Lima is for Lovers (and Hungry Stomachs)

Well hey there, fellow Awesome Seekers.

WELCOME TO SOUTH AMERICA.

This is my first time on this continent, and to say I'm excited is perhaps one of the biggest understatements in the history of the world.  Or at least of this blog.  If you've had the misfortune of being anywhere within five feet of me in the last few months, you are well aware of JUST HOW PUMPED I have been to go on this adventure.

ANYWAY...

Lima:  Undoubtedly the first stop on pretty much any visit to Peru.  It's the biggest city in this country with a little less than 9 million people.  It's massive, sprawling, and traffic-filled, but also quaintly and very beautifully nestled right next to the Pacific Ocean.  Drive down the Circuito de Playa--or the road right up against the beach--and you could swear you're in Southern California on your way from Malibu to Santa Monica.  There's even a pier that juts boldly into the ocean.

Lima is also, I've noticed, for lovers--it's hard to look at this city without seeing couples cutely lost in each others' worlds.  Everywhere.  I saw a few couples cuddling at a construction site, for example.  It's sickening and fantastic; there's a popular park called El Parque del Amor, with mosaic benches reminiscent of Gaudi's in Barcelona, topped off with a giant statue of a couple full on making out in a passionate embrace.  It all makes you both want to puke and find the love of your life, especially at sunset.  For a single girl without a main squeeze in sight...it's begrudgingly beautiful.

We get it, Lima--you're romantic.  Now stop making us gals that are here for work feel lonely. 

We were greeted at the airport with a sign (I always miss this when I travel not for work), and were immediately welcomed into the five-star arms of The Belmond brand.  This was a (Awesome) recurring theme of this trip, as they were our sponsor-turned-hand-holder-turned-comfort-provider-turned-over-the-top-spoiler throughout.   

I am not worthy of the amount of luxe, believe me.

(SIDENOTE: Let me just throw this in now, and then continue on with a discussion of Peru.  The Belmond will ruin you for any other hotel experience ever.  It's just a thing.  But it is a wonderful, luxurious, take-me-away-and-never-look-back kind of thing.  Consider it, if you ever make it to this part of the world.  A few nights at a Belmond hotel is a great way to bookend a rough-and-tumble adventure at Machu Picchu.)

Ok, so...Lima.  If you read a guide book about Lima, or perhaps tune into some of the online travel conversation, a lot of the advice you'll get goes something like this: "Stay there for a night, and then move on with your trip--there is nothing in this congested city to see."

Awesome Seekers, I beg to differ.

Lima has recently become synonymous with good food.  No, wait--not just good food, but the kind of food that defines a culinary adventure, a city that begs you to eat, eat, eat, and then shoves more food down your throat when you're full.  If you do Lima right, you should never be hungry, but always be hankering.  At least that's what I took away from it all.

We were, admittedly and unfortunately, only in the city for about 24 hours, but in those hours, we ate. 

And ate. 

And ate.

(I later talked to a couple from Mexico who had spent a whole six days in Lima--just eating!--before moving on to the rest of the country.)

Our Guide to All Things Edible for the day was chef Jean Paul Barbier (who can be found at the restaurant Tragaluz in Miraflores), a man who has cooked for a fistful (or two) of celebrities in his time, and knows his Peruvian foods without missing a beat.  The first stop was the Mercado Surquillo in Miraflores, a market that, I was told, is a pretty typical neighborhood market.  There are, of course, supermarkets in Lima, but the mercados are kind of like daily farmers' markets, offering high quality fresh ingredients to families and chefs alike.

There are a few reasons for Peru's recent rise on the food scene, one of them probably being that Peru's economy has been booming as of late, allowing a vivid and expressive restaurant scene to truly begin to thrive.  But certain gastronomic groundwork had already been laid long before, particularly through the mix of cultures that make Peru, PERU--global influences brought on the backs of immigrants from Spain, Italy, Germany, China, Japan, and West Africa that combined with the already developed Peruvian palate to create new national dishes like lomo saltado or even ceviche, which is thought to have its roots--at least partially, and with dispute--in the Moorish culture that came with Spanish conquistadors. 

But maybe one of the biggest reasons Peru has such a blossoming food scene is simply because it has so much food.  This place is fertile.  The mercado was practically overflowing with produce--and with a whole lot of produce I had never even heard of before.  (There were avocados there as BIG AS MY HEAD, which is pretty much my definition of Awesome.)

Peru has three different regions--the mountains, the coast, and the Amazon--and each region has its own personality with distinct ecosystems.  Of the 112 bioclimates in the world (some say 104--either way, there are a lot), Peru has 84 of them--which means, as our guide explained, Peru can "grow almost everything and anything."  And it's true:  People in this area of the world have been mastering the art of agriculture for hundreds if not thousands of years (more on this later).  The potato as we know it was developed in Peru (there are somewhere around 4,000 types of potato in Peru, which makes eating even french fries a serious delight).  Avocados, peppers, tomatoes, cocoa, corn (lots and lots of corn)--all native to this part of the planet.  Basic staples for delicious eating just sprout from the earth here.

Peru also has a lot of not basic staples too, or at least foods that had never crossed my path before.  Chef Jean Paul steered me in the direction of fruits and veggies like granadilla, caigua, and--perhaps the weirdest--pacay, a giant pea-pod-looking thing filled with a starchy, sweet fruit the consistency of Styrofoam and giant black seeds to match. 

