The Academy Awards Project: Rabbit Hole

Went to see Rabbit Hole tonight. This is part of my ongoing yearly attempt to see every Oscar nominated movie or performance from the six major categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

I know it's kind of a random, quirky goal. I only really achieved it once, and I ended up having to see a couple of movies I hated in order to do so, so my dedication flags a little each year. I'm doing pretty well this year, having seen Inception, 127 Hours, Black Swan, True Grit, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, The Fighter, The King's Speech, and Rabbit Hole, so far.

My big revelation this year is that Kinsey is old enough to come to serious movies with me now. Academy Awards night will be more fun!

As for Rabbit Hole, it was a good little movie, but I don't see it winning any major awards. Nicole Kidman could garner a nomination, although I really rather preferred Dianne Wiest's performance. It wasn't your standard movie...mostly just a study of people working through the grief and trauma that comes from losing a child. I went with Melissa, Kinsey, and Mom. All of them were a little non-plussed. I guess that's a so-so review. Unless you find the subject of interest, you can skip this one.

Let's Go Home

It turns out that there is a time to go home...

Our trip through Asia was fabulous, and as I look back on everything, there isn't much I would change, but travel does get tiring and I'm ready to go home.

It turns out I learned a few things.

1.  Even though each country in Asia is different, much of Asia is also the same. Buddha statues abound. Karst mountains are beautiful, but start to feel the same after seeing them in China and Thailand, so I skipped them in Halong Bay. Did I miss out? Probably so, but a lighter wallet and two previous karst adventures crosses them off my list.

2.  I miss the diversity of the United States...both in food and people.

3.  Travel is fabulous, but for me, the next time I do a big trip, I want to go with a few more people. Traveling on your own is indulgent, easy, and a huge learning experience, but it's also a little lonely and hard to do everything by yourself. My weakness was at the end of the day. I managed to get us everywhere, see and do the things we wanted, but at the end of the day, I needed someone to take over on dinner...someone who wanted to find great places to eat and new foods to try...when I was too tired to see to that last detail--and one that I very much missed.

4. I used to want to go on a big around-the-world trip, hitting every continent and crossing off all the UNESCO World Heritage Sites or exotic excursions, but now I think a good solid three months at a time is a better way to go. Maybe as I get better at this, the time will expand.

And finally, here is my Top 10 List of Favorite Experiences:

1.   Snorkeling at the Surin Islands 
2.   Hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge
3.   Loy Krathong Festival
4.   Hiking from Jinshanling to Simitai on the Great Wall
5.   Angkor Wat, Ta Prom, all the ruins at Siem Reap, Cambodia
6.   All of our biking experiences
7.   All of difficult experiences I had in learning how to travel, which made me a better traveler
8.   All of the interesting people I met
9.   Riding an elephant
10. Caving in Taman Negara

Interestingly, I think most of my favorite experiences were a little off the beaten path. Not completely hidden gems, but sometimes the harder treks, or the tours most people don't take, or the moments you weren't really expecting to be fabulous.

One moment I seem to remember with great fondness is watching the sunset at Siem Reap. One of my guidebooks suggested watching the sunset from a specific vantage point. We were tired from the heat of the day, but climbed a hill along with a bunch of other guidebook reading souls and found a perch on some ruins. I wasn't quite certain what we were really looking for, and to pass the time, I struck up a conversation with a young man who was on the last leg of his round-the-world tour. He and his girlfriend had mainly toured South America, and he regaled me with tales of Angel Falls, Easter Island, the Galapagos, and more. After awhile the crowd fell quiet and I realized everyone had their cameras out. I pulled mine out and saw what everyone had been waiting for. The sun was a perfect, tiny little disc just above the horizon and the sky turned into ribbons of color. I shot picture after picture, experimenting with different angles until the sun set and darkness seemed to fall rather rapidly. Was it the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen? Probably not, but somehow it was just a remarkable moment and I was there to take it in, in some little corner of the world.

