City without a Soul

And speaking of Luxembourg (mentioned in my last post as a country that didn't really capture my heart). . . I just found this draft for a post from 2009. It's got kind of an abrupt ending, but it's been so long now that I don't feel like I can finish the post with a whole lot of accuracy.

Actually, I'm really thankful that my cousin and frequent travel partner Kirsten is so good about journaling. I do have her record of the trip, but my intention on this blog is to get my own impressions down in writing. So, here's the unfinished post; it was fun for me to re-read it, and it's a good incentive for me to blog now about my more recent travels - before my impressions are so faded.


Luxembourg is absolutely gorgeous, like a city right out of a fairy tale. But it's also, well, kind of boring. Ok, so we took a good tour of the palace where the Grand Duke lives and saw two very interesting museum exhibits, we enjoyed exploring the casemates that underlie the old part of the city, and we had some good food and some great Reisling - but two days there was plenty of time. Longer than that and I think the sumptious bank buildings and the shiny BMWs and all the Loius Vuitton bags (even more than I see in Seoul, I think - and that's saying something!) would start to grate. In the short time we were there I found myslef thinking several times - and saying it out loud at least once - that I kind of felt like we were in a fake city in Disneyland, wondering when it would close down for the night.

A bit more on the bright points mentioned above: our palace tour was guided by a friendly middle-aged Luxembourg transplant from Holland and included lots of interesting info on the royal family, including their one-time connection to the Dutch royal family.

The Luxembourg City Museum had a temporary exhibit on murder. I don't think there was any particular connection to Luxembourg, but anyway it was thought-provoking. The exhibit included sections on famous murderers, like Charles Manson and Jack the Ripper, and on punishments for murder, and an interactive item where museum visitors were supposed to place a card in a clear glass box with a scenario in which they would murder someone. Some of the options: Would you murder for money? Would you murder someone who had murdered a loved one in retaliation? Would you murder in self-defense?

An underground tunnel museum (kind of like the skyway in Minneapolis, it seemed to connect a lot of buildings) ended with a really interesting section recalling the MoMA's "The Family of Man" exhibit of the Luxembourg-American photographer Edward Steichen.

Lots to Love about Laos

There's something to love about every place that I've visited. I can even think of a few things to love about Luxembourg, which is probably at the bottom of my "places to love" list: it's a clean, beautiful city and it's got good beer and great wine. Laos hasn't bumped Nepal from the top spot on that list, but it does get a pretty high ranking. Here are just a few of the things I loved about Laos:

1. Spending time with cousins. My cousin Kirsten and I are frequent travel buddies, so I get to spend time with her on many of my trips. This time, though, I also got to visit with my cousins Christa and Danae. (Actually they're my second cousins - or is it first cousins once removed? Their dad and I are first cousins.) Anyway, Christa has been teaching English in Vientiane for a year and a half, and her sister Danae's visit overlapped with the time that Kirsten and I were there. I think it had probably been at least five years since I last saw Christa and Danae; whenever the last time whas, I doubt any of us would have believed you if you'd told us then that the next place we'd see each other would be Laos! I'm thankful to be part of a family where second cousins (or whatever we are!) can say, "Hey, are you going to be around in January?" and then just pick right up when we visit.



2. The food! Okay, so I love food pretty much anywhere - even at home - but it's always fun to experience new tastes, and Laos didn't disappoint. Two highlights were sticky rice and green papaya salad, but pretty much everything was good - even the fried grasshoppers. Lao food is a lot like Thai; we ate so much good curry!






3. Natural beauty. Laos is gorgeous; I was especially enamored with the limestone karsts around Vang Vieng and the waterfalls near Luang Prabang, but much of the other scenery we encountered was very pretty, too.




4. And not to be outdone by nature - cultural beauty. Laos has a very diverse population with lots of minority groups. On one hike, we passed through adjacent villages - first a Khmhmu and then Hmong - and our guide gave us an interesting introduction to their different marriage customs and housing styles. Luang Prabang has a great arts and ethnology center about some of those groups, and one of the restaurant/bars in town also puts on a spectacular fashion show of traditional costumes. The models are students who without their pay for this work would likely be unable to afford school fees and related costs - a great way to put tourist dollars to good work!





