Chris and Paula’s World

Hello!

We have been in Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh for the last four days. We are getting ready to take a boat to Vietnam tomorrow. The plan is to spend a few days in the Mekong Delta before heading to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).

Cambodia has had a sad political history and has rebounded since the genocide that devastated the country in the early to mid 1970’s. We went to The Tuol Sleng (S-21) Genocide Museum where we learned more about the sad history of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Tuol Sleng was a school that was converted into a prison where 20,000 people over a 3-4 year span were held, starved and tortured prior to being moved to killing fields where they were executed. Out of 20,000 there were 7 survivors. During the genocide 2.5 million Cambodians were exterminated, primarily people living in Phnom Penh (city dwellers) and professionals. We also visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek 15km outside of Phnom Penh. There were hundreds of such places throughout Cambodia, and in total 19,000 mass graves. These fields have been converted into a memorial site. There is a stupa on the site that is literally a tower of the skulls that were excavated from graves found on the site. A very powerful memorial.

We’ve spent the rest of the time doing more sight seeing and hanging out at some really cool local markets.

Again I have had to visit a medical clinic. I’ve had the lower half of me cured and now it seems I have a problem in my upper half! I have bronchitis and am back on antibiotics. Interestingly, the same medication I was prescribed in Nepal ($4 for the pills) was $33 here. That aside, I am on the mend and feeling a lot better despite a nagging cough.

Next update will be from Vietnam. Hope all is well at home. I’ve been really wishing for a glass of rum and eggnog, and some Christmas cheer. Have a glass for us…well, for me at least, Chris hates eggnog — you can just have the rum for him.

xoxo
Paula

Hi!

We are in Siem Reap, Cambodia now. We decided to cut our time in Thailand into two parts as we were hoping to be there to ring in the New Year. Thought we would be doing that on a beach somewhere but have discovered how truly busy the beaches in Thailand are in high season. Instead of keeping up our search we were both happy to land on Bangkok for NYE. We both really loved the city and have booked ourselves into a swish hotel for a few nights. This is the first New Years Eve in a while where we’ve had confirmed plans so early! Ah, the lure of a posh hotel… some things it seems don’t change.

When we left Bangkok we headed to the beach. We spent 4 or 5 nights on Koh Chang, a beautiful island on the south east coast of Thailand about 5 hours from Bangkok and close to Cambodia. It was nice to be back on a sandy, hot beach and we are happy to have tan lines again. We stayed on Lonely Beach which is a bit of a misnomer, as it was quite busy with travellers and our “resort” played loud house music late into the wee hours (I’m talkin’ 4 a.m.). It definitely won’t win a prize for favorite accommodation on the trip but we were within steps of the beach and the Thai massage ladies so all was well. Though they were lazy days we did manage a couple of day trips to neighbouring beaches (and were glad to see that we had lucked out on the best of them) as well as a couple of trips to a village called Bang Bao for some excellent seafood. Bang Bao is a fishing town that is built on stilts in the ocean. I don’t think that we have had a fresher local catch in a while - not since our meal of crab from my cousin’s boat in Newfoundland. All in all it was a good time.

From Koh Chang we took a ferry to Trat which was where we had left mainland Thailand. We stayed in a guesthouse called POP which we agreed was among the best places we have stayed on the trip. Great rooms, super comfy bed, clean and cool. We also liked Trat alot with a great night market where we ate some awesome Thai food washed down with Chang and Singha beer. From Trat we booked a van to Cambodia. The bus trip is unfortunately not a great goodbye to Thailand OR welcome to Cambodia. The Lonely Planet warns travellers about these buses being scams — they basically take so long to get to the destination that you are so exhausted when you get there you agree to stay at the guest house that the driver conveniently owns. We ended up on such a bus/van. We left at 10 a.m. and ended up getting into Siem Reap at about 10 p.m. — 3 hours late. We had not scheduled a place to stay but happily refused the very pushy tout who would not relent on trying to sell his guesthouse. After the first 2 places we tried were full we began to get nervous, but we found a good place - and for $15USD a fairly good deal. Interestingly, in Cambodia they seem to prefer the US dollar, which isn’t a shock I suppose when approx 4000 Riel = $1USD. We thought we were being clever by trying to pay in Riel - they told us our room was $45 USD for three nights, and of course that equals to approx 179,500 Riel!! Gets a little heavy in the pockets, but added to that we discovered that ATMs give USD, not their local currency!

