great album names for punk rock bands that come up during the course of casual conversation. Part of a series.

Stagnant Pool of Onions

And it results in pulk

Few things could combine what I love drinking most with what a best friend hates drinking most. But this does. I would like to try beercon, but fear it would result in a horrific Frankendrink.
HK moment 1: I'm meeting up with a friend for a drink tonight, and she has commented on all of the pretentious names most clubs have here: One- or two-syllable names that have nothing to do with liquor, such as Drop, Mink and Soda. So I call her to find where she's at and it takes a few back-and-forths to realize that she's not at Mink, but Mint.
Have I mentioned how I like to go to bars, and not clubs? This one is a private club - you still have to pay for your drinks, but can only get in if you are a member or on their guest list - but the one redeeming value is its James Bondian villian aspect to it. It's sleek, spacious and has a big fish tank built into a wall with 8 smallish sharks swimming in it. As said friend said, you expect some bald guy to be sittin in the corner with his cat.
HK moment 2: On Monday, out of the blue, I get a phone call from my college editor from the spring of '92, whom I haven't talked to since he graduated in said year. He was visiting HK, where he worked in the late 90s, and saw I worked in this quasination.
And then today, I get an email from the one of the three college roommates I never stayed in contact with. We'll see how this trend plays out.
Personal moment 1: I've been devouring books lately, finishing books I started four years ago and those I started five days previous. Because once baseball starts, I know what I'm doing if the Cubs are playing.

I really don't want a pony

The upside to Hong Kong: there's prevalent freedom of speech and the press, which obviously I'm interested in.
The downside to Hong Kong: Market pressures often limit which cultural offerings we get. Music is limited, as are movies. Which usually is bad.
Unless it's this movie. I read about this as news item, and really, that's all I need. America, you can keep this one.
On the upside, I finally found another band I can like here. On a Friday night, a friend wanted to know if I wanted to see music tonght. Among the bands listed, the best bet seemed to be the all-female punk rock band; I am a sucker for the now-defunct Sleater-Kinney, as they they rank in my top 3. The drummer was great, the bassist OK, but the guitarist/singer; eeeeesssshhh. I wish she could have done either well.
But the last band, Maniacc, made me remember why I loved live shows. Their set was 5 songs, about 25 minutes, and they loved every minute. They started singing whiny emo songs, and then would go into full-bore metal after about 2 minutes. And not 80s hair metal band, but screamo, from the pits of hell yelling metal. Maybe it's the whole balance/yinyang thing, but nothing makes for a fun night with jangly guitars crossed with what sounds like Crom yelling a blood-curdling yell about his girlfriend breaking his heart.

The way home

Most nights, I drink in the Soho neighborhood. I cab it home, about a 8 minute ride on most nights down Queens Road West most of the way. In my drunken states, I've noticed a few neat restaurant signs. So why not follow up on those drunken thoughts when I'm actually sober, I thought, and photograph them. Which I did, after work one night, walking from the last stop (Sheung Wan) back to Kennedy Town, about 45 minutes.


Happy hour at Happy Restaurant!


Fish on the sign means I keep walking.


Sammy would feel right at home in Texas, I think.


There was a cage right behind the sign with something slithering, but I did not bother to check it out. A friend who surfs won't eat shark's fin soup for the same reason I won't eat snake soup: You don't eat me, I don't eat you.


Tasty, eh? Though look at which building it's in. Having been to both geographic areas, I have to say I'd be much more likely to eat there if it was Goa Restaurant in Canada Building than as it is.

Temple eye candy, part 2

One of the many classical Khmer faces in Angkor Thom.


From inside one of the temples in Angkor Thom.


A detail from Banteay Srei, about 30km or so from Angkor Wat and about 45 minutes or so over bumpy, ripped up roads. The temple is made of pink sandstone, from about 950 AD, and the details are amazing. Don't believe what you first would think from the above pic; the good guy is on the bottom, the bad guy on the top.


This is the level of detail from 1,050 years later. And my apartment in HK is showing its age, and it's not even a year old.

Temple eye candy, part 1

Scenes from the various temples


Family and guide in Angkor Wat.


One of the many apsaras, or celestial dancers, carved in the temple.


More apsarasas, but in Ta Prohm.


Indicative shot of Ta Proh, and the huge roots that cover some of the complex.


Part of a scene of a battle in Angkor Wat.

Mister! Mister!

