A Break in Singapore

The first time I was ever in Singapore, a few years ago, it was also my first-ever stop in Asia. My reaction at the time was that the city was almost too perfect. Everything was incredibly clean and modern. There were Western restaurants and bookstores and coffee shops. I remarked at the time that it seemed as if the city were being run by Disney. It was impressive enough, to be sure, but where was the passion, I wanted to know? Where was Asia?

This time, Lisa and I stopped off in Singapore after traveling through Vietnam, Cambodia and India back-to-back-to-back, and this time I had an utterly different feeling for this city-state at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula. We quickly realized that the taxi drivers used meters and didn't try to bargain with us, there were no touts following us down the sidewalk and imploring us to buy from them, and we could brush our teeth with water from the sink. Suddenly, I was in love with Singapore!

Seriously, Singapore is a unique stopover in Asia. If you're visiting this part of the world for the first time, the city provides an easy introduction to Asian culture. Or, if you're coming from South or Southeast Asia, Singapore provides a nice break from the stresses of travel.

Our visit was even better because we were able to stay with our friend Rick Von Feldt. Rick has been in Singapore for more than five years now, working in Human Resources for an American corporation. He's a good friend, we've had great talks over the years, and it's always nice to catch up with him. He gave Lisa and me the run of his house while we were in town, and we spent a number of days catching up on errands and emails, doing laundry, and hanging out with Rick in the evenings. We even managed to see "War of the Worlds" at a local cinema.

Here are Rick and Bob toasting with a glass of wine on our last evening in Singapore, before Lisa and I resumed our travel adventures in Egypt...

Delhi, Agra and the Taj Mahal

From Ladakh, we returned to mainstream India and traveled back to Delhi, the national capital. There aren’t very many tourist attractions in Delhi, it’s more of a city for diplomats and businesspeople. But Delhi is one of the main gateways into and out of the country and it has good proximity to Agra, which is the home of the Taj Mahal and hence India’s prime tourist destination.

From Delhi, we arranged transportation to Agra. There, we saw the ruins of Fatehpur Sikri, once the capital of India’s Mughal Empire, as well as the impressive Agra Fort. But the main attraction is the Taj Mahal, which really is as impressive as you imagine it to be. The odd part is that Agra is an unattractive city and, like Varanasi, is populated by all sorts of unusual characters. So it’s a bit of a chore to actually get to the Taj Mahal, but once you're inside the complex the touts are gone, the lawn is manicured, and everything is clean and bright. It’s an oasis of peace amidst the chaos of India. The building itself is larger than I’d imagined, while the symmetry and details of the architecture are perhaps even more striking than in the photos.

Here is the must-have picture for all visitors to Agra:

Monk and Prayer Flags

A photo of a monk and prayer flags outside a Buddhist monastery, high on a hill in Ladakh, with the Himalayas in the background...

Ladakh - A Visit to Himalayan India

After a fair bit of time traveling through the heat and humidity of South and Southeast Asia, we longed for a respite from the weather. We also wanted to see a different part of India, and so we headed to the Himalayas, and to Ladakh. This region of India shares a border with Tibet and much of the local population is Tibetan Buddhist. It was an amazing flight into Ladakh - our plane sliced through a range of snow-capped Himalayan peaks as it descended into Leh, the region’s main city.

This was an opportunity to experience some of India’s considerable diversity, since the culture was nothing like what we had seen in other parts of the country. Oh, cows and donkeys still roamed the streets and the hotels all experienced daily power outages, but otherwise you’d be hard pressed to know that you were still in India. The colorful saris on the women were gone, replaced by shawls and long dresses. The local restaurants advertised Tibetan fare. The city was ringed by mountains. Here was the view from the terrace of our hotel (a $28 room):



We enjoyed the cooler air and even the chance to put on a sweatshirt in the early mornings or evenings. Of course, at more than 13,000 feet the air is also considerably thinner, which made walking up hills and stairs a chore. But the thing to do in Ladakh is to explore local Buddhist monasteries (gompas), which are seemingly all perched high above local villages. So we spent a lot of time walking slowly up hills. ;-) But the views from the gompas are incredible and were worth the effort.

One morning, we arose before sunrise in order to catch a ride to the Thiskey gompa in a nearby village, where the monks allow outsiders to observe their morning puja. There, we sat on the cold stone floor of their prayer room, as the sun rose slowly in the sky above the Himalayan peaks, and watched as the monks chanted, played music, prayed, and greeted the day.

