after a 53 hour commute (yes, 53, yes, count 'em, 53 hours to get to charlotte from kuala lumpur), i have been keeping busy with long-lost things like peaches and bathtubs and bookshelves.
BUT before all that, emily and i compiled a list of the best and worst of southeast asia, either as helpful travel advice to anyone planning a trip in the future or just because it was really fun.
here we go:
Best smart-traveler move:
Winner: taking a $3, local overnight bus from Jakarta to Solo. 16 hours as the main attraction on a bus crammed with people, vendors selling giant stuffed animals, band-aids and everything else imaginable. some unpleasant knee-groping from the creep across the seat, a pretty constant paranoia of being robbed, and a completely sleepless night, but a true traveling experience. and we saved like $20.
Best surprise:
Winner: Tadlo, Laos, a picture-perfect, not-yet-discovered by Lonely Planet, town with cheap bungalows huge waterfalls really great people and good food.
Runner-up: finding a amusement park, complete with rollarcoasters, popcorn and bumper cars (we got schooled by an Indonesian kid btw), in the small town of Solo, Indonesia.
Biggest 'should-have-listened-to-Lonely-Planet' moment:
Winner: taking the lovingly-dubbed 'scam bus' from Si Phan Don into Cambodia. It started as an uncomfortable bus ride, escalated into a border crossing where the guard (named Ouch Mean. for real guys.) piled on 'extra fees' and took literally all of our dollars, and climaxed with having to pay an extra $6 to sit in a minivan listening to a Eurotrashy hipster talking about having sex with underage prostitutes in Bangkok. pass.
Biggest 'skip it' place:
Winner: Jakarta. seriously fuck Jakarta. We spent two days sitting in traffic, seeing nothing nice or pretty, and feeling generally sketched out and unwelcome. This was about a week after the bombing, so maybe we caught it on a rough week but our overall impression was don't bother with Jakarta.
Runner-up: Pulau Perhentian. beautiful islands off the coast of malaysia, which sounds like a no-brainer until you realize you're about to see many easier-to-access, cheaper, more beautiful islands. also, there was a tsunami warning while we were there. downer.
Best example of globalization:
Winner: talking with a group of young monks in Luang Prabang about the death of Michael Jackson.
Most enigmatic injuries:
Winner(s): Emily's month-long Cipro-resistant dysentary and Jaki's persistent 2-month-long sprained ankle. we don't know what kept emily sick or how jaki sprained her ankle. weird right?
((ps my ankle is STILL swollen. wtf ligaments))
Most kickass, generous foreigner:
Winner(s): TIE between Vincent, who hooked us up with every theatre in KL and saved Jaki from a lot of fulbright redtape, and Yasmina, who let us live in her perfect Bali apartment for 3 weeks for freeee.
Best faux-celebrity moment:
Winner: relaxing on the beautiful beach in sanur, taking off our sarongs only to be ambushed by 10+ (fully-clothed) balinese teenagers who insisted on being photographed a minimum of 25 times with our bikini-clad white-skinned selves.
Best pretrip purchase:
Winner: steripen. despite jaki using it incorrectly for a solid 2 weeks, it saved us many a time from the sickness that only took us down once.
Worst food:
Winner: DURIEN DURIEN A THOUSAND TIMES DURIEN. there's no way to describe how awful this 'king of fruits' is, despite its hyper-popularity in all of seasia. it's like rotten melon and cheese and garlic and mostly, hot garbage. there's a popular saying about durien, that it 'smells like hell, tastes like paradise' because it really smells like garbage and everyone realizes it, but what they're not admitting is that actually it smells like hell and tastes just as bad.
Runnerup: cuttlefish. i'd take a cricket to that nasty crinkly dried sealife any day.
Best food:
Winner: everything else. special shoutouts to seasian fruit (mangosteen, mangos, rose apples, lychee, rambutans, pineapples that will spoil u.s. pineapples forever), and the amazing indian food in KL.
Things we wish we'd known:
1) If you go to Indonesia, learn some Indonesian because everyone expects you to speak it
2) That Emily is both number-dyslexic (chica can't handle the 00's ya'll) and has a zero-tolerance policy for being hassled, catcalled, or anything of the sort.
3) Most importantly: that having white skin makes you a lot of things. It makes you mostly really funny to everyone, it also makes you interesting and intrinsically sexy to a lot of people so get ready to be talked to by everyone, and have your picture taken, and stared at ALL THE TIME. really
Special section: Catcalls, best of 2009, Southeast Asian edition
1) setting: drinking guinness in jakarta with a bunch of futbol players from cameroon (right, wtf?)
the line(to em): 'Is it possible to love you?'
the line(to jaki): 'I have a house near Bali, will you come away with me?'
response(from both): 'No.'
2) setting: zooming at 60 km on our beloved motorbike nusa dua, a man holding a baby and riding with his friend swerve up and drive next to us
the line(to jaki): 'How is it that you are so beautiful?'
response: confusion.
the line: 'Are you available?'
response: glance at baby, 'Are you?'
3) setting: walking to the beach
the line(to em): 'hey sexy'
em(simultaneous with his line): NOT OK!
4) setting: walking through some insane mall
the line(to jaki): (said very earnestly btw) 'I UNDERSTAND YOU.'
response: 'you do? i mean...i've been looking for a guy who understands me but who would have thunk i'd find him here!!'
ok guys, that concludes our best of seasia volume one, i've got to go watch madmen with my housemates (seriously, i am so acclimated)
seasia is so fun. you should all go. we should go back.
em's going to keep this blog because, while i'm over here illegally downloading music and wearing earrings, she is still in India!!! so keep reading.
lovejaki
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