Next, Chef Jean Paul bought fresh fish at the market, and mixed us up some stunning ceviche back at the restaurant, explaining the key ingredient to Peruvian ceviche, the leche de tigre, or Tiger's milk. (Apparently, if you mix it with pisco, Peru's national spirit, it makes one hell of a hangover cure.  I can't say I tried it, but something tells me the Peruvians know their hangover cures.  I'll take their word for it.)

I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of seafood usually, but this stuff--it was good.  Really, really good.  Slightly spicy, fantastically tart, and incredibly fresh, accompanied by sweet potatoes and two different kinds of corn to help construct the perfect bite.  When he finished it out by bringing us all pisco sours to wash it down--well, I might as well have died and gone to (tastebud) heaven. 

It was like Peru had just jumped inside my belly.

And that was just the beginning of chef Jean Paul's showcase.  He proceeded to throw down course after course of scallops and shrimp and beef and quail eggs and gnocchi and potatoes (lots of potatoes) and avocado that wowed us all into a foreign food coma, making this whole "work" thing we're supposed to be doing a difficult concept later in the afternoon.  It was truly Awesome.

Work on we did, though.  The afternoon was filled with the more historic (and picturesque) sites of Lima, which began to paint the picture of just how beautiful this city is up close.  Sure, from far away, it's a bit overwhelming: bland buildings crawling up hillsides and and spilling across any open space, busy traffic, billboards filled with advertisements--all coupled against a sky that was (at least while were there) gray and depressing.

But, like a lot of places, it's the details that make it magical.

And Awesome, of course.

Because what would the world be like without Awesome.

 

(SIDENOTE: These balconies pictured above are on the Archbishop's Palace, or the administrative headquarters of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lima.  They're a good example of the famous wooden balconies of Lima, called celocias (from the word "jealousy"), which were built during the Spanish and signified the Moorish influence.  The balconies were used as a place for women to be allowed outside (kind of) without being seen.  Apparently this is the only "outside" those women really ever got.  Major bummer.  BUT they look really pretty, don't they...?)

 

You caught me, Lima.  I guess you really can't be in Lima without falling in love at least a bit...

Mumbai: A City Oozing With Awesome

Hey there Fellow Awesome Seekers.  It's been a long time, I know.  MONTHS since I made it all the way around the globe, and I have yet to even begin to tell you about what may be the Most Awesome City on the Planet.

How could this be???

Well, two reasons, really.  (Three if you count seemingly endless shifts behind the bar.)

First: After returning, I found myself in what can only be described as a Travel Hangover.  Jet lag??  Sure, but it was more than that.  It was a full-on, mind-obscuring haze, a travel-induced body-and-mind slump.  It was the kind of low energy blah where I silently scrutinized my "normal" surroundings, seeing them in a whole new light; where I slept way too much, dreaming about the places I'd been in order to maybe process it all a little more; where I found myself newly thankful for all I have, while missing what I'd left behind; where I curled up on the couch for days simply being still because I had been moving non-stop for three weeks and 24,807 miles (but who's counting, right?).

Travel Hangover.  It's a thing, guys, I swear.

Second: I've been struggling with how to even begin to describe Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the final stop on the trip, and (dare I say it?) my new Favorite City. 

Since touching down in Mumbai, I had been jotting down words and phrases, trying to figure out how to portray a city that immediately punches you in the face so hard you reel for days and days before finally settling into it.  

I've been to crazy cities before--Cairo specifically comes to mind--but Mumbai is a whole new kind of Woah.  Mumbai assaults your senses, all at once and completely unapologetically.  Mumbai brazenly shouts "I DO WHAT I WANT" over and over again, and all you can do as a visitor is nod and hold on tight.

(We landed in Mumbai at night, and one of the first things our driver told us was, "To drive in Bombay, you need three things: Good breaks, good horn, and good luck."  It took about ten seconds of observation to understand exactly what he was talking about.)

Mumbai smells--but not good or bad, just distinct, and the smell changes constantly, wavering from curry to jasmine to sewage to car exhaust to chai and back again.  Everything is colorful--doorframes adorned with carnations, women wrapped in saris, trucks hand-painted with mesmerizing detail, cows covered in decoration, shops selling knickknacks pilled so high the shopkeeper seems buried.

It's hot. Sweat poured from my pores, drenched my clothes, stuck dirt to my skin, and caused general discomfort that was mostly ignored--thanks to the chaos.  

Mumbai defines busy.  

People push constantly--not aggressively, but indifferently--and motorbikes, auto-rickshaws, taxis, trucks, and bicycles vie for attention as pedestrians attempt to simply stay alive. Beggars, mostly children with children, are omnipresent, pulling at shirts, tapping on car windows, staring into souls.  

This city pulls at heartstrings.  It builds you up, then quickly breaks you down.  It is an enveloping emotional roller coaster. 

And the noise never stops.  Honking, yelling, children screaming, people chattering to produce a cacophony of general-city-living until it becomes the kind of norm where silence, if found, is eerie.

It isn't a city for travelers looking for a relaxing getaway, but it's a city made for photographers, filmmakers, explorers, and, of course, Awesome Seekers.  Sure, Mumbai explodes with an overall sense of Awesome, but it's the seemingly endless treasure hunt of little Awesome (Awesomette, if you will) that makes the city so much fun.  It is rich in detail--if your eyes are open wide enough, you could stand in one place for hours and never get bored.