Varanasi, Part II - The City's Bizarre Bazaar

If Varanasi were all about the Ganges and spirituality, it would be a can’t miss city. But there is another, less attractive side to Varanasi, as well. It’s a rough, dirty city, populated by all sorts of charlatans. Again, it’s the paradox that pervades all of India. Spirituality and depravity exist, even thrive, side by side. They are two aspects of the same reality.



Above is a photo of a typical street scene. Here is just a bit of the fun we ran into in this unusual city (some of this is common throughout the country and not unique to Varanasi, but this was still all experienced in the same city and on the same morning):

- We walk along the sacred river to the stench of urine, feces and raw sewage. Just feet away, people bathe and meditate, lost in their faith and oblivious to the pollution and the grime.

- We wander streets that are an animated maze of cars, buses, trucks, rickshaws, bicycles, people, cows, goats, donkeys, dogs, fresh produce, weeks-old garbage, men bathing, children playing, men urinating, dogs defecating.

- A man holding a snake in his hands appears out of the shadows and asks us for money.

- A beggar with gangrene hands waves black fingers in our faces.

- A seemingly affable man befriends us as we walk, asks where we are from, smiles broadly and reaches out to shake my hand. I return the gesture and then he decides not to let go. His grip is strong and now he wants to sell me a massage. No? Well, then, maybe a shave. I have to forcibly remove myself from his grasp.

- Another man walks by and accuses me of taking photos of women on their way to a cremation. I know that cremation photos are taboo, but we are nowhere near a burning ghat and I have only taken a picture of Lisa. He threatens to call the police and have me thrown in jail. He screams and attracts attention, then demands a donation. Lisa laughs and so he threatens to throw her in the river.

- We are followed everywhere by anyone who wants money or has something to sell. Cyclo drivers, postcard children, touts for local businesses, beggars. There is no zone of privacy here. No getting away from the incessant pestering of touts and beggars.

I can go on, but that gives you an idea. I love Varanasi and I hate Varanasi. I want to know more, and understand more, and yet I never want to see the place again. It’s India to the absolute extreme.

Early morning light on the Ganges

Here is another photo from Varanasi - a glimpse of the early morning light on the Ganges...

Varanasi, Part I - The Spirituality

When we left Calcutta, Lisa and I took an all-day train to Varanasi. This is one of the most spiritul cities in India and a pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Buddhists.

For Buddhists, there is Sarnath, a small town about 30-minutes away. This is where the Buddha gave his first-ever sermon. We went there one afternoon and visited the stupa that marks the site in Deer Park where the Buddha is believed to have first expounded his beliefs to disciples.

The real attraction of Varanasi, however, is for Hindus, for it is here that millions of people come to bathe in the sacred Ganges River, or to die and then be cremated on the banks of the river.

A remarkable experience is to take a sunrise boat trip on the Ganges. When we arrived at the river at 5 a.m. we had many offers from boat owners to take us on a one-hour trip. The first view of the Ganges at that hour is stunning. As we emerged from the narrow streets of the old town onto the ghats (steps) that led to the river, the sight of the sun rising over the silvery-orange water was spine-tingling. The morning haze is just lifting at that hour and there is an otherworldy glow to the whole scene.

A while later, as our long, thin rowboat silently plied the sacred waters, we watched as hundreds of people bathed, prayed, meditated and did yoga along the Ganges. Others, meanwhile, were engaged in more secular activities – fishing, or washing clothes - but the great majority of people were on the river for spiritual purposes. Here are some of the early morning bathers...



Some of the ghats are specially designated for cremations, and as we made our trip down the river we saw a body wrapped in a red robe lying atop a simple wooden funeral pyre, watched over by family members. On the return journey, we saw a flame and a plume of smoke rising from the spot where the body had recently been.

Praying, bathing, and dying. In Varanasi, the rituals of life are conducted out in the open, for all to see.

Calcutta - An Introduction to India

“You’ll love India.” “You’ll hate it.” “India is only for advanced travelers.” “India is a breeze – it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.”

We’d heard it all. And it’s all true. India is everything that you’ve ever heard, good and bad. It may not be an easy place to travel, but if you really want to learn about the world then at some point you have to tackle India.

