Asian Calmination - Cambodia

Cambodia

I was excited to cross the border. Besides Hong Kong to Shenzhen, real land crossings have been missing from my life. The process didn't meet expectations though, with lots of waiting time in no man's land and no interesting bits, save the exchange of crisp US dollars. In Cambodia, the ride was very rural until suddenly crossing the Mekong River, urban Phnom Penh arose with little warning. My hostel, 19 Happy House Backpacker, was a couple blocks away from our dropoff point, at #59 Street 13. A wrong turn and a dozen blocks later, I was lost with the early afternoon sun really weighing down on me and my red backpack. When I finally reached the hostel, the staff could not find my booking. Minutes of awkward confusion later, I realized I was at Happy Backpacker, a separate establishment. I circled around even more confused, as Street 13 was somehow between Street 15 and Street 5. I came across #60 Street 13, which was some Malaysians' home. Malays speak English which is great, but they had never heard of Happy House Backpacker despite my protests that it must be next door. Some venting later, I kept walking down the street and finally saw the sign for 19 Happy House several blocks away. I learned the hard way that street numbers have absolutely no meaning in Cambodia.

Spark - eccentric establishment

My first night in Phnom Penh included pickup ultimate with the young athletic Swa players on a barebones mini turf pitch, followed by many beers at a concert hall/beer hall/replica Italian plaza/microbrewery/cafeteria called Spark (complete with sinks specifically designed for pukers in the bathroom) with Asian Ultimate legend Jared Cahners. I learned that the fellow Newton native has been living in and out of Asia since the 1990s, coming to Cambodia for his PhD but quitting shortly before we met, and had various histories of fluency in Mandarin, Vietnamese and Khmer. In between, I met a Japanese/Chinese/Thai Wellesley College graduate Clinton Global Health employee looking for someone to analyze malaria data, a Peace Corps volunteer and some of the pioneers in Cambodian ultimate. I always enjoy entering a new city and observing the makeup of the economy, and the makeup of the foreign population.  Throughout Asia, English teachers abound, but in Cambodia I met many aid workers/NGO veterans. This influx gives Phnom Penh a distinctly non-traditionally Asian feel. The downtown is awash in bars and pizza/Chinese food joints with stories traded in English and French.

I didn't have the best time in Cambodia. Everywhere I felt like locals were constantly trying to fleece the last buck out of me, and it really wore me down. Sure, this vibe was prevalent in all the former communist countries I visited (Vietnam and Laos) but most evident in Cambodia.  Ironically, while I attribute communism for the uninspiring aspects of Cambodia, a better understanding of the rise of communism is my best takeaway from the country. While Phnom Penh dates back to the 15th century, and was called the Pearl of Asia in the 1920s, it doesn't feel like an old city. The French and the Communists had left a grid of dusty and sweaty streets, old architecture too rundown to exude any colonial charm and a skyline dotted by a handful of uninspired modern high rises. There are some golden Wats scattered throughout the city and a major boulevard with a pretty monument in the center, but it struggles to compare to the temples of neighboring Thailand. And though I did not find Khmer cuisine bad per se, my palate was so well primed before and after in Vietnam and Thailand.

The ugly legacies of communist rule, and specifically the bloody genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, are thus still very tangible. The government was brutally anti-intellectual, killing most anyone with glasses, education or foreign language knowledge. The country's genocide caused the deaths of around a quarter of the population, an astounding culling of 8 million down to 6 million. When you lose an entire generation of cooks, architects, bureaucrats and writers, cultural devastation is inevitable.

I never really understood communism in history classes. We studied so much about its deleterious effects that it never made sense how such extreme practices took hold in the first place. I read Lenin in high school and Marx in college and still had no idea. But my second day in Phnom Penh involved visiting the Killing Fields outside the city, where hundreds of skulls are prominently shown, and the S21 school-turned-prison-turned-museum, which documents accounts of the atrocities that occurred there. Walking through history, I learned that Pol Pot as a frustrated failed man, who despite an education in France, rode a populist ideology that villainized the educated elite, foreign influences and minorities. The Khmer Rouge promoted rural ethnic Khmers as the backbone of Cambodian society, preaching self-reliant isolationism. If any of that sounds familiar and scary, reread what the regime did after they got into power and be even more scared.

I had planned to be in Cambodia for a brief two stops, before reaching Bangkok for an ultimate tournament. However I mistook the tournament to be a week earlier than it was, giving me another week to explore Cambodia. I'm not much of a beach person, but I figured a southeast Asian trip was incomplete without one, and so I ventured south to the resort town Sihanoukville. There awaited miles of pristine beach facing the Gulf of Thailand, and a bizarre mixture of expensive restaurants and hotels, dirt-cheap bungalows and hammocks, and a bunch of nothing in between.  Young Europeans who were lazing around the hostels for weeks on end seemed to outnumber any other demographic. They were apparently not my group, for in a backpacking rarity, I actively tried to  go out hard and have a good time and came out with no memorable stories whatsoever. Maybe it didn't help that I spent the day reading research papers in my air-conditioned bungalow and was looking for people with whom to discuss global income equality. Sorry I'm just not a beach person.

I quickly moved on to Kampot, a river town that was much more my kind of place. Just two hours away, the demographics could not be more different, with a local economy grounded on its famous pepper rather than tourism. The city's key attraction was an enormous durian sculpted into the middle of a major traffic circle. A conversation the previous day with friend John Johnson alerted me to an abandoned town between Kampot and Sihanoukville, but it was tough to verify on Google. Exploring a charming collection of expat-friendly riverside bars on the east side of the river, I found some seasoned expats engaged in academic research. I asked them about this abandoned town, and the expats enlightened me about Bokor Hill Station. One of them showed me the Google streetview, and pointed at himself standing next to a church. "I was there when the Google Earth guy was walking around with all the cameras!" I resolved to go the next day. 

Curious about the opposite riverbank, I explored a bridge closed to traffic and found a hole in the barrier, evidently used by pedestrians. I snuck over to the west side and found a decidedly more local scene. At an outdoor club blaring Khmer music, I ordered iced beer and cow entrails. On the way home, I passed by the durian, took one sniff of its imaginary scent, and threw up the entrails.

