting romantic moments.

Aside from it being cooler in temperature compared to what I'm used to in August/September, I found Stockholm to have a quiet regality to it. Everything felt clean to me (including the youth hostels I stayed in when Mr. CT Lawyer wasn't there), and the city felt small and functioned without much fuss. I'd even say politely. If NYC was freshly washed and cleaned in the West Village or UWS, I'd say it felt of similar color to me as Stockholm. With that includes the fact that Sweden has apparently a culture (at least in the city) of late night happenings starting at midnight. As I am not someone who frequents bars and likes to be in bed by 11pm, I can't expand more on this as I was fast asleep, wearing ear plugs

I got to Stockholm a day or so before Mr. CT Lawyer, so I took my jet-lagged self on a walk through the town to see what was going on and how to navigate the conference before it started. It was rainy when I arrived (and throughout my visit), but I bought myself a small umbrella and walked through the business districts, through the ancient area of Gamla Stan with the palace and winding alleyways with old brick houses and customs houses, and back across towards the museum area. Aside from the bustling tourists, I found the quiet while walking around to be quite soothing compared to the hectic NYC noise.

While I'm not much interested in visiting museums while I 'm traveling, I visited the Vasa Musem that is dedicated to an old Stockholm harbor shipwreck that was resurfaced and preserved. It was a fascinating place that hoisted the delicate ship remains at the center of the building, with displays and stories spiraling down from the masts to the base of the ship's belly.

Once Mr. CT Lawyer came in town, we loaded tourist activities into our schedule before my conference started. We went on a mini-archipelago cruise, which for a few hours wove between some of the closer islands that populate the waters in and around the city. We also walked over to the outdoor museum called Skansen. Through our meandering walk through the museum I had hoped to espy (and pet) some living moose and reindeer who had such little interest in us humans they (understandably) stayed as far away from the edges of their enclosures. To soothe my sad inner child, we relished at the food court a traditional smorgasbord of meatballs covered in lingonberry sauce and mashed rutabaga.

We ate a lot of food while in Stockholm - probably more than we should have. All of it was so delicious and scrumptious...and sinful. I discovered pear soda/seltzer, which was so refreshing I am still actively hunting for it in the US. It was also morel and crayfish season so, of course, I had to try different delightful dishes with those in it to "make sure" I understood what morel and crayfish tasted like. And I ate some tender reindeer accompanied with a rich and comforting sauce a couple of times. One luxurious meal that we went to was at a super restaurant called Djuret, which I believe means animal in Swedish. There, we had a 6-course meal dedicated to one daily animal (ours was lamb). Each new dish was just as fascinating and fulfilling as the dish before, and I started to fully understand what people mean when they talk about food being a journey or adventure. We had a blast trying out the unique flavor combinations and admiring the stunning art of food. He had an applemust (like sparkling apple cider) that was so good it made me angry. I had a new glass of tasty wine with every dish and became sufficiently silly by the time we left the fancy restaurant - hours after we started.

I felt like a lot of the food was very creamy, like the seafood salads and all of the sweet treats, so I am baffled at how Swedes are able to keep their stereotypically lithe figures, considering all of that cream and butter put an extra load on my person. I spent enough money on souvenirs and delectable foods that at least my wallet was lighter than it was before I arrived.

One day we walked through Gamla Stan and found a lovely candy store that hosted an array of homemade taffies and hard candies. We walked in like children and gazed at the unique (to us) flavors of the candy canes when the runner of the store - a young a more svelte version of Santa Claus - came out jubilantly and sold us some candy, giving us free candy canes for "being good". Speaking of which, something I noticed that was fun about the area was that candy canes (called polka in Swedish) were ample, despite it not being the Christmas season. I had always considered candy canes to be solely dedicated to the month of December, but in Sweden, you can get polka ice cream from a non-Santa-doppleganger while sweating in a t-shirt and shorts. I guess, in my head, Sweden lived up to every stereotype I've ever harbored about it and its relationship to Christmas.

We also took a leisurely stroll at some point around the river in Sodermalm, where we found a hidden gluten free bakery on a quiet street, called Friend of Adam. There I bought a princess cake to try out. After my experience with it, I strongly believe that all cakes should now be princess cakes. The fluffy, spongey cake with the soaked up bits of berries, along with the light and buttery cream in the middle, and topped with a fun layer of marzipan was everything I could ever ask for in a cake. I hope you, too, get to experience the joys of a princess cake.