5. The variety of activities we did - hiking, biking, kayaking, caving, sightseeing, swimming in waterfalls, learning to cook Lao food, meeting Christa's students, getting massaged, shopping. . . really, what's not to love about any of that? Here are a couple more photos; full album coming soon!

Catching up - Boseong

The other night I was spring cleaning my computer files and realized (again!) that many of my Korea experiences have not been chronicled on this blog. Partly for readers out there, and partly because this is the only form of journaling that I do, I'm going to try (again!) to catch up.

Today's post is a brief re-cap of a trip to Boseong in spring 2010. Boseong is one of Korea's prime green tea growing locations. Although it's in Chollanamdo, the province I lived in the first time I was in Korea, I never made it to Boseong until last year (with my old roommate from Mokpo, who still lives there). I think we visited a bit early in the season; I've seen pictures of lush green tea fields, and as you'll see, they were still showing signs of winter brown when we were there. Regardless, it was a great way to spend a lovely spring day with a couple of friends.

We started our visit with green tea ice cream:



On the way from the parking lot to the tea fields, we walked past this beautiful bamboo forest.






Then we hiked around exploring the tea fields for a while.





And after all that walking around, it was time for another green tea treat: a surprisingly yummy green tea latte.

Winter Travels

It's May 6th today, so obviously it's a bit late to be posting about my winter travels. Late, but not surprising, right? That's kind of the way things work on this blog.

In January, after a snowstorm in Philly that cancelled my flight and a 6-hour wait at 30th Street Station for a train to DC, where I was finally re-routed after hours on the phone with American Airlines, I returned to Seoul. All that waiting ate up the 24 hours that I was supposed to have to sleep in my own bed, do laundry, and re-pack before leaving for Tanzania. My friend Michelle saved the day; she took the list I e-mailed to her, went to my apartment to gather what I needed for Tanzania, and met me at the airport, where I had just over two hours to unpack/re-pack my bags and take off on my next flight.

Then that flight was late getting to Doha, Qatar, which meant I missed the once-a-day flight from Doha to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This time it was my friends Crystal and Michael who saved the day; they live in Doha and picked me up and hosted me at their apartment that night.

Once I finally got to Dar and then caught my domestic flight to Moshi, there was one more hitch. Paul, the guy who had arranged our Kilimanjaro trek and safari, did not meet me at the airport as planned. I had written down the name of the hotel and just took a taxi there, so that didn't seem to be such a big issue. My cousin Kirsten and our friend Eric were supposed to arrive later that night; I waited and waited and waited and began to worry about what had happened to them, unable to check flight status as the Internet was down. When we finally did connect the next morning, I found out that Paul had also failed to meet them; the guy who claimed he was there for Paul took them to a different hotel, and they had no idea where I was. As there were two of them and I was alone, they were even more worried than I had been!

Anyway, all's well that ends well, right? It did end well - we all made it safely to the summit of Kilimanjaro, and then met up with our cousin Nathaniel for an amazing safari and a few relaxing days on Zanzibar. Here's the photo story:

Tanzania

In February, Michelle (the one who saved me at the airport in January) and I flew to Jakarta, where our friend Nancy is teaching. My friend Leslie flew in from the States the next day, and Michelle, Leslie and I spent a few days with the orangutans in Borneo (or Kalimantan, as they say in Indonesia). From there we flew to Bali; Nancy, who was then off for the Chinese New Year, met us there for several days of fun and relaxation - and lots of good food and shopping and spa-ing! Michelle and Nancy each returned home from there, and Leslie and I hopped on a ferry to Lombok, where we hiked to a waterfall and did some amazing snorkeling around the Gili Islands. Here's that trip in pictures:

Indonesia

"Responsible Tourism"

I read an interesting article in the New York Times this week that explores the idea of spending money wisely when abroad, especially in developing countries - a topic I brought up in my last post here. I don't agree with all of it, but both the article and readers' comments on it are thought provoking and worth a look. Here's the link for anyone who's interested: http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/travel/13prac.html

"You Work for Holidays; We Work for Food"

That's a quote from an interesting conversation with a taxi driver in Lombok, Indonesia a few weeks ago. It was near the end of an amazing trip with three great friends, and it left me feeling a bit sad and reflective.

