Love me some Thai food!

I didn't ever mention our Thai cooking class here. Or, I mentioned it, but never demonstrated it pictorally. On the blog, at least.

We had some amazing food in Thailand, from the pineapple & shrimp curry at Cabbages and Condoms to the yummy dessert pastry things in the food courts and street stands. And the mango & sticky rice dish! Oh my. I must admit I had Mexican food three times. And it was good. I was trying to load up, since I haven't really found any in Athens yet.

I think the cooking class was one of the highlights. Essentially we cooked and ate for four hours straight. :) Our instructor first took us to the market, where we bought all our meat, coconut, vegetables, etc.

We set to work washing the veggies, cutting up the meat, beheading the shrimp and pulling the guts out (so disgusting).

His set-up was great; in one room we made our coconut milk, in another we prepared each dish (pictured below), and in a third we ate!

Out on the balcony were all the stoves where we finally put all the ingredients together to cook it.We made: 1. Tom Yum Gung (spicy shrimp) Soup; 2. Laab Gai ("Northern Chicken Salad") with sticky rice; 3. possibly the best Phad Thai I've ever had (I don't usually like it!), 4. Green curry with chicken.Grinding up the green curry paste was quite a task; we all took turns.

And for dessert, Tub Tim Grob, or "Rubies in Coconut Milk," made from water chestnuts soaked in fruit punch, rolled in tapioca powder, then soaked in hot water. The result is like a chewy jelly candy thing, which is then put in coconut milk.

We had a great time and were very full afterward! :)

If you ever do find yourself in Bangkok, look up this cooking school. The guy is really great & explanatory and the menu changes daily. He also gives you a little recipe book with what you made. Yummmm!

No running, no cycling, no stairs, no kneeling, no no no.

Allow me to translate for you what I heard as the doctor spoke these words to me yesterday: DOOM!

First of all, do not ask me why I had a doctor's appointment on Sunday afternoon. For the same reason that Voula's sister had a doctor's appointment at midnight a few weeks back. It's Greece.

I was happy though to meet with this specialist as a second opinion. He is a friend of Pepie's cousin, and as Pepie was also having knee troubles, he agreed to see us - and he didn't charge us. A little blessing in itself!

This doc studied my x-ray and found some issues with my kneecap, as the other one did, but pronounced a more detailed problem and treatment. I am young enough that the eroded cartilage should mold back into position with proper rest and exercises (muscle strengthening to make my kneecap work properly), without surgery. But this entails doing basically nothing that involves bending my knee. Try doing that for even an hour!

The anti-inflammatories that the other doctor gave me have helped the pain subside for the most part (why can't I take these forever?), and today I went to the gym to do some of the isometric exercises. The words "lifestyle change" have definitely been sitting heavily in my thoughts the past two days. I should be able to have normal function in my knees again, but things like running would only continue to aggravate it. There is a pool very close by that I will be joining when I get back from Thessaloniki. I don't love swimming. But I'm going to learn to like it!!! (I'm still holding out for mountain biking in the future!)

Goodbye to my running days, triathlons, etc. Wow. It's kind of a big deal for me! :(

Phnom Penh, part 2

It is clear that the city of Phnom Penh is still recovering from the loss of so many lives under the Khmer Rouge Regime and from the lasting blow to its economy. As a result, the streets don't seem as crowded as they do in other big cities, and the population is noticeably poorer. Tuk-tuk drivers and motorbike "taxis" aggressively pursued me, and once delivering me to my destination, they would often insist on waiting for me in the hope of a return trip - which I soon realized may be one of their only chances for business for the day with tourism having taken a recent downturn. (This picture was an accident, but hey, it shows my view for a better part of the day)...I felt slightly out of place here as a female tourist traveling on my own; at one point I walked down a road toward a temple I could see in the distance and quickly noticed I was the only female in sight. Worse, there were monks everywhere, and they, along with the other men, were accutely interested in my activities (which only happened to include walking down the street). I saw monk robes hanging in doorways, drying from recent laundering, and hordes of monks congregating all down the street. I finally saw one old lady, a vendor trying to sell her product to a few men who were busy avoiding being struck by a group of teenage boys playing with a hackey sack. However, I decided the temple wasn't worth it the weirdness I was feeling; I've seen plenty of temples on this trip! So I turned back.

