Happy Foot

Sometimes I have experiences that I enjoy so much that I am hesitant to describe or dissect, but here it goes...Happy Foot. Today was a rough day. Got to bed about 1:30 last night woke up at 5. We're super busy getting ready for company, a trip, and I wanted to finish some work things before the end of the day. But enought about that...

Let's just say, after typing for about 12 hours today and finishing up two long documents, I was ready for Happy Foot. Hong Kong has developed a wonderful obsession with foot massage which is so perfectly matched to the environment, I can hardly believe it. For US$22, you can get an hour long foot massage (which includes the calves, knees, and shoulders). Although not private, the experience is superbly relaxing and with little invasion of "private space."

Tonight was my third time going to Happy Foot. The first time I only tipped US$3 and felt stingy. The second time I tipped US$8 and felt too generous. On my visit tonight, I think this was confirmed. I arrived to find a large group of expat ladies exiting. It was a circus. After a few minutes of waiting I reached the counter and was told to wait a few more minutes. But, before I knew it, my previous foot masseur (or happy footist?) came from no where and had claimed me. I was so surprised as I don't know that I've ever actually noticing a tip "paying off."

Laying back in the big comfy chair, it's actually hard not to laugh sometimes, but not because of the sensative touch to the foot, but rather the people. People getting massages have such funny expressions. There will be business men in full suit, pants rolled up, just zonked and relaxing. I saw this especially at lunch time. But tonight, my amusement came from a man in his thirties. Tall and lanky, I looked over to see him seemingly passed out and cuddling two foot dolls. Yes, this grown man was coddling these life-size foot display figures like a little teddy bear. I lay back and closed my eyes only to hear a song that brought back memories - Celine Dion "My Life Will Go On." Now how can I stay quiet and restful with all of these influences?

It's a strange and pampered world we live in sometimes. Thank you, Eric, for working up the courage to get us to Happy Foot. It's a real island of relaxation in this up and down city.

Soft and Fat

Soft and fat. Descriptors I don't think our most recent visitor was expecting to hear from her fortune teller. Rich and handsome are two adjectives that come to mind as being more classic. But hey, soft and fat her man is supposed to be.

Fortune telling, the spirits, the ancestors around us, and luck are all a part of the traditions and culture of Hong Kong. With a mix of the Chinese traditions, splash of the Western, and unique creations of their own, it seems almost every week brings a new opportunity for exposure. And then there are the stand-bys, fortunetellers and the horoscopes.

I've had my fortune told once now at a local temple -– Man Ho -– by a gentleman that was very kind and used a combination of numerology and other methods I didnÂ’t quite understand to make a prediction that I know already has not come true. I am still holding out hope though that my inability to accurately depict my current situation of living and working explains this failure.

Lara, who stayed with us a few days about a month ago, decided to have her fortune read on what I like to call Fortune Teller Alley. It's an area of the Temple Street Night Market that opens for business about 8pm. The whole market runs for approximately a mile and is a block wide, but on one particular block, all of the fortune tellers have taken up shop. There was little tarot and more hand, face, and numerology readings. If you ask me, they were all pretty shady.



Lara's particular teller was a man in his forties to fifties. He was nice enough but seemed only to know a few key words of English that he kept repeating over and over either to stretch time out or to add emphasis. Perhaps the strangest thing about his booth though, was his oddly purposeless side kick. I assumed he was a passing customer when we first entered, but when Lara came to an agreed upon price and commenced the reading, he stood transfixed to the left of the teller, mouth half open, and just a little too close to me for my comfort. He was nice enough, but strange people that hang around and listen to our futures donÂ’t make me comfortable. I never thought IÂ’d see a cluster of fortune tellers, but weÂ’ve got one here in good old HK.

I get my daily dose of prediction and advice from the South China Morning Post. It carries both western horoscopes and similar Chinese predictions based off of the year you were born. What I just notice for the first time today is that the person that actually supplies the Chinese horoscopes appears to be a Catholic priest. I canÂ’t say for sure, but his picture appeared in the paper right next to them and he was wearing a traditional priestly collar and black outfit.

My Cup Boileth Over

Tonight I met a couple of friends for "hot pot." Similar to shabu shabu (Japanese), this is a type of eating that interestingly enough isn't that far away from the Sirloin Stockade of my youth.