We were lucky in our Airbnb hunt for finding a nice place to stay for the week, in the southern city island of Sodermalm. While Gamla Stan is a quaint little tourist spot, and other areas are commercialized with shops and touristy food, Sodermalm helped us feel like we had found the "real" Stockholm - where people worked and lived life. We were surrounded by fun local restaurants and grocery stores that delighted and mystified me with its different selection of foods. We got to be away from the overly priced fikas and had pleasantly quiet morning enjoying creamy pastries while watching people stroll.

Before he left, we went to city hall for a conference buffet dinner. Along with many (many many) other water professionals, Mr. CT Lawyer and I found ourselves in an expansive hall that led into a gold hall that was covered in golden mosaics and had me gaping at the ceiling in between gulps of reindeer meatballs.

Mr. CT Lawyer left a few days before me, so I ended up having some time to explore more of the country by myself before heading home. Firstly, I met up with my online buddy, Malmo Martin, and we ate lunch at a cute little train restaurant and ended up walking around (and outside) of the city to help him prepare for a friend's bachelor party the next day. We chatted and joked about life while he patiently explained and detailed for me Swedish culture, politics, and current affairs.

The day before I left I decided to take an express train north to explore the old town of Uppsala. I only knew of Uppsala because of my appreciation for the popular book series by Stieg Larsson, but I am very glad I made the trek up despite intermittent rain. I started in Gamla Uppsala, where the old town used to be located some hundreds of years ago. In this area are three ancient royal burial mounds, which are hard to miss as you walk around and between the mounds. The museum for the ancient site was small and simple but well done. I learned about the occult linkages to the grounds, and they ended up handing me an iPad and told me to walk around with it outside as I scaled the old ruins. When I looked up, I saw the quiet ruins of a cute sprawl of land with grass and a church. When I held up the iPad and looked into it, I saw a rendering of a living and populous town hundreds of years ago happening on the screen. This made me giddy with excitement.

After my adventures in Gamla Uppsala, I took a bus over to the new town area, where the university is. This area was a lot more like Stockholm, and I mosied around and explored some of the university campus without having to get in the way of celebrating college students running around. I visited the big cathedral and the Gustavianum Museum, where I got to go into a creepy operating theater (the world's 2nd oldest) and explore their collection on Mr. Nobel and his famous prize.

I wish I had been able to write this earlier so I could have more fully remembered all of the pieces of my visit there, and perhaps portrayed a fuller vision of what I experienced. What I do know is that I am looking forward to going back to Sweden. I know there's more in store for me.

Leaving Brisbane

When I returned to Brisbane, I was surprised with the challenges I had with readjusting. I had major jet lag from the flying, and people commented for a week or two that I seemed flat or unwell. I’m not really sure what was going on, but I was hurting for a little bit after returning from SE Asia. Either I missed the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to in Phnom Penh, or I was recuperating from months of being sick off and on there. Either way, it was hard.

I do know that I was struggling to adjust to the bus system in Brisbane. In most of my adventures through SE Asia I was used to hailing a tuk-tuk driver with a simple nod of my head and for small denominations of dollars get carried to anywhere in the area I desired to see. In Bangkok, there’s a transit system that operates regularly, much like the NYC subway system only above ground. In Brisbane, on the other hand,  I lived in a place where buses were maybe every 30 minutes normally needed at least one transfer somewhere to get where I wanted to go. There was a lot more planning that had to happen for me to get anywhere.

Brisbane, after all, is a very large suburban-urban area. Or, as many people told me time and time again, Brisbane is a big country town.

Which meant I was at the mercy of the usually-late TransLink buses that would take me from Point A to Point B..with about 20 points between the two. During Brisbane’s cool winter time. With shops closing at 6pm every day (as opposed to SE Asia’s “open late” culture). Being a famously impatient and cold-adverse person, I did not take to these readjustments easily.

Most of my first four weeks of being back emphasized finishing my piece de resistance – my Final Project for the Masters of Integrated Water Management! I am pretty good at time and project management, so I was ahead of schedule and was able to calmly hunker down and polish my 70-page paper over and over again until I could submit it several days early. I booked several health appointments during this time (I wanted to check everything before I left since it was cheaper there than in the US), where most professionals remarked how calm I seemed considering how close my deadline was.

