6am and I’m still awake…

This is officially the worst sleepless night I have had yet.  Too bad I can’t get my mind around the new writing I want to do or I could be almost done by now.  What have I done so far tonight…

• Drove to the other end of the city to get my favorite Spicy Green Onion Pancake with Egg only to find out the stand is not there anymore and has been replaced by yet another BBQ corn stand (there are already three in the market)
• Stopped at a different market on the way home for the best dumplings in Taipei… they are just a little smaller than tennis balls.  I should have taken a picture.  Five of them fills me up.  No wonder there is a line-up all night for them.
• Found Weeds Season 5 online and have now made it through eight of the thirteen episodes, with a break in the middle to watch this week’s edition of WWE Smackdown
• Given eye drops to a street cat who does not like eye drops
• Played my WWE RAW vs Smackdown game until the battery died
• Talked to my father on Skype and introduced Mouthy to the wonders of online chatting
• Organized my book and DVD shelves… then decided I didn’t like it and put everything back… and now I still don’t like it.
• Listened to the monks at the temple in the mountain by my house ring the bell/gong at 5am like they always do
• Watch the night turn into day

So, what do I do now?  I’m getting tired, but there is something I haven’t done in a long time and I think maybe… just maybe I can break my rule and go for it.  It’s been more than five years since I have eaten anything from McDonalds.  I still refuse to eat anything of theirs… but I do remember loving their hotcakes.  It’s been so long… and I lost weight on the vacation… so one morning of indulging won’t hurt… much.

I’m not sure what time McDonald’s begins breakfast here… probably six or seven… I’ll go safe and walk over at seven.  If I fall asleep before, then no big loss.  But I do still have more Weeds to watch, and I don’t feel any urgent need for sleep right now. 

I wonder if the hotcakes taste different in Taiwan???

Back to Kbal Spean again
Out where the rocks look like frogs
If you go off of the track
A landmine will knock you on your back
Back in Kbal Spean again…

There are only a few places I have visited where I have said “I am going to come back here no matter what.”  One of the main ones is Kbal Spean in Cambodia.  It’s the small area pretty far out from Angkor Watt that has no temple and is all carvings in the rocks, in the actual riverbed and in the coolest waterfall around.  It was probably the one main place I was looking forward to going back to when we booked the trip to Cambodia.

It may not look like much in the pictures, but it’s just so cool up there.  A good and bad thing now is the road to Kbal Spean is now paved, so more people can go and it takes a little less time than riding on a dirt road.  Of course, that means more people actually go, unlike last year where I was there with no one around. 

All the temples of Cambodia are amazing, but there were three specific reasons to go to Kbal Spean…

1.  The Frog…  The first time I actually didn’t even notice the rock I was standing beside was this famous frog.  I looked and looked for it last year, but I guess it was just to obvious for me to notice it.  This year I went right for it and the boys (of course) got into the picture. 

Maybe I was confused by the fact that the frog actually looks more like Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… only 900 years older.

2. Stir-fried Pineapple Chicken from the Flying Coconut… my favorite meal in Cambodia, both trips… you just can’t beat a little hut on the side of a mountain which serves up the freshest pineapple with chicken (and a little pork we noticed) with one of the biggest coconuts on the side for a drink…

Eva had to pee three times after drinking the whole coconut!

3.  The Waterfall… I just love this waterfall.  I dipped my head into it last year, but I knew I wanted to go all out this year.  There is something cool about the water as it comes down the stream, over carvings of reclined Vishnu’s, winding down a riverbed of Lingas, then past the Cambodian Mutant Ninja Frog until it drops over the edge for people to see.  Or in my case, get really wet on a really hot day…

Up close and personal with the waters of Kbal Spean…



The shot of me directly in the waterfall didn’t come out, plus I forgot to tell Eva what I was doing so she wasn’t ready to take a series of shots of me going through the waterfall.  I’m serious if I say the one thing in all of Cambodia I wanted to do was stand in the waters of that waterfall again.  It felt better than I can even explain.

Just in case you haven’t seen them, here are a few shots of the carvings around and in the waters of Kbal Spean…






You can’t go over the waterfall, but someone did decide he wanted to…



I travel with idiots!!!
(three of them this time!)

Mouthy returned to me after a long day of traveling to the other side of Taipei to see the vet and have her eye looked at.  They removed the stitches in the eye so now she can see out of both, but the cone has to stay on and they taped up her front claws so she can’t accidentally scratch her eye around the cone.  She looks happier to have the eye opened, but more angry about the paw tape.  I’m sure she’ll get the tape off by herself in a few days.