Right after I got back from my pre-Christmas trip to Thailand, I got a mailing from my other sister. Her daughter had a class project: they mailed out a little paper doll to people outside their immediate area, and the recipients where supposed to take them on adventures. I'm guessing my niece will get bonus points for the best trip, as her paper doll got to go to Cambodia, Hong Kong and Macau, instead of just West Bend or Wauwautosa, Wis.
The hardest part of travelling in Asia is dealing with the poverty. As I tell friends an family, what these sights should do is make you incredibly thankful for what you have. The temples near Siem Reap are thronged with Cambodians, usually little kids, trying to sell you postcards, trinkets, photographs, water, anything for money. Saying "no" to a five-year-old girl who's trying to sell you postcards for a buck isn't easy, especially when you realize a buck to her means a helluva lot more than it does to me. The money they make goes to feed their family, not buy a candy bar.
Here's the difference: My sister and mom bought a few trinkets on the final day in Cambodia so they could include it in the writeup about the paper doll's trip for my niece. One of the kids they bought it from was about 8 years old, the same as my niece. My niece will spend the day in class all day. The same 8 year old is probably trying to sell a trinket all day so their family can eat. If they can get enough money, that means they can then go to school too, but survival comes first.
I always buy a few things on my final day, when I hear the kids shouting, "Mister! Mister!" as they run toward you with stuff. After my sister bought a few trinkets for a buck from one girl, and my mom some other goods for a few bucks from another kid (I think the sibling), what I assume was their mom came near our van and offered to sell us a drawing for $3 with a big smile on her face. We joked back, "No, we have enough!" and she just laughed back; we knew her family just made about $5 in sales, and I bet you $4.50 of that was in profit. Anything more than that was icing on the cake. It wasn't that much to us, but the world to them.

I see pictures of picture-taking

In Belgium this summer, I taught my mom the one rule of travelling. No matter where you are, if you see an Asian tourist, sooner or later they will pose against something and get their picture taken. She doubted me as I told her this in Brussels, as we were near the Pissing Boy statue. I told her within 5 minutes, we would see an Asian group of travellers posing near it, to have their picture taken. Within a minute, twenty seconds, said group arrived. Less than two minutes after that, they were snapping their first pictures.
I've always made it a point of taking a picture of Asians taking pictures on all my trips. As I explained on this trip with the family, Westerners take pictures of things, while Asians take pictures with things.


In Ta Prohm.

Ta Prohm's construction is overgrown with gigantic trees, whose roots have overtaken the complex. It's known to most people as the temple seen in the Tomb Raider movie, and the guides remind you of that all the time. (Also, the locals try to sell you bootleg copies of said movie at all the temples in case you forgot.) That makes it especially popular for picture taking.



The temples were far busier this time around than when I was last there, about 10 months ago. There were far more hotels open on the way to the airport. The number of buses at the main temples was triple from what I remember. And the number of people at a lot of the places was triple, sometimes quadruple.
This was most noticable at Phnom Bakheng, pictured above, where you can watch the sun go down over a huge reservoir. A year ago, you scrambled up a loose-rock pathway to get to the temple and claim a space of your own. While there were a good number of people, the crowds weren't horrendous.
But this year, the had constructed a long, circuitous, graded path, making it easier to get to the temple. The temple was overflowing with people, far more than it could accomodate. The Washington Post has a story on this and the debate over temple preservation vs. the much-needed jobs tourism generates. It's only going to get worse, too. I'll go back again, I'm sure, but not during the high season of late November-early March.

In the know

I was debating whether to get a guide for our temple adventures. The last time I went I had one, but wished him gone by the second day. All I did was hear the same stories over and over again, about how one of three kings built said temple. I would rather have just wandered through the temples on my own.
But I decided to get one for two reasons: 1) It would help mom and sister understand everything better and 2) It would let them (and me) get to know a local a little more.
It was a great call. When I stopped by the hotel office in the first morning of our temple jaunting, someone said about me, "Oh, he's got a good one." We got Rous Ry, who apparently is the first person our hotel calls when they need a guide. He was smart, funny and friendly.
And he was business savvy. He was trying to learn Spanish. Why? Guides essentially work as independent contractors; the hotels call only when they need one, though each hotel has favored ones. At our hotel, an English, Japanese or French-speaking guide cost $30. A Spanish-speaking guide got $80 a day.
He was about my age, with a wife and two kids back in Pnom Penh. He visits them in the off season and once a month or so in season, though he says his wife will sometimes show up for an unnanounced visit/inspection.
Like all older Cambodians, he has Khmer Rouge story. Amazingly though, his isn't as heartbreaking as most: He was forced to leave Pnom Penh when the Rouge arrived in 1975, and he was split up from a sister and his parents. He ended up having to look over a group of kids, though he was only six years old. After Cambodia was liberated of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese, he was able to reunite with his sister and parents, all of whom survived the regime. His younger siblings, who were born after the Khmer Rouge were deposed, don't believe his stories about the atrocities, he says; they find it hard to believe that no one wouldn't resist the radical communists. They don't understand, he says, that some in his group were so thin and weak from malnutrition that a gust of wind would literally blow them away, into the rice paddies, and the Khmer Rouge overseers would shoot anyone who went to save that person.
If anyone ever goes to Siem Reap, I heartily recommend hiring him, and ask him if he remembers the word I taught him: baksheesh, the bribe government workers ask for to get something done.