The next morning I was back on a motorbike for the first time since my Sapa fall. From a purvey of Googlemaps, the trip seemed like a 40 minutes straightshot on one major road. However at the 40 minute mark I reached the ticketed entrance to the mountain road, and I realized that the Hill Station was of course, up on a hill, and that Google hadn't quite charted that winding Cambodian mountain road. I drove up into the unknown, made a sharp turn around a bend and nearly fell off my bike. The mountain sloped into the Gulf of Thailand to the south, and the ocean winds crashed down unimpeded. The winds affected me mostly on the hairpin turns, when I slowed down dramatically. More daring motorcyclists zoomed past me on those turns, but I wasn't shamed out of braking - my nerve had left with my palm skin in the mountain gravel of North Vietnam. Finally I reached the top of the mountain, past the construction of a monstrous modern casino, a budding tourism park, some sanitation pump stations. Hiking up a grassy clearing, I found a solitary stone church. A bench that could have been lifted right out of Paris sat undisturbed in front. The church's stonework was definitely weathered, but otherwise everything was in remarkably good shape.  The doorway arch was doorless and I walked into an eerie interior. The multi-scripted graffiti covering the walls and the flower pots in front of religious statues reflected a dichotomy between disdain and worship. A small Jesus on the crucifix still hung overlooking it all, silently witnessing decades of good deeds and sins.

There were no explanatory plaques, but the area had been settled by the French in the 1920s, providing a cool getaway from the stuffy Phnom Penh. It was abandoned by the French twice, ultimately to the Khmer Rouge, and was even used by their remaining forces after a Vietnamese invasion overthrew the regime into the 90's. Now Cambodia has been stable enough that the area is being developed, and the ghost town may itself ghost away. The lack of historical preservation is understandably not a focus (any cultural preservationist would be busy further north), but it still saddens me that so many stories there go untold. With no public information, I had very nearly missed this site.

I had already spent way longer on this hill escapade, and hurried back, driving past the large abandoned Bokor Palace Hotel that was apparently even cooler. The ride down the steep mountain slopes was interminable and I couldn't wait to never drive a motorcycle again. Returning to Kampot in the late afternoon, I was stunned to learn that there were no more bus options returning to Phnom Penh. Turns out the start of the Chinese New Year affects commerce in Cambodia as well, and buses simply stopped operating. The Super Bowl was the next day and definitely watchable in Phnom Penh. Wikitravel did list one alternate form of transportation - car pool. And so I found a bunch of drivers and agreed to pay $20 USD to join an unknown number of people for the 4 hour ride to the capital. I waited in the park for 2 hours, and finally there were 3 other Cambodians joining. The sedan driver and I made 5, and as we hit the main road, I thought to myself this wasn't so bad - Wikitravel had warned that these carpools often crammed 7 into the same car. As soon as I counted myself lucky, our car slowed down and I had to scoot in for another passenger. And then we stopped again, and two woman were sharing the shotgun seat. As the 7 of us drove down the road, imagine my surprise when we slowed again. I shuddered to think of 5 of us fitting in the back, but instead the driver got out and then essentially sat on the new passenger's left lap. And the 8 of us in this clown car of a sedan made our way up to Phnom Penh for the start of the year of the monkey.

Watching the Super Bowl in a Texas-themed bar in Phnom Penh was an experience, but the game sucked and I moved on to take a minibus to Siem Reap. Here again I was a victim of Cambodian capitalism. The minibus was run by a minor agency and not easy to find, and my desperation at potentially missing the ride was showing when I asked a tuktuk driver for help. He ended up taking me for a $1 ride, and literally drove around the block back to where we started and pointed out the agency. Upon landing in Siam Reap, I luckily had saved my hostel location on Googlemaps and realized it was a 3 block walk. I was harassed by tuktuk drivers anyway, and I gave one the address as a test. A $1 ride would have been generous, but this guy brazenly asked for $5. I was more than willing to contribute to the local economy, but such shameless disrespect honestly infuriated me. I told him to fuck off and walked.

No place on my path was as touristy as Siam Reap. In contrast to the well ordered geometry of the nearby ancient sites, the modern city felt like a disorganized cantina of businesses clumped every which way to mine that tourism gold. Hotels and restaurants catering to tourists of all types face each other with services advertised in English, French, German, Chinese and Korean.

Hostel owners advised me it was possible to rent a bicycle at 5am. Indeed it was, but I had to jump over the locked gate of the hostel first. Though I'm not much of a morning person, I biked the 8 miles out of town and reached Angkor Wat an hour before sunrise. The classic view of Angkor Wat at dawn is usually taken in front of a lake, but a tenth of humanity was camped out on that spot. I thought I could take an equally impressive shot from a different angle, and jostled with a separate large group of people for position. I failed to capture any decent photos from the front, except perhaps this one of the crowds. I raced through the temple and tried to process everything. The palace was immense yes, but each column was still intricately carved, the stonework carefully laid. Statues and murals were so commonplace that negative space was a rarity.

Angkor Wat from the back

Nowhere was I more negatively affected by hype than here. I had heard so much of these ruins and even the previous night, a hostel mate had talked about the spiritual experience of witnessing the sun rise in Angkor Wat. In front of the building, surrounded by thousands of people, I did enjoy the bright hues of the morning sun...but I was not spiritually moved. Perhaps my favorite part of the experience was reaching the back of the complex, the sky still in the later stages of dawn, and looking out into the relative peace of the jungle. Whether I like it or not, preconceptions heavily influence my enjoyment, and it is no surprise that some of my favorite experiences on this journey were ones that I had no expectations of at all.

The whole set of ancient temple complexes is often collectively referred to as Angkor Wat, but Angkor Wat is only the biggest of the temples in the Angkor ruins (Angkor means capital city, Wat means temple). Angkor is undoubtedly the largest and most famous of the many temple ruins attractions in Southeast Asia (of which this trip included 2 others), all with a Buddhism-appropriating-Hinduism shared history. Dating primarily from the 12th century, the city is believed to have been the largest pre-industrial city in the world, spanning 390 square miles, before essentially being abandoned and lost to the jungle for centuries. Angkor Wat is so impressive, reaching the height of a 20 story building, and so revered, being the only building in the world to be featured on a national flag.