The eye is very cloudy and you can still see the damage to it, but the vet said she looks better than her other visits.  I feel so bad for her… we took her off the street in May and expected to take her back after two weeks or so.  It’s been almost four months that she has had to go back and forth from the shelter to the vets.  She’s still a little depressed, but she has a lot more room here to move and play… which she actually does now.  She’s been slowly batting the ping pong balls around the balcony which is great.  I still don’t know if she will go back to her crew on the street in a month or so or if we will be trying to get her in a home.  I still don’t know which is best.

The pics are before the vet visit today.  She is sleeping off her long day and the drugs they gave her.  I’m sure she’ll be ready for her next photo shoot tomorrow!

If you know the street cats I take care of from past posts, Mouthy is one of Toughy’s kittens from her last batch of kittens she had prior to a big typhoon last Summer.  Mouhty was the only one still around after the typhoon.  Crazy used to be part of the group as well, and with the way Mouthy and Crazy both act, and the black and white markings on Mouthy, there is a chance that she and Crazy are actually sisters.  I’m not sure since Toughy always had three kittens with her (Mouthy and two orange and white kittens) and Crazy kept to the outskirts of the litter, staying with Mamacat more.  I don’t know, but I do give Toughy updates on her baby whenever I see her…

Toughy and Crazy… all part of the Mouthy family!!!

So this is what it feels like…

It’s like a cloud of depression so think that you can feel it when you move your hand forward to take a drink of juice… but there is no reason for the feeling.  You don’t want to move or do anything, but your body twitches every second you are not doing something… so your mind and body battle for the upper hand.  You feel rundown at the same time as you are restless, beat up at the same time as over-rested and angry for the smallest, slightest little thing.  Your temper can snap like a toothpick holding up a skyscraper at the same time as emotions run wild with tears hiding behind a thin veil in the corner of your eyes.

You can’t sleep…

Although emotions are on high, others are low.  Emotions are heightened while passion is snuffed out.  The need to strike has replaced the need for touch.  You crave closeness but are repulsed by the feeling of it.  Everything seems sped up at times, then slowed down, just ever so slightly that you are positive that only you can see the blades of the fan as it runs on high to cool you off as you sweat out the heat that builds in your body as the seconds tick by,

You can not sleep…

People don’t seem to understand you, as if you are speaking to them from inside a tank of water and they are just lip reading.  You never really feel hungry, but you eat small amounts all the time, never finishing anything, but always eating it.  You drink… and drink… and drink some more to try and get rid of the feeling of dryness on your tongue, and your kidneys hurt as the fluids flow from top to bottom and…

You just can not get to sleep…


I just took the ninth of the ten Anti-Malaria pills I had to take before, during and after my visit to India.   It took about two hours for the side effects to finally kick in and they will last until about mid-day next Monday, giving me less than a 24 hour window without much in the way of side effects before I take the next.  People keep wondering why I don’t want to take these pills… because this is not a fun way to be…

And… I JUST CAN’T SLEEP!!!

 

This made my day after everything else pissed me off…

Of all the places we visited in India, Udaipur and Rishikesh were our two favorites… maybe because they both had monkeys!!!  Well, it had to do with a lot of stuff (like the other places completely wearing us down), but if (and that’s a very BIG IF) I do go back to India for another vacation, Udaipur and Rishikesh are top of the list.  The monkeys will show you why…

At the top of the mountain at the Monsoon Palace, and looking up from the wildlife reserve below…

Monsoon Palace Monkeys (above and below)…

We met this guy outside the front entrance to the Monsoon Castle, we named him India Elmo since he looks a lot like the little guy we adopted out to a permanent home the day before leaving for India…

In Cambodia you can find places playing The Killing Fields and Tomb Raider every night.
In Udaipur, they only have one film on the menu…



I had an idea for a new Bond movie… Octopussy 2 – The Attack of DOMOPUSSY…



I have tonnes of pics and stories from Rishikesh which I am getting to this weekend I hope.  The Ganges, the best (and cheapest) samosas in India, street-side sugar cookies and The Beatles…

Jai Guru Dev… Ohm

Day Three of the temples of Angkor and we had our driver (much to his dismay) head back into the main temple area for us to hit temples that we didn’t see the first two days (as well as ones I missed the first time I visited).  Outside the East Gates of Angkor Thom are two, very small, twin temples Thommanon and Chao Say Tevoda which are overlooked by a lot of visitors.  They are almost identical, although built in different periods, and the fact that Thommanon was rebuilt in the 1960′s while Tevoda was left untouched.  The similarities and differences make visiting the two really a cool experience.