As I was exiting the street, a young monk caught up with me and started talking. Is that allowed? In Bangkok we were told repeatedly don't touch the monks, they can't touch women. I guess I assumed that meant they wouldn't be talking to us either. :) But he wanted to try out his English and be seen talking to me in front of his friends, who were waiting down the street in a tuk-tuk, grinning at him. I had to laugh.
I was also intrigued that they use US dollars as their currency; all prices are listed in USD and my familiar green bills came shooting out of the ATM. In fact, when I arrived, I had to change my Euros into dollars. I don't even know what their actual currency is called; I only saw it when my change was less than a dollar. Rather than use coins, they give you thousands of their Riel (I just looked it up); one dollar is around 4200 Riel.

My hotel was great - minus the 15 mosquitoes I killed in my room upon arrival and also the power outage in the morning - and I had the best night's sleep there on the whole trip. It's only too bad I didn't have more time to enjoy it:

Walked down near the river and around the city a bit...I didn't take too many photos here, but this was priceless...

Why not have an aerobics class in the park? I also saw one in a large u-turn lane on a busy boulevard. What fumes?

Two days in Phnom Penh (part 1)

So, early Monday morning I flew from Bangkok to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital and largest city. Phnom Penh is a city that is very much shaped by its relatively recent history. There is a lot of great architecture, with French colonial influence and traditional Buddhist palaces, and the people were very warm, but it is still recovering (along with the whole country) from the brutal policies of the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia for four years starting in 1975.

In April of 1975, Communist Party leader Pol Pot implemented a radical scheme to turn the country into an agrarian collective, leaving the cities mostly empty from forced relocations, imprisonment, and executions. The entire population of Phnom Penh was ordered to leave the city and take on new lives as working peasants in the countryside. Under Pol Pot's directive, the Khmer Rouge tortured and executed nearly all educated people, including teachers, doctors, writers, and their entire families. Many more Cambodians died due to malnutrition or starvation. By the end of the Khmer Rouge's four-year rule, between two and four million Cambodians lost their lives.
I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former school that was used as a Khmer Rouge prison. It is quite a heavy place, as you can imagine; it still houses torture devices and extensive blood stains remain all over the place. Room after room of photos depict victims before and after their torture and death. There are mugshots of each victim that were taken before (or sometimes after) their execution: men, women with their babies in their arms, young children.
I didn't have time to go out to the killing fields, but saw a video and many photos of the mass graves, skulls, and a memorial monument. It is really a horrific and terribly sad place. You can feel the weight of what took place as you walk through the buildings. It's a sobering way to spend an afternoon, but I think it's important; there are so many things that we hear little about in the west because it doesn't affect us financially. Yet you can't be in Cambodia without facing the reality of what took place - it affects every level of society.

I didn't particularly enjoy my time in Phnom Penh. I don't think it was Phnom Penh's fault; traveling alone finally got to me, I think. I saw what I wanted to see, but I didn't feel 100% comfortable being there on my own. Also, it could have been the heaviness and overall feel of the city. Anyway, I was sure glad when that taxi came to take me to the airport, kind of...

oh, the goodness

You know the canned pumpkin I bought in Bangkok? (Had to go all the way to Thailand for canned pumpkin and chocolate chips!?) Anyway, it's gone now. I made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and bread tonight. For some reason I have really enjoyed baking since moving here; funny since I can't get half the ingredients I need. Bake it, and give it away.

Please ignore the half-muffin in the bottom of the picture. ;)

Adventures in Greek Health Care

I am not finished with Thailand/Cambodia posts, but I need to take this brief time-out to discuss the ongoing saga of my knee, culminating in today's highly emotional Greek public hospital visit. Over the last week my knee has grown steadily worse; occasionally too painful to walk, and regularly now I am reduced to a very becoming hobble. Can't put too much weight on it, must avoid stairs, can't walk far enough to get to the subway to even go anywhere. I'm pretty much a cripple.

I thought I was prepared mentally for the craziness that is public health care; my appointment this morning cost 3 euros and the x-ray was just 4.50 euros, so you might imagine the clientele attracted by this hospital. I prepared myself for lots of waiting and prayed for an English-speaking doctor.

Side note: I get this tinge of anxiety deep down when I sense something might not go as it should or I may not be able to figure something out (happens occasionally when overseas on your own). I got this little tinge as I entered the hospital this morning after Lydia dropped me off; loud swarms of people everywhere, crutches, casts, every ailment imaginable. The receptionist (is it still called that when it's a man?) spoke English so that put me at ease, and he pointed me to the door of the orthopedic surgeon. There were about 15 people surrounding the door, looking as though they were ready to tear it down and ambush the poor doctor and his assistant inside. Every time the door opened, us new arrivals had to hand them our form and then wait, while those who had been waiting longer tried to push their way inside and the assistant struggled to close the door against them.