Admittedly, my calm demeanor and confident project management did not prevent me from stress eating. And I did have a hospital run a few weeks after returning…but that was mostly because I had had my medication adjusted just before and my health insurance told me I needed to make sure I was not reacting adversely to the change. Unfortunately, I had another infuriatingly bad run with the public hospital system in Australia (with a doctor yelling at me about how we are all going to die someday while I was asking him if I was okay) that may haunt me for a while to come. Don’t worry – I am still fine, just angry at a cocky doctor who was less than helpful with a simple concern.

Also, one week before submitting my paper there was a full-time conference on WASH in Brisbane. This was a huge week, as I was wearing several different hats every day at the conference, depending on the audience and time of day. I was working my consulting job a few hours during each day of the conference while I also represented my masters program…while trying much as possible to network for my own emerging WASH career. In some ways, the week was overwhelming because of the amount of people I talked to, but I also felt in my element. I am a social person who is hungry for learning and likes to network, after all. It was also very fun to see those I met in Phnom Penh and throughout my consulting/education come together and weave in and out for a few days.

And then, I submitted my paper.

I submitted it early, and it was anticlimactic. I was expecting some kind of little trumpet announcing my completion, or maybe a hug. Instead, I simply got an email saying, “Assessment Received”. And that was that. A few days later my friends from the class got together to celebrate our completion of the program – only then did I feel like I was really done.

Of course, my six weeks back in Australia included reuniting with friends and seeing people I had met throughout the last year and a half. I met up with friends as much as I could before I left – for dinner, for lunch, for festivals, for walks.

Some of my closer friends and I took a few days to rent a cabin in the Bunya Mountains and enjoy some relaxing freedom with each other before we started to return to our own countries. On our trip, we stocked amazing amounts of food that we cooked between long hikes around the mountain trails. There were wallabies carpeting the landscape with little joeys poking out of pouches everywhere! The air was clean (and COLD!) and smelled like trees and wooden stoves. At night, we’d go outside and gaze at the Milky Way in the darkness of a quiet, lamp-less place. We talked about funny and serious things over wine and movies. We fought off red-bellied black snakes before munching on trail mix. The retreat was a lovely respite from the rest of the world.

I worked until I left to return to the US (I am still consulting, too) so I did not have a lot of downtime before leaving. But that’s okay, because it meant I was busy and productive, which I like. 

A few days ago, I got on a redeye plane that took me out of my Australian Chapter of Life and placed me soundly back into the US for the next chapter that I have yet to open. I got a bit emotional while I left, but by now I have moved back and forth so much that it's become almost standard procedure for me.

In reflection about Australia, people asked me if I would take a job and live there. The answer is, I’m not sure.

The whirlwind 18 months have been so incredible and eye-opening that I feel it really gave me a chance to learn about my adult self and become more me. Australia was definitely a key piece to my transformation and incredible experience. It’s definitely a beautiful and peaceful place with more adorable and fuzzy animals than you can shake a stick at. And the people I’ve made friends with in Australia are outstanding and supportive friends. I am so glad that they are in my life and I wish I could safely bottle them up and take them with me wherever I end up. 

That said, I’m used to a different lifestyle that lets me be more mobile without a car or worrying about early business closing hours. I’m not used to watching TV in the evening - I'm more about  exploring interesting social events in random parts of the world. In some ways, the Australian culture is perfect and family-friendly and relaxed and secure…but I don’t think it’s for me. I like messy, adventurous, buzzing, aggressive places and cultures…like what I've experienced in NYC and Phnom Penh. I like dirt and tightly-packed streets where I can escape for a weekend. I like knowing that I have a small patch of city I can walk around and get everything I want without taking a 45-minute bus where I will feel carsick. 

I think if I was a quieter person with a lot less demands on a place (i.e. free and diverse activities, late-night options), and with a family to care for, I would jump on the opportunity to stay in sunny Australia. For now, I think I will love my Australian Chapter and look forward to visits back for friends and vacations.

Perth

I know I'm over a month behind on writing blog posts. I have been finishing my masters thesis...and consulting...and tying together the pieces before I leave for the US. Better late than never?

I should probably start from when I reentered Australia.