The country is enormous and is teeming with people, history and sights, so unless you’re able to devote an inordinate amount of time there is no way to see anything more than a fraction of this diverse land. We chose to begin in Calcutta because we had a friend there. Sue Shultz is an UWP alum who now works for the Foreign Service. I hadn’t seen her for a number of years, and so it was a lot of fun to catch up, to talk about travel and about India, and to hear some of what she’s been doing in the past several years, first in Turkey, then Kenya, and now as Public Affairs Officer for the consulate in Calcutta and as Director of the American Center there. Here we are with Sue one evening...




Sue hosted us for four nights and it was through her (and through her driver Peter) that we received our introduction to India. When Sue worked on weekdays, Peter drove us around to some of the city’s sights. The Victoria Memorial, the Marble Palace, the Howrah Bridge and more.

But Calcutta isn’t really about tourist attractions. It’s a about impressions. One of our strongest impressions came during a too brief visit to the Mother Teresa home. There are dozens of these homes throughout India, catering to countless numbers of orphaned, malnourished and handicapped children. We played with some children in the orphanage and were struck by how much they smiled, but at the same time how much they seemed to crave affection, to be touched and held.

The nuns who work at these homes are making a dent, but only a dent, in the city’s poverty problem. The poverty is crushing - it’s as stifling and overwhelming as the summer humidity. Almost every building and street in Calcutta, it seems, is crumbling and dusty and in need of repair. Throughout the city, thousands of people sleep on sidewalks, bathe in the street, and urinate on the sidewalks. There are heaps of garbage piled wherever there is space, being picked at by dogs and birds, or being shoveled onto trucks in a desperate attempt to keep the streets somewhat clean and free of disease.

And yet…as Sue noted, the Bengali people of Eastern India go to great efforts to educate their children. It is a very literate population and there are many bookstores. One afternoon, we went into a sparkling shopping mall where wealthy and midddle class Indians were dressed fashionably, shopping at Benetton and Levis, eating ice cream at Baskin Robbins, and going to Hollywood and Bollywood movies.

There are a lot of talented, educated people in India and there is a thriving middle class. But these people also live in the midst of overpowering poverty, a crumbling infrastructure, and piles of garbage. It’s all part of the Indian paradox, which we became quite familiar with during our time in the country.

The Journey to India

Some travel days are just more interesting than others.

When it was time to leave Cambodia, we needed to go from Siem Reap to Bangkok in order to catch a night flight to Calcutta, India. So we had a choice - $170 per person for a flight or $11 per person for a bus. We’d just spent money to fly out of Vietnam and didn’t want to pay $340 for just a one-hour flight, so we chose the $22 option. Naturally, it would cost us in other ways…

We were put on a minibus leaving Siem Reap (very comfortable and air conditioned, we were told), with the promise that we’d take a bigger bus from the border on to Bangkok. The minibus had 22 seats, including fold-down seats that filled the aisles. One of these seats was broken, so our capacity was actually 21. Of course, we had 22 passengers. And luggage, which was piled in whatever empty space remained.

The 22nd passenger, one of the bus company employees, actually sat on top of a pile of luggage. This was the view from our seats…



O.K., so we had little leg room and there was no easy way to exit in case of emergency. But we had seats, and so as we set off down a paved road out of Siem Reap, it seemed that we could handle it for a few hours. Soon, however, we turned onto a dirt road. A bone-jarring, jaw-shaking, please God make it stop kind of dirt road - which we had to endure for three-and-a-half hours.

After finally making it back to a paved road, the driver immediately stopped, opened the windows and turned off the air conditioning. Well, they told us the bus had a/c, but no one ever promised it would be on for the entire ride ;-) There was more traffic here, which meant fumes pouring in through the windows. Which is a really pleasant aroma when mixed with the smell of dust and sweat. Sometime in here, Lisa saw an advertisement on the side of the road for flights to Bangkok. “Oh...a plane,” she sighed.

After leaving Siem Reap at 7:45 a.m., we finally made it to the border at Poipet at 1:30 p.m. We then lugged our bags about one-half mile, through the Cambodian and Thai immigration windows, and then to a café on the other side of the border, where we were told the next bus would pick us up in about 20 minutes. More than an hour later, someone pointed us in the direction of a flatbed truck.

You’re kidding me, right?

No, no, they said. Only 10 minutes to where bus is.

So we all loaded onto benches on the back of this truck, with luggage piled at our feet, and set off once more.

“I’m sure this will be a good story one day,” I sighed.

Ten minutes later, they dropped us off again. And it was true – a real, 45-seat bus awaited us. Comfortable, cloth seats. Leg room. A toilet. Air conditioning. And when we began driving to Bangkok, we noticed that the roads were paved and smooth! We all practically jumped for joy. What a difference - we knew that Cambodia was mired decades behind Thailand in development terms, but it’s amazing how stark that contrast can appear when you cross the border by land.

