Indian Epic, Pt. l: Chennai and Mahabalipuram

Hello! As some of you may remember from last year, April is the month in which Khmer New Year happens. What this means, technically, is that everyone has three days off of school to party, play games, drink to excess, and just generally celebrate the arrival of the New Year. What this means in reality, however, is that the whole country essentially shuts down for the entirety of the month of April. Due to this, most volunteers plan to take vacations during this month.

Last year, as you may also remember, I went to Bali for six days with my two lovely lady pals, Amie and Amelia for Khmer New Year. This year, since Garrett and I now had previous experience traveling  together to Vietnam and found that we proved able to not kill each other during that amount of time, we decided to further test our travel compatibility by raising the bar and going to.... (where??): INDIA. Here, we would be in each other’s company- without pause and in a very challenging environment- for 18 days. That's right, everyone: 18 days. We figured that if we were still on speaking terms after three weeks together, we might really have something here.

So, let’s begin, shall we?

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It all started in Cambodia, on March 30^th, where we left Phnom Penh in the morning to head up to Poipet, the border town of Thailand and perhaps the most undesirable city on planet earth. This place is full of sleazy sex tourists who come for the casinos (since gambling is outlawed in Thailand) and serves solely as a decent stopover point when traveling internationally from Bangkok. We stayed the night in a miserable hotel, crossed the border early the next morning, and tried to forget our sorrows by reveling in the smoothly-paved streets of Thailand and ample choices at 7/11 of pastries and puddings with delicious fillings like mung bean and taro pieces. We took an express van to Bangkok, and after exploring a little in the popular and touristy Khao San Road, headed to the airport and boarded our plane, landing in what seemed like no time in India…

First stop: Chennai.

Chennai is crowded and dirty and smelly and delicious and hot and populated by about 6.6 million people (still and all, only the 4^th biggest city in India…), and gave us a pretty accurate first impression of what to expect throughout our travels in this crazy country...

We arrived at our hotel late, and having only had plane food for dinner, were hungry for a snack. We decided to venture out and find something; around the corner from our hotel was a small restaurant, which was still serving food at 11 o' clock.

We each had a bowl of idly, which are small rice patties topped with a mixture of tomatoes and lentils. We’d heard so many warnings from people prior to our departure about not eating food unless it was steaming hot, and these were only lukewarm, BUT WE WERE HUNGRY so of course we ate them and then proceeded to worry the entire night about getting sick… Our worries were unfounded, however and we woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and ready for our first full day in India.

Our first full day began as every day should: with breakfast. The hotel had a continental breakfast, which was DELICIOUS and included in the price of the room, so we were not shy, as you can see. The thing that looks like a donut hole in front is just that: a savory donut called a vada (pronounced “vahrah”) you eat with daal, or lentil curry. The rice patty topped with the green, soupy-looking stuff in the back is called idly- the same thing we’d eaten the night before- and the tortilla-looking bread off to the side is called chapathi, which is a wheat-based flat bread popular in the south of India as a substitute to naan, which is mainly eaten in the north. The overfilled ramekin in front is a potato masala and in the far right corner is an overflowing cup of chai (I told you, we didn’t hold back...), which tasted suspiciously like tomato soup. The stuff that looks like fruit in a cup is, well, fruit in a cup (I didn’t have room on my plate!).

After breakfast, we waddled over to the travel desk in the lobby of our hotel to talk to the guy there about what to do in Chennai. He recommended we go around for the morning with a taxi driver, and while we weren’t wild about spending the 800 rupees (~$15) on personal transportation for one morning, we figured it be the best option in order for us to get a feel for the city and get a better idea of what it would be like when we decided to “go it alone” later with public transportation.

We started out at a temple called Kapaleeshwarar, which had an impressive gateway tower adorned with many sculptures of different Hindu gods.

“Should we have our arms around each other? I don’t know, we read in the guidebook that touching is inappropriate... We should probably just stand as awkwardly as possible.”

At the second temple we visited there were beautiful gardens and a sanctuary inside where people could meditate.

