Layover in Bangkok

Any of you who have ever traveled through Asia probably know that Bangkok is definitely the flight hub of the region.  It has two international airports--a fact I learned when I wasn't paying attention and scheduled a flight into one and out of the other last year; fortunately I had a long enough layover to make it across town, and fortunately it was four in the morning so there was no traffic.  Except for that incident, I've always flown through Don Mueng, because that's one of Air Asia's (the discount airline for this part of the world) hubs. 

Although the only time I spent time in Bangkok I arrived and departed by bus, this trip will give me my fourth and fifth go-rounds through this particular airport.  I'm learning my around pretty well by now, and I always enjoy stopping because they have a Krispy Kreme.

Off Again--Malaysia 2014

Yup, it's that time again...I couldn't let a summer get by without picking up at least one new country.  And this one is important, at least for me--this will complete my 30 X 30 goal.  Now, I first said thirty countries by the time I turned thirty, which I had planned out to do.  However, when I got around to seriously looking at airfare for the summer, including the trip to the US, I quickly found that July is a terrible month to be in the air if you're on a budget, or at least if you're booking somewhat last minute, as I tend to do these days (the more I travel, the less I plan ahead...).  If I made the trip to the US in June and returned in August, I could save four hundred dollars, or more, than if I traveled to Malaysia first and made the overseas trek in mid-July.  I had intended to do the Malaysian bit first so it would fall before my birthday in July, but it was easier to redefine a bit my 30 X 30 plan (after all, I'm still making it to number 30 while I'm thirty) than to pay that much more.  So...Malaysia in August it is.

If I've discussed my travel plans with you before,  you might remember (or not, no one cares all that much about someone else's itinerary) that my original intent was to go first to Brunei and let that be my thirtieth country, as it seemed a bit more exotic to go someplace no one back home in Tennessee could find on a map, then continue to poke around a bit in Borneo and return to peninsular Malaysia for the second half.  However, my beloved Canon G9 that has been my faithful companion for the past six years and three continents, finally retired.  It needed major repairs, and it seemed it would be better to put the money toward an upgrade--so now I have a new best friend, a Canon Rebel SL1.  I've long wanted a DSLR to step up my photography a bit, but as a backpacker I wasn't sure if I really wanted the weight and intrusiveness (sometimes when traveling I prefer to not obtrusively stick a camera in the locals' business).  I finally chose this model because it was touted as the lightest and smallest DSLR, so it seemed a reasonable compromise.  It is still quite a bit larger than I'm used to, but I'm adjusting well.  And these days many travelers carry them, so it no longer seems quite so obvious.  I love it and I'm really looking forward to seeing the results from this trip!  However, due to that unexpected expense, I decided that Brunei and Borneo would have to wait, and am sticking with peninsular Malaysia.  

So, off to the airport...

Arkansas Skies

On the road again! (Imagine sung by Willie Nelson).  The weather couldn't be more perfect than it is today as my mom, brother, and I head for Arkansas.  Usually by this point in July, the sky is dulled by a white hot haze, but this cooler than usual summer has given us several days with brilliantly blue skies and white fluffy clouds.

I'm really looking forward to spending some time with Papa and Nanny; we're hoping to go camping at Buffalo River, where they've been going nearly every summer for about forty-five years now, if the campground isn't already full.

Stormy Sky

I love watching a storm roll in.  First, the eery quiet, then the sudden gusts of the wind picking up, the trees dancing as the clouds darken. 

The Chaos in Between

Sometimes in life there are moments in which you know that you are seeing something special, something you will never see again.  The star-crossed elements align and a magic moment happens.

I had one of those moments tonight, on a red-eye flight from LA to Nashville.  As I blearily stared out the window between attempts to sleep, the layers of the sky  separated. 

Below were the lights of a city, maybe somewhere in Texas.  Ribbons of orangey pinpricks outlined the streets, knotted together to create a downtown.  In the second level, a summer storm raged as we flew parallel, just to the north.  The clouds flickered and glowed with constant lightning.  Above the fighting clouds, a third level opened to the heavens. The Big Dipper, bright and bold among hundreds of more distant kin, looked serenely over the fleeting scene below. 

Three layers--the sleeping city, the ancient universe, and the chaos in between. 

Spicy Bullfrog

A quick way to get Lu Wei excited is to bring up spicy food.  As a native of Hubei province, he is something of a connoisseur.  He's used to his foreign friends and his wife having much weaker palates--I think you really have to be born there to appreciate some of the local specialities.  However, when some of us expressed a willingness to be adventurous, he quickly organized a meet-up at one of his favorite places.

