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.

Istanbul Layover

Mmm baklava...

A last-minute change happened to some of my travel plans.

I had scheduled a trip to Malaysia for Denise's wedding in late-June. I had booked the tickets ages before, planning on stopping over in Taiwan on the way home and taking time with some friends to plan out our Malaysian adventure.

Two weeks before I left, though, it became clear I was needed to attend a work thing in Ghana right before my trip to Malaysia. With that, I had to make a mad-dash effort to change my flight details going to Malaysia so that I could arrive from Ghana...somehow. Those two locations don't often connect (if you were wondering).

Last-minute international flights can sometimes be (crazy) expensive...especially when they're not exactly roundtrip. The short version is that I ended up having to book my trip to Ghana and Malaysia through Turkey (both ways) and I would literally make a lap around the planet. Since I had such an intense itinerary, I decided I may as well enjoy myself and take a 24-hour layover in Istanbul.

Preparing for a last-minute layover in Istanbul was interesting. US-Turkish relations were not great - only a few weeks or months before I went a travel ban to Turkey was lifted for US citizens. I received my Turkish e-visa and started looking for information about travel concerns (a.k.a. where should tourists avoid) only to find out that the US government still strongly discouraged people from going to Turkey at all. The US government site indicated that before I traveled to Turkey, I must write out my will and make plans with my family about what was to happen "when" I get killed or dismembered while touring the country (as if it was a sure thing). That felt a bit extreme; I knew plenty of people who had recently been to Turkey and lived to tell the tale quite happily. I decided to visit the French government website for traveling in Turkey, to compare... they expressed that one should exercise caution and not be an idiot when traveling in foreign countries. It seemed more reasonable, so I heeded the French government's advice.

As I was boarding the plane in Accra to Istanbul, however, my newsfeed informed me that I was going around the day before a major election. This often spells bad news, and tourists are often encouraged to avoid areas with election, just in case there are demonstrations that could turn violent. I was anxious that I was getting myself into trouble.

I, fortunately, needn't have worried - apparently, elections are only a concern AFTER they happen, and no one seemed concerned about it on the plane nor in the city while I was there.

So I landed in Istanbul and made my way to the old town area and checked in to a hotel where I could shower and nap, The hotel felt like a French hostel, with an old building's charm and creaking floorboards to anounce your presence. The guys running the hotel were extremely sweet and warm, too; I was very early for checking-in, but they invited me to go upstairs and enjoy the breakfast.

I left my luggage behind, crept up the spiral staircase to the roof with a sunroom, and found myself staring at a Turkish breakfast buffet. If you've never seen this, know that it is colorful - reds and greens and yellows and purples. Everything is freshly cooked - eggs, cheesy dishes, sausage medleys. And everything tastes satisfying to the soul. I was starting to doubt that the Turkish food so often eaten from NYC street carts would not hold a flame to the real thing, here.

After being nourished, I walked around the old town to the Blue Mosque. This is a huge mosque that appears to be blue (there you go) and is still a working place of worship. I threw a scarf over my head and made my way into the mosque. It was indeed lovely to look at, and rather simple...but there was also a feeling of overbearing sacredness that I can feel in places where people invest so much time praying.

I was approached by a pleasant man - a Kurd - who wanted to sell me rugs. I thought to myself, you know what? Why not? I'll go look at rugs for a little bit. And I totally got sold - not for a rug (that was way too far out of my price range), but for a tablecloth. It is a gorgeous, hand-woven tablecloth that is both heavy and delicate. It could have been a fake or poorer in quality than the "real deals", but I honestly don't care - it took my breath away. And now, it may be one of the most expensive things I own.

After dropping a healthy amount of grocery money on a rug, I made my way to the cisterns (essentially an old underground reservoir). I'm a water expert, so of course, I'd want to see an underground Basilica Cisterns - especially one with ancient columns that are decorated with heads and Corinthian pillars. And it was the coolest thing! I walked down a staircase into the dark cavern of cisterns. The pillars were lit modestly, which makes it feel like the water and pillars are lit by candlelight. I walked along the soggy tourist path and found the famous Medusa heads at the end of the path. How did people carve heads into poles for underground water storages? I'm mystified. Something also nice about visiting the cisterns was how few people were there enjoying the damp, magically-lit site when I was there. It almost felt like a secret.

Probably where all of the people were really, though, was across the street to view the famous Hagia Sophia.

The Hagia Sophia is a ginormous domed building that has a patchwork history - during Byzantine times, it was a huge church. Afterward, it became a mosque. It's now a museum. Really, there isn't much that has to be said by the museum curators with any placards, though, because the building inside and out is majestic and jaw-dropping enough to distract even the most adamant historian buff from some painfully-written narratives. The whole place just felt simple yet magical - I don't know how else to describe it. I went in to see what the mammoth building was holding, and I was surprised to find a bunch of large, rather-famous-looking Jesus-related mosaics. All were impressive.

But let me emphasize - the building is very large. Very large. There were some times where I found little pockets where there weren't a lot of people hanging around and I would see something small, simple, but beautiful to look at. Like mossy water jars in a little nook by the crypts. And a cat bathing in some light coming through a window.

A note: This is well-known to many, but Istanbul has a lot of feral cats hanging out all over the place. They're everywhere, minding their own business, running the world enjoying the sights like the rest of us.

I felt dizzy with the sights after walking through the museum, so I decided to take a break for lunch at Cafe Rumist. I had something amazing and delicious, but don't ask me what because I don't know what it was (I just pointed and said, "yes, please.").