Afterwards we ended up at a popular bazaar called “T. Nagaar,” where we sampled the local fares, sucking up coconut water from a straw and licking the grease of samosas off our fingers as we walked around, soaking everything in (and sweating everything out…)

We watched these chaat (snacks) being made: begun with empty shells and then topped with curd (plain yogurt), a tamarind-based sauce, a mint-based sauce, slivers of dried and then fried ground chickpeas (which Garrett and I first mistook for shredded cheese heh), and chopped cilantro.

Final product.

Our second order of business at the bazaar, after food, was to find Garrett a murse. That's right, everyone: a murse, otherwise known as a man purse. Garrett had his wallet stolen while we were in Bangkok, so he (we) decided this would be safer, and obviously more stylish…

Option # 1

The winner. He loved this murse way too much, you guys.

Another thing we did while in Chennai was get far too many sweets from this place, (which was unfortunately [or fortunately] located right next door to our hotel):

Such as this:

... an amazing, ghee, or milk fat-based dessert tasted which like sugar cookie dough topped with a layer of chocolate… Heaven, in other words. It cost about 8 rupees (~15 cents) for one dessert, so you can see why it became impossible for us to exercise any self-control when confronted with endless varieties to try...

The coiled, orange sweet in the middle is called a jalebi and is a slightly citrusy bundle of fried dough, with a hard shell exterior and slightly soft and juicy interior... We made it a point to try and compare jalebi throughout India. 

Also, I’m not embarrassed to say (ok, I am a little) that I'm pretty sure we tried every dessert in this display case over the course of our 3 ½ days in Chennai.

Our second full day in Chennai, we got up the courage to take local transportation. We walked to the bus station across the street from our hotel, and waited for a bus to take us down to the beach so we could go running.

Luckily, this wasn't our bus...

Our bus wasn't too crowded, and we were able to quickly (and cheaply: also for about 8 rupees, or 15 cents) make our way to Marina Beach to be amongst those who wanted to get in some early morning movement before the start of the day.

Marina beach looks a little bit like what you would imagine the post-apocalyptic scene of an amusement park to look like, with skeletal frames of ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds littering the horizon and abandoned food carts sinking into the sand.

Ravens dotted the sky out to the Bay of Bengal and homeless people stretched out on blankets or rice mats, sleeping until the sun became too unbearable to ignore. We ran by a group of Indians practicing laughing yoga who directed deep belly laughs and waves in our direction as we passed. Garbage covered the ground and the smell of rotting fish overwhelmed the senses in waves...

As we walked back to our bus stop, a man fell into step with us and we started chatting. His name was Sandir (pronounced like sand + deer), and he walked with us for half an hour to the bus station, giving us tips and suggestions on what to do in Chennai as we went. Taking his advice on getting out of the city, we decided to take a day trip to Mahabalipuram, a village not too far from Chennai renowned for its 2000 year-old temples, but perhaps even more intriguing to us for its promise of the mystifyingly named “Krishna’s Butter Ball…”

Day trip!

Little did I know I’ve been drinking the high-calorie kind of water my whole life.

Heh.

Over the course of our travels in India we saw many of these markings outside of houses, which we learned are meant to protect its inhabitants and ward off the evil eye.

Fishing boats.

Classic feet in ocean picture.

The first temple we visited in Mahabalipuram was the aptly named "seaside temple," located on the Bay of Bengal.

We’d gotten over our fear of touching in public at this point, having seen Indian couples holding hands and putting their arms around each other.

Second temple we visited in Mahabalipuram.

There are goats everywhere in India!

Here it is, folks: Krishna’s Butterball. As you can see, it’s not *actually* made of butter. I was sorely disappointed.

On the way back I befriended this nice lady on the bus who saw me admiring her garland of camellias out of the corner of my eye and proceeded to pull off a sprig to put in my hair and dab a bit of her red bindi powder on my forehead. Made my day.

For our final day in Chennai we decided to just explore the surrounding area a bit on our own.

We started at the Government Museum, which had an impressive and stately exterior, made even better- as I'm sure you will agree- by these dinosaurs:

We then went back to T. Nagaar to catch anything we might have missed the first time.