I biked over 40 miles that under that brutal Cambodian sun, stopping for coconut water whenever possible. I saw a temple in a marsh, a temple with a giant tree growing through it, and the temple that Lara Croft/Angelina Jolie had run through. By the early afternoon, I was unable to appreciate the ancient wonders around me - I had had my temple run.

There were plenty of temples I didn't get to on my one day of biking, but I didn't go back out the second day. Sure I felt bad, drinking beer in a cafe in the vicinity of some of the worlds' greatest treasures, but I was so tired it was a no-brainer of a decision. Even worse I was cognizant that my lack of appreciation of the temples was a product of my western education. I've learned enough about gothic arches and flying buttresses to admire European cathedrals, but I don't know the first thing to look at when staring at the Hindu/Buddhist temples. I don't know the difference between a temple dedicated to Vishnu or Rama, and the murals tell stories that make no sense to me. Clearly the course of action is to study this history, but I prefer to blast the parochial scope of my education. I explored the rest of Siem Reap that day, and was surprised to find a functioning town with some non-tourist economy, and a very touristy street creatively called Pub Street. Wandering through town, I got hassled nearly every block by a tuktuk driver offering to take me to the temples. Unable to find a respite, I walked straight to the bus station and bought a ticket to Bangkok the next day.

Asian Calmination - Vietnam

The giant red backpack is completely deflated. At its peak it bundled 30 odd pounds and imprinted its shoulderstraps onto my body.  Long hauls in bus hulls and nights on dirty hostel floors has bruised the polyester casing. Somehow it held up and protected my laptop, my clothes and my sanity over the many miles.

The longest trip I've ever taken feels very epic to me and my little world. By plane, train, boat, bus, motorbike or carpool, I made my way through the unfamiliar. I had my resolve tested deep in the jungle, survived hairy motorbike experiences, crossed five land borders, crashed an aviation annual gala, squished into a clown car, bathed an elephant, soared over the rainforest, drunkenly floated down a river, climbed a waterfall, prayed in an abandoned church and refreshed my trove of good stories. I ran into a college teammate in Bangkok, explored the best coffee shops in Luang Prabang and was offered jobs in Phnom Penh and Chiang Mai. I ate street food everywhere but miraculously never got food poisoning, or even had a calamitous toilet encounter.

I had been thinking about a trip like this for a while. I'd enjoyed traveling before I moved to Hong Kong, but 4 years in a great jumping off point fed a growing travel appetite. The more of the world I saw, the more of the world I realized remained to be seen.  Many cities were accessible by short flights, but plenty of fantastic less urbanized areas were beyond the reach of the weekend warrior. If I were to leave Asia, I had always planned on allowing for a lengthier trip to visit some off-the-path areas. And at the beginning of 2016, I made the decision to leave my job and make this trip happen. I targeted places I hadn't yet been able to visit, mainly Vietnam, but I didn't set a real itinerary. I had some vague routes that made geographic sense, but honestly had no end date set. Along the way I hoped to see cool sights, get off the b have fun, learn more about the world and global income inequality, visit friends, and also take "travel breaks" to learn the professional skills to transition to becoming a data scientist. I hadn't intended on this being a soul searching odyssey, but that happened regardless.

The trip weaved in and out of different phases. I departed Hong Kong for Hanoi on January 15, a week after my last day at work. I backpacked through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, while I was more of a digital nomad in Bangkok, Malaysia and Singapore. The portion in Xinjiang felt like a separate trip altogether, after which I embarked upon familiar lands for a friends seeing tour. I returned to Hong Kong on March 28 but continued living out of my luggage for another two weeks there before arriving in Boston (via San Francisco) April 12, making for 35 stops in 96 days. These three months were some of the best days of my life and I tried to never forget how lucky I was to have this whole opportunity.

I get some flabbergasted responses when I recount the whole expedition, as if the whole idea was nuts. I get some nonchalant nods as well - while this may have been my most epic trip, there are plenty of ultramarathon voyagers who sneer upon my measly wanderings.  Some of these expert travelers were great sources of knowledge and inspiration to me. These include Tim O'Rourke, long time Hong Kong expat who tried to bike from Darjeeling to Ireland through Pakistan and Iran in the early 90s, Dave Learn, the long time Shenzhen expat who traveled around the world for over two years, John Johnson, whose Instagram photos have a cult following, and Sam Axelrod, who needs no descriptive appositive.

Vietnam

The instant I landed in Vietnam, I became a millionaire, with more Dong than I knew what to do. I immediately caught an overnight train north to Sapa, a mountain village I had only heard about a few weeks before.  I was in a nervous daze the entire ride, arriving in the chilly darkness into a remote train station an hour away from the town. It wasn't until a local bus took me a main-squarish place that the discomfort eased off and discovery took over.

And I discovered that I'd picked a hell of a start. A simple walk out of town led into gorgeous green valleys with rice terraces carving up steep slopes. The clear weather provided an incredible backdrop to what was probably the most beautiful place on my entire itinerary.  I took a chill hike down the valley to neighboring villages, and on the way back up to the town, I stopped by a cliffside coffeeshop / bar. Sipping egg coffee and beers, I watched as the fog rolled in and out of the valley outside my window, evolving from one sensational view to another. It was as pleasant a beginning as I could ask for.

Sapa was part of a rural mountainous area settled by at least 6 distinct ethnic groups. While it was difficult for foreigners to reach during a long weekend, Sapa was well frequented by backpackers. I quickly began to learn the demographics that made up the southeast Asia, or Banana Pancake Trail, backpacking crowd. There were few professionals based in Asia like me, and far more students in a gap year or about to start work, mostly from Western Europe and Australia. Likely due to greater student loans and a less prevalent traveling culture, Americans were few and far between.