I took a taxi to Jiedaokou and from there the subway a few stops to a part of town closer to the river (getting anywhere takes some time in a city the size of Wuhan).  Just outside the subway exit, I met up with Luwei, Angela, and their son Levi, and Micah and Bonnie, who were coming from another direction. We made our way down an ordinary street of shops and restaurants in an area where the locals seemed a bit surprised to see so many foreigners.

Along with few other dishes, Lu Wei ordered a gigantic bowl of spicy bullfrog, a Hubei specialty.  You can even buy live bullfrogs at Walmart in the seafood area, next to the eels.  (Where would you categorize bullfrogs?)  The meat tasted fairly generic; I'm trying to think of something to compare it to.  I would say it was somewhat similar to eel meat, but I don't think that would help most of my readers out much.  Rather slippery and smooth, the meat had more the appearance and texture of fat, but was solid and definitely meat.  I'm not making it sound appetizing, but really, it was just fine.  I can't really say much to the natural taste of frog, as this was marinated in a spicy broth that would cover up any gaminess and fishiness or what have you.

It didn't seem just terribly spicy at first, not as bad as we'd expected.  But the more I ate, the spicier it seemed to get.  About half way through the meal I started dispersing my bites of frog between longer and longer breaks of eating the side dishes.  As we arrived further down in the dish, it quickly became so uncomfortably spicy that we foreigners just picked at it and then gave up entirely.  Lu Wei would ask solicitously, "Did you have enough? Is it alright?" while throwing down prodigious amounts himself.

Somewhere around this point, we began discussing how spicy bullfrog was ordered in this restaurant.  There are five levels of spiciness, and you tell the waitress your preference, from the least spicy, 1, to insanity, 5.  I would have estimated our current dish to be a three or so, but Lu Wei told us it was only a one.  Only a one??? And it was already so spicy that we could only eat about half of a normal serving!!  When Lu Wei is alone or with like-minded Chinese friends, he normally orders a three!

Chinglish # Whatever

I really need to update my facebook album of fun Chinglish that I've come across here in my lovely city.  Until I do, here's today's bit...and no, it's not very good orange juice. 

Back in Time

Here I am again in the Wuchang train station.  I'm heading to Jingzhou for the weekend to visit old friends.  I'll stay with Rebecca (who I worked with my second semester at Yangtze University) and her husband Jon, and hopefully I will see a lot of my Chinese friends at the Sunday meeting. 

It always feels a bit like going back in time, going back somewhere I've lived before.  The same familiar decorative pond in front of the apartment building, the same hot noodle place, the same old walk through the park running along the outside of the ancient city walls.  I'm glad for some changes, though-I'll be there in only an hour and a half on the high-speed train; when I lived there in 2010 it was a four-hour bus ride, as the train station hadn't been built yet. 

Week 8…

Well, as soon as I finish this week's classes, the semester will be half over (well, my semester. There's another week of classes that I am not scheduled for, and then exams...) It seems like I and everyone else over the age of twenty-five say it so often it's a cliche, but my, time is flying.  Every semester goes faster than the last. 

This week in my writing classes we started expository essays.  It really is nice teaching the same class for the second year; I did all the hard work last year and now I just have to adapt and edit the lessons.  I also like that I get the opportunity to make my lessons better, with the knowledge of what last year's students did and didn't get and what they found interesting. 

After a short introduction to expository writing, I brought up that there are several types of expository writing, and that we would take a closer look at some of them.  First up: cause and effect. 

Since I have a few hours between my two classes on Tuesdays, I usually stay in the classroom building and get some work done, away from some of the usual distractions at home. It's also much more efficient to plan out next week's lesson while this week's is fresh in my mind.  I am the opposite of ADD; I prefer to spend all day on one thing rather than split it up. 

Today, before I settled down to work in an empty classroom as I usually do, I went over to the Foreign Language Department building to visit the copy room to print some materials for later classes.  On my way back, I walked the long way around, along the Rapeseed fields.  The blooming season is already coming to an end; only a few straggling speckles of yellow are left of the solid sea of shocking...yellow...that made even the sun seem dull for the past few weeks.  I feel like I ought to use another word other than just yellow, but none of the alternatives--lemon, banana, gold--really fits; rapeseed could be the definition of yellow.  

