Sunday, July 27, 2008

The last four months...


Angkor Thom entrance


Leper King terrance entrance


Prerup temple


Bayon Temple dancers


Ta Phrom tree (favorite temple in Cambodia)


Ta Phrom


Ta Phrom


Angkor Wat reflecting pool


Angkor Wat temples


Angkor Wat temples


Angkor Wat engravings


Pheah Khan engravings


Other type of Cambodian gas station


I swear this picture wasn't staged


New Korean friends


New Korean clothes


My new home

I don’t know where the last 4 months have gone. It has been busy but I should have been putting up blogs. This has been my travel itinerary since the last time I posted a blog:

Korea – Vietnam – Cambodia – Korea – Spain – Italy – Spain – Korea – USA – Spain – Korea – Hong Kong – Spain

So I have moved from Korea to Spain. I enjoyed my 4 months in Korea but am very excited to be in Spain. I am living Tarragona, a town on the Mediterranean about an hour drive south of Barcelona. My apartment is about a 20 minute walk to the beach. Come and visit. The sangria is on me.

Well, this is going to be my least exciting post to read, at least so far. There are a lot of things I want to write about before coming to Spain but I’d rather write about the things I’ve already done in Spain. So things will be a little in reverse but I’ll come back and update this blog after I’m all caught up. Check back in September for this one, it will be worth the read. Meanwhile, hope you enjoy the photos from Cambodia and Korea.













Monday, March 31, 2008

SUMO!


Opening Sumo bout


Highest ranked rikishi entering the ring


The little guy won!


The Yokozuna


$25,000 match


Umeda Sky Building


Osaka skyline


Seoul Museum of what?!?


My tiny bathroom

I had to go somewhere for a visa run two weeks ago and thought it would be fun to go to a Sumo tournament. So I got online and checked to see if one was going on in Japan. Luckily, there was one in Osaka. So I booked a plane ticket and was there the next night.

I didn’t know much about Sumo before I went to Japan beside it was two large men, dressed in what look like diapers, trying to knock the other one over. What I learned was sumo is said to date back over 1500 years and much of what is seen today is very similar to how it was performed then. The sumo bout takes place in the dohyo which is two feet high and 18 feet square. The crowd would always gasp and then cheer when the competitors flew off the dohyo. Always above the dohyo is a roof resembling a Shinto shrine with long tassels at each corner representing spring, summer, fall, and winter.

A sumo wrestler is called a rikishi and there are about 800 rikishi in professional sumo. It is customary for each rikishi to choose a sumo name, which usually ends in mountain, river, or sea, translated into Japanese of course.

The rikishi are ranked into five divisions.

Yokozuna
Ozeki
Sekiwake
Komusubi
Maegashira

Even the judges, or gyoji, are ranked and only the highest ranking gyoji can officiate a bout involving a yokozuna. Also sitting on each side of the dohyo is an additional judge and these four can overrule the gyoji’s decision or force a rematch.

The sumo bout is won by forcing an opponent out of the inner circle or to force an opponent to touch any part of his body on the ground. It is illegal to strike with fists (slapping is legal), pull hair, eye gouge, choke, or kick in the stomach and chest. Most importantly, there are NO weight classes. About 90% of the matches with a gross deferential in opponent’s weights, the heavier guy won. But every single time the crowd rooted for the smaller guy and erupted when he won.

The typical sumo match lasts about 5 to 15 seconds. The longest ones maybe last two minutes. But the whole bout seemed more about the ceremony and posturing leading up to the actual wrestling. To begin, each rikishi enters the dohyo and symbolically cleanses his mind and body by rinsing his mouth with water and wiping his body with a paper towel. He then scares away evil spirits by raising each leg and stamping each foot on the ground. Some of the rikishi make a big show of this. One guy really showed off his flexibility by pointing each leg straight up in the air, a pretty impressive feat for such a big guy, and then brought it down with a big thud. Each time, the crowd went crazy. Lastly, the rikishi throws a handful of salt into the ring to purify it and protect him from injury. The salt throwing is only done by the higher level rikishi.

Finally, after all of that preparation, the two rikishi go to the center of the ring. The squat and get in the ready position with their fists on the ground. This part of the “ceremony” is called the shikiri. After giving each other dirty looks in the ready position, they will back away, go to their corners, towel off, throw salt, and then come back to the middle of the dohyo. This cycle can happen a couple of times and each time it occurs, the crowd seems to get more and more excited. In 1928, a ten minute time limit was introduced, which has since been reduced to four minutes. I can only imagine how long this would go on with no time limit.

