Rhymes with Safari

I’ve been to New York at least 10 times in my life, but Rob had never been. I hadn’t done any of the “touristy” stuff since my first couple of visits, but I was happy to do it all again with Rob. We bought $79 City Passes, which included entrance to the Met, the Natural History Museum, MoMA, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Top of Rockefeller Plaza.

We supplemented the City Pass with a pedicab through Central Park, the Broadway Show Rock of Ages, and a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman.

We were smart enough to go to the Top of the Rock on our first day, which turned out to be the only sunny day.  We took lots of pictures with the Empire State Building in the background. On our last day, it was so overcast and rainy that we were strongly encouraged not to bother going to the top of the Empire State Building. But since it was already paid for, and we were leaving the next day, we did it anyway. They weren’t kidding. There was nothing to see.

They gave us half-price on the flight simulation NY Skyride, which takes you on a virtual helicopter tour over New York. And there was no line, so the terrible weather was actually a bonus.

The City Pass allows you to skip long lines, which was hugely beneficial for our visit to the Museum of Modern Art. The lines there were so long, we probably wouldn’t even have gotten in before we needed to leave for the Letterman show. But because we had the City Pass, we just breezed on in.

I prefer MoMa to the Met, which is very overwhelming. We saw the controversial “The Artist is Present” exhibition, with live nude models, but my favorite part was seeing a group of very young schoolchildren being asked what they saw in a Mark Chagall painting.

Who knew I was so into the Olympics? Maybe I’m just kinda jazzed about it because I live about 25 minutes from British Columbia.

I’ve always liked figure skating, which should come as no surprise, as it’s an awful lot like dance. I remember watching the figure skating during the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer. Alone, in my freshman dorm room. On a Saturday night.

Yesterday, I found myself thoroughly entertained by men’s cross-country skiing and snowboard cross events.

On Sunday, Rob and I drove to Vancouver because it just seemed like the thing to do. To quote this guide: Why Stay Home When the Party’s Next Door?

We had the shortest border wait of all time on the way in. Only one car in front of us. Which was a shame, because I planned to use the wait time to eat a sandwich and find the map of Vancouver that’s in my car somewhere. We parked near a casino park and ride (not actually in the parking lot, because it was full, but next to two cars in front of a nearby shop that appeared to be closed. This may have been poor judgment, as I had an erroneous tow in Vancouver before, but the car was still there when we got back.)

The Skytrain downtown was packed, but festive. The atmosphere around Robson Street was less “rah rah” Olympics and more insanely crowded street fair. I have to say, there weren’t a lot of activities. We wanted to take the free Zipline over Robson Square (5-hour wait) or go in the LiveCity Vancouver viewing area (line around the block), see the medals at the Royal Canadian Mint (line around the corner), or ice skate (line around the corner), but we didn’t do any of those things.

I bought a little stuffed mascot at the Shoppers Drug Mart, which is sitting on my desk, making me smile. We walked to Chinatown in search of a place to eat/drink beer, but didn’t find any place that suited us. There was less Lunar New Year fanfare than I expected. Hopped a bus back to downtown and waited in line to get into a pub.

For some reason, I thought we were waiting in line to get a table, but once inside, we still had to lurk in the shadows to see who was paying their bill and snag their table. Fortunately, this didn’t take too long. Rob drank beer and I had a sockeye salmon burger and yam fries, with a pomegranate cider, as the Canadians around us cheered the country’s first Olympic gold on home soil. Men’s freestyle ski.

We walked to the ice rink after, and spotted the mascots leaving the rink after their show. We missed the show, but seeing the mascots made me day. Seriously, that was all the Olympic flavor I needed. Felt like a totally successful day.

On the way back , our border wait was even shorter. NO cars in front of us.

It was an entire year after India before I even felt like traveling. I also felt guilty about taking that much time off, so I didn’t take a single vacation day for an entire year. (I get plenty of holidays, and my schedule is pretty relaxed, so this wasn’t a huge hardship.)

When I heard that a friend of mine was going to be in Saigon for three months, at first I was insanely jealous. Then I bought a Rough Guide Southeast Asia for $5 at Half-Price Books and decided that I should go meet her there. Rob didn’t have much interest in Vietnam, so this was a perfect opportunity… when else would I say to myself, “Gee, I’d like to go to Vietnam alone”?

I also wanted to see Cambodia and Laos, but that proved too much for me to do in the two weeks I planned to be gone. So I settled for Cambodia, and joined a 10-day tour that started in Bangkok and ended in Saigon, where I stayed for a week with my friend.

I love to travel. I love riding on buses and tuk-tuks and boats and seeing a world so, for lack of another word, foreign to me. In southeast Asia, it’s rice paddies and thatched roofs, Buddhist shrines and motorbikes.

It was a great trip. Despite having enjoyed my time there, I wouldn’t say that I loved Vietnam or Cambodia…or India last year. I did really like Nepal. On the other hand, I can’t even hear the words Bangkok, Thailand, Japan or Tokyo without gushing, “I looooove” Bangkok, Thailand, Japan or Tokyo.

Cambodia was cool because of all the temples. I realized that temples weren’t the priority of my tour group when, after a daredevil sunset motorbike ride to Sam Mountain in Chau Doc, Vietnam, our motorbike drivers took us to a Buddhist temple with Las Vegas lights. One of my travel mates said, “What the heck are we doing here?”

This was the same guy who overslept and caused us to miss sunrise over Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Even without the money shot, Angkor Wat was incredible. The must-see of Cambodia. Ancient Hindu-Buddhist temples, too hot and massive to visit all at once or on foot. Tour books advise you to take three days. We only had one, but we had an air-conditioned bus to take us to a temple or two, then back to the hotel for a rest and a shower before bringing us back to the temple complex. And a really amusing tour guide who told jokes like, “what is the difference between a woman and a pony? A woman wears her in a pony tail, but a pony doesn’t wear its hair in a woman tail.”

From the bus between cities in Cambodia, I saw long dirt pathways leading to narrow homes that were taller than they were wide. Freestanding ornate temple gates framed the entrance to the “driveways.”

I thought the Mekong Delta would be more picturesque, like the backwaters of Kerala in India. Still, it was fun to see floating fish farms and floating markets and visit villages of Vietnamese Muslims and people who make coconut candy and rice paper (for tourists).

I spent the longest time in Saigon, because that’s where my friend was staying. It was a pleasant enough city, and I leisurely visited museums and pagodas. (Temples also were not the priority for my friend, who had to wait outside the Jade Emperor Pagoda, pictured below, because it gave her bad spiritual vibes.)

One of the reasons I prefer Bangkok to Saigon is that you have various shrines and temples in the middle of the streets in Bangkok. It is very obviously a Buddhist country. I didn’t see nearly as many monks in Vietnam, and had to go out of my way to see religious sights. (Except for the Notre Dame cathedral.) Guess we have the communists to blame for that.

Worth noting, I had 99% success with bug spray…even a “natural” lemon eucalyptus spray (made by Cutter) that didn’t even have any Deet in it. I wore it like perfume, sprayed it on all the exposed skin every day, after every shower. I got one mosquito bite the whole time…and then ran out of the spray on my last day. When I got home, I discovered three bites on my legs and feet.

The trip was entirely without travel disasters and I enjoy reflecting on the experience and looking at my pictures. I especially appreciate the feedback my pictures get on Facebook.

But the best part of all was seeing Rob pull up to the curb at the airport, with Isis poking her nose out the open window to welcome me home.