Going Full Backpacker in Phnom Penh

Posted on August 19, 2013 by lisafindley

Sometimes you just have to go full-on backpacker. I spent my last few days in Cambodia in Phnom Penh, the capital city, which has a reputation for being a more dangerous place to be a foreigner than most other Southeast Asian cities. I’d just spent a week in Siem Reap, absorbing the beauty of the temples of Angkor, eating at the mostly-locals food shack down the street, and sitting very still in my air-conditioned bedroom during the worst heat of the day. I was about to go to Vietnam and dive into the history of that nation. Not to mention I was mainly in Phnom Penh to visit the Killing Fields and S-21, two sobering monuments to the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. For a couple days here, I needed a place to retreat, reflect, and relax.

The 88 in Phnom Penh

I stayed at The 88, a backpackers’ hostel not particularly close to the sites of the city, but just down the street from a fruit market. Also, it didn’t matter that you couldn’t walk to much, because it was entirely self-contained; the hostel had a full restaurant and bar, a pool, and a raft of tuk-tuk drivers willing to take you on any of the pre-set tours the hostel’s laminated sales sheets described. Of course I enjoy exploring neighborhoods on my own and meeting people along the way, but when you’re in need of a mental and physical break, there’s a lot to be said for a hostel that makes everything easy for you.

So when I wasn’t sightseeing, I was holed up behind the hostel walls, lounging in the pool, drinking cocktails with the girls from my dorm room, eating Western and Khmer dishes from the hostel restaurant, sending my laundry away to be done, and waiting for my Vietnam visa to be processed. I hung out with a Spanish couple, who felt like old friends by this point–we’d met on the slow boat to Laos, seen sights together in Luang Prabang, and had dinner in Siem Reap.

Beef loc lac–a delicious dish

I say “going full backpacker” because I saw many a backpacker who spent all night partying and most of the next day recovering in the hostel common room, hardly leaving the hostel at all to explore the sights of the city they’d flown halfway around the world to visit. It was remarkably easy to be sucked into this lifestyle, and it’s important to recharge like this from time to time when you’re on long trips, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the long-term. Otherwise, why even bother leaving home?

When I got to Ho Chi Minh City a few days later, fresh visa in hand, I returned to more adventurous ways. I left my hostel to explore the area and interact with the people who lived there. But for a couple days in Phnom Penh, it was nice to remain isolated and regroup.

Taking the Slow Boat in Laos

Posted on June 13, 2013 by lisafindley

A lot of people assume that my year-long trip is one giant vacation, that I drift from day to day with a cocktail and no agenda. Actually, I’m doing something pretty much all the time. If I’m not sightseeing or meeting locals and other travelers, I’m writing this blog or keeping in touch with loved ones, and if I’m not doing that, I’m looking up where to go next and how to get there, or moving funds around and cursing the slow internet connection. I’ve read more books in the last nine months than I did while I had a job, but not as many as I’d hoped, and I get way behind on my journal with some regularity. So you can imagine how much I appreciated the abrupt change in pace when I got on the slow boat to Laos.

The slow boat

Boats used to be the main mode of travel in Laos, but in the last 20 years the country has undertaken huge road projects, and increasingly buses and cars are the way to get around. There are still a few boat routes in use, however, and one of the more popular ones for backpackers is from the Thai border at the town of Huay Xai, down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. The journey takes two days, with about 7 hours of boat travel each day, and a night’s rest in Pakbeng.

The view

It is literally a slow boat—a long, low houseboat with a roof overhead and a small engine room in the back. We took a different boat each day, but the setup was pretty much the same. A few two-seat wooden benches, and then rows of minivan seats lining the narrowing prow, with a “bar” in the back selling some beers and a few bags of chips. Bags are stowed below the floor, with a few in the back near the engine. As in the rest of Southeast Asia, no one makes safety announcements or points out the life jackets; you just sit and wait for the magical moment when it’s deemed time to go, and suddenly you’re moving down the Mekong.