I came in through Western Australia, stopping in Perth for a few days. It so happens that stopping over in Perth from Southeast Asia before heading back to Brisbane saved me hundreds of dollars, and I have a friend in the area I was keen on visiting. Also, I had the rare opportunity to see one of my absolute favorite animals in the world, wild! It was a pretty good deal.

My friend met me at the airport. Upon seeing me at the gate, she handed me a sweater. After putting it on, she got me into her car so I could drop my heavy bags off at her house before adventuring around the area.

The weather in Perth compared to Phnom Penh was shockingly cold (I was shivering a bit). All of my heat rashes (I had quite a few on my limbs)from living in boiling Cambodia started to heal immediately after landing. I felt ill-equipped to deal with weather, though, as I had packed only tank tops and light shirts that breathe well while sweating. I was cold.

The culture shock from SE Asia to Australia was subtle and easy. The cleanliness of the streets surprised me for a while, as I was now used to streets lined with dust and dirt and litter and other curious objects (eg, half sets of sandals). I had learned how to listen for oncoming traffic so that I could leap out of their way and avoid injury. Here, the streets had grass and trees to divide the pedestrians from the cars, and the only trash you see is safely contained in bins, ready for pick-up. Here, everything looks so shiny and polished compared to what I had gotten used to.

The other surprise I had was the lack of people on the streets. There were so many streets, but I wondered where all of the people were. In SE Asia, it was a rare moment to be alone and free of other people. Now, the place seemed empty while we drove.

And we drove around a lot. For those who don't know, I am easily carsick and don't personally enjoy being in cars for long periods of time. This has been the case in Brisbane all year, where everything is accessible by riding in buses through long stretches of suburbia. Perth seemed to be formatted like Brisbane, with lots of roads and highways to drive. Aside from the discomfort of long drives, driving around did help me get to see the area quickly; given I only had a few days to see everything, I was glad to see the country gliding by my window.

We explored Freemantle a bit. Freemantle is kind of like a cute, quiet area of Perth that grew legs and walked down the shore a few miles. It is an adorable area with cute shops and pleasant cafes down small streets. It also used to be where a big prison was located, which is now a museum and performance space. We didn't get to go to the prison because of my limited time, but we visited the harbor area with a few older stone buildings we could walk around before eating fish & chips for lunch at an open-air harbor joint called Kaili's. Oh yeah, I was also having culture shock (and still am) to the high prices of Australia. This place is not cheap!

The second day in Perth was the piece de resistance of my trip. We woke up early, got to the port, and hopped onto a ferry to Rottnest Island. This, my friends, is where the adorable, angelic, absolutely amazing QUOKKAS LIVE!!!!

To say I was beside myself with excitement would probably not do justice the giddiness I had all day. I mean, I have been loving quokkas from afar for years! Finally, I got to go to quokka paradise and pet them! I got to potentially love them and rally the quokkas to happiness and freedom, with me, forever!

Well, I didn't expect the quokkas to be little sugar junkies, though. There are bakeries and sandwich/candy shops dotted near the harbor, and the little quokkas by the shops have grown accustomed to tourists dropping tasty things on the ground for them to try. The quokkas near the shops rummaged around for little morsels of chocolate or sugar or other highly-addictive substances that could cause major damage to the health of these succulent-eating marsupials. It was heartbreaking to be turned down by quokkas while holding a succulent leaf in exchange for someone nearby who had sugar-coated hands and a piece of banana (other tourists were idiots and kept feeding quokkas things that are not good for them). One local guy came over and told me that some of these quokkas by the shops have been losing chunks of fur as a result of eating sugary sweets instead of succulents. I was devastated to hear this. Later on, I saw a little quokka huddled in the corner of a shop's alley with Snickers wrapper in its delicate little paws. I shouted and ran over to grab the wrapper from the poor little fluffball, and it gave me a confused and sad look as I threw away the wrapper saying in near-tears, "No, quokka, no!"

Outside of the shop area, the beaches on the island were gorgeous and wild, and less-addicted quokkas came over and investigated our squee-ing selves for a little while. We tried our best to master the quintessential quokka selfie without intimidating the meek little things. They were sweet and gentle, and I was in love so much I barely could get myself to leave them. We also went for a quokka tour to learn more about their lifestyles and stumbled across a heavily-quokka-ed area where we oggled and awwwed for a while, trying to lure them to love us (I wasn't alone in this endeavor!). It was a heavenly day, and I could not have felt more accomplished in life.