There are only 6 Grand Tournaments a year and each lasts two week so I was really lucky to catch one the weekend I needed a visa run. I got to the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium early in the morning to make sure I got a ticket. After an opening ceremony, the matches started at 8:30am. The beginning matches started with the lowest ranked rikishi and they went fast because there was no salt throwing and posturing. They just got in the ring, wrestled, and got out of the gym. But there was a constant stream of bouts, only taking a break to switch gyoji, which didn’t take much time. As the rikishi got higher in rank, the preparation for the bouts took longer. The highest ranked guys even had their own pillows brought in for them alone to sit on while they waited for their bout.

The most anticipation was for the yokozuna’s match. The yokozuna is the best of the best. In the last 300 years since the title was created, only 69 rikishi have held the title of yokozuna. To be considered for promotion to yokozuna, a rikishi must win two consecutive tournaments at the rank of ozeki. Once a yokozuna, he can never be demoted. If a yokozuna continues to make poor showings at tournaments, he is expected to retire. Two of the last five yokozuna have been born in the US, Akebono and Musashimaru.

The match I saw with the yokozuna was really competitive. It lasted about 30 seconds, an eternity compared to most matches, but he ended up winning. I can only imagine the reaction if he would have lost. Also, that had 25 sponsers, with $25,000 going to the winner.

After the tournament, I took a walk around my neighborhood, Umeda, and saw a really cool building, the Umeda Sky Building, the seventh tallest building in Japan. It looks like it should be in a James Bond movie.

That night was also the un-official St. Paddy’s Day. I found an Irish bar close to my hotel but I was the only one wearing green and the band was playing crappy pop music. It was a disappointment but I’m not too surprised. There’s no where like Chicago to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

My first Seoul apartment had the smallest bathroom I have ever been in. A three foot by four foot area held the toilet, shower, and sink. Amazingly, it didn’t feel cramped.

I realized today was Opening Day for the Cubs. For the first time in 7 years, I didn’t try for tickets the day they went on sale in February.

Random fact of the day – On April 3, 2008, I will be 1 billion seconds old. How about that?





Monday, March 3, 2008

Kilimanjaro 2 - Berg 0


Mt. Kilimanjaro



Guides and porters for Kili



Porter carrying Craig's bag



Our new friends


Drinking giraffe


Babboons


Black and white colobus monkey


Blue monkey


Zebra crossing


Baboon butt

In January, 2006, I went to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. I had been in Kenya for 2 weeks prior to visiting Tanzania. 3 days into my climb, I started to get sick and was diagnosed with malaria and pneumonia. I figured this had to be a fluke occurrence and vowed to revisit and mountain and make it to the summit.

With my project in Kuwait coming to a close (finally), I got an opportunity to make the trip back to Kilimanjaro. My good friend, Craig Seitz, decided to make the trip with me. He was scheduled to arrive about an hour before me but I couldn’t find him once I got my bags. Our driver, Simon, seemed to know that Craig had arrived but didn’t have enough money to pay for the $100 entry visa (he claims he didn’t drink away all his money). Now, if you have ever travelled internationally, you would know once you go through customs and get your bags, it’s next to impossible to go back the way you came. Not in Tanzania. I was able to walk back through the baggage claim and past the passport control to find Craig waiting and hoping I had $100, which I did.

I wanted to make the same trip as before so I booked the hike with the same tour group using the same trail and was able to find the same guide. Everything went well the first two days of the hike. They were physically challenging but I had trained for it and was well prepared. In 2006, I started to get sick at the Day 2 camp and that’s exactly what happened this time. I coughed throughout the night and on Day 3, it was as if someone had turned off my body’s energy and took away all my stamina. The trail grade on Day 3 was not as steep as the first two days but you couldn’t tell by looking at me. It was all I could do to hike continuously for 20 minutes. Everything about it was eerily similar to my 2006 attempt. I was pretty sure I had pneumonia again and if I had been in Africa longer, I would have thought I could have malaria again too.