When my name was called only a few minutes later (to the great consternation of those still waiting) I went inside, and after discovering that my knowledge of Greek can only get me about 2.4 seconds into a conversation, they told me to wait and found a doctor who spoke English very well. Thank you God. He examined my knee and told me I had to go get an x-ray; I have osteo-mumblemumble (something in Greek), and it's very bad, made worse by standing and walking.

Here is where the fun really began, and I'm sorry I am incapable of telling a short story; the doctor pointed across the street to another part of the hospital, told me to show this paper to the secretary, get an x-ray, and bring it back to him. Simple enough. I took the paper, hobbled my way across the street, and was greeted by even louder and larger throngs of people in the entry way, 7 possible windows to approach, and no semblance of a line anywhere. After showing my paper at three of the windows and staring at them blankly as they released a stream of Greek in my general direction, I felt that tinge start to become stronger, and an uncontrollable wave of every emotion I've felt since moving across the world by myself two months ago, my dissatisfaction at not knowing the language yet, the frustration of being totally incapacitated by my knee since arriving, and every other possible thing I could feel began to bubble over. There I was, standing in the middle of all these people, helpless and confused, and I started crying. So awesome.

At the 4th window I blubbered something about needing help and not knowing what I was doing, and the lady said, "need appointment. Downstairs." I bawled my way all the way downstairs, which looked like deserted storage areas and a construction zone, finally found a window, where the lady took my paper and wrote "12:50 19/2/09" on the back. I was pretty sure I was supposed to have this x-ray done before February 19, since the doctor across the street was waiting, but I had no way of communicating that, and this woman didn't speak english either. Pretty much I found myself a bench as removed from everyone as possible, sat down, and promptly lost it.

A little later and still doing that deep heaving thing that little kids do after they just had a major melt-down, I was out on the street. This poor old man (not to mention everyone else who passed by) kept looking over at me as I tried to get myself together. I called Lydia and barely was able to explain what was going on and she said she'd come. With three kids and tons of stuff to do, she had only been able to drop me off earlier. Around this hospital there is no parking; the streets are tiny, people park on sidewalks and next to other cars in the middle of the street and police write tickets all over the place. Both Lydia and I were praying fervently for a parking spot for her as she came, and she found one immediately. Unheard of. She found me, took over, and 10 minutes later I had my x-ray and was back across the street looking at it with the doctor.

So, as you can see, my cartilage has eroded and my kneecap is grinding on my bone, there (you get to keep your x-rays here, isn't that exciting). He gave me anti-inflammatories to take for 7-10 days while resting my knee. If it doesn't get better, surgery might be necessary. This is like what happens to you when you're 60. Not 29. I can't deal with this here; I have to be able to walk. I've given up on running, which is depressing, but walking is kind of a necessity. I already feel so dependent on everyone around me. So frustrating. :(

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(We will now resume regularly scheduled blogging.)

Pattaya

Last Thursday we took a day trip to Pattaya, about an hour and a half away from Bangkok. Pattaya was once just a small fishing village with about 100 families, but after the Vietnam War it became the official "R & R" center for American armed forces. It is still home to many war veterans, a popular retirement spot. With the expats and the tourist boom that followed, the number of shops, bars, hotels, etc. increased to meet the demand. Also came the hostess bars and brothel/bars...and now Pattaya is known for its sex industry. An estimated 20,000 girls and women in Pattaya are involved in prostitution. Sadly, many of the bars and brothels throughout Thailand are owned and operated by these vets!

The beach, "Walking Street," and the street along the beach (we hung out at Starbucks watching the sunset; after dark, the area takes on a whole new persona: red light district) ...
The transformation of the Walking Street:
During the day, we visted Tamar Ministries. They have a three month training program for girls and train them to work in their hair salon, bakery, coffee shop, or cardmaking business. Like Night Light they also offer discipleship classes and counseling. The coffee shop: Bakery:On the walking street that night, we saw this table set out with a meal on it. This was an offering meal to a spirit. The red drink indicates that it is for a "kumantong" - an aborted fetus spirit. They believe these "babies" are still with them, and they take care of them as though they were living babies. Some people can physically see these spirits as babies walking or crawling around in the room. Just one of the many spiritual beliefs and strongholds present in this culture.