I think it works best to work from outside in as I describe the environment. Picture it. A large pot that holds probably 3 gallons of water. Divided in the middle (or two pots - not sure), garlic, ginger, and other flavoring herbs fill its steaming walls. One side is spicy, the other more mild. Directly orbiting of this pot is an enormous lazy susan. It along could hold approximately 10 good sized serving bowls. In roughly Neptune position, our plates sat small and bowl sat dwarfed. And lastly, the "Plutos," our group sat around the perimeter of the table which had been made to fit 10, but we were just 7.

Like a good buffet, hot pot involves lots of random and unique food - food that scares you slightly under normal circumstances but because it comes on a lazy susan, is ordered for the whole of the table, and is small in quantity, you try. None of the things I tried tonight will I be running out to buy in bulk at the Sam's Club anytime soon, but I must say that the steam and smells eminating from the center were enticing and the flavors of the food very fresh.

My favorite things were the fresh meets, shaved wafer thin and brought to the table on platters in little rolled up fashion. Picking your desired flesh, you used chopsticks to take it from the tray and into the boiling water. There it would slowly cook itself into a flavorful bight after about 2 minutes at which time you would pluck it from the water with a ladle and into your bowl. The meets were beef, pork, and lamb. The other items were mushrooms, tofu, tofu skin, a fungi (no one gave me a name), Chinese greens, radish, blood tofu (not my favorite), dumplings, and fish balls. In shabu shabu, rather than leaving the food in the pot to cook, you actually hold the food in the hot water. This was less work for us.

I like hot pot a lot (minus a belligerent customer that came a little too close to our table in his tantrum) but must say that now, three hours later, my stomach is going...blahhhh...bllllah....bbbllahh. I think I might need to do a little training before any marathon sessions.

My Elephant Adventure

Traveling in developing countries can be moralistically confusing sometimes. In this case, we were presented with the opportunity to ride an elephant on the last day of our visit to Thailand. We were traveling with a large tour group, and one of the stops offered optional elephant rides for an additional cost. Knowing that riding an elephant is not something that I would typically do, I decided to jump at the chance. To my surprise, only two of us out of a group larger than 30 did so - myself and a friend we made on the tour - Cynthia.

I had heard before of the plight of the elephant and was generally aware of the poor conditions reported, but since we've returned, I have seen a new story in National Geographic that really chronicles problems with elephants in Thailand specifically. I think most people would have expeted the decision whether to ride to come down to one of saftey, but in the moment and that particular situation, I was not worried about my safety. I was concerned with the elephant guide's large hook used for control and the random use of vegitation for feeding the animals along our route. The elephants of Thailand are in a difficult position. They're essentially unemployed and the only work that can be found is serving tourists like I was. So, what is worse, being the tourist that pays money to ride an elephant or just passing them by. I guess, in hindsite, the best thing that could have been done was to visit some sort of a sanctuary and offer a donation there.

In the moment, and for the moment, I was and am content with my decision. It gave me a perspective that I never would have gotten without riding. I now feel more like a friend to the elephant than I would have felt if I'd passed by and will do my best to be supportive of elephant rights in the future.

Macau - Fireworks Saturday

Two weeks ago today, Eric, Lara, and I went to Macau for the day. Part of the motivation for going to Macau was to watch a fireworks competition that started that night and continues every Saturday through this month. At the end of a day of site seeing, we sat and viewed the fireworks in the night sky.



I was really caught of guard when I looked up while crossing the street and saw a Royals shirt. Looks like they have at least a couple of fans in this part of this world.

What Color is Your Buddha?

Yellow, Pink, Green, Light Green, Orange, Blue, Purple, or Red. No fuscia, lavender, crimson, or jade. The rainbow of colors adopted by Thai Buddhists based upon the day of the week (and in one case time of day) on which an individual is born was assigned hundreds of years ago but is still taken seriously today.

Can’t remember your day of the week? You can calculate yours at:

http://pregnancy.about.com/cs/boyorgirl/l/bldayofweek.htm

The specific assignments are:

Monday Yellow
Tuesday Pink
Wednesday (day) Green
Wednesday (night) Light Green
Thursday Orange
Friday Blue
Saturday Purple
Sunday Red



The king of Thailand was born on Monday and the country shows this by having yellow flags near palaces, on billboards, and most impressively on the King Rama IX Bridge. As a close cousin to Boston’s new Big Dig bridges, the King (an engineer by schooling) designed the basics of this bridge and arranged its construction as a gift to the Thai people on his 72nd birthday. Apparently, every 12th birthday in Buddhism is a special celebration (guessing this is tied to the celestial resetting of the calendar) and the King thought this a great manifestation of his thanks. The bridge has bright yellow cables and sashes. We caught them from a striking water view we had on our final day in Bangkok and driving over the bridge the day before.