Mumbai, you guys.  It is nuts.  But, oh so amazingly Awesome.

Ok, now let's back up a bit...

India has been on my list of "MUST GO PLACES" for years, but Mumbai specifically topped that list about four years ago, when I found myself enthralled with a life-changing, mind-blowing, how-did-someone-WRITE-this book called Shantaram.  (Haven't read it?  Stop what you're doing right now and get a copy.  Seriously.  I'll still be here when you get back.)

Ever since then, in the back of my mind, there's been a little voice yelling "Go to Mumbai. Now."

But I have to admit I was also I little worried.  Mumbai hasn't gotten the best reputation lately in terms of safety--especially for women, and especially for foreign women.  (In fact, India as a whole isn't getting good press on its treatment of women these days.)  One of our crew members who met us in Mumbai said that both the men sitting on either side of her on the plane over had warned her to "be safe" because they had each known a foreign woman who had "gone missing" in Mumbai.  Missing.  Like never-heard-from-again kind of missing.

Gone.

Not exactly comforting first impressions of a city.

And, as she told me that on our first night in Mumbai, looking out at the sprawling city from our hotel room, I could understand how "going missing" would be relatively easy here.  The crowds of people, the maze-like slums, the bustling traffic and crumbling infrastructure--one ill-minded person with a strong grip and you could really be gone for good.

I went to bed that first night excited that I was finally in Mumbai, but kinda scared about what that might mean.  After all, being blonde and foreign and a woman has gotten me in some...rather terrible...situations abroad before.

But, as I came to discover in the next six days, Mumbai is a place full of surprises.

I was never grabbed inappropriately (or worse) once in six days, which is something I can't say for a lot of other places I've been.  And the men in Mumbai--they met my gaze, talked to me like an equal, smiled at me like a friend, starred at me with curiosity rather than that I'm-undressing-you-in-my-mind I became so familiar with when I lived in Jordan.  Now, that's not at all to say that bad (read: awful) things don't happen to women in Mumbai; I just didn't personally feel it like I have in other places.

One of the women we met told me that Mumbai is actually the safest city in India to be a woman, that she often takes taxis alone late at night, maybe even after a few drinks, and feels totally fine.  Our guide confirmed that, but added that despite the safety, there are very few public women's restrooms in the city, meaning that women suffer from UTIs frequently (ouch)--which made me think there must not be much of a collective women's voice in the city as a whole.   I also noticed that women waited--sometimes for a while--for the "women only" busses, and piled themselves onto the "women only" train cars.  It's possible that "safest city in India for women" might not really mean all that much, considering the length women will take to not have contact with strange men.

Our guide in Mumbai, an incredibly spiritual, essence-of-a-yogi man named Ram (who embodied every stereotype associated with a tour guide in India, although Ram, in my eyes, was the protoplast), started off our meeting on the first day with this--which, when I look back at it, I think was a recommendation for how to approach Mumbai specifically:

"It is about integrating between the head and the heart, the logical and the illogical, the thinking and the feeling.  It is about moving from within to without.  This is what's important." He continued in his sing-song Indian accent as we walked out the front door of our hotel. "Let's look for all the aspects," he said, making his hands wide, "and not just," he brought his hands very close together, "the information."

Then he looked up, smiled.  "So," he said, nodding his head in the side-to-side way I came to love in the next few days, "let's begin with a namaste, shall we?"

When in Rome Mumbai...

Mumbai has a population of roughly 12 million (with some estimates of the metropolitan region being as high as 20 million), with a density of almost 60,000 people per square mile (to put that in perspective, Manhattan's population density is around 27,000 per square mile).  And, on top of that, I read somewhere that an estimated 300 families are moving to Mumbai a day--no doubt in search of a slice of India's ever growing GDP.

People are packed in this city--and most are packed even tighter than the statistics show.  Around 50% of Mumbai's population live in slums, and those slums take up only 10% of the total land in the city.  (You can do the math if you want, but you get the idea: There are a lot of people trying to exist together here.)

We took a day trip to the Dharavi slum--which is not only the largest slum in Mumbai, but also the largest slum in India, and, in turn, the largest slum in Asia.  (It should also be noted that it is the slum depicted in the epically popular movie Slumdog Millionaire).  With a population of around one million, and a size of 1.75 square kilometers (or less than one square mile), Dharavi takes Mumbai's crowds to a whole new level.

The word slum has all kinds of negative connotations--all of which were flowing through my head on the morning I woke up to make the trip to Dharavi.  I was nervous.  I pictured, well, basically numerous scenes from Slumdog Millionaire.  I even turned to Zoe, my roommate, as I was getting ready in the morning and said something to the extent of, "I'm trying to figure out how to prepare myself to be depressed all day."

And I know I'm not the only one, because after I got back to the hotel and posted a single picture of Dharavi on Facebook (and noted that it was a slum), comments started popping up about it being "devastating" or "sad" or "terrible".

(Perhaps this is why so many people in India had a problem with the movie Slumdog Millionaire.)

I get it.  We've been programmed to view slums as a living situation forced upon a person, like the aftermath of a natural disaster.  And it gets complicated, because I'm sure the conditions aren't ideal for everyone there, but I also think it's a heck of a lot more complex than an outsider's initial response can neatly package.