We hired a tuk-tuk and guide to take us to Angkor Wat today. What an incredible place! I don’t have the camera with me to upload any photos, but Google it, it is really amazing. It is a huge site, much bigger than I had imagined, and Angkor Wat is one of the major sites but there are many other temples to explore as well. There are Buddhist and Hindu temples, some a bit of both, but Angkor Wat itself was built in the early 12th Century as a Hindu temple for the god Vishnu. We visited Ta Prohm, one of the only temples that has been basically left to the jungle. It is amazing to see an ancient temple literally in the grips of massive tree roots and vines that have wound their way over, under, and through huge stone walls, statues, and doorways. Work has been done to prevent further deterioration but you really get a sense of the power of nature but also of the strength of these structures to endure! There are literally trees straddling the temple, and these are MASSIVE trees, not little bushes or ivy vines! It is beautiful.

That’s all I have to report for now. We will be visiting some floating markets in the country side tomorrow and possibly head back to Angkor Wat for sunset. Hope all is well at home.

xoxo
Paula

Well, translated that means something like “I know I will never get the money back”, but that is irrelavant, it’s just some good Thai characters. Paula and I a on “Lonely Beach” on the island of Ko Chang in South Eastern Thailand. I notice tonight that this is our first posting in quite a while. Well it seems we have been on a bit of a holiday. We arrived just over a week ago and spent 4 days with our friends Chad and Morgan in Bangkok and then we promptly headed for the beach!

Let’s start with Bangkok, perhaps the coolest city I know! Very populous and large, excellent transportation, excellent food on every corner (and I mean right on the corner) and every western amenity that we have come to miss (and indulge in at every chance). Seafood is everywhere and shopping is everywhere. We spent our days consuming as much of the both of those as possible. “Birdies” - these little cans of strong coffee mixed with sugar start the day off great. We checked out some of the tourist attractions including the grand Chatuchak market - where you can buy anything, I mean anything. We are planning on spending our NYE in Bangkok coming up, lots of plongs (whitey) there to spend it with too…

Now we are in Ko Chang. About a five hour bus ride from Bangkok to a place called Trat, home of a very cool night market. Spent the night there and next morning (ok, 1:30pm) we took the ferry to Ko Chang. A big tropical island with a road skirting the outside. The western side of the island has about 6 little villages full of beach side huts that you can shack up in. We are about 30 meters from the water, 20 meters from an endless supply of beer and all night long house music. After almost 9 months of travelling, we needed a vacation!

Oh and PS, sorry for no pictures lately. When you are on vacation the only pictures we have are of me in my new orange speedo bathing suit. Don’t worry, you’ll see them soon enough!

Let me tell you that pineapples here are extra good.

Hello,
We are currently in Delhi on our way to Bangkok late tonight. The trip fom Khatmandu was pretty non-eventful despite the poor reputation of Royal Nepal Airlines — actually, now Nepal Airlines. We left about an hour late but were fed well (something we have both come to really appreciate en route) and landed safely in Delhi. Now that we have been in Delhi a few times and consider ourselves fairly good at getting around India, we arrived without a reservation at a hotel and found an awesome place to stay. Leaving an airport or train station in Delhi is funnier than when we first did it. The auto rickshaw and cab drivers all vying for your business (in fact many times resulting in them hurling insults at one another and a few times hurling arms at one another) have now become more comedic than scary. I still am not used to the looks from 80% of the Indian men and look forward to getting to Bangkok.

Thought I would mention the course I went on in Pokhara at the Ganden Yiga Chozin Centre. It was a three night retreat at the centre and focused on Meditation (3 hours a day), Buddhist Philosophy/Teachings (5 hours a day) and Hatha Yoga (2 hours a day). There were 4 of us in the course - 2 Europeans, me, and a girl from Shanghai. Really interesting to see the Chinese girl at this centre. The monk seemed surprised but they were all very happy that she was there so they could inundate here with pamphlets about Tibet and Chinese rule there. It was all done good naturedly, but it was of course interesting to see how little she was aware of in terms of what has happened in Tibet. Roughly 8 hours a day sitting on a floor cushion is not an easy thing. Meditation was really difficult (sitting still in that position as well as the fact that it was Deepawali, a very noisy holiday)…it is tougher than it looks!!! Amazing the thoughts that come to mind when you are trying to focus only on counting your breaths. The teachings were really interesting and included some spirited debating with the American Monk who was leading. Every night after the evening meditation from 7:15 to 8pm was silent time. No talking. Being in a cabin by myself, it wasn’t too difficult to do. There are other courses on offer where it is silent 24X7 for 10 days…ugh, I don’t think that would be for me. I think that Buddhism is fascinating and while I don’t see myself being a convert any time soon, I do appreciate the fact that it is a very compassionate and peaceful world view. It was great to learn more about it and deinitely want to continue trying to meditate and do yoga when I get home.