I had finally reached the end of my 1GB memory card with the first video in Thommanon and then we got stuck in Tevoda while breaking in the new memory card…

We saw some really cool, smaller temples on the third day that most people skip.  The rain did cause some problems as I ended up sliding down a set of stairs, hitting my back and shoulder… then I slammed my head off a low doorway slipping on wet rock… and I broke through a little wooden walkway (all three on our return to different parts of Angkor Thom) cutting my leg.  We were wet, tired and I was very sore by the time we finished up in Angkor Thom. 

I really liked the twin temples of Thommanon and Tevoda.  I think the rainstorm added to it as it really showed the difference between a restored and a brokedown temple.  The bright sun at the restored temple to show off the architecture and the rain pouring in and dripping through the cracks of the unrestored one helped show the age…

Domo decided to get a little up close and personal with one of the carvings…

Running out of videos (finally)… and almost though about half of the pictures.  Need to start posting India stuff while I edit Vietnam and Thailand.  Cambodia is one of my favorite places, so I guess you have to suffer through more of that in the meantime. 

Our meal on the final night of Cambodia… Chicken and Cashew Stirfry for me, Fish Amok (very Cambodian meal) for Eva, and a little friend who seemed to know out  of the entire restaurant, I would be the one who would share with him…

More later (I hope)…

I know I have a bunch of vacation photos and videos to get up on here, but today I just don’t feel like it.  I’m excited and a little freaked out with the two things I brought home today with me. 

First… I took a bunch of books to Simon, the local used book guy on Sunday but he didn’t have much I wanted to read in stock at the restaurant that sells his stuff.  Luckily I asked him if he had anything by a few authors, and they just happen to be the ones he has a lot of at his house.  Since he doesn’t have a real shop here, he can only fill the shelves with some of what he has, and, just like me, he likes to have a lot of the good stuff at his house.  So, he gave me the directions to his place (which is in the middle of nowhere) and I got to attack the shelves.  It’s a good thing I only brought a little money with me (on top of the credit he gave me for the other novels) or I would have come home with way too much.  Oh… wait… I think I already did!

New books cost a fortune in Taiwan so if you can get them from Simon, it’s a much better deal.  I’m hooked on Gabriel Garcia Marquez and wanted more, but even his novellas are expensive.  I did pick up two of his books in India, since they are cheap there, but didn’t want to lug too many books around with me which we were traveling.  When I got back I was kicking myself for not buying them, but then along came Simon. 

I also wanted to read some more Philip K. Dick, and again, he had more than enough for even the hardest to please Sci-Fi fan (which I am not).  So… what did I get?  Well…

The I want to read and will take it next time stack I made is about ten times the length of that list.  So much to read and so many authors I have wanted to read, or have read and want to read more of.  I put back Neil Gaimen for the Houellebecq book as Simon guaranteed I will want to keep it in my collection after reading it and not want to give it away.  He knows his books and he usually gives me stuff I really like, so I have to trust him on this one. 

The second thing I came home with tonight… Mouthy. 

If you remember, Mouthy was the cat who took six months to catch at the bridge, who then got really sick.  Well, we took her in for treatment about the middle of May with Baby, and Baby got to go back a few weeks later.  Mouthy, until today, was still in a cage at the holding center with a very bad eye.  We thought that her eye was just dripping from the cold, but it was actually cut pretty deep, maybe by herself while she was sick.  She had drops and was getting better just before I left, but she got scratched again and now it’s worse. 

She visited the vet today and her eye has now been sewn shut in order to let it heal.  She also has a cone on her neck so she can’t get at it.  I just couldn’t leave here there… she recognized me right away, even after all this time, and I know she trusts me more than most people since I have been visiting and feeding her since she was a kitten, so she’s here on the balcony where Elmo lived for a while.  She’s already a little more active than Elmo, but she is a street cat and she is trying to figure out if she is safe here or not. 