Ram, our guide, tried to explain the dynamics of the intense poverty found in Mumbai on our way to Dharavi.  

"What contributes?" He asked us, not waiting for an answer. "The caste system? Perhaps, but there is more.  It is the do's and the don'ts, the social pressures.  You cannot achieve more than you are destined to--it is the system of karma, of destiny, the idea that everything that you give will come back to you slowly."

He paused.

"There is this idea that you deserve in some way the surroundings that you find yourself in.  People here in India, well, they believe maybe a bit too much in the fact of karma.  Every situation you are in," he explained, "is the cumulative response to the universe based on your past actions, so you just live in the now.  You look at the rich man and think, 'He is rich because he is destined to be rich, I am poor because I am destined to be poor.' It all begins to lapse into complacency."

Now, my American born-and-raised mind did not quite understand this.  I was raised to dream big, reach for the stars, pick yourself up from your own bootstraps.  I was taught from a young age to always strive for betterment, that I could be anything and do anything.   The American Dream.

"So you're telling me that people are happy with the living conditions?  That nobody wants better access to, say, clean water or food or better shelter?" I asked from the back seat of the car.

"It's very complex..." Ram answered slowly, "People may not be content necessarily, but not ambitious either.  The average person is not striving to make it into the book of records, for example."

Statistics about Dharavi aren't easy to come by, but here's the picture you'll generally get if you google it (and take these with a grain of salt):  From what I could find, one third of the population has no access to clean drinking water, and it's been estimated that there is only one toilet for every 1,440 people.  The poor drainage systems and sanitary conditions lead to widespread disease--as a result, there are somewhere around 4,000 cases of disease reported daily in Dharavi.  The monsoon season only makes matters worse, as you can imagine, sometimes flooding streets and houses with sewage.

Doesn't exactly sound like the kinda place you want to spend a day.  But, Awesome Seekers, perhaps that's why we travel instead of googling things all day, because as it turns out, Dharavi was pretty Awesome.

We were lead around Dharavi for the day by Fahim Vora, a resident of Dharavi, and also one of the creators of a tour company that trains students as tour guides, showing visitors the "local" side of the slum (while also providing students with an income to pay for school).  The tour was excellent; but what we even more refreshing was the pride that Fahim clearly had in his home.

He explained that Dharavi is essentially its own functioning city, with police stations, hospitals, schools, shops.  "You have everything you need right here," he told us.

Nearly every adult is occupied--meaning that even if they aren't employed by someone, they have found a way to make their own living.  The result is a surprisingly aggressive economy, built on four major industries: recycling, garments, leather, and pottery.  There are over 5,000 businesses in the slum, and some 15,000 one room factories.  Everywhere you look, someone is working--pounding, washing, sorting, welding, selling, baking, sewing, cutting.  It really is impressive.

The goods from Dharavi get exported all over the world.  Ever wondered what happens to all those containers from your airline meal?  Well, I can't be certain, but I did see a room devoted entirely to sorting, washing, and recycling containers that looked eerily like the ones I had just eaten off of on my way to Mumbai, used once and then forgotten about.  And this kind of innovation, this kind of refusal to let anything go to waste is seen everywhere in Dharavi.

This informal economy turns into a lot of money every year--estimates of how much Dharavi brings in yearly range from $500 million to $1 billion, depending on who you ask.  Which, if you don't think about it, seem almost lucrative--until you do the math and realize that with a one million person population, those numbers equal somewhere between $500 and $1,000 per person, per year.

That's not very much, no matter how you swing it.

And there's no way that money is being divided equally by everyone.  Those that run the industries and own the companies are literally millionaires ("Still living in Dharavi!" Fahim exclaimed), while the people who are, for example, sorting the trash for a living are making no more than $3 a day, and sleeping in a shanty above the trash piles.

I will never again complain about my bartending job.  I will never again complain about my bartending job.  I will never again complain about my bartending job.

But there is a sense of growth and the idea that one's life can upgrade.  People often aim to move into better apartments, or add on to what they already have.  And those that make it big--the millionaires that own the companies for example--they still live in Dharavi.  "They will stay here because their family and life are here," Fahim explained.  "Families have been here for centuries.  There is an attachment, and people don't want to move."

So what's the take away from Dharavi?  Well, there was definitely a sense of ambition.  And I wasn't depressed when I left.  Impressed, yes--depressed, not so much.  I'm not really sure how to package up such a diverse, bustling, overwhelming place, but maybe that's the takeaway in itself--simplistic and all encompassing words like devastating and sad are not mine to use on a place like Dharavi.  And if you'd ask any of these people picture below, people that actually live there, I bet they wouldn't like those words used to describe their home a whole lot either.

Now, Awesome Seekers, this blog has dragged on much too long, and I still feel like I have barely scratched the surface of the Awesome that is Mumbai.  I have one final example that might possibly begin to do it justice.  On our last night in the city, we were shown around by a guide from the hotel, set on showing us some of her favorite places in Mumbai.  (Yes please!)

After a gorgeous sunset at Juhu Beach--filled with families, and snow cones, and man-powered ferris wheels--we headed to Bhuleshwar Market.  This place will forever stay in my heart as potentially the most Awesome place I have every unexpectedly found myself.  A predominately Hindu market, Bhuleshwar is not only a humming, hustling street market (with car traffic, of course!), but also home to some 300 "homeless" cows, who are respected, fed, and cared for by the market patrons and shopkeepers.