Offerings on the engine for a safe journey (blame the blurriness on rumble of the engine)

And once we were off, that was it. There was no loud music, no group activity, nothing to demand my attention. I could take a nap, read a book, chat with my neighbors, or spend hours watching the beautiful scenery gliding by. I went for a combination of all these. It was wonderful to just sit and do nothing, in this stunning setting.

Packed

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, of course. I almost didn’t make the boat, because the people I bought the ticket from refused to take me to the dock before 11:30—but the boat was meant to leave at 11:30. Finally, I started walking up to the main road to find my own tuk-tuk, and with an exasperated sigh the ticket seller led me to a tuk-tuk that got to the dock at 11:33, and I was literally the last person on board the boat. I’ve never been that person before, but here I was scooting down the aisle with my bags in tow, all eyes on me as I searched in vain for a seat. I ended up on a bench behind the engine room, which was big enough to stretch out in. But it was also incredibly hot back there, because we weren’t getting the same breezes they had up front, and the motor made a constant, deafening noise. On the second day, I got a seat near the front of the boat, so it was much quieter but we all basically sat on each other’s laps. The days were pretty cloudy, and we had a little rain on the first day. Getting up to go to the toilet was an exercise in acrobatics, and the toilet itself wasn’t exactly pleasant. I’d read that plenty of locals come by in their boats to sell food during the ride, but that didn’t happen once when I was there, and the bar had only a few packets of chips, so I was glad I’d bought one of the sandwiches from the many food vendors in both Huay Xai and Pakbeng.

Lunch

But really, it hardly mattered. I read on a blog somewhere that the slow boat is the best trip they’ll never do again, and that about sums it up. It’s too uncomfortable to make it a regular mode of transport, but it’s too beautiful and (for us modernized Westerners) too unusual not to enjoy.

Decorative touches

The family running the boat on the first day included two brothers several years apart (the older one tormenting the younger one, much to the younger one’s delight), and an adorable toddler with her hair up in three bouncy pigtails. They were friendly with a lot of the customers they met at the stops along the way; we picked up a few passengers at the tiny villages we passed, but mostly we loaded and unloaded goods that needed moving.

The banks of the river were hilly, covered in green grasses and trees, the occasional palm, some brown shrubs, a few patches of slash-and-burned forest, and clumps of what looked like birch trees with maybe three brown leaves each. For the most part it was pretty calm, but we did pass little whirlpools often, like the current was so overwhelmed with the size of the river that it couldn’t decide which way to go. The banks often had sand, and it was the fine white-brown sand of a lake or ocean beach, not what I’d expect to find on a river bank. Large gray rocks collected along the edge, many glittering in the sun in a way that made it seem like there must be shiny minerals in there.

We passed villages up on the hills, and depending on how big the village was (12-30 buildings), there was a dirt path up the hill or a set of stairs carved into it and bolstered by logs, or sometimes cement stairs. All the villages had houseboats looking just like ours tied up by them; many of them had orange satellite dishes on top of them. Also lots of little skiffs, the long, skinny boats no more than a butt’s width across. All the boats are painted blues and greens, no plain wood.

A village

Gardens

There were often people along the bank when we went past. Some were children, the girls in traditional long wrap skirts and t-shirts, the boys in t-shirts and shorts, or sometimes naked. Some kids waved at us, some stared. The men and women pulled in fishing nets—sometimes men dozed on the rocks, dozing next to their fishing poles, which are long bamboo poles with a line or net dipping into the water. There were plots of land fenced off with something growing inside, maybe lettuce? These little gardens ran down almost to the river.

Fishing poles

On my second day, away from the engine, I could hear the constant rush of the water as we slid through it. I could smell the vegetation from the banks (and also, unfortunately, the cigarette smoke from the many, many Europeans lighting up around me). The uniformly brown river was pretty free of trash. Butterflies were everywhere, mostly white ones flittering around the whirlpools and off across the water. It was colder than expected on the second day. After bathing in my own sweat back by the engine (and in the tropics in general), I was surprised to find that I needed my long-sleeved shirt up front, as I might have done on a boat ride anywhere else.