…like this amazingly greasy piece of perfection, which was basically a deep fried ball of potato with cumin and turmeric and without which our lives would have been rendered incomplete.

omg

We wandered into a sari shop to get me “fitted” for a sari and so I could get an idea of how much fabrics cost/which colors I was interested in/how in the world to put one on…

These ladies were very nice and didn't mind my taking up their time to try on various saris

For dinner we gave the restaurant from the first night a second try, this time in the safety of normal working hours when hot food is much more readily available. This large, curried potato and onion-filled crepe, called a masala dosa, would come to be a staple of our diet throughout our time in India, eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Finally, we boarded our first ever night train in India, with which we would come to be very familiar over the course of our travels. This is what Garrett did for the entirety of the trip:

While I did this:

… That’s it for Chennai! Stay with me as I journey onwards to Mysore, birthplace of Ashtanga yoga and one of the quaintest cities we visited in India. I can’t guarantee I will be more concise in the upcoming posts, but I will try, since what’s to come is a long saga with many more adventures to share. I’ll also try to space these posts out a bit so as not to overwhelm you with reading material from this blog. Please enjoy and don't hesitate to give me feedback if you’re like “SHUT UP LEAH AND JUST SHOW US THE PICTURES ALREADY” etc. Thank you for visiting and look out for the second part of this epic very soon… :)

March in Cambodia: heat, weddings, and more heat

Current time: 3:06 PM on a Monday afternoon. My fan is working as hard as it can, my room is doing its best to bake me, and I’m fairly certain I can see the heat waves rising off of my glistening skin. The only person holding me back from complete insanity right now is Bill Bryson, and even that will be short-lived: I have only thirty pages left of Neither Here Nor There.

March is one of the hotter months in Cambodia—not as hot as April but still, temperatures are up there. Students have stopped coming to class, getting a leg up on the relaxation that’s soon to take place for Khmer New Year in mid-April.

It is also a time for weddings. It seems that with the atmosphere of summer and the feeling of freedom that comes with that, everyone’s looking to party whenever and wherever possible…

As I type this, there is a wedding going on across the street. The bass line is so loud it’s reverberating in my chest. Preparations for the wedding began around 4:00 AM, with a detailed play-by-play relayed over a loudspeaker: “There will be 36 different dishes! … and sweets and fruit… if we run out, we’ll just buy more!...”

Weddings in Cambodia are funny and strange. On Sunday my crafty and very pushy friend Ohn once again swindled me into committing myself to an awkward gathering with her. This time the commitment was going to a wedding with her and our mutual Khman (Khmer man- term courtesy of my friend Diana and me) friend, Sopia. I agreed, on the condition that I could bring Garrett. She said this was fine, as long as he wore “new clothes.” I promised I would make him do just that.

In the early evening, Sopia, Garrett, Ohn, and I all went to this wedding, which was down a windy dirt road, dressed in our finest. As we entered the wedding, we sompayaed, or gave respects to, the family, and after much chaotic movement of chairs and tipping over of half emptied beer cans on the table to make room, were sat at a table with several other Khmer people and a man who looked Khmer but was explained to “speak English” like us.

As it turns out, this man was Khmer by birth but has spent the past 30 years living and growing up in Ohio, where he was brought from Cambodia as a child by a missionary organization. In between bites of rice and seasoned duck, beef, and big pieces of gritty fish and shrimp Ohn kept putting in my bowl and swigs of Angkor beer, we chatted with this man and learned his story.

He came back to Cambodia several years ago to re-connect with his roots, and met a Khmer woman he took as his wife. He has been back several times to visit for extended periods, and they now have a five-month old baby girl named Alex. Both his wife and daughter are beautiful. He wants to bring them to the states to visit, but the process of getting a Visa for Khmer people is very extensive and difficult. I can’t imagine being separated from your family by an ocean and not knowing when the situation will be remedied...

As the night wore on, the music got louder and conversation became nearly impossible, so we did what anyone would do: drinking more beer, toasting repeatedly and grinning at each other from across the table. Ohn’s friends dragged us from the table to dance awkwardly in a circle to heavy bass-lined Khmer music, altering our movements (or in some cases, not) to be in sync with the rhythm of the current song.

At the end of the night, before we went home, Sopia, Garrett, Ohn, and I all took a picture together outside of the wedding. Klee, our new Khmer-American friend, snuck into the picture at the last minute haha. I don’t have it yet, but hopefully will at some point in the future at which point I’ll post it here.