What.

We went at night, and this place was nuts.  I can confidently say I have never been in a more crowded circumstance, or been so distracted by all the things to buy.  It was, for someone who loves markets as much as I do, essentially heaven.

Being a Hindu area, there are temples situated throughout the market.  Now, I have no idea what was going on there at the time, or whether what we stumbled upon was normal, or whether our guide knew it was happening--I couldn't find my way in that place by myself to save my life (which was unnerving at times, because our guide was definitely not making sure we were keeping up with her).  Either way, we were led through a seemingly nondescript doorway, into a courtyard that I will never forget.  Somehow the market stalls disappeared and gave way to singing, dancing, colors and lights.  A giant, glowing neon "OM" sign presided over the place, just in case you weren't already overwhelmed with an enveloping sense of INDIA.

And then this little girl appeared out of no where.  And I lost it.

I started crying.  Yep, crying.  Crying tears of happiness and oh-my-gosh-I-can't-believe-I'm-really-here while at the same time mumbling under my breath "don't cry, don't cry, don't cry."  It was as if all my dreams of Mumbai--heck, of India--had come true at once, right there in that court yard.  The singing, the dancing, the smells, the colors, the all around jubilation came together to form the Perfect Realization of a place.  It was as if Mumbai, after six days of recognizing me as a mere bystander, had finally opened up its arms, and let me inside.

"Here, Awesome Seeker," Mumbai said, "this is what it's like to be part of me."  And all I could do was clutch at my travel companions, tears welling up, smiling because it felt like I'd been let in on one of the most Awesome secrets ever.

Travel.  There really is nothing else like it.  At least nothing that's legal.

Ram, the connecting thread of wisdom throughout those six days, wrapped it all up nicely.

"Put your heart into it," he smiled, "and then it happens."

Well, Mumbai got my heart.

And it happened.

P.S. Wanna watch a seriously Awesome music video about Mumbai?  YOU KNOW YOU DO.


And just because I get excited when I see the word Awesome anywhere, especially in my new Favorite City:

Malaysia: The Unexpected Awesome of Langkawi

Fact: Langkawi is the most beautiful place I have ever been.  Ever felt like you stepped on to the cover of a Conde Nast Traveler magazine?  I felt like that every day I was in Langkawi.  Pristine white sand beaches, bright blue water dotted with lush, verdant islands, and contrasted with rich, earthy 550-million year old limestone formations.  My breath was taken away so frequently, I could barely breathe the entire time.   I was so consumed with Awesome on the day we arrived, all I could do was throw my sandals off, and run to the water, shouting for joy from the intense beauty of it all.

But first, a little geography for you:

There are 14 states that make up Malaysia.  Langkawi is a district of the state of Kedah, the northern state that borders Thailand.  Formally called "Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah," it's an easy name to understand once you're there.  It's an archipelago in the Andaman sea made up of 99 islands (wikipedia says 104, but all the locals tell me 99, and I'm assuming they know better).  Only three of those islands are inhabited--which means fulfilling that dream of finding yourself on a deserted island is totally possible here.  

It lies in between Thailand, Indonesia, and mainland Malaysia in a piece of water specifically called the Straits of Malacca.  From the main island (the one with the biggest city, Kuah) you can see Thailand across the strait--a fact that, on the first day when it was pointed out to me, made me tear up a little as I realized just where in the world I was.  

Sometimes traveling can make you feel so gloriously small.

To say that Langkawi is a paradise is an understatement.  It's a beach-goer's dream.  It takes "tropical island" to a level that this Wisconsin girl has never understood before.  But at the same time, it's way more than the beautiful beaches that bless its shores.  There's a population of over 60,000 people here, a culture rich with legends and tradition, an economy based off of rubber tapping, rice farming, and fishing, and a UNESCO mangrove geopark that is filled with monkeys, crabs, and eagles.  If you don't want to sprawl on the beach all day, there is plenty to see and learn and do.

Which is good, because (sigh) we were technically there to work, and sitting on the beach all day does not make interesting educational programming.  

Sure, the beaches may look like the Caribbean, but driving through Langkawi tells you a completely different story.  Rice paddies line the roadside and stretch into the distance, dotted with oxen waiting for their time to plough.  Humble mosques rise out of the horizon and most women wear the hijab, reminding you that Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, while at the same time welcoming Hindus and Buddhists and Christians as the other prominent religions.  Signs are in Malay, the official language of Malaysia, which looks and sounds a whole lot like Indonesian, if you happen have that as a reference point.  Since Malaysia is a former British colony, people do speak English here--especially in the service industry--but, unlike Sydney and Singapore, English will only get you so far in public.

(Side note: Due to the heavy tourism from both the Middle East and Japan, Malaysia is the first place in the world where I've been able to use both the weird languages I know to read signs at the airport.  I couldn't help but geek out a little.)

We stayed (go ahead, roll your eyes) at the Four Seasons Langkawi, a place that was so immaculately decorated and impressively designed I felt immediately unworthy of its attention--but oddly welcomed at the same time.  Man, this place is cool.  The architecture and design are Awesome, but it was also the diversity of guests that got my attention.  Sure there were Europeans and maybe a few Americans, but also couples and families from the Persian Gulf.  Ever seen a woman in a full burqa enjoying the pool next to a woman in a bikini?  Not at your average Caribbean resort, I bet. 