View from dinner

On our stopover in Pakbeng, the main street had no electricity for several hours, and this was before the terrific thunderstorm that started up during my delicious Indian dinner. Candlelit dinner quickly turned into flashes of lightning dinner, and I stared out over the hill at this magnificent storm along the surging river as my beer grew warm. Luckily, the electricity came back later that night, because the A/C I’d paid extra for was definitely necessary.

Climbing up to Pakbeng

If you’re headed to Luang Prabang from Thailand, or vice versa, and you have the time and the patience for it, I’d recommend the slow boat. If you need to be forced into relaxation, this is the ride for you. If you’re already lazy like me, these are the two days you’ve been looking for.

Hometown Tourist: Humboldt Park

Posted on July 12, 2012 by lisafindley

Hometown Tourist is a series that hears that chipper tip, “be a tourist in your hometown!” and says, “Okay!” When friends come to visit, I like to show them a combination of standard tourist spots and the neighborhood places they’d never know to look for. Why not write about all those places? If you have suggestions on Chicago places you’d like to see covered for Hometown Tourist, add it in the comments.

I might never have started this blog were it not for Humboldt Park. Humboldt is bordered by North Ave, California, Kedzie, and Division, a vast expanse of green on the west side of Chicago. When I lived on California, I would walk the seven-tenths of a mile down the street and find a spot next to the lake to sit and read. In 2009, I’d been thinking of starting a blog (nothing like joining a trend a year or two late). On a few sunny September afternoons, feeling stifled and uncreative in my apartment, I walked down to Humboldt Park, sprawled out on the grass, and wrote. Surrounded by families barbequing and teenagers biking and old men fishing, I scrawled some ideas in a notebook and decided they would be enough to go on.

A typical summer day in Humboldt Park

The manmade lake is stocked with fish, and the patient and hopeful find many places around the perimeter to set up their poles and see what they can catch. The boat house is basically a big pavilion covered by graceful arches, and I mostly look at it from afar, although it can give a nice view of the lake when you’re standing on it. Also, there are barebones bathrooms in there, which is useful.

Native plants

The park was designed by Jens Jensen, who designed various other parks in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. One of Jensen’s main principles was using native plants in landscape design, rather than importing exotic plants. He believed that a space was most beautiful when it used the materials at hand, and looking at the prairie design of Humboldt, it’s easy to agree. I also think of my friend Matthew, who works for a parks department in Michigan and spends a large part of his time removing invasive plants and educating homeowners about the dangers of invasives and the benefits of natives. Looks like Jensen may have been ahead of his time on this one!

You can see the Sears Tower (or Willis, sure) in the distance

The park is so large that a road runs through it so cars aren’t inconvenienced. All the pictures here are ones I took in the eastern side of the park, but the western side has great stuff too: a fancy fieldhouse, a small lagoon with a sand beach (the only such beach in the city that’s not on Lake Michigan), and a little river flanked by benches sheltered by plants in just such a way as to make them perfect makeout spots. A bike path meanders through the whole park, baseball fields host games all summer, and the playground is almost always covered in children squealing with delight.

The boat house

Humboldt Park is the name of the surrounding neighborhood as well as the green space, and it’s a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood. Giant, metal Puerto Rican flags straddle two of the streets, and almost every other storefront is a restaurant with delicious foods. The city of Chicago hasn’t really caught up to the street food craze sweeping the nation, but there are several food huts and carts at the park with tasty jibaritos and alcapurrias for sale. In June of each year, the streets host an official parade and also an unofficial parade of jubilant, flag-waving people in slow-moving cars for the Fiestas Puertorriquenas. People sit out on their porches and grill food, bomba and salsa music blasts from stereos, and everyone’s in a great mood. All this is concentrated in the park, where a large carnival is set up and live music plays. It’s a good time, and a total change to the usually peaceful park.

In short, if you’re anywhere west of Western and north of the Eisenhower, stop by! It’s a lovely place to spend an afternoon.

Where it is: In the square created by North Ave, California Ave, Kedzie Ave, and Division Street

When to go: Whenever! Obviously, it’s not as active in the winter, although the scenery is just as beautiful as it is in the summer, if different.

What to see: The lake and boat house, the gardens tucked away in the shade, a baseball game at one of the diamonds, the shallow swimming lake on those hot summer days

Cost: Free