Our last week in Nepal was spent in Kathmandu and the surrounding Kathmandu valley. My stomach was STILL not good and went back and forth to a great travellers’ medical clinic three times. Think I am cured now, but it did put a bit of a kink in our plans while in the area. While in Kathmandu we stayed in Thamel, which is an area basically built for tourists. You can get a great pizza or chop suey, and buy cheap DVDs everywhere however you don’t feel like you are anywhere different from wherever it is you come from. We had some Nepali food there but found it to often be overpriced compared with the rest of the menu. We visited Paushupanath which is similar to Varanasi, with its burning ghats, as well as Boudanath with its famous and huge Buddhist stupa. At Boudanath we had lunch at a Japanese (!?!) restaurant overlooking the stupa, listening to everyone’s favorite song “Om Made Padme Hum” - a Buddhist mantra, played over and over and over again. I meant to ask if it is the only song legally allowed to play loudly from store windows, because it is literally everywhere you go.

We also spent a night at Nagarkot which promises the best mountain views at sunrise and sunset. We weren’t disappointed though we WERE freezing cold. We had misjudged the difference a little altitude can make. That and there was a several hour long power out that just seemed to make everything colder — not that there was heating in the rooms, but for some reason darkness makes it seem colder. We woke to a great view at sunrise in the mountain range that includes Everest. From Nagarkot we hiked 15 km back to a town called Bhaktapur. The hike was gorgeous thorough small villages, rice paddies,an ancient temple and pine forests, all with a mountain backdrop.

Forgot to mention that we also took an Everest Flight! It was amazing to fly close to the mountains and see them from that perspective. Thanks to Chris’ untiring research we chose the best seats on the 18 seater plane (right at the back with no wings in our way). A few German tourists complained to the attendant that we should all share seats (at least I think that is what they were saying) but the flight was 1.5 hours long and by the time they got around to mentioning it, we were turned around to go to the airport. As they say in Tanzania, “Pole Sana”!! “Very Sorry”! We got some glares at the end of the flight, but I mean, really…you gotta do your research!! Chris is going to laugh at that, as he is the research hub of this trip… I’m really just here for the ride.

Anyhow, Nepal was great.

As I said earlier, we are now in Delhi for two nights. This city will not win any awards in my book of favorites, but that’s ok. We are both looking forward to seeing Chad and Morgan in Bangkok and also looking forward again to seeing a totally new place. Nepal and India are similar in many ways - culturally, religiously, etc. It is always exciting to go somewhere that is different again. Of course we also can’t wait to get back to some quality beach time.

Hope that all is well at home. I keep thinking about the Christmas potlucks that we are going to miss (Tiff and Sheldon’s for one) and do wish that we could be home for that!!! Stay in touch and keep well.

xoxo
Paula

Well, I went paragliding, it was a blast! For someone who thought they were relatively afraid of heights, I almost forget I was up there. A very beautiful and scenic ride over the mountains and valley of Pokhara followed by some stomach turning acrobatics over the Phewa Tal (Lake). It’s a bit awkward when you look down and see the wing below you!

Chris

Just a few photos that we have taken over the past week in Nepal. We have visited two places: Lumbini - the Birthplace of Buddha and Chitwan National Park - Nepal Safari Action.

You can see the whole batch here: http://www.chrisandpaulasworld.com/photos/v/nepal/

I wish the Internet was better and we could upload the whole bunch. You’ll all have to wait till the obligatory slides night at our house! Wait, we don’t have a house…

Buddha!

Paula riding a bicycle in Lumbini

Me guiding

Elephants crossing the river at Chitwan

The Lush Forests of Chitwan

Washing the Elephants

Paula’s Friend Jacques

We’ve been in Pokhara, Nepal for a few days now. Pokhara is at the base of the Annapurna range of the Himalayan Mountains. 4 or 5 mountains over 7000 meters high all within sight of this town. The area of town where all the tourists hangout is called Lakeside. It is a strip that runs parallel with a beautiful lake called Phewa Tal. If you hike along the edge of the lake you can see the reflections of the snow capped Annapurna mountains in the lake! The strip itself is a myriad of restaurants, Internet cafes, stores that sell chocolate and toilet paper and other stores that sell North Face ripoffs (of pretty good quality) for a fraction of the cost.