We also enjoyed some snacks and toured the island on a bus, finishing our adventures with lunch at the port - I got myself an unprecedented amount of chili mussels for consumption.

I got another surprise during my short visit to Perth - I had found out that an old friend from NYU I hadn't seen in a decade lived in the area! We ended up meeting in Freemantle and enjoyed drinks and dinner with each other as we caught up on life over a few hours. I was so pleased to hear how she's doing and what has changed for both of us since last time we met. Reconnecting with old friends might be one of my favorite things in life.

On my last day, we visited the CBD of Perth. The buildings in Perth are big and loom over the streets in silence, but the city overall is a pretty small and compact place. Most of the places we wanted to visit (like museums) were unfortunately closed for the day, but we wandered a bit and I took in the quietness of the small city before getting on another plane to get back to Brisbane.

A Quiet New Year

About a week ago was the Khmer New Year. Most of the foreigners (aka expats) fled the country for holidays in cooler climates, and locals headed into the provinces to visit family over the holiday. I, on the other hand, opted to stay in Phnom Penh and work on my research project, furiously coding transcripts and trying (with tired eyes) to interpret my codes into a tangible story. I’m still working on making sense of the data and putting together my analysis, so I’m glad I stayed behind.

People here asked me what the city was like during the week everyone was gone. Honestly, I didn’t venture out too much because of my research, but I did go outside here and there. Simply put, it was hot and empty.

Firstly, it was hot. Of course, this is not an interesting observation; it is consistently in the 30s C / 80s-100s F. But that week was exceptionally hot – most days wavered between 39C / 102F to 40C / 104F (and that is not including the increased degrees for the “RealFeel” measurement). I hid in my bedroom with the aircon  nonstop in order to avoid melting; going outside seemed extremely unappetizing.

Also, Phnom Penh was silent and empty. The quiet meant I could sleep longer into the morning, which I found rather pleasant. And the streets were free of parked cars and people; only a couple cars would be driving down the main roads, whereas normally it’s packed and congested traffic nonstop. The reduced number of people made it easier to walk down the streets because there was no competition for space.

Actually, this walking around on the street was short-lived. Whenever I tried wandering more aimlessly up and down the street, I would get some tuk-tuk drivers’ attention. Normally, this attention includes someone shouting, “Hey lady want a tuk-tuk ride?! Where are you going??”, trying hard to make a transaction. Over the New Year, though, the attention was more tuk-tuk drivers’ adamantly yelling for me to get back on the sidewalk and put my phone away. It seems that some people take the week’s emptiness as an opportunity to speed down empty streets recklessly. Also, someone mentioned that theft goes up in the New Year because people want nice things like smartphones and will ride down the street on their motorcycles to snatch your belongings if you’re too close to the street.

The tuk-tuk drivers weren’t asking to give me rides, they were just genuinely concerned about my wellbeing. Which was a strange change of pace for me, being used to politely declining constantly as I walk down the street.

Despite the emptiness, I did have a little bit of a social life. There may not have been very many things open or people around (every restaurant I like to go to was closed), but I had a few friends who stuck around as well, and we'd go out to enjoy each other’s company over cold beverages (Brown Coffee was open, of course).

One friend had a dangerous allergic reaction to some strange ingredient in a meal while in the city that week. I tried to help that friend find an EpiPen or some allergy help so that they could figure out what happened to them. Just to let you know: Cambodia doesn’t have EpiPens. Try all you might, you will not be able to successfully source EpiPens in this country (and if you magically can, I am going to guess it’ll cost a lot). Luckily, this friend went to an embassy and sourced an EpiPens that way, but otherwise was looking at having to go to a clinic for a stab of adrenaline if anything else happened. This medical mishap was alarming for me in some way. I wonder, if someone has a child who is allergic to some food, what do you do? If someone is deathly allergic to some kind of insect or surprise allergy (and is a baby?!), what happens? It reminded me how some things that work in countries like Australia and the US are far cries from how things work in countries like Cambodia.

Don’t get me wrong! Cambodia is progressing and evolving at lightning speed. There are so many developments happening here, even for the 3 months I’ve been here! And so much is happening that it’s very exciting to be here and watch it change and morph into a new kind of society. That said, I do miss the immediate healthcare of other places.