...And now, please enjoy some funny, random pictures from recent times. :)

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One of the many enlightening books my library has to offer students from its collection (note: this was not one of the books I purchased, but was donated years ago by a Japanese organization I will grace by leaving unnamed).

Mountain! My favorite breakfast: toast topped with fried potatoes seasoned with cumin and paprika, and made better than I could have imagined with a duck egg (LOOK AT THAT YOLK, PEOPLE).

My plant! Which had a home in my room for about twelve hours before the mice realized how wildly entertaining it was to dig up all the dirt and see how angry it made me. It is now sitting, unmolested, downstairs.

Cheese omelette, Cambodia style.

In Mondulkiri, a province in the East renowned for its cooler temperatures and waterfalls. We are riding an elephant!

The elephants get hot, so you have to wash them (I empathize).

Aaaannnddd a picture of the cutest baby, possibly in the history of time: Banya, supporting the cats in his K-State onesie (thanks, mom).

That’s all for now! Hope you all are happy and healthy, and enjoying cooler temperatures than I currently am…

A New Experience of Phnom Penh

On Sunday I went to Phnom Penh with Ohn to visit some of her relatives there, including her mom who's been staying with them for a while since she's been sick, and her daughter, Liya, who was returning from a trip to Mondolkiri, a province in the east famous for its waterfalls and coffee plantations, and Sihanoukville, a beach town in the south. They live in a huge house—basically a mansion by Khmer standards— and, as it’s been explained to me many times, “gkay mein” (“they have”). In other words, they are the "haves” as opposed to the “have nots” of Khmer society.

Ohn informed me I’d be going with her while we were making sandwiches at her house on Saturday. I was lathering peanut butter onto slices of bread as usual when she said, “Tomorrow, you’re coming with me to Phnom Penh.” I froze with the knife midway to the bread. “Um…” I stalled for time. When Ohn says something is going to happen, there's pretty much no alternative.

“Tomorrow I’m running really far… I don’t know if I’ll have the energy…” I attempted, desperate for an excuse of any kind. “Ok! So you’ll go with me to PP tomorrow! We’re leaving at 11.” “Uh... I’m really not sure.” “Alright! So I’ll see you at 11, then.” I sighed, resigned to my fate, and agreed to go.

At 7:30 the next morning Ohn called me: “The touri (van) is coming to get you at 10. Ok?” Being well aware at this point that I needed to just go with the flow I said, “Ok.” The touri came and picked me up at 10, and after circling around to different houses to fill up the van, we stopped at Ohn’s and picked her and a friend up too. Ohn was wearing a giant floppy hat, mismatched clothes, and heels, as usual. She presented me with a yellow fruit: “Crow ohp,” she said (“good smelling”), and encouraged me to put it up to my nose to see for myself. The fruit was a plai jan, a yellow pulpy fruit with a smooth exterior. The three of us kept hold of our plai jan on the way to Phnom Penh, periodically putting them up to our noses to smell and against our cheeks for their coolness.

After getting to Phnom Penh, we grabbed a tuk tuk to head over to Ohn’s bong pu’ohns’ (relatives’) house. They were in an area I’d never been to before, which isn’t surprising since I typically occupy about a ten block radius of Phnom Penh when I’m hanging out with other volunteers. Ohn’s relatives' house was huge… I mean really: massive. I’ve never seen a house so big in Cambodia before. The house was very tall and very narrow. There were four floors, each with more than one room but not more than three. The kids all have their own rooms with big beds and air conditioning units. There's an exercise room with an elliptical and a treadmill, and the main feature of the downstairs living room is an expansive flat-screen TV. The kitchen has a stainless steel refrigerator (I was aghast), and the front room was full of very intricately carved, very expensive wooden figurines of frogs with golden coins in their mouths for luck, and ornate reliefs of Angkor Wat.

We ate in the kitchen sitting at a tiny table—Ohn, her friend, and me. The others had already eaten so they just stood around and watched us haha. (I’m used to it by now so it was fine). We had rice (of course), boiled and syrupy sweet eggs, a fish soup with wilted greens, and, (this is my favorite and I know they prepared it because Ohn told them it was) fried eggs with onions. It sounds boring and simple but I promise it is the most delicious thing in the world.