I do a lot of my traveling in developing countries, and in those places I'm always struck by the inequality that exists in our world. Mostly at those moments I feel incredibly blessed, but there are also times when I sort of hate being the rich White Westerner. Sometimes that's because I feel a bit guilty for enjoying so much when so many others have so little. To be honest, though, it's usually because I'm being exorbitantly overcharged for something, which creates an inner dilemma: do I argue that I should pay the local price for the same product or service (like a taxi ride) that a local would, and do I try to avoid being one of the rich White Westerners who drives up the price for all of my fellow rich White Westerners to come after me? Or do I rationalize that the price difference (often a dollar or two, sometimes even less) wouldn't even cover the cost of a cup of coffee here in Seoul, but could buy, say, food for a day for an Indonesian taxi driver's family? More and more I find myself coming down on the latter side of that argument. I'd like to think it's because I'm becoming more compassionate as I grow older, but actually it's probably more due to the fact that I'm no longer a penny-pinching Peace Corps volunteer or grad student.

Obviously tourist dollars won't close the inequality gap, but I think they really do make a difference for those taxi drivers and market vendors who make a living that way. As we were preparing to leave our last campsite on Kilimanjaro (that's a topic for another post!), our guide thanked us for coming. He encouraged us to encourage our friends to visit Tanzania (and indeed, I encourage any of you reading this to go!), pointing out that visitors create jobs for people like him and our cook and our porters. After that, they all sang us this song:

Jambo, Jambo bwana (Hi, hi sir.)
Habari gani? (How are you?)
Mzuri sana (Very fine.)
Wageni mwakaribishwa (Visitors are welcome)
Kilimanjaro (Kilimanjaro!)
Hakuna matata (There are no worries)




(Thanks to fellow Kili climber Eric for the video and to http://www.museke.com/en/node/1125 for the lyrics and translation)

Return to Jeju

Jeju is an island province that lies just to the south of the Korean peninsula. It's often referred to as "Korea's Hawaii," and it was for some time the honeymoon destination for Korean newlyweds. As the Korean economy has grown I think the honeymoon market has expanded to places like Phuket and Boracai, but Jeju remains a popular destination for mainland tourists.

I went to Jeju twice during my first stint in Korea. I've never been to Hawaii, but I think that comparison raised my expectations a bit too high, especially with regard to beaches. There are a couple of picturesque waterfalls, some pretty coastal scenery, and unique lava tube caves on the island; there's also lots of grass, which you don't see much of in Korea. So it's not Hawaii, but Jeju does make for a pleasant getaway.

The second time a visiting friend and I did a bit of hiking on Hallasan, the volcano in the center of the island, but due to bad weather and closed trails, we couldn't make it to the top. Though I'd pretty much exhausted the other highlights of the island, that mountain was always there to draw me back.

Enter a short mid-semester break, a couple of colleagues who share my affinity for hiking, and really cheap plane tickets, and you have my return to Hallasan, which is Korea's tallest mountain (1950 meters/6397 feet). Some stunning fall colors were a bonus, but even without them, our two full days of hiking would have been a worthwhile third trip!

Here we are near the high point on our first day's hike. In the distance behind us you can see the outer rim of the crater that's at the peak.


The next photo was taken about three hours into our hike on day two, followed by a couple of shots of the view near the peak.





I can't seem to get these pictures to line up here, but this is an attempt at a panoramic shot of the crater at the top:




Most photos that I've seen of Hallasan show a bright blue lake in the crater; I guess it must dry up in the fall/winter. We'll see how much longer I stay in Korea, but maybe one of these days I'll have to make one last trip to Jeju to see the lake!