Tilting at Windmills

Oh yes - the fire hair happened.  :-/

Becky is dicking around, taking two days to finish a single post, so I'm hijacking her blog.  My name is Peppermint.  You may remember me from such epic adventures as when we hiked to the Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, or the time we went to Hakone in Japan, but I haven't actually made the blog since she wrote about Flat Stanley (yes, I thought he was "pretentious," as Becky wrote, and a few other more choice words that she didn't.  She's not the only one with a colorful vocabulary, believe me).  And that kind of pisses me off, because I've been on all the trips.  I even went with her and the shitty brats to Istanbul.  But did she let me take part?  No.  I assume it's because she thinks she's too mature, but with as much time as she spends watching anime, she's only kidding herself.

Anyway, sorry, let me move on and tell you about our day trip to Zaan, the whole reason for my long-overdue guest post.  Yesterday Becky was trying to figure out what to do with herself for the next three days.  I kept telling her she had to get out of the city, because Amsterdam is fun and all, but there's only so much secondhand pot smoke you can breathe before you get high for real (although I wouldn't be surprised if she actually didn't mind the smell.  You should hear her complain about her cigarette-smoking neighbors at home, but has she voiced a word of complaint in Amsterdam???)  She was fixated on Delft and possibly a further trip into Belgium, because she's obsessed with her family history and whatever, but she found out she could do a tile-painting workshop at Royal Delft (the last of the historic factories) if she emailed in advance, and you know she's a sucker for that shit.  So finally - FINALLY - she listened to me when I asked, "Hey, you daft bint, what else is Holland famous for?  Like in that Monet with the tulips?"  It's windmills, in case you're a little slow.  Holland is famous for windmills.  And tulips, but it's the wrong season for that.  After a quick chat with Google we decided we were heading for Zaanse Schans.

Zaanse Schans is this beautiful little tourist trap of a historical village that fucking looks like Rembrandt or Vermeer would have painted if it they had time.  Some genius looked around in the last 100 years and said, "Where have all the windmills gone?" and decided it would be great to preserve Holland's industrial past.  Yep, I said industrial.  All those windmills weren't just there to look pretty (like your mom*) - they actually milled shit, thus, industrial past.  There's a pretty awesome museum that explains the whole history of Dutch milling and production, but Becky just breezed through it.

See, she gets so obsessed with taking pictures and having all the experiences - and breathing the air.  To be fair, the air was gorgeous.  I mean, Amsterdam smelled pretty good, especially after four years living in Ulaanbaatar...bikes instead of cars and the delicate aroma of hashish?  I could get used to that!  But Zaan smelled like motherloving CHOCOLATE.  When we left the station and the scent of the cocoa plant hit us, Becky started feeling nostalgic for the coffee roasty smell of a Kansas City autumn, but I told her to shut her mouth because this was, like, a million times better.  A town that smells like chocolate?   Sign me up for that!**

In the great tradition of historical towns, there are workshop demonstrations you can watch.  By the time they were ready to get started, unfortunately a shload of tour buses had rolled in, primarily populated with Chinese people, so you can imagine how well that went over with Becky, if you've read this blog for any length of time.  She would not be deterred from the clog workshop though, which I have to admit was kind of fun.  Becky got matching clogs for herself and her niece, the Princess (Bunny and Dirt Devil are likewise sorted - at this point she just needs to purchase something for Monkey, so if anyone has any ideas...)

We had a good stroll through the village, checking out the different shops (and by checking out, I mean eating free samples of cheese - it's a good thing Becky's slightly lactose intolerant or she'd be constipated.  Not that I can blame her - the Netherlands do have some deelish cheeses).  There was a weaver's house, which showed us how sailcloth was made, and the dairy, of course, and a chocolate shop, and other houses, which I guess people actually live in.