Well, I barely made it to the Day 3 camp but knew I wouldn’t make it any further. The next day, we began the 9 hour hike off of the mountain. I was really happy to see the truck that picked us up but we had been too slow and the doctor’s office was closed when we got to town. The next morning, I went to the doctor. After being asked a few questions and a 30 second examination, she determined that I had a lung infection. She didn’t explain the difference between a lung infection and pneumonia, but did confirm that it was impossible for me to have malaria. After the exam, I received 4 different boxes of pills and a bottle of liquid medicine. All together, the visit cost me $15. When’s the last time you paid $15 for anything at the doctor in the US?

So after a day and a half rest, I was beginning to feel better. Meanwhile, Craig was making friends with everyone in the town and was on his was to being deified. I think he learned more Swahili in a day than I learned Spanish in three years of high school classes. Needless to say, we had a lot of friends to go out with on Saturday night and shut down all the local bars.

Our last day was a day trip safari to Arusha National Park. On the way there, we saw 23 people pile out of a regular conversion van. It was like watching the clowns at the circus but I’m sure this was a regular occurrence. It was amazing to see the people keep coming. Also learned that people drive on the left in Tanzania.

Once we got into Arusha National Park, I found out you could go on walking safaris. But you could only do this because there were no big predators in the park. So there would be no lions, leopards, or cheetahs. But we did get to see giraffes, zebras, monkeys, baboons, Cape buffalo (one of the famous Big 5), wart hogs, and a couple different kinds of birds. If I hadn’t been on safari 2 years ago, this would have been an amazing trip. But after seeing big herds of elephants and crash of rhinoceri (I had to look that one up), it just wasn’t the same. Still, it was a fun day to see all of these animals in the wild. I’m probably done going to the zoo.

After returning to Kuwait, all I had to do was wrap up a few loose ends with my project, pack my belongings, and get on a plane. But I was still in Kuwait over Valentine’s Day, which Kuwait is trying to make illegal. I read that it is illegal in Saudi Arabia, and that it is illegal buy red roses on February 14. Another western holiday corrupting the youth of the desert.

My home for the next few months will be Seoul, South Korea. I arrived here about two weeks ago and will be working out of an office for a company called G-PEM that puts together the design and drawing packages for the equipment my department builds. I found a month-to-month lease on a studio apartment that has the smallest bathroom I’ve ever seen. In a 4 ft. x 4 ft. space fits the toilet, shower, sink, and medicine cabinet. I was very spoiled living in my two bedroom palace in Kuwait.
I was scheduled to go to Vietnam before Korea but the project got pushed back. I may get to visit Vietnam for a few days at the end of March but probably won't spend much time there until April or May. Keep your fingers crossed.

I haven’t been able to do much exploring in Seoul yet but will put up some pictures once I do. Some things I have observed…

-Seoul seems pretty clean. Everyday on the train, someone is picking up trash and newspapers.
-I am DEFINITELY a minority here. I am usually the only non-Korean on every bus, plane, or train.
-Every meal consists of a rice or noodle dish.
-When it snows, everyone breaks out the umbrellas just like it was raining.
-The skirts girls wear here are shorter than the ones in Kuwait.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Home and back again



Happy New Year!



Duomo



Italian English class



Santa Maria Maggoire


Happy New Year! I guess it is three weeks after the fact but I probably haven’t spoken to you since December 31 so it probably still applies. I’ve been back in Kuwait for almost three weeks and my trip home seems like a dream because it’s almost like I never left here. But I did have a great 3 week intermission from the Middle East. Italy, home, Iceland, and back…

I have two good friends that live near Milan, Chiara and Fede. They came to visit my family for Christmas 2004. I have had a standing invitation to visit since then so I took advantage. And there is no better place to go after 8 months in Kuwait than Italy.

In the few days I was there, I had spaghetti carbonera cooked by an Italian grandmother (DELICIOUS!!!), taught to 4 almost completely female English classes at my friend’s mother’s school (I’m sure I fulfilled on of my teenage fantasies), visited Lago Maggiore and hiked around Santa Maria Maggiore in the Italian Alps. Each day I had beer, wine, and a few different pork products. I have been twice now and everything is beautiful there. Seriously, go visit Italy.

As great as it was to visit friends in one of the most enjoyable places I have ever been, it didn’t match the excitement I felt as I flew back to Chicago. I was home for 14 days and tried to see as many friends and family but it was impossible to squeeze 35 weeks of catching up into two. But I was able to see a lot of people which was great. And apparently I was good last year because Santa Claus treated me well.