Finally...Heavy Duty Shopping and Water Puppets

We put off shopping for nearly the entire trip, picking up only the easiest, most lightweight trinkets, so that we would not have to carry them around. But we have finally arrived in Vietnam and I sense that our trek is pretty much over, so we are abandoning almost any sense of visiting tourist places and decide to indulge in ... shopping!

Old Town Hanoi is a lovely place to give in to the shopping bug. Our hostel is located on a busy, narrow street right near a giant night market. The room is large, clean, and filled with teak furniture. The floors are slick, marble tile. The bathroom is decent. It's a better room than you would think from the entrance.

We decide to stay for several days, and nearly immediately start to explore the shops. According to Lonely Planet, Old Town has small streets dedicated to different trades, so we set off in search of lacquerware and pottery. It turns out that things are a bit more of a mishmash than LP would lead you to believe, but the shopping is still fun. The quality is not exceedingly high, but the prices are pretty cheap. I made the mistake of changing money into Vietnamese dong. I later learned that it would have been better to buy in American dollars as merchants prefer the dollar. They will take the dong, but then you always have to calculate what rate they are giving you.

I march poor Kinsey from shop to shop, unable to decide what to buy. I end up buying a rolling suitcase for about $15 just for our extra purchases! Kinsey gets a cute red silk skirt with a black silk top. I buy a lot of silk sleep sacks for Christmas presents. The vendor is happy to sell me 12 of them for about $4 each. As I walk away, the vendor next door tells me she will sell me sleep sacks for $2 each (!) so I buy 12 more! Christmas shopping is done!

Somewhere along the way, we end up going to see the famous Vietnamese Water Puppet Show. The stage is set over a pool of water and the puppeteers stand in the water to manipulate the puppets. As a result, there are a lot of water-themed puppets, like fish, fishermen, ducks, and water oxen. The stories are really just short vignettes, but they are all clever and very charming. Kinsey ends up buying a dragon water puppet after the show.

And, with Vietnam having a French influence, we managed to find a nice French cafe, where we while away a few lunches and watch the Vietnamese scene scroll by...

This is what what the streets of Old Town Hanoi are like. Motorbikes rule the street. There really isn't much sidewalk room, so you walk in the street while the motorbikes whizz by inches away.

Little hole-in-the wall restaurants spill out into the streets everywhere. Hygiene looks questionable, but the social aspect is very appealing.

Exhaustion Sets In...and a Lighter Bank Account

By the time we hit Vietnam, I have pretty much thrown in the towel and decide to cut short our Asia trip. Money is getting low. We could stay and do some sightseeing, but frankly, I am becoming a little jaded and tired of the Orient. The big draw near Hanoi is a trip to Halong Bay, but all my research concludes that it is just another bay with karst mountains, similar to the Li River in China and Phuket in Thailand. Spending money to see yet more karst mountains is not particularly appealing. There are other small tours throughout Vietnam that could be fun, but again, most of them are similar to other things we have already seen or done--such as going on a bike tour or visiting quaint artisan villages. The only things that are specific to Vietnam that I really want to see are the Cu Chi Tunnels and some of the war sites, but honestly, the thought of dragging us through more train rides and travel just for those, has dampened my enthusiasm considerably.

So I decide to give up on really seeing Vietnam and just spend a few days in Hanoi and then fly home. In keeping with our original Asia Bucket Trip tickets, we are allowed to change the dates of the flights as often as we want, but we have to hit every destination that we originally booked. Hence, we have to fly out of Ho Chi Minh. When I first conceived of the trip, I thought we would travel overland from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh, but now that I have scrapped the overland, I have to buy airline tickets instead. Luckily, short flights in Asia are generally not very pricey.

Meanwhile, we have a few days to kill in Hanoi...and I am in the mood to go shopping!

Cambodia 3

TBA

Cambodia 2

TBA

From Wealth to Poverty...Which One Should You Visit?

Flew to Cambodia