On my second day, I summoned the nerve to rent my first ever motorbike to visit some waterfalls an hour outside town. I immediately braked too hard and fell. I came out of that fall alright and quickly got a grip, and was soon exuberantly cruising along mountain roads. Then the road turned to gravel and I came to a patch mysteriously being hosed by a man. I braked before reaching the puddle and suddenly found my bike skidding and my hands hitting the gravel hard. Emergency thoughts rushed through my head. "Is this how it happens? Is this how people die in accidents?" Half a minute elapsed before I could feel sure that nothing was broken. The man with the hose helped me up and an old man raced down from the hill. He led me to his hut and placed my skinned palms into a bowl of water and watch the gravel sift out. My palms, the right one especially, had little remaining skin. I was wearing long pants, but they had torn apart and left my left knee pretty scraped. I had to get my bloody palms back on the handlebars and finish my ride to a waterfalls. Luckily when I returned to my guesthouse to patch up my wounds, a German couple there revealed themselves as nurses and helped dress my wounds. The damage on my right palm, while superficial,  hindered my ability to carry bags for another month.  The good start to my trip had turned bad quickly.

On my bus from Sapa to Hanoi, I had the luxury of choosing assistance from the Dutch nurse or the Australian medical student to redress my wounds. Hanoi was a hectic city, with its unordered motorcycle madness crazy even when compared to Chinese cities. In terms of crossing the street difficulty, Hanoi is to Beijing as Beijing is to New York City as New York city is to Random Little Town. Within that chaos however, I was able to find lots of chill time within the city's many interesting cafes. The coffee was so good, oh so good, and the food maybe even better.

I stayed in the city's Old Quarter, not far from the west lake with its giant tortoise. Unbeknownst to me, this tortoise died while I was in Hanoi, leaving only three of its species left (am I such bad luck?). The area breathed of the narrow alleyways and makeshift market places, organically winding streets free of the bird's-eye decrees of urban planners. There was plenty of griminess - Hanoi is still in a developing country, but it's a capital with an illustrious history. The Hoa Lo Prison, or the Hanoi Hilton, was despite its dark nature probably the most interesting place I visited in the city. Though the war is long over, the prison/museum is full of propaganda trying to convince viewers that the American prisoners loved it there. I had known enough about John McCain's imprisonment there during the Vietnam War to question these accounts. Though the museum walls now seemed harmless, they were just eerie enough for me to imagine the horrors of McCain's experience being dragged down the same corridors. It was more fun to imagine how Donald Trump might have fared had he not dodged the draft. 

The storied Halong Bay was next. I visited in January, way out of season, and the bright green water and clear blue skies that so many photos had hyped up were nowhere to be found. Both sky and water were generic shades of grey. I joined a two day one night cruise with an interesting cast of characters. People often ask me, "who is the craziest person you met on your trip?" I think it's difficult to uncover the depths of another's depravity until you really get to know them, which doesn't happen too much while backpacking. However on that cruise, there was an old white haired, white bearded American who probably last shaved during the Reagan administration. Upon boarding, he immediately inquired about weed, which endeared him to the younger backpackers. He soon got weird. He was in his 60's and had not been in the US in over 30 years because it was too sinful. He was a Bible Literalist, believing every single word to be divinely inspired, and actually withstood scrutiny of hypocrisy. Another American girl Brook talked about her last name Long and how cool it was that Long means Dragon in Vietnam, and that Halong itself means Descending Dragon. Bible Beard then spoke about how dragons were the flesh incarnate of the devil and how terrible it was for the Vietnamese to worship them. Talk about buzz kill. Luckily the tranquil seas and green islands of Halong Bay were fun enough overall to drown out Buzzkill Bible Beard and the grey skies.

Next up was Da Nang and Hue, and the memorable bus trip and aviation party which I've documented already. Hue was cool and palatial (Hue Forbidden City) and I could have spent more time there exploring, but instead I chose to escape the rain and drink. Da Nang might seem like a boring modern city, but I enjoyed the chance to see a functioning industrious side of Vietnam. From Da Nang it was a short ride to Hoi An, a charming old port city which had eschewed the modern commercial duties to Da Nang and emerged instead as a touristy lantern-lit ode to a historical era. I loved Hoi An and how the tight Chinese-Japanese-Vietnamese urban architecture intermeshed with the gorgeous river scene. Though the town was small, I could have wandered around those pedestrian alleyways all day. The trip was greatly supplemented by a long bike ride to the beach with a French girl I had just asked to take my picture, and another ride out from town to the Terracotta Park, a random museum with clay models of world wonders, which I had learned from Mya at the aviation party. The liberated joys of backpacking - meeting fellow travelers and finding hidden gems - reached new highs in Hoi An. 

This high was soon to crash down. Sometime on my next voyage, a 16 hour bus ride to the mountain coffee town Buon Ma Thuot, I lost my phone. I spent about 24 hours mostly feeling sad, but I fit in 5 delicious cups of coffee, observant walks through a tourist-free city economy, and a great goat meat dinner with a retired Canadian couple.

Skipping the resort city Dalat, I headed straight to Ho Chi Minh City to a new phone. I was lucky to be offered housing from Sam & Quentin Axelrod, though they were both out of town. Their US consular housing provided a pitstop of luxury, with AC, TV, gym, wifi and an immense jewelled tiger (that Sam loves and Quentin hates). I also was able to connect with some ultimate friends and a Georgetown classmate who based his startup there. I learned that Saigon, or HCMC, is a surprisingly great city for startups. For a city of its level of development and quality of life, the cost of living is bizarrely low (sidenote: its abundance of skybars are also an urban outlier). A steady local graduate corps of programmers are readily and affordably available, and several co-working spaces have sprung up to make HCMC a go-to spot for location independent workers.

I planned my days to involve at least 2 coffee outings, interspersed amongst tourist site visits. My 5 days in HCMC were chill, with sobering trips to the Cu Chi Tunnels, the War Museum, and Saigon's Chinatown. I went into the tunnels confused about how a rag tag underground (literally) bunch could beat the US army machine, but left with an idea of the terror any American soldier must have felt entering those narrow dark trap-filled death corridors. I went into the war museum prepared to deflect the Vietnamese propaganda, but left aghast and abashed. Even if the Agent Orange exhibit inside was incredibly exaggerated, the US atrocities during the war were unfathomable. I felt deep shame for my country and my ignorance of this event. The Chinatown experience was less sobering, but still war-related. I walked around District 5 and found my way into a housing estate where I heard Cantonese. In the courtyard, a pair of adjacent stalls sold dumplings and tea respectively. I sat down and awkwardly started a conversation with a 50 year old enjoying his lunch. His vernacular was odd, with an unfamiliar word to be found in every sentence. He used a formal term for a soldier's march in lieu of the verb for walking. He went on to describe how the whole area used to be in Chinese, and how 4 in 5 residents left during or after the war. I asked him why he stayed, and his calm demeanor belied the sadness of his answer. "Most of them died leaving. The Chinese people have forgotten us. Few Hong Kongers like you want to visit us. But it's ok, life is pretty good here."