4 countries in less than 24 hours

Snow in Amsterdam was a shock to my system this morning, after the muggy sauna that was Bangkok and the slightly less muggy sauna that was Phnom Penh. I'm back in Athens now, where the temperature is somewhat normal, and needless to say, I'm completely freezing.

So where to begin? I have two weeks of pictures to show you. If you are my friend on facebook, you could just go look at the album I posted earlier today. That will knock off about 60 of them for you. For the rest of you, and for the rest of the rest of you, because I know you will keep coming back even if you've already seen the photos, I will post a little each day this week. We can't get overwhelmed right off the bat.

Today's theme is tourism. NOT sex tourism; I'm sure we will get to that. Along with the ministry stuff we did - outreach, visiting a variety of established ministries, prayer walks, etc. - we saw quite a bit of Bangkok. They wanted to be sure we saw the good sides as well as the parts we'd be working in. Understandable!

Last Sunday afternoon we set off into the steamy, aromatic city for a bit of a tour with Darrell, Charity's dad, who was the lone male in our group of 9-12 women (depending on the day/activity). We took the water taxi up the river. Here are some of the girls on the team, wishing the breeze was a little stronger on the river:

Our first stop was the palace and...er...really big wats (a wat is a temple). They were pretty incredible to look at, actually:Once inside the grounds, we could take off our shoes and step into a special temple with hundreds of worshipers to get a look at the Emerald Buddha. Photography was strictly forbidden. I have become pretty good at discreet photo-taking. Afterward I felt guilty and disrespectful.
The Great Palace:
One of the guards; not quite holding still:
Nearby (which is not quite as "nearby" when it is 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity and you are walking, with long pants and sleeved shirts and closed-toed shoes because that is proper temple attire), is a very large Reclining Buddha. He fills up the temple, and is so large that it's really difficult to get a clear view of the whole thing:
Worshippers can give offerings by putting a coin in each of the bowls along the wall:We took a water taxi across the river to the Wat Arun, this huge temple that can be seen down the river...
You can climb it! In Israel last year, my favorite part was climbing around in caves or through tunnels or anything else that involved climbing, crawling, or floating (Dead Sea). So I really liked this temple. Cheap thrills. The stairs were really steep, though; I still get a little tingley when I think about it.

Shirley, who I roomed with, and I on one of the levels:Some of the detail on the temple:
Um, what?

Well, as the title suggests, it's been a long day...I succeeded in emptying the contents of my suitcase onto my bed (except the clothes, which all went straight into the laundry), so now I guess everything else is going back into the suitcase so I can sleep in my bed.

I'm ready to go home.

I think I have experienced some sort of culture confusion these last few days. Two weeks is no time at all, but in the very-short-term mindset, it's plenty of time to start learning your surroundings, directions, obvious culture patterns, etc. After this trip, I will return not to my own culture but another different one (Greece, doy). I was learning that one, now I've been in this one - can't remember parts of that one at the moment. And Voula is going to kill me; I haven't studied Greek once.

I have told a couple people that if I had come to Bangkok nine months earlier, it's quite possible that I could have ended up in Thailand instead of Greece. The culture is so much different (something about a SE Asian culture vs. a European culture seems so foreign to me), and the weather is insane (permanent sweating, ick), but the ministry is already thriving and there is already community in Bangkok. I'd definitely like to come back. I have a feeling my involvement with NightLight is not finished. (Don't freak out - I'm confident Greece is where I'm supposed to be for now.) :)

It's been so interesting to me to compare the sex industry in Athens vs. Bangkok. I know, it's weird that I think about these things! But really, in Athens it's still kind of a back alley, seedy side street thing. Sure, they may have trafficked in close to 60,000 more women in 2004 for the Olympics to meet the need of the huge tourist influx (shocking but true). But you don't go to Athens for sex. You go for the Acropolis, Greek food, and all the other amazing things to do in Greece. Sure, it's easy to find, for those who want it. But in Bangkok, the sex industry IS the tourist attraction. It is the reason the "tourists" come. It's just a totally different mindset. The popular streets, the famous areas, are the ones with the bars and the girls. It's the so-called "sex capital of the world." Lovely reputation.

Anyway, I'm in Phnom Penh now. Not my favorite. I'm really eager to go home tomorrow. It's been a long two weeks. Really good, but long.