What I had originally thought was going to be the "break" time in this Round-the-Globe excursion--a time for "work" while I secretly snuck daily trips to tan on the beach--turned out to be a jam-packed few days of Awesome.  To be fair, there was a day in there where it rained so much we ended up filming spa treatments for the resort's promotional use (rain delays have never been so relaxing), but otherwise there was way more to the island (and the resort itself) than I had taken into consideration. 

If you're bored during a stay in Langkawi, you're not talking to the right people.

We toured the Kilim Karst Geoforest Park, a mangrove forest that is protected as a UNESCO world heritage site.  It's got eagles, macaque monkeys, brightly colored crabs, mudskipper fish that walk on land (our guide called them "Living proof of evolution!"), and brightly colored birds.  Mangroves grow in super-salty tropical climates, where rainforest meets ocean.  Most plants would die in these conditions, but through a series of impressive adaptations (those crazy roots being one of them), Mangroves thrive in this incredibly weird environment.

Our guide for the day, a man name Aidi (pronounced I.D.), added a lot of Awesome to the mix.  We started off before the sunrise, on a somewhat choppy semi-covered boat ride that took us deep into the canals of the mangrove forests.  Despite a super wet mid-morning downpour, we ended up with an absolutely gorgeous day to admire the ecosystem.  I'm pretty convinced Aidi knows everything, and he is also one of those people that lives life with a passion that commands respect.  "Now you can understand why I love this place," he said as the sun came out and monkeys started to appear. "To me, this is life.  It's real.  My friends in Kuala Lumpur tell me to go and get a job in an air conditioned office.  I won't."  And he laughed at the very absurdity of the thought.

I just love people like that.

The next day, we took a trip into the nearby market with the chef of the Four Seasons, a man named Adee Affende, who is from Langkawi and learned to cook first by practice growing up, and later by putting himself through school after he had worked a variety of kitchen jobs.  The market was bustling and a bit overwhelming--but Awesome, because I think markets are one of the best ways to learn about a new place.  It's an interesting peek into how other people live; something that seems so average to a person who lives there is almost always a sensory overload to a newcomer.  

We went a wet market, meaning it was selling fish and poultry and meat, not just veggies and fruit and herbs.  The term "wet market" implies everything you think--I wouldn't wear open-toe shoes or pants that drag on the ground to this one.  Fresh fish were still being unloaded and packed with ice, a rhythmic chopping kept the beat of the crowd as butchers broke down chicken carcasses with certainty, livestock hung from hooks.  We picked out some tiger prawn (Chef Adee explained to me that the color is what tells you the freshness as he expertly sifted through the bin), and then headed to the back where the vegetables and herbs were being sold.  He picked through the different leaves, offering me new things to taste and smell (Ever had bitter leaf?  I hadn't.).  This is the market where he usually shops and he seemed to know most of the shop keepers well--which was great, because filming in a market can sometimes be super difficult as an outsider.

We took our ingredients back to the kitchen at the resort and Chef Adee prepped everything to be ready for the camera.  We cooked Udang Gulai, basically a prawn curry made with coconut milk, spices, tomatoes, sweet potato, and that bitter leaf I tried earlier.  Major yum.  While we cooked, Chef Adee explained to me some of the basics of Malaysian cooking--that it's all about balancing the sweet, salty, sour and spicy.  My favorite thing he told me, however, was how Malaysian cooking has changed a bit, since recipes used to be handed down from generation to generation not with measurements included (one gram or half a cup, that kind of thing), but with quantities by price (one ringgit of tomatoes, five ringgit of prawn, etc.).  When prices started to change, however, recipes had to be retaught based on concrete measurements.  He's still translating some of his family's recipes as he cooks new things.

And still, there was more to do in Langkawi.  We visited the Laman Padi rice museum, something I never thought existed in the world but am totally glad it does.  A functioning outdoor series of rice paddies, Laman Padi (literally meaning "rice field" in Malay), is meant to help tourists understand where rice comes from and how it is planted, grown, and harvested.  The state of Kedah produces half the rice in Malaysia, something they are (rightfully) proud of.  The museum has a rice paddy at every stage, and has people working the fields to show how it's all done.

There is nothing fake about it, either.  There are fish jumping around the submerged plants, and an oxen stands on call to plough the fields.  I got in to learn how to spread the sprouted seeds, but only after applying a citronella balm to my feet and ankles to "discourage the leeches."  Comforting.

During the time we weren't filming, I rock climbed and learned archery, took a boat out to an uninhabited island to hike up 1000 steps deep into the rainforest, and even jet skied for the first time (less cultural maybe, but still Awesome).  I didn't lay on the beach once (although I would have, had I not been working).  I left feeling as if Langkawi had taught me a lesson--not the kind that necessarily sticks with you forever, but more of a "Don't you dare go back and tell people I'm only just a pretty beach" kind of lesson.  There is a depth to the flavor of this place that goes way beyond the crystal blue water and fine white sand.

The people here believe Langkawi was cursed by a maiden that was executed long ago after a dispute with her mother-in-law left her accused of adultery.  She is said to have doomed the archipelago for seven generations of bad luck, leaving the people here to constantly blame her for a lack of prosperity.  However, most people believe that the curse has finally been lifted, since the eighth generation has just begun.  Tourism, they hope, will boom in the coming years.  