After, I made my way to the Grand Bazaar and went to a patisserie to have some baklava. Yes, I'm still gluten intolerant. My rationale for contaminating my gut with the honeyed, flakey pastry was because (1) the stuff in Turkey should probably be a million times better than the stuff I had as a kid in New England and (2) it was in memory of my mom, who loved baklava to a point that it caused family drama on some occasions. Was my experience worth the pain, in the end? Was it delicious enough to justify the outcome? Absolutely.

I continued to walk around and went to the Grand Bazaar to buy some stuff. I wasn't there for long, but I can confirm it is indeed grand, and that the architecture is, once again, beautiful and graceful (like so many buildings in Istanbul).

After collecting some presents, I walked to the Bosphorus near Galata Bridge. I had read somewhere that fish wraps were tasty and were freshly-made under the bridge, so I went to get myself a wrap. The white fish was roasting on a little outdoor open grill by an old man, and I asked for one wrap. He smiled and quietly started to pull it all together, dousing it with sauces I didn't know and stuffing the wrap with veggies I didn't see coming. I took the wrap and bit in. There was sumac mingling with warm fish and veggies. I am pretty sure I saw God at that moment.

After my small holy experience with the fish wrap, I hopped on a (very cheap) boat ride so I could enjoy the river and look at the rest of the Istanbul coasts that hug the Bosphorus. I saw that different areas of Istanbul looked really different from each other - I was concentrating mostly on an old area with lots of mosques. Other chunks of the cities were more modern and had taller, glassy buildings.

My boat ride ended and I was tired. I walked back to the hotel (it took a while) and grabbed some snacks before I took a nap and watched a FIFA game before getting back in a cab to go to the airport.

Istanbul is beautiful. It isn't entirely European - it does indeed have characteristics unique to Asian cities I've been to. It's also very old. I felt like it had an ancient feeling like if Paris, London, and Bangkok had a similar Great-Great-Grandmother...that would be Istanbul. I admired the mosques dotting the city and the peacefulness I felt while roaming the city.

I've already told Mr. CT Lawyer that it's not a matter on if he'll ever visit Turkey with me someday, but when. Because I fell in love with the place in under 24 hours.

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.

Montreal for a Weekend

For Labor Day, Mr. CT Lawyer, Chloe (our pup), and I went to Montreal in Canada. We were planning on going to get some tasty food, explore some pseudo-French culture, and relax in another country for a while. Sure, it was the start of fall and it was rainy and cold for much of our trip, but we still had a pleasant time.

I had been to Montreal a decade before for the Jazz Festival, and I recalled Montreal as a vibrant, buzzing city full of culture, European style, and buzz. What I didn't realize was that a lot of my perceptions about Montreal were actually about the festival. Montreal as a city was still charming, but a lot smaller and quieter than what I had remembered. It felt French, yet American at the same time; I am still not sure how that is possible. In a way, it reminded me of the quiet, subtle urban sprawl of Portland, with a bit of the tired industrial look of Cleveland or Detroit.

We both have varying levels of French knowledge (I used to be quite fluent), but we struggled with the Quebecois French. It didn't sound like French at all to me! Almost everyone we interacted with there initially spoke to us in French rather than English, which was fine except I would speak in European French and apparently spoke well enough that they would start spinning away in Quebecois French. Soon afterward I became lost and confused about what I was hearing (was that FRENCH?!) and sheepishly asked the same question in English. We gave up trying to converse in the local language and advertised our foreign tourist-ness for the rest of the trip.

We had hoped that Montreal would be more dog-friendly, but aside from two VERY dog-friendly cafes (Le Doggy Cafe and Hot Dog Cafe), there were limited options for us to bring our pooch. We improvised with a lot of chilly outdoor walks - such as going up Mont Royal to the lake and meandering in Old Montreal's cobble-stoned streets - to keep her active and part of our little adventure.

We had some fun highlights to our trip without Chloe:

• We explored the Biodome's animal habitats for a few hours.
• We went to a bustling local market - Jean Talon - and ate delicious crepes, cheese, and bought some amazing fresh strawberries and ciders.
• We had really good food at two notable restaurants: Elda was a nice local bistro where (we got a sandwich and a beef dish) and Toque! was fancy and whimsical food that was delicious (we got a price-fixed meal with a duck dish and some other stuff).

The highlight of the highlights was our adventure to a food truck festival. We stumbled upon the event - there were dozens of food trucks and a swarm of people in lines and drinking/eating on little plastic chairs and tables around the stadium. Most of the food trucks offered poutine (the Canadian specialty and favorite - french fries with gravy and cheese), which we tried and politely moved on. We also got some pretty amazing lobster dishes, ribs, raclette, and ice cream. It was a delightful evening and helped us better see the local culture in a more authentic way. People were pleasant, clumped in their groups of friends, and very interested in beer and poutine. As we left, we found ourselves paying $10 to go into an ax-throwing truck (where you throw axes in the truck at targets a few times) and really enjoyed failing at ax-throwing (okay, well I sucked). Only in Canada would this truck work out.

Would we live in Montreal? Neither of us felt a confident "yes" to that question, but neither of us said definitely "no", either. Montreal has some cleaning up to do on its infrastructure, the "francophone elite" culture clashed with the overall Canadian-friendly vibe, and it seemed like they have more in common with Broken Industry America than they wish to admit. We found this article that better expressed some of our not-so-swell observations of the area. That said, the people were pleasant, the vibe was peaceful, and we would both happily come back for another visit.

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.