The Queen. Her birthday was celebrated during the month before we were traveling.

Eric is green; I’m yellow (in good company); the queen’s is blue. What’s yours?

Saturday’s Private Tour

The floating market

Venturing outside of Bangkok gets slightly more difficult for the self-guided, particularly just over a weekend trip. So, with a 6am wake up call and quick breakfast, we were off in our large but comfortable Toyota van with driver and our tour guide, Wendy.


The view from James Bond's seat

We drove for an hour south of the city before coming to the launching point for our floating market tour. Exiting our vehicle, we took what would be our second of three forms of transportation for the morning, the “James Bond boat.” Apparently since Gold Finger was filmed in Thailand in the 1960’s, one of the traditional Thai boats has become known for its use in the film, at least according to our tour guide. Whatever the name, the boat could fly and gave us perhaps our biggest AH! WE’RE IN THAILAND moment of the weekend. Scooting down the water at about 40 miles an hour for minutes on end, we shot deeply into the wilderness of Thailand. Every few minutes we would have to slow to a near halt and make a turn, as the canals were tight and all the corners hard ninety-degree angles. Eric took some great video from this portion of the trip, but I am not sure how to post it here, so if you’d like to see e-mail me.


You can see the steam in the air.



After a few minutes of what seemed solo boating, we began to fall in line with other boats and it was evident that we, along with half of the tourists in Bangkok, were approaching the floating market. Although touristy now, the floating market in Thailand has a long tradition coming from the days when local farmers and villagers would meet in the morning on their boats to exchange their goods and enjoy freshly made meals. The market that we found had remaining hints of quaint practicality but was beginning to boil over with a shrink-wrapped tourism. Our treasure purchases ended up to be food purchases rather than trinkets. The boats inched along full of people, as temporary lanes of traffic emerged and sellers peddled their goods – all this with the surreal feeling of doing it all while floating. I still have an occasional craving for our first and best purchase – coconut pancakes. Yum, yum, and yeow! These small sweet pancakes came served in a banana leaf and had a hint of coconut milk. The other food we enjoyed was purchased for us by our guide – a pomelo – a fruit, similar to the grapefruit in its tartness but slightly sweeter and also plumper and firmer in its composition. The segments we had came wrapped, clean, and easy to devour.


Cooking from above


The tourist merchandise was set up on the side of the canals for easy pointing and purchase.

Returning from the floating market, our tour made a stop at a handcraft market. Apparently as more and more of the local crafts have become subjugated by factory produced items, someone came up with the idea of bringing local craftsman together in one working location where people could view the traditional production processes and also purchase goods. Although it felt a little forced, we were fascinated to see some of the wood carving action. Many of the pieces were made from teak wood (large murals that took between half a year and a year for two men to complete) and impressively massive chairs made from entire stumps and roots of local trees. We only purchased a couple of small coconut bowls but there was a wide variety of ready to ship handicrafts that were tempting.


The detail on these carvings was amazing.


A big chair


Temple of Ramma IV

Our last stop for the day with the guide was at the Temple of Ramma IV. It plays host to the tallest chedi in Thailand and may have been my favorite of the temples that we saw. I don’t know what it was about it, perhaps it was just having a really good guide with us that could explain everything, but it was fascinating. The bell-like shape on the horizon was just the beginning of its splendor. Inside the chedi that was visible was another older chedi, completely encased but still standing. There was a functioning Buddhist school on site and the most complete selection of the different Buddha poses that are meaningful for the Thais that I saw. Our guide gave a really good explanation that I think I will expand up for my next post.


A close-up of the chedi.


The open-air school room at the temple.

From there, it was back to Bangkok, a long drive with good traffic, and a really long drive on the day we went. It was interesting though to see great fields of salt being harvested for export and also some small manufacturing plants. It was also nice to have the time to ask our guide all of our accumulated questions from the previous day.