My two weeks at home fly by and before I knew it I was on a plane again, to re-visit Iceland, and to experience New Year’s Eve in Reykjavik. Unfortunately, United Airlines didn’t want my trip to be smooth. I missed my connection in Baltimore because my flight was late out of Chicago and they sent my bag with all my outdoor gear to Burlington, VT. So I got to my hotel at 6pm on NYE but the night was still amazing. I think every Icelandic man, woman, and child buys up all the fireworks in the northern hemisphere because I can’t imagine there were many left after seeing the display that night. The sky was in flames. Unfortunately, the next day the weather and the airlines did want me and my brother to climb Iceland’s highest mountain, Hvannadalshnúkur, but it gives me a reason to go back again.

So back in Kuwait. I have definitely cheated winter this year. It was cold (40-50F) for about a week but has warmed up to 65F this week. And I’m scheduled to go to Vietnam for my next assignment after a visa run to Tanzania so I’ll escape the cold temps that are hitting Chicago now. But I guess that’s the benefit of surviving the 120F summer here.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Egypt



My new bedoiun buddy



Pyramid blocks




Solar boats




The Sphinx




Entrance to the Valley of the Kings




King Tut's tomb




Queen Hatshepsut's temple




Heiroglyphics at Queen Hatshepsut's temple




Karnak temple



Luxor Temple


Sakkara


I made my final visa run of the year last week by going to Egypt. As usual, I only had a few days, not nearly enough to explore a culture as rich as the Egyptians. I flew into Cairo, the world’s 16th largest city with a population of about 20 million. A friend had set me up with a great travel agent, Harty Tours, and if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend them.

These things are really big. That was my first thought when I saw the Pyramids at Giza for the first time. When you think that they were built over 3500 years ago, it’s truly amazing. They were my first stop on my first day and by far the highlight of my three days. The pyramids were built in the 4th Dynasty of Egypt and are the only survivor of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The largest was built for Khufu, or Cheops, and is called the Great Pyramid. It is about 482 feet tall, is made up of about 2.3 million blocks of stone, and weighs about 6 million tons (12 billion pounds)! Like I said, it’s big. The stones used for construction were said to been brought up the Nile from Aswan and Tura, which is not a small feat in itself. One theory for the construction is that the pyramids were built for only a few months a year when the Nile was flooded and the peasants were unable to work their land. Before the construction of the pyramids, crime was high during this time and this kept the people out of trouble. They were also paid for their labor which helped to build the ancient economy.

The other two pyramids were built for by the sons of Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus. The Pyramid of Chephren is the one that looks like it has a cap on it. All of the pyramids originally had a aesthetic stone covering the building blocks but it has completely eroded on the two other pyramids. Out of respect, Pharaoh Chephren built his pyramid about 10 feet shorter than his father, but since it is built on higher ground, it appears taller.

As cool as it was to see the pyramids from the outside, it was even more amazing to see them from the inside. My guide lucked out and got me one of the 300 tickets they issue when the Great Pyramid is open to the public. The entrance is about 30 feet above the ground. The first hallway you must walk up an incline hunched over for about 300 or 400 feet. This opens up to a much taller shaft that leads to the King’s Chamber, which the pyramid operators have added wood stairs to reach the entrance to the chamber. To enter the King’s Chamber, you again have to stoop over or just crawl for about 10 feet. It opens up to a room 17ft x 34ft and 19 ft high. The most amazing thing about being inside is that the stone blocks line up with each other PERFECTLY! How these 5000 pound blocks were each set with such precision is a mystery.

Right next to the pyramids was a museum for the Pharaoh’s Solar Boats. These boats were included in every tomb to help accompany the soul of the dead on its eternal journey. The boats were discovered in 1954 but unfortunately, one of the boats decomposed while the others were being excavated.

The last stop in Giza was the Sphinx. The Sphinx was built by Chephren and its face is his portrait. It faces the rising sun and was worshiped by the Egyptians as the sun-god and is surrounded by a temple that was only accessible to high priests and the pharaoh. The nose is rumored to have been shot off by Napoleon but more likely was done by a man upset with the local people making offerings to the Sphinx in the 14th century. Or it could have eroded over the last couple thousands of years.