Paula had a bad stomach for a day or so and now she is off on a 4 day meditation and yoga course. This leaves me for the 1st time on this trip, alone! For the 1st 5 minutes I felt lost, but sense took over pretty quickly…Now we will have something to talk about! After doing pretty much everything together, it does not leave much for conversation except for my usual yip yap about Bon Jovi and whatnot. I think the next few days will be good for me to do some hiking and some other outdoor activities solo. I can finally have the good side of the bed as well (the beds in Nepal might rank as the worst

I started out this post with the intention of uploading some photos from Chitwan National Park, where we did some safari-ing and had a lot of fun. But it turns out I brought the wrong memory stick with me, so they will come shortly.

Today is my sister’s birthday as well, so wish her a happy one!

Cheers everyone, I love and miss you all.

Chris

Hello! We have arrived in Nepal!

We spent our last days in India in Varanasi, a holy city on the banks of the Ganges River. Varanasi is most famous as the site that Hindus go to die, or next best, where their ashes are sent after cremation for scattering in the most holy river in India. It was among the dirtiest cities that we have seen, however there is something almost magical about it. Spirituality is everywhere. On any of the tiny alley ways of the old city you will find several small shrines built into the walls or added on to the walls. The shrines are for several different gods, but the main ones seem to be Shiva and Ganesha. All are scattered with flowers or small offerings of sweets or incense. Everywhere you walk, like other cities we visited, your nose is full of both good and bad smells, sometimes at the same time.

In Varanasi we visited the burning ghats. As I mentioned, many Hindus go to Varanasi toward the end of their lives. The city has many “dharamsalas” or rest houses, as well as hospices where many will live until they die. Others come to the city and sleep on the streets. The burning ghats were very close to our hotel and the fires burn 24X7. At night you can see the light of the fires reflecting on the rising smoke, and with the Ganges alight with hundreds of floating candles (”puja” or offerings) it is a pretty amazing sight. We were told that depending on the day between 160 and 200 people are cremated at the ghats. Once a person dies, their family (males only allowed) attend their cremation. Small pyres are built from 200 kg of wood taken from enormous piles, the wood used is dependent on caste. The body, wrapped in a shroud is placed on the pyre and the wood lighted by a family member. People cremated at one of Varanasi’s ghats have “immediate liberation into the next life”. In a country where you see everything happening in front of your eyes, it seems to fit that the exit from life is a part of the mix. The sight of the fires (at one point we saw 14 burning) is something neither of us will soon forget.

From Varanasi we took a train to Gorakphur where we slept for a night. I ended up getting about 40 mozzie bites on my legs, which wasn’t a highlight. From Gorakphur we took a crazy bus across to the India/Nepal border. It was the perfect last trip from India. Packed, cramped bus that was delayed until one annoyed passenger got out of his seat and slugged the driver. The whole bus was standing and yelling (not sure which side they were taking) in about 5 seconds. About two minutes later the enraged passenger was seated and the bus departed.

We made it across the border and took a car to Lumbini where we stayed for two nights. Lumbini is the birthplace of Buddha, and is therefore another holy city. We rented bikes and toured the town, most of which is a large reserve with many monasteries erected by different countries. Really nice place, but outside of the monasteries, the town pretty well shut down at 6 pm.

Today we arrived to a town near Chitwan National Park where we hope to do an elephant back safari tomorrow and some other fun stuff. More later.

Hope all is well at home

xoxox
Paula

Namaste! We arrived in Shimla yesterday afternoon, after another interesting bus ride. Our bus was scheduled to leave Dharamsala (a 10-15 minute taxi ride from McLeod Ganj) at 6:00 a.m. We had decided to take the “Superfast” bus, as it was a difference of approximately 4 hours…knowing how cramped these buses are, we thought we’d save our knees the trauma. We got to the bus station at about 5:25 a.m. and moments later, a driver hops on the bus and calls out “Shimla”. I hopped on to see if this was THE bus, and by the time I got to the front, the bus was in gear and starting to move. Chris had both of our bags outside, getting ready to climb up and lock them to the racks. No time for that. I called out to Chris to jump on with the bags and the moment he was on board, we took off. Remember that Dharamsala is in the mountains… the bus starts careening downhill, making crazy turns and poor Chris is trying to get both of our big packs up the small bus aisle. The conductor nicely kicked a man out of the front comfy seats and gave them to us. Comfy is relative of course, but there was more leg room even though we had to straddle our bags. Again we enjoyed having a daredevil driver who liked to lay on the horn and play chicken with oncoming trucks, buses and cows. I couldn’t keep my eyes open after topping myself up twice with a Gravol like pill appropriately named “Vomistop”.