Finally we headed out along the canal toward the windmills.  We had a freebie for one of the mills, that came with the admission to the museum, so I told Becky I wanted to go to "The Cat."  They all have names, you see - the Spotted Hen, the Four-Leaf Clover - and it should be obvious that we would go there.  Fortunately, the Cat turned out to be a paint mill, so we both won.

She's been in super art teacher mode this whole time, only you haven't heard about it because she's a lazy ass.***  Someday she might tell you about the demo she saw on paint mixing in freaking REMBRANDT'S HOUSE.  But for now, suffice it to say that Rembrandt didn't go to the local Dick Blick and buy his paints nicely packaged in metal tubes, he bought pigments and then mixed his own paints, which were stored in a pig's bladder (a dead pig, that is - it might get a little messy to try and use a live one...)  The Cat was a mill that prepared and ground the raw materials to create those pigments, and it was pretty awesome.  Much more interesting than a wood mill, or a grain mill, or any other kind of mill, really.

We walked past all the others and took a ferry across the water to a less touristy but every bit as pretty street.  All the houses had their backs to the water and were in the Zaan style, so it really had a beautiful feel.  We stopped along the way for lunch, then went back to the station to get the train back to Amsterdam.  It was a nice way to spend the day, but I'm glad we did it on our own instead of getting on one of those stinky tour buses.  The roundtrip fare to Koog-Zaandijk (where you get off the train) was 11.60 euro, in case anyone is interested.  And THAT, Becky, is how you sit down and write a blog.  (mic drop)

Becky's notes (because she can't just let me do this):
*Peppermint doesn't know how to make your mom jokes.  They are supposed to be insulting.  (I do too - telling someone that their mom is only pretty and serves no other purpose IS insulting.)
**Can you imagine?  You'd be hungry all the time!  You'd never lose weight!  (And the irony is, apparently she's never going to lose weight anyways, so what's the problem?)
***Not entirely true - I had an IB workshop for three of the days.  (Whatever.  Remember how many hours you spent in that PCbang across from Monumental Paradise in Kathmandu, trying to catch up your posts from Tibet.  I don't want to hear it.)

A (First Class) Pirate's Life For Me!

This trip is the least prepared I have ever been for travel.  I blame this on my students - if I hadn't spent the last several months immersed in work, I might have been ready for it.  The notes in my travel journal leading up to last week are two pages in all.  I had more than that for last year's spring break in Shanghai, and I freaking lived there!  However, I did have a few things on the list, and the second one was to see Fuji-yama.  In our discussions about Tokyo, Blondie suggested that Hakone made a good day trip to do exactly that, so I went for it.

This was a little daunting, because I didn't have much to go on.  I was leaving from Kawasaki, and I couldn't find any definite information, so in the end, I just went to the station, and when I found a sign that said, "Odawara" (the switching point between the train from Tokyo and the one to Hakone) I crossed my fingers and bought a ticket.  I couldn't figure out how much it would cost, so I bought a platform ticket, figuring I would pay the difference at the machine in Odawara (that didn't quite turn out the way I'd planned, since it was actually a ticket that only lets you on the platform, but I got there in the end).

I have to say that nobody treats tourists like the Japanese do.  When I got to Hakone, I had no idea where my hotel was or how to get there, so I went to the counter for Hotel Reservations, and she was able to tell me three different ways to get there.  Again and again I was able to find help when I needed it, and the fact that I wasn't as prepared for this trip as I normally am didn't turn out in catastrophe the way I thought it would.  Getting to the lake was another way that I benefited from this.  The driver let me off right outside the boat office, and I was so excited that my cruise was coming in less than five minutes that I actually splashed out and paid an extra 500 yen for a first class ticket.

Ooh - luxury!

I was grinning like a huge idiot when I presented my ticket for admission into the first class cabin, and there's a possibility that I might walked around singing, "Royals," because I was the only one in the whole damn suite (okay, almost the only one - the other two first class passengers were up deck and getting snacks).