I want to see her go to a permanent home after she heals up, but I don’t now if it is best.  She’s not wild, but she’s not a housecat either.  I’m sure she would be fine either way, but I don’t know what is best.  She’s been off the street for over three months now and more used to people.  A home would give her a safer, longer life, but she is still wild at heart and maybe going back to her crew would be better for her.  I don’t know… she’s only been here a few hours and I am already wrestling with what could and should be done with her.  I’m also trying to make sure she can’t get the screens out of the windows and escape from the balcony.  It’s a long way down for my little conehead.

Have I mentioned the wonderful anti-malaria pills they gave me for going to Southeast Asia?  You have to take them for two weeks before and four weeks after being in the infected areas.  Sounds good to make sure that you are okay, but the side effects of these pills makes me wish I just got malaria and dealt with that instead.  I can just put a check beside almost every side effect listed for ‘got it’ and compare with others.  I took another one tonight which means tomorrow is going to be one hell of a day.  I wish I could call in ‘over-medicated’, but that won’t work.  The worst thing about the pills though… I didn’t get bit by a mosquito.  Not even once!  they don’t bite me anymore.  I stopped getting mosquito bites about two years back, so really, do I need these side effects just to be safe?

Okay, gonna go check on Mouthy, read a little of one of my new books and fall asleep before the side effects kick in.  I just hope Mouthy doesn’t live up to her name the whole night long… she has to sleep sometime.  Doesn’t she…

This is one of the reasons I wanted to go back to Cambodia.  On my first visit I missed some things.  I went to Preah Khan last time and made the mistake of accepting a local person’s offer of a tour of the temple.  He was dressed like a guard and offered his services so I would see and understand the temple more.  The only problem is he rushed me through the temple and I didn’t even know which way was what when we were done and he was asking me for money.  This time was different.

By the end of the second day our driver really wanted to just get home, but we wanted to get as many temples in as we could.  The drivers here are great, but they really don’t expect a person to do the full day without wanting to go back.  We started out early and went until we had to leave… you can’t stay in the temple areas once the sun has set.  We told him we wanted to do Preah Khan, which is one of the three largest temples in Angkor, and he dropped us at the perfect time.  While everyone else (and I mean EVERYONE) headed to a small hilltop temple to watch the sun begin to set over Angkor Watt, we had Preah Khan all to ourselves.

I didn’t even realize when I did the video that I was talking quieter than I usually do, but it was just so quiet and peaceful there that it just seemed right to speak a little lower… kind of like a library.  I found the map below online and it is perfect as it shows the two spots where we shot the videos, the first being on the High Terrace and the second in the Central Sanctuary.  If I had any battery left I would have done a third video in the Hall of Dancers (which on the map is where is says ‘Courtyard’)… but I can alway do that on the next visit.

Preah Khan is one of my favorites (I say that about most of the temples though).  It has many fallen down parts and is like a maze to get through even though it has a very basic North/South – East/West design.  There is so much to see there and little corners to go around and dead ends to come across I’m sure you could visit many times nad the temple would be new and different each time. 

So here we are… Preah Khan…

Directly across from the High Terrace you can see a two-level structure which was rare in those temples.  It was actually a library in it’s time, very close to the swimming hole.  I know I seem a little obsessed with the libraries at the temples, but I love that these grand temples were created, and they always made a separate structure, within the grounds but separate from the temple itself for the library. 

The great thing about this trip was going back to places I’d been before like Angkor Watt, Kbal Spean and Ta Phrom… seeing new temples I missed the first time like Thommanon, Prasat Kravan and Banteay Samre… and getting to see a temple like Preah Khan all over again in a different way.  Instead of the sounds of people all you could hear was the jungle.  Birds, monkeys and other creatures as well as the wind through the trees made it the perfect setting at the perfect time of day to have visited the temple.  We were tired by the end of Day Two, but we were both amazed at the perfect setting we had for visiting Preah Khan.

 
The boys may have had a little too much fun at Preah Khan…

A little dancing outside the Hall of Dancers…

Still working through the videos and pictures at the same time as a new project I really wish I had a lot more time for.  Oh… just in case you are wondering why the line ‘Welcome to the Library’ keeping coming up in my videos, we watched this video just before leaving on vacation and Eva can’t get it out of her head…

Phimeanakas Strikes Back…

Last year I climbed Phimeanakas, a very steep and somewhat dangerous set of steps, to find out at the top their was a set of wooden steps built around the back for people to climb up safely.  I was excited to go back this year and see the temple again as it is one of my favorites mainly because I was so clueless when I was there the last time.  This time I got there and something changed…

(I’m putting on the first two videos from last year so you can see the whole story)