The rest of my Saigon experience consisted of expensive drinks at skybars, to the extent where I nicknamed the city Skygon. My first country and main impetus for the trip surpassed my expectations. The pho, banh mi and coffee defied the laws of economics in their quality and price. The foods that hadn't been popularized worldwide, My Quang and Bun Bo Hue and Banh Xeo, rocked my world. I had tasted enough of the food and learned enough of the language that when I entered a Vietnamese restaurant in Bangkok weeks later, I felt surprisingly at home. There was never a dull moment outside either. Cars didn't own the roads and pedestrians didn't own the sidewalks. Everywhere the motorbike was king. The system seemed to be in a state of dynamic flux, never at any equilibrium but somehow never breaking down.

Cal's Guide to Asian Cities

This guide is very me. I've spent quite some time traveling around Asia, mostly to cities, and here is a wayward collection of experiences and opinions dressed up into a guide. All travel tips, pictures, puns, and snarky comments are mine. If you don't like me, you won't like this.

Bangkok

Minimum Time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Bangkok isn't the official name for the city. The official name comes from Pali and Sanskrit root words, ancient languages of northern India which were the scripture languages for Buddhism, similar to ancient Hebrew and Aramaic for Christianity.

Do: Bangkok has a lot going for it. There is a reason the city has often been the most visited city in the world. The Grand Palace is golden and grand as are so many temples. There are happening markets, riverboat tours, and so many malls. The food options are tremendous, with street-side vendors selling skewers and orange Thai Iced teas and many different regional Thai cuisines packing their own spices. Then the sun disappears and trucks open up Transformer-style into parked bars, night markets emerge, tourists and locals alike rage underneath expressways and interesting night shows shall we say take place. Bangkok is similar this way to Amsterdam and New Orleans - there's plenty to do culturally, but that's not why you're really there. 2 days is enough to scratch the surface, but especially when factoring hangover time, 3 or 4 is recommended.

Pun Factor: 10. While not unanimous, Bangkok is at least a Thai for punniest city in Asia. There's a reason schoolchildren ask "What's the capital of Thailand?" before punching you in the balls. "Let's go to the temple." "Wat Pho?" There's also a MRT station called Nana, which even locals find funny.

Beijing

Minimum Time: 4 days

NLGX

Linguistic Footnote: Beijing (北京) means Northern Capital. There is also a Southern Capital (Nanjing - 南京) and an Eastern Capital (Tokyo － 东京). 

Do: China has 5,000 years of history and a lot of it took place in Beijing. Large restored sections of The Great Wall are an hour away and are required for Chinese to "become real Chinese." The Forbidden City and Summer Palace preserve some parts of the last dynasty, and Tiananmen Square will invoke more recent Chinese history. There's the Drum Tower and other sections of the former city wall, numerous temples, other former imperial courtyards and gardens, upscale shopping, hidden Hutongs, crazy nightlife, Peking duck, the huge Summer palace, the 798 art district, Beihai park, Nanluoguxiang street, the CCTV tower, the Bird's Nest, the Olympic Sites and some of the world's worst air. The city as a whole is a great collection of tough people from all over China who have been through a lot.  Due to the spread of the city, you really need 4 days to do it properly.

Pun Factor: 4. I heart BJ, as well as heart getting Tanked in Tiananmen (original name of this blog).

Guangzhou

Minimum Time: 1.5 days

Linguistic Notes: Guangzhou has historically been known to the Western world as Canton. When the Portuguese arrived in the 1500s, there really wasn't a name for this city, but the province name was/is Guangdong. The Portuguese somehow transformed this into Canton. Oh don't worry, we will delve more into Portuguese trans-phonetics in this blog post.

Guang-tham City?

Do: Guangzhou is a historic center of trade, trading with the Arab world as early as the 9th century. There's some history to be found, like the former colonial enclaves and the church on Shamian Island, some old school Cantonese architecture and a museum dedicated to the father of modern China, Sun Yat-Sen from nearby. But despite the long history and its reputation as the birthplace of Cantonese culture, Guangzhou really disappointed me in the cultural category. It's modernized into any other Chinese metropolis. It sprawls into other cities with far too many people, and with road names like Jie Fang South Road divided by the same plastic white gates, Guangzhou typically feels like any other city in China. On the plus side, there are some cool modern residential buildings in Zhujiang New Town, and some cool teahouses and a very solid nightlife scene. The city is so big that if you actually do want to see the sights, it'll take a while, but the sights aren't all that special.

Pun Factor: 1. I cant(on) even.

Hong Kong

Minimum time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Hong and Kong do not actually rhyme in Cantonese.

Do: I originally came up with the concept of "minimum time" to help tourists plan their trip to Hong Kong. Despite the often overwhelming density, Hong Kong (Skyscraper City) is arguably a better place to live than to visit. The main attraction is that skyline, as seen from the the Peak (take the tram up for old timeyness, or a taxi up waiting behind 100 people for a 100 year old ride isn't your thing), the Star Ferry, the ICC Sky bar, the Avenue of Stars, or one of hundreds of great spots weaved into the mountainside. First timers to Asia generally enjoy the Big Buddha statue out in Lantau, which is larger taller in meters (34) than it is old in years (21). There's street stall shopping in Mong Kok and Temple Street, colonial history in Tsim Sha Tsui and Sheung Wan, aggressive hooker bars in Wan Chai, a crowded materialistic public area creatively named Times Square, and the world's heaviest concentration of debauchery upon a steep gradient in Lan Kwai Fong (LKF). Because of the city's great transportation system, that can all be done in 2 days and still leave you time to spend way too much money on a purse. If you want off the beaten path, there's the park/outdoor museum in the former Kowloon Walled City, incredible hiking trails all over the territory, easily accessible beaches, charming streets in Sham Shui Po, an old tram that locals call the Ding Ding, the Asia Society's intricate connection to the mountainside, and so much great food that you might get too full to do any of these things. The connected elevated walkways in Central are also attractive to those who like urban design, while fans of skyscraper architecture could consider this their Mecca. My five favorite buildings here: 1) Bank of China 2) HSBC Building 3) K11 4) The Centre Building 5) Carnegie's.