Guanggu with Amy

I was flopped on the couch, thinking it would be a solitary and quiet Saturday night (not that I, as a confirmed introvert, mind those, at least sometimes...) when Amy called.  She wasn't doing anything either, and was a bit stir-crazy to get out.  Did I want to go out and get some dinner?  

We dithered back and forth politely for a bit about where to go--somewhere here on campus, over to the much wider selection at Zhang Fa, the campus-next-door, or did we really want to go out out?  Finally we got past the polite "What would you like to do?  Really, anything is okay with me..." stuff, and she admitted she really wanted to get off campus.  We ended up catching a taxi to Guanggu, which if you follow my blog you might remember is that huge square (digression: we need a better word than a "square" for a central open area surrounded by buildings that I think of as a piazza; many of them aren't square, but I can't think of a really appropriate word in English...this one is round.), surrounded by shopping malls and restaurants and a subway stop, that is the hub of activity in this part of the city.  

We meandered around the largest mall, Ocean City, considering our options for dinner.  We wound our way through a crowded, crazy maze of food stalls on the back side of the fourth floor; I had barely been aware that that area even existed.  We kept getting separated by the flow of people, mostly students, squeezing up and down the narrow aisles; the floor was a bit of a landmine of spilled drinks and dropped chopsticks.  Everyone was eating something-on-a-stick or slurping spicy noodles from paper bowls.  We had a snack--she an ice-cream cone (surprise, surprise; Amy is a bit of an icecream nut), and I a strawberry juice.  We decided that we'd prefer to actually sit down somewhere to a bit more substantial supper, though.  There was a Korean restaurant stuck back in the corner, though, that I might have to check out another time. 

There are several quite nice restaurants up on the fifth floor; several are favorites of mine and many of my American friends: Show Coffee and Tea, despite its name, is know for its western food (I think I got lasagna last time I was there), but is quite expensive; M Kitchen is a south Asian fusion place, with a really wonderful mix of Indian, Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese; the Korean Barbecue place (I've never bothered to actually learn the name of the place--the others have signs in English) has little grills built into the center of tables, on which you can cook all sorts of meats and vegetables, then dip them in the provided sauces and spices, and also has quite a few Korean dishes and soups, as well as, for some reason, quite a selection of sushi.  There are also a couple of more generic Chinese places on the other side, but I've never bothered with them as I can get great Chinese food anywhere, and they look expensive.  

Of course, on a Saturday night in the most popular shopping mall in the university district of a city of ten million, there was a bit of wait time.  We were dithering a bit about M-Kitchen or Korean Barbecue, so we took a number for both and decided we'd go to whichever came up first.  So, Korean Barbecue it was.  We didn't end up grilling anything; Amy wanted to try a cold noodle soup (I tried a few bites; it was good but I'm not sure I really get the appeal of cold soup) her friend had recommended; I ordered black pepper beef and rice (unimaginative, I know), and we ordered a plate of niangao to share.  I should have just ordered a whole plate of the niangao myself and not bothered with the rice; that's what I was really craving anyhow.  Niangao, often called rice cakes in English (not those crunchy things health nuts are always munching), is a thick, chewy noodle-like stuff; before I've often had thin oval-shaped slices in hot pot, but in Korean places they cut long rectangular pieces, looking a bit like string cheese.  Floating in spicy Korean tomato sauce, they are wonderful.  Although nearly impossible to eat with those slippery black plastic chopsticks they always seem to have at restaurants.  Even Amy gave it up and used a fork.  

After enjoying our Korean food, we poked around a few shops and stopped at Carrefour, the French wal-mart-like store, as I needed some peanut butter.  Before leaving, we stopped and stood at the rail, looking out over the courtyard where a big sale of knock-offs was going on, over the fantastic neon designs overlooking the five floor of brightly-lit shops, and over the sparkling high-rises behind, which have running lights blinking and dancing at the shopping mall below.  we did ponder a moment how the people in those buildings ever sleep at night with all those blinking lights outside, but mostly we just enjoyed the color and craziness for a minute.  Sometimes you just need some city lights.  

Sunny Mornings

Sometimes it's the little things in life...I am not a morning person, and I'm usually still groggy and not in the best of moods when rushing down the stairs at 7:30 in the morning, trying not to be late for an 8:00 class.

But when I step out and the early morning sun is filtering through the trees and turning our ordinary little neighborhood golden, I'm grateful that I do have to be out early; left to my own devices I'd miss this most of the time.

And yes, that's a toilet there in front of my building.  Some neighbors are remodeling.  Even early-morning sunlight can't fix everything.