I, for one, fully support that.  Langkawi is Awesome.  Truly Awesome.  And the brief taste I had has left me convinced that Malaysia, as a whole, is a country deserving a lot of attention.   

Singapore: A Giant Luxury Tree House

I'm gonna be honest about Singapore: I wasn't totally excited to come here.

I've been to Singapore once before, over a year ago, on a 24-hour layover with my brother.  It was a fun day, of course, but Singapore didn't really stay with me in the way other places in the world have.  There was no grit, no feel, no overwhelming sense of place.  I left thinking, "Well, that was nice, but I don't really have to come here again."

Wrong.  Turns out second looks are a blessing.

In the last few days, Fellow Awesome Seekers, Singapore has really blown me away.  I haven't been blogging because there has been just so much to do and so many things to see.  It makes sense--Singapore is a city (country? city-country?) of over 5 million people, all crammed into a finite piece of land.  It's a churning sea of different cultures, a place that's still finding its own identity while being proud of its history.  It's young, while old, and people seem excited by the idea that they can still define what Singapore is to the world.

It's also probably the cleanest place I've ever been, which is what I remembered most about my last visit.  Singapore seems to have no dirt, but still has a lot of trees (HOW DO THEY GROW??).  In fact, if you asked me to define Singapore with one adjective, I would quickly respond: shiny.  This place glows, sparkles, creates an aura of breathtaking Awesomeness, day or night (but especially night).

Berna, my friend and producer on this trip, had a pretty accurate first impression: "It's like a giant business lounge, built into a jungle."

Truth.  Singapore is oozing with wealth, commerce, and greenery (more on this later).  It basically shoves an upscale shopping mall down your throat every other block and beckons you inside with the promise of air-conditioning and shade (this place is a heavy-sweater's nightmare; stepping outside is like having a large man breathe hot air down your neck non-stop).  The cars are clean and new, the buildings boast modernity, the sidewalks have no cracks, and the business district screams Fortune 500.

I feel poor just looking at the city.

And maybe that's why it rubbed me the wrong way the first time I was here--in the same way I don't go to Beverly Hills on days I want to feel good about myself, Singapore seemed to celebrate the haves while completely ignoring the have nots.

But what I should have realized is that a 24-hour layover will never tell you the full story about a place, even a small city-country kinda place like Singapore.  Turns out, there's a whole lot more to Singapore than its initial giant-shopping-mall impression.

This city is cool, but you have to work to find its flavor, its essence of what makes Singapore truly Awesome.  It reminds me of Los Angeles in that way; Awesome is not handed to you, you must make it, find it, create it.  You must listen to locals and stray off the nicely landscaped boulevards.  You must want to like it, and not simply expect to.

Which is great in Singapore, because it's so safe here that even walking down a dimly lit back alley at night really doesn't raise the same alarm bells it would anywhere else.  (One cab driver explained it well: The punishments are so harsh in Singapore, no one even really thinks about committing crimes.  This place still canes people regularly, on top of jail time.  You know, he said matter-of-factly, six months, six strokes. Um, what??)

Example: Berna and I followed a local ex-pat's advice in a search for genuine dim sum.  "You want the real deal?" he said, and then jotted down some serious taxi directions on how to get there when we nodded.  It was in the red light district of Singapore, he explained, but just so good, and there were durian stalls right across the street.  Lots of them.

Dim sum? Hookers?? Durian???  Sold.

The dim sum was Awesome. We were absolutely the only non-Chinese people there, deciphering a menu that thankfully had pictures. (Shark fin soup and fried frog legs??  We didn't quite go that far, but we could have.) It was also just cool to be able to leave, wander the "red light district"--hookers and all--as two super-foreign women, and feel 100% safe.  And this is coming from someone that takes her safety pretty darn seriously.  High five, Singapore.

Since we're on the topic of food: Singapore has a lot of it.  It's known for its hawker street food stalls, which serve up a pretty wide variety of grub from the melting pot of cultures that make up Singapore.  We filmed a segment on the different street food to be found in Singapore, led by Singapore's Food Ambassador, Violet Oon.

Dear god, it was interesting, and (mostly) delicious.  A totally eclectic mix of stuff filled my belly.  I managed to cram down mutton-filled murtabak, chicken curry, roti prata, a veggie spring roll, rojak (a veggie and fruit salad covered in shrimp paste and tamarind), fried oyster omlette, and a red-bean-filled-condensed-milk-covered snow ball for dessert.

That whole vegetarian thing has been forced to completely disappear on this trip, at least on camera.  But I guess that's the job, huh.  It felt good to overcome food fears--like oysters, for example (this was my first)--because, well, I kinda had to.  You don't really keep this kind of job if you can't appreciate the different food for your audience.

And so appreciate I did.

Now, real quick, before I've lost all you Awesome Seekers in the obscurity of a blog post that is far too long (and perhaps much too general), let me just leave you with maybe my favorite part about Singapore: The trees.  Ugh, I love the trees.  The Director of PR for the Four Seasons Singapore where we are staying (IT IS GORGEOUS, BY THE WAY) called our rooms our own "luxury tree house," and at first I laughed before realizing it's pretty spot on.  Looking from above, Singapore is covered in a blanket of trees.  It's like a giant park that happens to have a city in it, instead of the other way around.