I found my way upstairs, where I particularly enjoyed the view of the people in steerage, huddled together at the other end of the boat and looking miserable.  I had a great view and all that space to myself, and yes, I might have laughed out loud because I felt privileged, all for the low, low price of about $5.  Who the hell says I'll never be royal?!

Of course, the boat was just about as cheesy as it could get.  The pirates on deck were a nice touch, as was the Roman masthead.  The sails and rigging looked great, but were completely non-functional, since the boat was motor-powered, although I really didn't care.  The fact that it was so ridiculously corny actually added to it, if you ask me.  When I got tired of it (and the wind and the chilly air), I went back to my opulent seat belowdecks, and basked in the sunshine and the view.

Peppermint enjoyed climbing the rigging.  She was also excited to have her picture taken with Fuji in the background...like she was in a Hokusai print!  I love Japanese printmaking, and have taught about it a few times now, and this was one of the reasons why seeing the mountain was one of the top things on my list this trip.

Avast me hearties!  I be a brave wench and was not afeared in the least to have me picture taken with yon scallywag!  After all, my own nephew the Dirt Devil is an aspiring sea dog (okay, okay, so he just likes watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates, but I can hope I'm not the only wanderer in the family).  If I'd had anyone but Peppermint to talk to I probably would have spent the whole time speaking in blaggard; since you get enough weird looks traveling with an old, worn stuffed animal without talking to it, I stuck to humming "Royals," and giggling under my breath.

I have to admit, though - the solo flying is getting a little old.  I'm questioning now whether or not I should actually go to Tsagaan Nuur this summer after all.  I found myself almost as worn as Peppermint by the time I got back to UB.  Anywho...

As fun as it was to cruise around the lake (and it was), I came to see Fuji.  My mountain-spotting record has not been perfect this last year.  We did get a break in the clouds when I went to Everest base camp last summer, but it snowed the morning we hoped to see Tavan Bogd.  Sunday it was raining so hard that I had to buy an umbrella (which I then managed to leave on the bus that took me to my hotel), so I was worried that I was going to get skunked.  I guess I'm glad that it ended up being the Ghibli Museum that I missed, not Fuji.  Instead I got to see Fuji three times - on the lake, on the train back from Odawara to Tokyo, and on the plane flying back to Seoul, which was spectacular but I didn't get a shot of it.  I really would have cried if I hadn't seen this amazing scene.  The floating torii makes it perfect.

This is not the Floating Torii - the one you've seen pictures of is in Hiroshima, and I was NOT going there.  I can't imagine it being better than this one, anyways.  After getting off my cruise I took a stroll along the side of the lake (with my noisy little wheelie carry-on - it took me a little while longer to figure out that I should USE the damn luggage lockers) and enjoyed a little rest next to the lake, before making my way back to the docks, slurping up some ramen for lunch, and catching a bus to Odawara for the second highlight of the day.

A New New Year

This is our first of six days off for the Mongolian celebration of Lunar New Year, Tsagaan Sar.  Last Year I was all about getting every bit of use out of my Chinese visa I could, starting with a trip to Harbin during Tsagaan Sar.  If the holiday falls for the right length at the right time next year, I will be off to Greece, so I figured this was the year for me to experience Tsagaan Sar, Mongolian style.

The days leading up to the break are just like such days in any school in America - a total (as Blondie says) "shit show."  Our food drive, which was a little late getting started this year, kept everyone a little bit focused, but by Wednesday, it was pretty futile trying to teach anything, although some of us tried.

The Mongolian teachers had no choice - Wednesday was their big event, the Mongolian culture fair.  There were a few students who set up booths about different cultures, but they were largely about aspects of Mongolian culture.  Since there are a lot more students participating than there are, really, things to research, there was a lot of overlap, but they did a really good job, and I always think it's cool to see the kids in their traditional gear.  I even found out something I've been wondering about.  Mongolians have silk scarves similar to the white ones used in other Tibetan Buddhist cultures, but there are many different colors - most commonly blue, but also white, yellow (for religion and education), green (for nature), and red (for fire).  I've seen a few black ones, and wondered what they meant, and one of my students was finally able to tell me that this is the color you tie to a tree if you are having lots of bad luck.

