Jumpin' Jack Flash

Much of the non-beach coast in Busan is littered with these giant concrete jacks, an attempt to subdue the waves that try to come over the walkways.

There are also public outdoor fitness stations which frequently have giant white hula hoops. This one looks so sad.

let's get physical

A great thing about my apartment is that I can walk two blocks and then catch a 30-minute, 1800-won ($1.50?) bus to Busan. I did this on Friday night, and met up with Autumn (who is another 30 minutes on a subway, but still.) It had been, like, over a month since we'd seen each other.

A great thing about Autumn's apartment is that it's a short walk from this:


Autumn showed me around her corner of Busan. There were chrome grapes.


And down at the south end of Gwangalli beach, there is a fitness area with the usual fitness area things.




And last of all and best of all, there was a selection of the giantest, awesomest hula hoops ever. They HURT.

i want a hula hoop

Banteay Samré is my other favorite temple, besides Preah Khan. I like it because it's also fairly quiet, and very complete.



The doorways are short, though.




Even when collapsed into the double small hoops, it's a challenge to carry this sucker up and down the narrow temple stairs!


So we took the hula hoop out into the courtyard, and I finally have video!

Here's Autumn, being fantastic


And me, developing fantasticness, very slowly


And that was all. Cambodia offered great food, wine, shopping and massages in addition to the temples. The next day we spent a good fourteen hours on buses and standing in line at immigration before we reached Ban Phe. It was 11:30 at night on the 4th of July, and we remembered just in time to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" with Christian, who also existed. I'm sure that the other guests at my guesthouse appreciated it.

no one knows

On day two of temple-hopping in Cambodia, Autumn and I styled entirely new outfits with scarves from the market.

We visited Pre Rup, a temple mountain with ridiculous steps.





And then we hula hooped at Preah Khan (this is a lot of the same stuff, isn't it?) Preah Khan was my favorite temple when I visited Cambodia in October, and I'm glad that it was one of Autumn's favorites, too. It's sprawling and has giant tree roots growing over it, like Ta Prohm, but it has far fewer visitors. It's quiet and serene and the grassy courtyards were fluttering with hundreds of little yellow butterflies. The butterflies were surreal, but not something we could capture on film.





There are other, less irreverent reasons to visit ancient temples, besides hula hooping and taking pictures of one another. These are not much fun to blog about.



Besides, Autumn swung on a vine!


And this!


Curiouser and curiouser...


Preah Khan is arranged in a very deliberate cruciform layout, with doorways getting smaller and smaller as one approaches the inner sanctuary from any direction. This building (the one I'm hugging) makes me happy because it's so random. Off to the side but within the walls of the temple, it's a two-story structure with big round columns. Nobody knows what it was for.

hey, lady

After wandering around Angkor Wat, Autumn and I maneuvered our way past the chorus of "Laydee, you buy cold water/new dress/new scarf/fan/lunch/bracelets/etc." and visited Angkor Thom. The saleswomen are much like zombies. Slow moving, but when one sees you and moans, "Laydee..." it alerts all the others to your presence and you have a hoard of women and children trying to sell you things.

Angkor Thom is a big walled city, and home to one of the most famous temples here outside of Angkor Wat: The Bayon. The Bayon gives the general impression of a pile of rubble from a distance.



As you climb up into the temple, you notice the faces that adorn each tower. And the girls posing in window frames



and giving Eskimo kisses to ancient kings.



And then we fell in the mud!





It was tricksy mud, made to look like solid ground. We went down within the same fraction of a second, but kept going, up the steep steps of the royal palace.



And to Ta Prohm, where hula hooping happened



and America's Next Top Model posing happened.





A good day.


I'll write about the rest of our trip for next week.

two of us riding nowhere

Autumn and I traveled to Cambodia together on June 30 (my blog is far behind--when this entry posts I will be in Indonesia.) It was great.

We took a minibus to the border at Aranyaprathet, and switched to a big bus on the Cambodian side.



It was raining in Cambodia.



We arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia in the evening and after checking into our guesthouse we went down to the wonderful night market where we got out first doses of "Laydee! You buy...?" (this chorus would haunt us for the rest of the trip.) We bought silk scarves with which to style ourselves the following day.

Our third mode of transportation is the Cambodian tuk-tuk, which differs from a Thai or Lao tuk-tuk because it is a removable carriage hitched to the back of a motorbike. Very colonial.





Our fourth mode of transportation on the way to Angkor Wat was not a decorated pony. Autumn made friends with it:



I did not make friends with the pony.



But that is my collapsible hula hoop on my shoulder! At Angkor Wat!





When I visited with Elle and Jamie in October, the central tower was closed for renovation, but this time it wasn't.



We admired the view, and then hula hooped in the courtyard.





Since there are so many pictures, I will continue with the rest of our first day (Angkor Thom including the Bayon, and Ta Prohm!) tomorrow.

right round

I got to Ban Phe from Krabi on a Saturday, and spent the weekend on the island with Autumn and some other TEFLers. There was a big party at Sunrise Bar for someone's birthday, but before it got too busy I practiced my hula-hooping.



My travel hoop folds into itself to make two small circles. I took it with me on my travels after Ban Phe. I can say I've hooped in bus stations and in a mangrove forest, but I can't do most of Autumn's tricks yet.



Later in the evening, there was a highly organized pillow fight competition. I don't have any pictures of myself fighting, but mostly it was like this, until somebody's stool gave out.



The winner of the competition happened to be the boyfriend of the woman who organized it. Hmm...

Goodbye, blue sky

After a long week of observing TEFL students in the morning and teaching kids in the evening, I'm finished. On my last day, Lucky and Bruce invited me to their house for a wonderful vegetarian feast just for me. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

My last day was Ryan's last day too, and the staff let me take his very serious, sad, pensive picture from the "Pictures of People Who Work Here" board. I gave some thought to how to use this wonderful resource, and came up with these:



Thanks to Bert's mad security-guard skills, I was able to tape them up in the house of Ryan (and Autumn, and Bert, and Christian) as a surprise. He had found three out of eight when I went over later for a last-night-in-Ban-Phe hula hooping session with Autumn.

Today I get my last paycheck today and then it's off to Laos for a new adventure. I won't have the burden luxury of constant Internet access, so don't expect many pictures or blog entries. Kinda like last time I was an unemployed vagabond. I did schedule a couple of entries for later this week, but those are old news.

Spin me

There are people in the world who take Hula Hooping seriously enough to shell out some $50 or so for a fold-up travel Hula Hoop to take with them on adventures.

These people develop *ridiculous* bruises on their hips, and then switch to hands and develop *ridiculous* bruises on their hands and just push through the pain because there aren't many body parts for a novice hooper, and I don't particularly want to explain a new crop of ridiculous neck bruises.

In case you didn't catch it, I am one of those people.

Unfortunately, I do not have pictures. But I will!

Instead, here is a video of a ridiculously awesome hooper on Youtube. Be amazed!

Shawty fire burning on the dance floor

I got some cookies in the mail from my Grandparents today and it made me happpyyy!

But it also reminded me to tell all y'all that I'm leaving Ban Phe at the end of this month to travel around for a bit. I will come back probably before I go on to my next adventure, but... you probably shouldn't mail me anything because I may not receive it for a few months.

Anyway. Bert recently started to DJ at Sunrise Bar on the island. Here he is looking cool, as usual.



Songkran weekend was very laid-back, due to Songkran and due to the weather, so Autumn entertained us by giving hula hoop lessons.

Now Autumn has a collapsible travel hula hoop, and when I learned this I thought that it was very silly. It is a little ridiculous that someone, apparently, takes hula hooping seriously enough to make a collapsible travel hoop. Right? When I first used Autumn's hoop, though, I was converted. It's much bigger and heavier than those little things I played with as a kid. It stays up indefinitely, and Autumn can do some neat tricks with it.



And kids kinda love it.