Rous and my sister on an upper portion of Angkor Wat. In the distance is a balloon ride.


Explaining one of the scenes in Angkor, about heaven and hell.


On the east side of Angkor Wat is a huge diorama of the churning of the ocean of milk. I had heard of the fable a few times already, so I concentrated on shooting pictures.


At Banteay Srei, early in the morning.


Rock, temple, scissors. At Ta Prohm, with a kapok tree in the background.

Pictures, the mom edition

Like me, my mom enjoys coffee for breakfast, though I think my supercharged coffee threw her for a jolt. My sister, however, only drank Pepsi. No water, no coffee, nothing but Pepsi.


Inside Angkor Thom, which she proclaimed her favorite of all the Siem Reap temples. The complex is huge, with multiple temples, many of them with the classical Khmer faces seen int he background, and all in various states of wear.


Inside Ta Prohm, looking adventure-ish.

Pictures, the sister edition

One of her big concerns when she landed was that I didn't have a hair dryer.


Though I thought she was fine without without a hair dryer look. From atop Pre Rup, an unfinished temple complex from around 950 AD, with great views and few people visiting it.


Inside Angkor Wat, on the tallest part of the temple. She was quite game to climb with me to the highest parts of places.



Inside Ta Prohm, with its overgrown vegetation

Family moments

So the first family trip has come and gone. Friends are asking, "How did it go?" because they know I was stressing out about it. (I'm now fighting what I think is a cold, which could have been brought on by stress. Then again, it could have been brought on by the AirAsia flight from Bangkok to Macau, where the cabin temperature was no more than 62 degrees, tops.)
But it went far better than I ever could have hoped for. Sure, I got stressed out/cranky at certain moments, but not much (I think.) There were no major accidents or international incidents. We made all our flights, no one got sick, and my sister and mom seemed to enjoy themselves.
Even sleeping 3 people in my tiny apartment wasn't that big of a hassle, though I really was looking forward to sleeping in my bed again toward the end. That, and actually staying in a few nights and not trekking to a restaurant. As much as I love eating out, even I need to recharge with a night in once in a while.
But my concerns about my older sister adjusting to her first trip overseas were unneeded. The crowds didn't faze her and she found restaurants/food she could eat. (Though I swear, one day I will break her of her American habit of adding salt and pepper to everything before eating it, no matter what it is.) My mom, per her last trip, was a trooper and had no problem, and apparently she is one of the rare few people who really doesn't suffer from jet lag. Sadly, though, I did not inherit those genes, nor her mellowness while travelling; my stress moments were either 1) Me trying to make sure everything went right and they got to see as much as they could, including some local sites and not just stuff from behind the hotel compound (my thought) or 2) me not used to travelling with other people (my mom's observation). Most people would say it's a combination of the two.
I had a full trip packed for them, and they handled it like troopers. They landed on a Monday in Hong Kong and spent the night eating at the FCC and drinking at my local watering hole, the Globe. Tuesday was spent visiting my work, the Peak (where once again, my mom protested about being high up somewhere, but once she got there she agreed the view was worth it) and Ocean Park, the combo z00/aquarium/amusement park in the hills behind me. Sadly, the pandas they wanted to see at Ocean Park had their exhibit closed that day.
On Wednesday, we were trekking down to Cambodia for a few days of temple seeing, including Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, before we flew back to Macau on Saturday. We dined at Fernando's, which is worth the trip itself for their verde soup and drunken steak, before heading to a casino so my sister could lose $1,000 in about 30 minutes playing blackjack. (I broke even, honest truth.)
That left about two more days to wander around Hong Kong, pick up a last few gifts and souvenirs at the various markets before I shipped them off on Tuesday.
The lowlight? There really wasn't one, but if there was a stressful moment, it was trying to take the mom and sister to the old market in downtown Siem Reap, so they could see some of the architecture and how some of the locals shop. We wandered into the blocklong square and I smelled what I thought was fish that was probably out a little too long. I just kept on trudging, but my cohorts quickly told me we had to leave then, because of the smell. And it wasn't fish they were smelling, but durian which had been cut up. And the best way to describee it was dead, rotting fish. The smell was so bad they didn't want to come back to the downtown area at night, though I assured them the durian would be gone.
The highlight? Having your family meet you halfway around the world and spend time with you. On Friday, in Siem Reap, we watched the sun rise in Angkor Wat and watched the sun set from another temple, Phnom Bakheng.



While the colors weren't as vivid as my last trip, from a year ago, and the crowds were at least four times worse, I made this point to my sister: You're sitting on a 1300-year-old temple, in the middle of Asia, watching the sun go down with your family. Does it get any better than that?

Patience, please