We also had a performance by our sister school, school 60.  It involved a lot of the usual suspects, and a few unusual ones (a trio of girls who lip-synced to K-Pop in gold sequined dresses, and a group who danced - if I read the styles right - a Bollywood number).  The boys who performed on moriin khuur, the horse head fiddle (an instrument whose story demonstrates why you should never make your woman jealous of your horse), were some of my favorites, and when the student behind me told me he used to play it, I told him he should pick it back up (mostly because smacking him wasn't an option).

The real show stopper, though, was their contortionist.  This girl couldn't have been more than ten years old, and she did pretty much everything I've seen any of the professionals do.  The best part, though, was watching my students flip out - the girl sitting in front of me kept covering her eyes.  It freaked them out that she could bend like that.

The staff dinner was not as great as last year, but I went and had some buuz with Engrish, Champ, and Wallflower anyways.  Teachers are encouraged to dress up in national dress, as well, but since American national dress (t-shirt and jeans) is boring (if comfortable), I wore my eagle hunter coat.  I was on my way out the door when Peppermint told me she wanted to come and participate, too, and after a little discussion we decided she could dress up as my eagle, made possible by the feathers I brought back from the festival.  My students pointed out that I could have used my longer feathers for her tail feathers, and she wanted to kick my ass for not thinking of it myself.  Oh well, maybe next year.

More to come....

Tackling the Tiger

Hiking makes me a little schizophrenic.  I love it.  I hate it.  Last fall I came to the conclusion that really I love it, as long as I can take whatever time I need to do it.  After visiting Taktsang Monastery, the iconic Tiger's Nest that Bhutan is well known for, I'm not sure that I can still say that.

The day started out well.  After a light breakfast of an omelette and coke (because you need the protein for a long hike, as well as that crazy burst of energy that coke gives you to get you started.  Don't you agree, Coca-Cola company???) we were on the trail by 7:30 a.m., before the horses could even get up there.  Not that that was even an option...my family is full of outdoorsy sort of people and there is no way I was taking the easy out.  I never have, although there have been moments when I kind of wished I could (usually about halfway up, to be precise).

The ascent to the Tiger's Nest is gradual.  No, really, it is!  The trail consists of a LOT of switchbacks, but very few stairs, at least until you get to the very end.  It's not until you come to a break in the trees and see how high you've come that you realize it.  And THEN you'll see how far you still have to go, and you'll cry a little bit, if you're a wuss like me, anyways.

Still, the forest is lovely, and even though you are sweating buckets, the sun is not out, and there are lots of things to take photos of.  And if you're lucky, your guide will be supportive.  Mine was.  Sree kept telling me how well I was doing and that she appreciated me.  Maybe two-thirds of the way up, she wanted to know if she could ask my age.  I told her I was nearly 34.  "Oh, that explains your good walk.  The driver and I were talking, and even though you are fat, you have a good walk."  Oh.  Um.  Thanks?  My size has been discussed and pointed out a LOT while I was traveling this summer, in spite of my effort and some success in getting it under control.  Sree went on to explain that they agreed that my size suited me, that unlike some people, who are only fat in their faces or their stomachs, that I am fat all over, and I said that I was lucky to be tall, and that in spite of being fat, I am really healthy.  She said that she could tell that by how I walk.  All this would, I guess, serve to help me accept myself, which is also part of my current mission, but it's still a topic I'd just as soon not talk about.  Guess I have a ways to go.

And speaking of having a ways to go...man, but does that hike go on and on!  The closer we got to the Tiger's Nest, the more we saw of these.  They are little tiny stupas made of human ashes and clay, hidden in the hollows of rocks.  Knowing that the Bhutanese follow Tibetan Buddhism, I couldn't help but ask about sky burial...do they practice it still in Bhutan?  Sree said no.  They used to, but now people get cremated.  And apparently turned into tiny stupas.