Next was the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. I had one hour for a museum that houses over 120,000 Egyptian artifacts. It was like going to the Baseball Hall of Fame, seeing the jerseys of Babe Ruth, Lou Gerhig, and Ty Cobb, and then leaving. But that was all the time I had. I did get to see all of the burial jewelry of King Tut, which was worth the price of admission.

The last stop of the day was the Pyramids Sound and Light show. Seats are set up in front of the Sphinx so the pyramids are in the background. A narrator then tells the history of the pyramids and pharaohs while the Sphinx and pyramids are lit up. The stories are a bit corny but the light show is pretty neat. I tried to take a few pictures but it was the same result when you try to photograph fireworks. This link has some good photos of the show.

The next day, I got up early to catch a flight to Luxor. It was a lot warmer and less congested than Cairo. Our first stop of the Valley of the Kings. The kings of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Dynasty are buried here. They had a huge problem with grave robbers and wanted a place to protect them as their funerary objects were very important to the after life. Well, I think almost all of the tombs ended up being robber anyway except for one, King Tutanankamen. The reason is that Tut’s tomb was built down into the mountain instead of up. His was the only tomb left intact. Inside was his sarcophagus and the actual mummy. He was just a little guy but he also died when he was about 20 so maybe he was still growing.

King Tut’s tomb was neat to see because he is the most famous of the pharaohs, but it is not as large or well decorated as the other ones in the Valley of the Kings. The reason is that right after becoming pharaoh, these guys start building there burial chamber. Tut died suddenly at a young age so a burial chamber for him hadn’t been completed. Plus, he had to be buried within 80 days of his death so it was thought that he was buried in the tomb of a nobleman, not a pharaoh, which would explain the size and location.

Different tombs are open on different days so I was also able to see Ramses III, Ramses VI, and Ramses IV. These tombs were decorated from floor to ceiling with carvings and hieroglyphics. It was really amazing to see and imagine the amount of work that went into making the tomb. Pictures weren’t allowed inside the tombs otherwise I would have spend 3 times as long there.

Close to the Valley of the Kings is the AlDeir Al-Bahri Temple built for Queen Hatshepsut, one of the few women to become pharaoh in ancient Egypt. She was born of royal parents, Tutmosis I and Aahmes. Her two brothers died prematurely but Tutmosis I had a son, Tutmosis II, by a commoner. Rather than have a woman become pharaoh, a man of partial royal lines became king but married his half-sister Hatshepsut. However, he too died early in his life giving Hatshepsut the opportunity to become pharaoh, partially because Tutmosis III, another partially royal son of Tutmosis I. This did not make Tutmosis III very happy and after Queen Hatshepsut died, he defaced many of the monuments erected during her reign.

I met quite a few Egyptians in the shops in Luxor. Each one of them asked where I was from and when I told them I was from Chicago, everyone of them either asked me where I hid my gun or told me they heard Chicago was a dangerous place. I guess Chicago has a bad rap in Egpyt.

I also hit two other temples that day, the Temple of Karnak and Temple of Luxor. The Temple of Karnak was great because it was so big. I spent a lot of time just wandering around both of them taking pictures.

I flew back to Cairo that night and got up early ready to see more sights. We started off with a few different churches, temples, and mosques the next day. All were very beautiful and ornate but did not compare to what I had seen the previous 2 days. So were set off for Sakkara, the site of the oldest known pyramid in Egypt. My boss tried to tell me it was more impressive than the Pyramids at Giza but I would argue otherwise.

The oldest surviving pyramid is called the Step Pyramid of Djoser and was built in the 3rd Dynasty for Pharaoh Djoser by the architect Imhotep. It is not built with the large stones that constructed the Pyramids at Giza but with smaller stones in a series of terrace and is the largest stone building in the world. Another great place to wander around because of all the other buildings and ruins around it. It also provided a great long distance view of Cairo and the pyramids.

After that, my time in Egypt was up. I did a little shopping and left for the airport. Back to Kuwait and work.

The week before I went to Egypt I spent my first Thanksgiving. I had a nice meal of butter chicken with all of the office guys. I sure missed turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. My worst Thanksgiving ever but only because it wasn’t anywhere close to Thanksgiving at my grandparent’s house.

I will be back on US soil in 6 days. I can’t wait. It’s hard to believe I’ve been gone 8 months. Plus I don’t have a winter coat, much less any coat, so it’s going to be a little cold. Hope I get to see all of you that are in the Chicago area. If not, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!