Pun Factor: 5. Haters like to call this place Hong Wrong, fans like to call it King Kong, but I'm not sure how long you can keep these puns strong. I was proven wrong though, by this: http://mashable.com/2015/01/13/hong-kong-metro-puns/ . I would like to say I wish I came up with those, but I really don't. 

Kuala Lumpur

Minimum Time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Its name means "muddy estuary" but read my previous post for way more linguistic background on Malaysian Chinese than you'll ever want to know.

Do: Kuala Lumpur only developed as a major city out of a tin mine in the late 1800s.  The only must-see in KL are the Petronas Towers which splendidly stand out in a skyline that gives it very little competition. The Batu caves are slightly outside the city, still accessible by metro, and are very cool for the large statue 43m statue of Hindu deity Lord Murugan and the awe inspiring (and bat-filled) caves up the mountain. Chinatown is cool if you don't live in a Chinese city, Merdeka Square is nice but empty, several of the Mosques are notable, and there are some fairly epic malls (Pavilion, Suria KLCC) because no Asian city would be complete without those, and a surprisingly strong nightlife scene in the Golden Triangle, especially for a Muslim country.  The food though is the main draw, and I cannot underemphasize how good and varied the cuisine in KL is, from Nasi Lemak to South Indian roti to Bakuteh. Malaysia's tourism slogan is "Malaysia, Truly Asia" which I find pretty fitting (and better than the alternative: Malaysia, the Airplane Mystery State). The city is not only incredibly diverse with so many Asian ethnicities and languages visibly represented, but it also exhibits many of the forces facing Asian cities today, including modernization eroding tradition, religious tension, traffic problems and solutions, pollution and the smell of durian. Whatever your preconceptions of Asia are, you will probably find them in Kuala Lumpur. 

Pun Factor: 2. It seems like you got something to work with here, but I got nothing of kuala-ty. I just got a ton of bad ideas all lumpur-ed together. 

Macau:

Minimum Time: 4 hours

Linguistic Notes: Macau sounds nothing like the Chinese name for this city (Cantonese: Ou Mun. Mandarin: Ào Mén). It is possibly named after an A Ma Temple that used to be there (A Ma Gok), but my theory is that the Portuguese were just terrible at transliterating names. I mean, they thought that Canton sounded like Guangdong. Also the current Portuguese spelling of Macau replaces Macao which is confusingly still used, even in official capacities.

Do: Count the number of face cards and non-face cards, and when the non-face cards outnumber the face cards by 10, start betting big. There's the Venetian, the Sands, the MGM Grand and the Casino Lisboa, none of which will kick you out for staring and all of which will let you slobber their free milk teas. Other than the the casinos, there are some cute European streets, a large historical Chinese house called the Mandarin House, the House of Dancing Water Show, the lovely Portuguese seaside restaurant Fernando's and the remaining wall of the St. Paul's Cathedral. Truth be told, Macau has had a rich and interesting cultural history, similar to Hong Kong, as an independent polity next to a turbulent mainland China. It was one of the earliest European colonies in Asia, and the most recently returned. However, unlike Hong Kong, Macau has ceased to develop it's own industry and has instead sold out to a comfortable quality of life financed entirely by mainland gamblers' losses. All that is left of the heart and soul of Macau is a burnt-out facade, which is physically manifested in the St. Paul's Cathedral.

Pun factor: 3. When introducing a local specialty item to Macau, what lazy name can McDonald's executives come up with? The Macau McCow.  

Manila 

Minimum Time: 1 day

Linguistic Notes: Most Americans just assume that people speak Spanish in the Philippines because so many Filipinos use Spanish names. But nowadays, nobody speaks Spanish

Do: Manilans will quickly tell you that next to Warsaw, Manila was the city second most devastated by World War II. This is used to explain why there isn't a whole lot of special visible history. There is a lot of Spanish influence in the background, in the old stone architecture and horse-drawn carriages, and a lot of American influence in the foreground, in the road signs and Krispy Kreme stores. There are aspects of Manila that fit into any leading global city, from the Mall of Asia to the clubs of Makati to the Fully Booked bookstore in Alabang. There also lots of leaky slums and crammed jeepney rides that show the poverty still rampant throughout the country. Rizal Park is worth checking out, as well as St Augustin Cathedral, Intramuros and Chinatown. See some of the sites, get to know some Filipinos and see why they're awesome and then leave the city to learn more about the country if that's what you want.

Pun Factor: 6. What do offices in Manila use? Manila folders. What do you call a white rapper from here? Manila Ice. Maybe it's true what they say: It's more pun in the Pilippines.

Mumbai

Minimum time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: This city was called Bombay for many years before a 1990s belated decolonization name change, and is still referred to as such by many longtime residents, in a similar manner to how Aussies might call Uluru as Ayer's Rock. Bombay might come from the Portuguese words for "good bay", which seems kinda lame, or it might come from a brutal mishearing of the local Marathi word Mumbai. As we have established, the Portuguese are terrible with foreign languages. The city has historically been referred to "as Mumbai or Mambai in Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Kannada and Sindhi, and as Bambai in Hindi, Persian and Urdu." 

Do: One's experience in Mumbai/Bombay will likely depend on one's familiarity with India. Out of context, Mumbai can be a very overwhelming city, a dense dizzying array of people, colors, aromas and sporadic Bollywood dance numbers. The main sights include the city harbour with the Gateway to India arch, the adjacent Taj Mahal hotel, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (call it VT). Other reasons to visit Mumbai include the beaches, the temples (Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Parsi are well-represented), the food and the museums. And the food is really, really good. If you can arrange it, a tour through the slums will provide a glimpse into the reality of over half the city's population. On the flip side, if you want to throw up, you could try to get a glimpse into the life of the 0.1% and see Antilia, the world's first $1 billion home.  Like several other cities in this list though, Mumbai is a younger city with far more to offer businessmen than it does tourists. 