The travel day itself was far from over, but everything else was a relative breeze. Four hours later, we were in Bangkok. We didn’t even care anymore that we were dropped off in a different location than what we were originally told. We dragged our luggage through the humid streets of nighttime Bangkok for a while, then finally hailed a taxi to take us to the airport, where we changed clothes and had some dinner before our 11:40 pm flight. We were on our way to Calcutta, India.

Angkor Wat

The most picturesque view of Angkor Wat...

Temples of Angkor in Cambodia

The temples of Angkor in Cambodia are remarkable. The world knows about Angkor Wat, but this is merely the largest and best preserved temple. In fact, there are more than 300 temples in the region around Siem Reap, most of them 800 to 900 years old, dating to the heyday of the Khmer Empire.

Lisa and I hired a guide for one of our days at the temples, and then spent additional time exploring the area on our own. Each of the temples is unique in its own way, but the most astonishing feature is the interplay between nature and man. After the temples were abandoned centuries ago, some of them were overtaken by the jungle. Today, as you wander the area, you see numerous huge, old trees with a tangled network of roots intertwined with marble pillars and sculptures that are nearly a millennium old.

Interestingly, these trees have been responsible for destroying the temples on the one hand, pushing out walls and breaking columns in half, but at the same time the trunks and roots now serve as support for these same structures, which would collapse without the weight-bearing help of the trees. Here is a picture of how the trees have overtaken some of the temples…



Angkor Wat is not one of the temples that is defined by this bond to nature, but it really is an architectural wonder. It was built in the early 1100’s, and even today is one of the largest religious structures in the world. There is a causeway that leads from the road across an old moat and up to the main building, which is an impressive sight. There is a pond of water in the front, and that is where the most famous photos are taken from.

When we were there, though, I couldn’t help but wonder what sometimes happens to great civilizations. When the temple was constructed, Angkor (the city) had about one million residents and the Khmer Empire was dominant in Southeast Asia. Yet today Cambodia is a poor and developing country. Most travelers we’ve spoken to in Asia have either loved Cambodia because the people are so friendly and welcoming, or have disliked traveling there because the poverty and begging is equally obvious and inescapable. So where did that great ancient civilization go to? How did it disappear? As we wonder, we can at least be thankful that the civilization left a legacy, in the form of the temples of Angkor.

Spending Riels in Cambodia

I slept a lot for a couple of days in Saigon, and we spent some time catching up on journals and emails, so the extra time in Vietnam wasn’t such a bad thing. The downside is that we ended up canceling out visit to Phnom Penh and missed a chance to see more of Cambodia. But the main attraction in the country is Angkor Wat, so after deciding to skip southern Cambodia, we simply booked a one-hour flight direct from Saigon to Siem Reap.

Then, once we got to Cambodia, I had my first experience spending Riels. Yes, the Cambodian currency is called the Riel. So if you go to Cambodia, you too can spend my last name. Here is a picture of a 1000 Riel bill...

Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease

It began with a sore throat. Then the throat pain got excruciating, to the point where I could barely swallow without wanting to scream. Then I got mouth sores and blisters. Not one or two, but 8 or 10. And then I woke up one morning with a rash all over my chest, stomach and back, and a mild fever. Uhh, this can’t be good, I thought.

These symptoms worsened the day before a scheduled bus trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, so we decided to put off the trip and stay in Saigon and Vietnam a few extra days. Then we went to a local health clinic that was staffed by Western doctors. A French doctor examined me and drew some blood, then diagnosed me with “hand, foot and mouth disease.” It sounded scary, but she said it was a common virus in Southeast Asia.

“It’s viral, so there’s nothing I can give you for it. The worst of the symptoms will pass after four or five days,” she said.

“So, this isn’t like the hoof and mouth disease we hear about?”

“No, nothing of the sort. Just rest. You'll be fine.”

We later looked up the disease on the CDC website, and everything we read matched what she told us. And the symptoms did indeed subside after a few more days.

Well, for a while, I at least thought it was a unique part of the traveling experience, that I had contracted a Southeast Asian virus. But then we met Steve, a traveler from Britain, who reported that he’d once been diagnosed with the very same thing at home in the U.K. So, really, all that happened is that I got sick in Vietnam. But with an exotic sounding virus, at least.