So we are in Shimla. Shimla is at 2205 metres and spreads across a mountain ridge for about 12 km offering views of mountains as far as the eye can see. Everything here is a hill, many that have steps built in. In the mid 1800’s Shimla became the summer capital of the British Raj. Until 1939 the entire government of India came to Shimla during the heat of the summer. Due to this, the town is an odd mix of urban forest, British colonial buildings (reminiscent of many a Fairmont hotel, actually), and homes that densly hug the slopes. Once the Brit rule ended, the buildings were and are used still by Indian government offices. Again we have to remind ourselves that we are still indeed in India. The streets are immaculate and due to a prohibition of motor vehicles in the centre of town, extremely quiet! It is nice being up at this altitude, the sun is hot, but the air is cool and pleasant. The temperature today is 16.5.

This morning Chris and I walked up, up, up to Jakhu Temple, a temple dedicated to the monkey god, Hanuman. Along the walk you can rent a walking stick, used for fending off the many monkeys that live in the area. I rented one and it came in handy. While on our way up a local man warned us to put our sunglasses in our bag, as they seem to be a favorite item for monkey theft. Before arriving at the temple, a women sold us several packages of prasad (food offerings - actually little white balls of candy) to bring along to the temple. There were two temples, the first and larger one surrounded by monkeys and people (some of the people hired to keep the monkey business to a tolerable minimum). Once we took off our shoes, we entered and gave our prasad to the holy man inside, who said a prayer, marked our foreheads with saffron and gave us holy water to drink and a mix of the sweet candy and dried chick peas to eat. We of course understood very little of it, but helpful locals pointed out what we should be doing, and we did it. Outside the temple we could hear a group of girls sqealing as the monkey thugs got too close. Monkeys are literally everywhere here and range in size from tiny babies to big beefy males, I’m guessing weighing at least 30 lbs. In our room last night, we could hear lots of monkeys jumping on the roof… if you weren’t aware of the monkey situation here you would definitely think it was people up there they sound so heavy. We just read that a man in Delhi (I think their Deputy Mayor) was killed by monkeys. He was attacked by a large group of them, and in his panic he fell over a balcony and died. Scary! Monkey advice: no eye contact, no smiling at the monkey, and no sticking out your tongue — all are translated as “Bring it on, monkey! Lets see what you got”.

Anyhow, that’s all I have for now. Hope everyone is well at home.

xoxo
Paula

Namaste from McLeod Ganj, India. McLeod Ganj is the home of the Dalai Lama in exile. It is also home to many Tibetans. I keep having to remind myself that we are indeed still in India. It feels very different this high up in the mountains, and we see more Tibetans than Indians in this town.

I spent the whole day yesterday in our room nursing a stomach flu (that’s what I have called it). We have been very lucky with gastro issues throughout the trip, however yesterday was not so good. Our room is pretty basic but has the most incredible views of mountains, and the town of McLeod Ganj overlooking Dharamsala down the hill about 500m. We have windows on two walls and a balcony, and while napping yesterday two BIG monkies (monkeys?) woke me up looking in the windows. You have to be careful here with leaving balcony doors open, or leaving laundry out on the balcony as the monkeys (that looks right to me) get up to no good. I wouldn’t want to wake up to them in my room - they are really big and beefy. Anyhow, feeling better today thankfully.

While McLeod Ganj is a busy town with infrastructure and tourists, just a few minutes outside it is quite rural and quiet. It is surrounded by green rolling hills and has a mountain backdrop. We went for a hike today from here through to Bahgsu and a nearby waterfall. At the waterfall there were monks in the basin bathing (the water was not running very high) and washing their robes. Long pieces of fabric, both bright orange and burgundy were laid on the rocks to dry while the monks went for a swim in the water. From the waterfall we continued uphill again to Dharmkot then back to McLeod Ganj. It was nice to walk in forest again with massive pine trees…all uphill of course which is not my favorite. Everything here is uphill or downhill… no flat road anywhere!

Had our first momos today for lunch - momos are Tibetan gyoza. Tasty little bundles of goodness. We ordered veg, and also a plate of cheese momo. They are served steamed with firy chili sauce. Going to take another cooking class, this time Tibetan - momos 1 day, soup the next, and bread the day after that. The bread here is looovely… Tibetan brown bread - kind of looks like an English Muffin, but it is a perfect texture, chewy, tasty, yummy.

Anyhow, thats all for now.

Hope that all is well at home,

Paula
xoox