Finally, after what seemed like forever we came to the Tiger's Nest.  Peppermint's been lying low this trip, although she did pose for me at the Potala and Everest.  She's been threatening to start her own blog, but since she's a cat, I have serious doubts that she'll get further than the first post.  She likes her naps too much.  At any rate, we finished climbing up to the monastery and had a look around.  A famous statue of Guru Rinpoche, one of Bhutan's holy men, is up there, and there's a legend of how it has spoken in dreams, twice now.  There is a hole in the floor that you can look down in, and see where he stabbed a demon with his three-bladed dagger.  And in case you were wondering, there was once a tiger's den up here.  The monks used it as a meditation cave before the monastery was built.

And those monks?  I gotta say they were a helluva lot more pious than me!  Heck, Sree is a dedicated woman - she must do this hike once a week, and she hardly broke a sweat.  When we got to the car, I was more like, "I am never hiking again."  By the time we were on our way down, the sun was out, which I was not happy about.  When you go on vacation during rainy season - and it was, I checked my forecasts in Lhasa, and every damn day said, "cloudy with a chance of rain" FOR THREE STRAIGHT WEEKS! - you expect a lot of clouds.  Instead, I came back with a bloody tan (remember what I said about being paranoid about skin cancer?)  And you know that saying (that I hate) about how getting there is half the fun?  Well, when said sarcastically, it's true...the other half is getting back down again!  Which is less work for your heart, but more for your knees.  One of the things I remember about hiking Ulsan-bawi in Korea is how wobbly my legs were afterwards.  The morning walks and occasional hikes this year must have helped me a lot, because my legs were okay, but my feet hurt like hell!

Still, I made it, and I think I am as proud of that hike as of just about anything I did on vacation.

Qin Shi Huang's Revenge

A long time ago, in a country not too far away, I had a friend named...let's call him Lick (that's a Korean joke).  Lick went to Beijing, and he got amoebic dysentery while he was there.  Being unwilling to miss out on all the things he went there to see, he tried not to let this stop him.  But while he was out shopping one day, he really, REALLY had to go, and the result was catastrophic.  Let's just leave it at the fact that you don't want to have explosive diarrhea when a squatty potty is your only option.

This little memory ran through my head as I was attempting to get myself together last Monday.  I didn't want to be the girl who went to Xi'An and DIDN'T see the terracotta warriors.  I also didn't want to be the girl who "redecorated" the bathroom at the site of the terracotta warriors.  And it's a big site - this was the biggest of the three pits, and there is no bathroom in any of the buildings.  So I felt like this was a legitimate concern.  Did I let it stop me?  Obviously not.  However, I didn't get much out of the other things we saw - Banpo neolithic village or Emperor Qin's tomb, and I only ate a little rice at the lunch, which was part of the price of the tour, and that was a shame since we had to drive over some really sketchy roads to get there.  I honestly wasn't that interested in them, so it wasn't that big a loss.

On the trip over, our guide - who went by the English name "Coffee" - asked if we knew that the terracotta warriors were in pieces.  He then went on to relate that nobody knows who broke them, but that there is speculation that it was done after he died by a rebel general, Xiang Yu.  I asked if he wouldn't have had to dig the warriors up to do that.  Poor Coffee didn't have an answer to that, and awkwardly moved on with his lecture.  Yes, yes, shame on me.

Peppermint was pretty impressed by the warriors and asked me to take her picture with them.  She was looking a lot better that day than I was, and I figured one of us deserved to have a commemorative photo.  Nobody asked me what I was doing this time.