We took a trip to the Urban Redevelopment Authority to find out a bit about city planning and urban development in Singapore, and what I thought was going to be some stuffy, dry room full of unimpressive city models turned out to be one of the coolest displays of Awesomeness I've seen in a while.  A full-fledged, super-detailed, million-dollar scale model of Singapore covered the floor of a huge gallery, and interactive displays described the growth of the city in the last century and into the future.  I'm not much of a nerd for urban planning, but I could not get over the coolness of it all.

All the trees were finally explained as well.  Turns out Singapore, with its space limited and land at a premium, has developed a rule based off the Japanese city of Yokohama. Any land that is developed into a building, must be replaced by the builders in the form of a park somewhere within the building, whether in a courtyard, on a roof, wherever.  And not just any park, but a publicly accessible park, so that major developments can not take away public park space from the people and the city.

I LOVE THIS IDEA SO MUCH. 

I could continue to geek-out about the intense (and thoughtful) planning going on with this city, but for now, let me just leave it at this: I'm excited to see where this city goes.  With its seemingly endless budget, its multi-cultural population, its attention to eco-friendliness, and its interesting uses of space and architecture and design.  There are some seriously Awesome things going on here.

And, let's not forget to mention this sign from a restaurant I ate at a few days ago:

Stay Awesome, indeed, my friends.

Australia, The Final Days: Beaches and Boomerangs and Boats

Whew, five days in Sydney sure flew. right. by.  

Sad, too, because I could get used to life in this city.  The people are Awesome.  The food is Awesome.  The beaches are Awesome.

Wait...did I just say beach??

There hasn't been an Awesome blog for a few days (probably ruined your weekend, right?) because yesterday, on my last full day here in Sydney, I had four hours of free time.  The choice then had to be made: write blog or go to beach (Manly Beach, to be specific).  

What would you choose??

Um, duh:

For the first time in (my) on-location history, I went to a beach in my bikini and got in the water.  I even got tan lines.  It was a big moment.  A glorious moment.  An oh-my-gosh-I-actually-feel-like-I'm-on-vacation moment. An equalizing moment between me and the real vacationers who I usually just glare at for days.  For an all too brief hour, we were one.

But let's back track a bit, and convince you all that I do get paid to be here for some kind of reason.

I skipped breakfast Saturday morning.  Why?  We were off to film a cooking segment with a chef here in Sydney and he had tweeted at me the night before that we would be cooking the "beef dish" on the menu.  Vague enough, but I also knew I had my work cut out for me.  I've been a vegetarian for a good fifteen years, so beef and I aren't real good friends.  I knew this day would come, though, and I've been training.  A good thing about having a meat-eating boyfriend is that it's relatively easy to steal bites off his plate during dinner, in an attempt to reacclimate your body (and mind) to meat without committing to a whole dish. 

Thank you, Cesar Flores.

Friends, it was delicious.  I didn't just have one bite; I had like seven.  The (apparently super great) Australian beef tenderloin was pretty fantastically cooked (in butter, none the less), and then served over fresh local veggies and handmade (by me!) potato gnocchi.  YUM. MAJOR YUM.

Chef Barkham couldn't have been nicer too, or more fun to film with.  Overall a really rad way to spend a morning.

We hopped in car after that and drove about an hour outside of Sydney to the Muru Mittigar Aboriginal Cultural Center  where an Aboriginal guy named Anthony had the unfortunate task of teaching me how to throw a boomerang.  Anthony learned from his dad when he was five years old, and claims to have mastered the skill in two weeks.  I probably needed about two years.  Especially for someone who wants to throw everything like an ultimate frisbee, throwing a boomerang (well) is not an easy thing to do.

Anthony, however, could throw it and have it come right back to him to catch it.  As a result, we kept the camera on him a lot.  The magic of editing might even make it look like I had some grasp of what I was doing.  Wouldn't that be cool!

Either way, it was a blast.  Anthony makes the boomerangs himself (his dad taught him that too), which I thought was seriously Awesome, and he plays the didgeridoo.  I learned, though, that women are forbidden from playing the didgeridoo (it's actually a law in Aboriginal culture), because it's believed that the muscles women would need to use to play the instrument are the same used in childbirth, and they could wear the muscles out before being able to have a child.  Interesting.

We only had two hours at the center; I could have been there for an entire day.  Super nice people, really cool information, and it was just fun.  As if that wasn't enough, to top it all off, an orphaned possum made a surprise appearance (he's being raised after his mom was hit by a car up north), and I got to hold him.  I gotta say, Aussie possums are way cuter than stateside possums.  

Saturday ended (whew, these days are packed sometimes) with a giant fireworks display.  I suppose I haven't mentioned it yet, but this week is International Fleet Review in Sydney, and approximately 1.5 million people are in town to celebrate.  It's nuts.  There have been all kinds of tall ships and war ships sailing into the harbor the last few days, and they were in full force for what had to be one of the largest fireworks displays in history.  Fireworks were shooting off of naval ships, off barges, and raining down from the Sydney Harbor Bridge.  The opera house was covered in projections, and the harbor was glowing with a laser light show.  

Holy crap.

We had media passes to the whole event, and therefore pretty much the best view ever.  Not a bad way to end the day.