Pun Factor: 5. The city was formerly the Bomb, but now is kinda mum. 

Osaka

Minimum Time: 2.5 days

Linguistic Notes: People from Osaka have a distinctive accent in Japanese 

Semi-enclosed shopping way struck by lightning

Do: Osaka is the second biggest of Japan's metropolises and one if its former capitals, but suffered a lot of damage in World War II. The main site, Osaka Castle, is a "ferroconcrete reconstruction" and while an informative museum and nice view, does not take you back to the days of samurais and ninjas. Dotonburi with the famous running man billboard is very bright and sensory overloading, and the same can be said of the neighborhood of Namba, which launched a popular band of rotating female dancers/singers called NMB 48. Shitenno-ji Temple is worth visiting if you haven't seen too many Japanese temples, and a baseball game is definitely a good experience for those familiar with the sport. There is also a giant outdoor climbing wall in the shape of a bowling ball that hangs over a street. Osaka is a good introduction to Japan, known as a great city to eat and drink, from high end sushi to fried innards underneath a railway bridge. Walk along the beautiful canals, the covered shopping alleyways, eat the fried food and then take a train to Kyoto, Kobe or Nara.

Pun Factor: 2. O for Pete's Sake don't try.

Seoul

Minimum Time: 3 days

Linguistic Notes: Most places in Seoul and Korea have corresponding Hanja Chinese characters due

to the historical Chinese brought written language. Seoul did not and recently decided on a phonetic transcription of 首爾. However the Chinese name had been 漢城 meaning city on the Han River or Han City, which is kinda confusing because Han is also the name for the Chinese people.

Do: Seoul is a loaded functional city. It's divided by a river and develops into the mountainside, with old and labyrinthine neighborhoods in between.  For tourist sites, the regal palace is a B version of the Forbidden City, but all told the Five Grand Palaces in Seoul are great examples of classic Korean architecture. Seoul City Hall and Dongdaemun Design Plaza among the many curved compelling pieces of modern architecture in the city. Seoul has a ton of museums, notably the National Museum of Art, the National Folk Museum and the Samsung founder's personal project Leeum Museum. Seoul boasts shrines that the UN has deemed worthwhile, an Olympic park, the Banpo Rainbow Bridge (which both crosses water and spurts out water) and the most wired city in the world (wifi everywhere). There are so many great food options, including street side tents and even food without kimchee. The drink option are impressive as well, whether you want to cheers with English teachers in Hongdae or Itaewon, get drunk under the table by Soju-hardened Koreans in Sinchon, or go upscale and pay homage to Psy in Gangnam. You could do Seoul in 2 days (if you don't spend too much time hungover) because there aren't exactly must-dos in this city, but you certainly won't get bored with a 3rd day.

Pun Factor: 10. Whether you arrive via the Seoul plane or Seoul train or by the Seouls of your shoes, hope you make some Seoul mates and leave a Seoul survivor. But due to the existence of Bangkok, Seoul is not the sole leader of Asian puns.

Shanghai

Minimum Time: 1.5 days

Linguistic Notes: The Wu dialect that emerged from the surrounding area is the descendant of the Chinese language that most influenced Japanese Kanji. The pronunciations of these characters have all evolved, but they still sound closest when comparing Shanghainese with the Japanese.

Do: The touristy aspects of Shanghai are essentially contained within one panoramic shot from the Bund and a walk underground in the most touristy tunnel imagineable to the other side of the Huangpu and the Oriental Pearl Tower. There's Xintiandi, a rare example of a redevelopment of a traditional Chinese neighborhood into an upscale commercial pedestrian zone that does not make you vomit. Actually, I don't really know much about Shanghai because even though my dad lives there and I've been there over a half dozen times, he takes me to the same places every time.  If you want to take the James Lee tour of Shanghai, then get some spicy crayfish in the wee hours, jog around tourists to the Bund, dine at the TMSK restaurant for their fusion band, visit the exquisite wooden furniture by an acclaimed artist/architect at a store/exhibition called 半木, and go to that one Japanese restaurant where you have to duck your head to enter. Apparently there's the Zhujiajiao Water Town far to the southwest of the city; but if you're gonna go that far, you might as well go to Hangzhou. Other than that, go to Shanghai and enjoy the First World offerings. That might mean tasting a Coldstone Creamery in a mall, drinking martinis in a 70th storey hotel bar, gawking at the bottle opener building or the even taller Shanghai Tower, regurgitating lots of East meets West cliches, or stuffing your face full of Xiaolongbao.

Pun Factor: 4. In this city, the proof of the pun is in the Pudong. It helps that Shanghai has become a verb in English, and that if you fly from Shanghai to Mumbai (analogous cities), you are literally going from Hai to Bai.

Shenzhen

Minimum Time: 1 day

Linguistic Notes: I got nothing here.

Can't we all just Paidui?

Do: If you want to know how different Chinese are from Westerners, all you have to know is that Shenzhen is a major tourist destination within China. Lots of Westerners living in Hong Kong would be shocked from this, because their experience of Shenzhen is usually something like the scene on the right, a mad scramble across the border to a much less polite city. In actuality, Shenzhen is one of the most developed and most Western cities in China, with a mind boggling skyrocketing pace of development. Chinese people enjoy seeing the fake Eiffel Tower in Windows of the World and the amusement park / European replica OCT East. More compelling to me is the 大芬油画村, a zone out in Longgang where artists are trained to copy classic works of art like the Mona Lisa. I've not been yet, but the place seems very cool and emblematic of the foundation of China's modern economy - copycatting. Shenzhen is no longer so economically tied to Hong Kong. Companies all over the world are flying in directly to do business with the factories, and the city is home to a burgeoning tech startup scene. Still, as a city barely 30 years old, there's plenty of ammunition to disparage the lack of cultural anything in Shenzhen, and I will stick to using a picture of Futian the one time it took me an hour and a half to cross back into Hong Kong.