After lunch, S’rey Pit (pronounced "bpate"), the youngest of Ohn’s relatives, brought out her English book for school. We sat around, flipping through the pages, me pointing out various things and quizzing them. I was impressed with how much she knew for being only six! She definitely has my younger students beat (however, she’s also getting a lot better schooling in Phnom Penh than they have access to in my village). Ohn’s mom made me coffee from Mondolkiri, making it extra sweet with condensed milk and lots of sugar. I will definitely miss these sugary coffees when I leave, no matter how many pounds they’ve added to my frame or how bad they are for my teeth.

Ohn brought a bunch of mangoes with from our village, since her relatives don’t have the space for mango trees in their small yard, so we sliced those open and ate the meat with chili salt, making appreciative noises when we'd get pieces that were sweet, and sucking in our cheeks when we got one that was too sour.

S’rey Pit’s shiny black blue hair was calling to me at this point, so I gave her a French braid, which I was happy to discover I still know how to do.

Ohn’s relatives brought out a big loaf of sliced bread, just purchased at a nearby bakery for my benefit, and two jars of jam: strawberry and apricot, which everyone called “peach.” Since I was thought to be the most seasoned jam spreader, I was given the duty of spreading jam onto slices of bread, taking orders from various relatives for which kind. I gave Liya, Ohn’s daughter, a little extra jam so she’d know she's still my favorite, even in the midst of all these new kids. Despite my going over to her house to make sandwiches for almost two years, Liya has taken a long time to fully warm up to me, so I didn’t want to compromise our newfound closeness. The kids topped their pieces of jammed bread with a layer of sweetened condensed milk and devoured them in seconds.

At around 3:00 it was time to go. Ohn, her friend, Liya and I all loaded our things onto a tuk tuk and set off for p’saa towit (the small market)- the meeting spot for vans going to different provinces. First though, I insisted we make a stop at Sorya, the mall in Phnom Penh, for ice cream, since Ohn’s friend had never been there before. We walked into the brightly lit and air conditioned mall, our senses immediately assaulted by fluorescent lights, multi-colored store signs, music from different directions, etc. I steered us to the left and into Swenson’s for ca-rem (ice cream). We picked our flavors: strawberry for Liya and Ohn, chocolate brownie for Ohn’s friend, and my usual: mocha almond fudge. We wandered around the mall with our cones, drifting into “Lucky,” the supermarket. We circled the store—meandering through the frozen meats, the draft from the freezers raising the hair on our arms, the raw smells entering our nostrils and souring the sweetness of our snack.

Ohn pointed out various things that got her attention: “Look how big that watermelon is!” “Look at all the ice cream!” I followed her and the others around the store like a little kid, anxious about how quickly my ice cream was melting, distracted by the activity of the store. Liya picked out two expensive yogurt drinks—a blue and a red one—each costing more than a dollar. I knew it was no small purchase for Ohn. As we eyed various items in the store, trying to fit into this unfamiliar place with our unfamiliar snack, I looked at other foreigners from a displaced perspective, feeling more different from them than similar as Ohn spoke Khmer to me at a rapid fire. We finished our cones and stepped back outside into the afternoon heat, loading ourselves onto the tuk tuk and continuing our journey. I noticed a plumeria tree on the way and asked how to say it in Khmer: "picka jopie," Ohn said.

In the touri, on our way back to Pearaing, I drifted in and out of consciousness, exhausted from the day. The van reeled and jerked as we navigated the dusty road, pockmarked with potholes from construction. Liya and I shared the front seat, the breeze from the drive giving way to a persistent heat as we lurched and weaved. Liya rested her head on my shoulder and I held my breath, not wanting to let the moment go before I had to. A headache that had been threatening all day manifested in full force and I rested my head in my hand against the base of the window, feeling weary and content as Ohn’s boisterous laugh came in and out of the backdrop of my experience.

As I so often do when I’m leaving for or coming back from a journey, I found myself thinking about how I’m going to say “goodbye” to my host mom and dad, and all the other people close to me here in less than five months, and a knot formed in my throat. Not today, I thought to myself and felt comforted. I don’t need to think about that just yet. And I drifted back into a restless sleep, the lights of the oncoming cars passing over my eyes and intensifying the pain behind them.

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Eating rice at Ohn’s relatives' house

Liya

The kids

In the touri

Ohn