You probably have heard all about the warriors.  You know no two are alike, although the bodies were very similar in a lot of them.  What can I possibly say to add to your knowledge?  Not a whole lot.  And unfortunately I was too sick to come up with any witty comments or snide remarks.  Once we made it to the site, I went off on my own from my tour group - I wanted to follow the advice of Lonely Planet and work my way from Pit 3 backwards to Pit 1.  I didn't quite manage it; what I thought was Pit 3 was actually the on-site museum, which had some neat stuff, including the two bronze chariots they unearthed here.  Oops.  Pit 3 was supposed to have been the "command center" and so I was kicking myself a little for not getting to see it, but hell, at least I made it there.  Also very cool to see was the restoration experts at work.  They reminded me of all my puzzle-loving friends and how much they might enjoy working here.  Belynda would, at any rate, if her comments when we were looking at ruins in Egypt are anything to go by.  Anyways, it was another China moment crossed off my list, and I was ready as hell to get to Shanghai.

OH MY BUDDHA!

As I was studying up for Chengdu, I found out that nearby was the largest stone Buddha in the world.  In a little city (by Chinese standards, anyway - 2.3 million people beats out my hometown of Kansas City by 7.5 to 1) called Leshan, two hours down the road, lies a marvel on par with the Sphinx of Giza...according to the Leshan tourism board, at any rate.  I wasn't sure if I could fit it in - I was only there for two days, after all, and the tour I'd signed up for that included both the Buddha and the pandas got cancelled because I was the only one signed up for it.  However, I talked to Domestic Goddess, who said that missing it was one of her biggest travel regrets OF ALL TIME, and after reading up a little more I decided I could be on the first bus out at 7:20, since the bus stop was so conveniently located next to my hotel, and make it there and back with some time in the afternoon to see a little more of Chengdu.

So here's the story: an 8th century monk named Daitong decided that the best way to deal with the treacherous meeting point of three rivers was to carve Buddha into the cliffside, that he would calm the river.  The Buddha actually took 90 years to carve out, and in the end, the river did become calmer, although whether it was caused by his divine influence or detritus from carving him is debatable. 

How big is the Leshan Buddha?  He is one BAMF (the "B" in this case standing for "big").  He is so freaking big that it's hard to get a photo with all of him in it.  Can you see the puny mortals standing on the cliffside behind him?  You could fit a bunch of them in his 23-foot long ear.  That's how bloody big the Leshan Buddha is.

On one side of the Buddha is a set of stairs wending their way down the cliffside.  The Chinese monks in olden times had names for this path - for example, the bird's way, because it was only fit for the birds.  It's kind of fun except for the million or so Chinese tourists pushing their way past you...that tends to be a little nerve-wracking.  Don't get me wrong, I like the Chinese (on a good day), but the idea of patiently waiting for the line to move doesn't always appeal to them, and the idea of falling down a cliff definitely doesn't appeal to me.

I couldn't understand the rush, personally.  I was snapping pictures all the way down.  One of the things I loved the most was all the niches with Buddhist sculptures carved into the side of the cliff - they were a little worn from the wind and the air pollution, but still just absolutely beautiful.  You can actually get up to the top fairly easily, even on a pair of feet that were very weary from way too much walking.  From the bottom, you have to go up a less steep, exposed path to get back to the top, which is a lot more exhausting, but it's worth it to see the Buddha along the cliffside path.  There are tourist boats that depart from the other side of the river and give you a much better view of the Buddha, but my "bus" - a 6 passenger van that was very comfortable (guess the early bird really did get the worm in this case - the bus on the way back was less comfortable) - dropped us off right outside the tourist area gate, which was kind of nice.

If you've never traveled with me, you may not realize that a 25 year-old pound purry named Peppermint shares my adventures.  She's a much lower key traveler than I am, and often prefers to stay in the hotel room than go out wandering...after all, she doesn't have my sense of direction and might not be able to find her way back if she got lost.  However, she was really excited to see the biggest stone Buddha in the world, and insisted on having her photo taken with it.  She and I were both a little offended when a tour guide asked us what we were doing.  I was taking a picture of my cat.  Duh.