Pun Factor: 0. Literally I got nothing here.

Singapore

Minimum Time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Singapore comes from the Malay word Singapura, itself from a Sanskrit word meaning Lion City. The Chinese name I knew growing up was 星加坡, which sounds like Singapore in Cantonese, but with the full on adoption of Mandarin, simplified characters and pinyin, the official name is now 新加坡, which sounds more better in Mandarin.

Pictures in Singapore look like architects' renderings

Do: The world's only shopping mall with an immigration counter has a million ways to make you forget about the poverty in surrounding nations. It's a great place to visit if you hate dirt and chewing gum, if you like toast and Milo, if you want to call your taxi driver "Uncle", or if you want to eat at a hawker centre but are too much of a hypochondriac to try in Malaysia. To Westerners, we call it Asia Lite, where the city collectively speaks dozens of language but really just uses English. Get a picture spitting with the Merlion, pay your way up to the top of Marina Bay Sands and marvel at the infinity pool, and go window shopping in Orchard Row. If you want a manufactured good time, venture out to Sentosa beach or Universal Studios or the Night Safari. But really just eat eat eat and keep eating, whether it's Malay food, Indian food, Chinese food, chili crab or western food. In truth, people like to give Singapore a hard time for its perceived sterility - in Singapore, once you've seen one, you've seen the mall. CNN even published a travel article "Top 10 Most Boring Things to do in Singapore." But we mock because Singapore is so functional and well thought-out, there are few outbursts of the organic craziness that expats grow to expect and love in Asia. People in China will see a collision of a truck carrying eggs with a moped on a pedestrian sidewalk and mutter to themselves "only in China" whereas people in Singapore will see ordinary citizens neatly line up for the opening of a new restaurant in the airport and mutter to themselves "only in Singapore." But deep down there's a lot to admire in a society that has lifted itself from poverty to the economic elite, dramatically raised health standards and lowered crime in its short 50 year history.

Pun Factor: 4. I mean, Singapore is a fine city. Was it ever a sunken colony? No it was a S'pore colony #starcraftjoke.

Taipei

Minimum Time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Few countries have had as large scale a linguistic transformation as Taiwan, with the main spoken language of Taiwanese replaced by Mandarin within 2 generations. Taiwanese is still alive and well but there are many native Taiwanese, particularly those raised in Taipei, who are well short of fluent in it.

Do: Taipei is an easy and common weekend destination for Hong Kongers. Mainland tourists now have direct flights and get to enjoy speaking their native language while handling currency that doesn't have the same picture on it. Taipei 101 sticks out in what is really a short city, and much of the charm of Taipei is ground level. The night markets make this city famous, where the smells of stinky tofu are partially diluted by those of steamed balls and teppenyaki. The National Palace Museum is priceless, consisting of many of the most valuable works of art from the Forbidden City that were carefully taken away before the Japanese invasion and moved to Taipei during the Chinese Civil War.  I don't usually spend much of precious travel time in a museum, but this one is worth a good chunk of hours. Then go to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, because it's there, and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, if you want more memories. Taipei is a good city to hike, with Elephant Mountain convenient and providing great views of Taipei 101, I mean the city skyline. If hot springs are your thing, there are several not far from the city. Besides these attractions though, Taipei is a great walkable city with lots of coffeeshops, cute alleys and bubble tea.

Pun Factor: 6. Just depends if you're a Taipei personality, or a Type B personality.

Yangon

Minimum Time: 1.5 days

Linguistic Notes: Yangon literally means something like "no more enemies" in Burmese and is translated as the End of Strife. The name of the first village to be at this site was called Dagon, which is still reflected in place names, including the city's famous icon Schwedagon Pagoda (Great Dagon).

View within Kandawgyi Park

Do: The Schwedagon Pagoda alone is enough to visit the city formerly known as Rangoon. The golden splendor of the most important Buddhist site in the land is among the more spectacular sites I've ever seen, and the city's streets are laid out to keep it getting seen. There's a lot of colonial history in the city, with more colonial-era buildings than any other city in Asia, but much of this is because the buildings are crumbling and the city has been too poor to rebuild them. Still, Yangon is a bustling diverse market town with Bogyoke market in particular trading some interesting spices, fabrics and jewelry. The jade market especially has exploded in Burma, due to demand from China, but I wish I knew about its devastating social consequences before I bought my amulet. In contrast to the daytime activity, the city goes all but silent after 9pm. Sule Pagoda is noteworthy on its own but pales in comparison to Schwedagon. The other main religious site, Botataung Paya is important historically, claiming to house strands of Buddha's hair, but was bombed in WWII and will not impress on travelers who have seen a stupid number of stupas. The city has a great park around Kandawgyi Lake which has a tourist-only fee that is still worth paying. Aung San Suu Kyi's house is reachable, but is no longer a site of demonstrations. My taxi driver literally stopped on his own and pointed out the house. Yangon's colonial history seems so removed from its modern construction, reflected its buried dead - the grave of the last Emperor of the Mughal Empire is here, as is a Jewish cemetery. And amazingly, the city is small enough that I was basically able to do everything on this list in 2 days and still check out the nightlife, which is so many levels below every other city on this list. Food-wise, I've documented how bizarrely bland Myanmar food is despite its culinary neighbors, but Shan noodles are worth a bowl.

Pun Factor: 3. How do you ask a Chinese person in Myanmar if he/she is cold? Brrrr 吗？


Of course, there are many cities in Asia I have not been to that are very worth visiting. The ones with the deadliest Pun Factors include Hanoi (puns can get Hanoi-ing very quickly), Penang (Punang), Delhi (cold cuts), Phnom Penh (Phnomenal), and of course, Phuket. While crafting this post, I was reminded how great Asia is. There are old cities, there are new cities, and there are interesting places that aren't cities. I was also reminded how I haven't written a travel recap post like this since: http://cal337.blogspot.hk/2009/01/recap-overratedunderrated.html. Anyway if you haven't visited Asia, come check it out. If I left anything out or really missed out on some city attractions, leave a comment below.