Skip the line

At the airport in Amman, Jordan, Josh went to go use the bathroom while I waited at the gate.  He came back a minute later and said, "There was a big line.  I didn't want to wait."

I said, "Did you check the urinals?"

He said, "The line isn't for the urinals?"

I said, "When I went earlier, the line was only for the stalls."

Lo and behold, he went back to the bathroom and confirmed that all urinals were free and open, and the line was only for the stalls.  Was everyone doing number two?  Nah.

This is something I should have expected, having grown up in a Muslim culture: men sit down to pee.  We really are in the Middle East now.  Exciting!

The Hungary Games

It turns out that Budapest's neighborhoods are numbered districts.  For example, we were staying in District VI.  District VII has a lot of abandoned buildings turned into pubs and District VIII has a lot of students.  Does each district pay tribute to the capital?  If so, we didn't notice.  We were too busy playing Budapest's games.

We did the cheesy-but-awesome game of Íjászat (Magyar word for archery).  Up on the heights of Gellért Hill in District I, a bit past the soviet liberation statue and the citadel, a tunic-clad dude awaits to teach you how to shoot plastic arrows at bales of hay.  My first shot was the best - the others tended to go too high.  But now I can defend myself in style.

The buildings in District V are not allowed to be higher than the cathedral of Szent István (St. Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary).  So it affords an excellent view when you climb up to the top of the dome.  Note the Hungarian Parliament building to the left of Josh's head.  We went with our Estonian friend Uku who has lived in Budapest for several years but had never been up here.  The part of this that felt like a game was crawling through the rickety staircases through the double dome (Josh says doubling is pretty common with domes - I had no idea!) so that we were in the space between the dome you see from the outside and the dome you see from the inside.  It felt like being somewhere secret.

And of course, we played a room escape game, which are a specialty in Budapest.  We went with our new friend Cléber to an address given to us over email, and rang doorbell number 10 at exactly 7:30 pm.  Once we were in the right apartment, the door locked behind us and we had to solve puzzles and clues to get back out.  We had exactly one hour and very little idea where to begin.  The hair dryer here and the postage stamps were essential.  The puzzles also involved wrenches, a magnet, lots of antique locks and keys, a toy train, and golf balls.  It was awesome, especially because we beat the game in 58 minutes, right in the nick of time.  As we were leaving, the staff told us that only 30℅ of the players figure it out.

We went to Margit Island in the middle of the Danube (district unknown) and witnessed many many games.  Frisbee and bocce yes, but also some inexplicable variants.  English-speaking men were playing something involving beer bottles and sticks.  And a massive group of Thai-speaking men and women were playing a game with a handkerchief in a tree.  We played none of these, but were stumped by the puzzle of Margit Island's poultry.  This chicken: How did it get so fluffy?

We spent a full nine days in Budapest and it was worth every minute!  They have found ways to turn an old and serious looking Hapsburg capital into a fun and relaxed city.  Our next stop will take us north, across the Baltic sea from Hungary's distant linguistic cousin, Finland.  Sweden, here we come!

A mountain Too sacred

In the city of Osh, in the country of Kyrgyzstan, on the night of March 8, in an otherwise nondescript cafe, dance music poured out of the front door.  It drew me in, weary as I was of eating in quiet and lonely teahouses.  That is how we ended up stomping to a Kyrgyz remix of Gangnam Style, with hooting teenagers forming a circle around us.  The occasion?  A national holiday celebrated throughout Central Asia, coinciding with International Women's Day.  We had been seeing cheesy TV commercials leading up to this holiday, but did not expect that people would celebrate it so heartily!

But Kyrgyzstan is full of surprises.  Crossing the border by land from Uzbekistan, the first things we noticed were 1) dogs, 2) mountains, 3) people who look a fair bit more east Asian than their Uzbek neighbors.  Tables have soy sauce, all signs are in Cyrillic, and the air is colder.  In fact, the morning after the dancing, we awoke to a snow-covered valley.  The local hill was cloaked in white clouds and it felt like we were thousands of feet higher than we actually were. 

This hill is awesome by the way, and totally worth a visit.  Called "Suleiman Too," it is the "best preserved example of a sacred mountain in Central Asia" according to UNESCO.  I think this lady concurs.

She is sliding down the rock, we're told by a local, because it has healing powers.  The really plump people were especially fantastic to watch, because they slid so smoothly.  Elsewhere on the mountain, people were sticking their arms into holes in the rock, squatting and praying in tiny caves, and exercising.  At the peak, there is a little building with a dome.  Inside the building this dude can tell you all about how the prophet Soloman prayed on this very spot (and as evidence, there are well worn, knee-sized depressions in the stone floor), and how later Babar Shah of Moghul fame built a dome on top of it.  The dude cannot tell you this in English, but his gestures work excellently.  Plus he has a great Kyrgyz hat.

This hat, called an Ak Kalpak, is not a gimmick like some other "traditional costumes" you might see on sale in tourist areas.  People actually wear it.  We saw men and boys were wearing it all over town.  It is probably their version of what a cowboy hat is in America; folksy, stylish, and masculine. 

Our stay with Central Asia's Turkic people winding down, we are excited to hit up their relatives in the Mediterranean. See you in Turkey!

Procession

One of the coolest things we did in Myanmar happened on the last night we were there.  While heading down to Chinatown for the night market, we heard music coming from a nearby alley.  We looked down the length of it and saw a stage set up at the far end.  Thinking it may be a concert, we walked in for a closer look.  A short way in, we reached a point past which people were taking off their shoes.  Sacred event space?  Intriguing.  That day was a national holiday, Union Day, so it was probably a public event with Buddhist backing, or vice versa. 

We took off our shoes and walked further in.  The street was covered in woven sitting mats with a central red aisle for walking.  On both sides of the aisle, people were seated in clusters and holding pages covered in Burmese script.  We walked and walked past about four sets of mini screens and loudspeakers, and maybe two hundred sitting folks, until we got close enough to the stage to see what it was.  A big golden throne, in front of a splendid backdrop depicting what seemed like paradise to me.  The throne was empty though. 

We sat down on the mats and took our places among the people.  Soon, a man came over and handed us each a plastic bag with a bottle of water, a juice bottle, and a baked item.  It felt like kindergarten snack time.  People around us were looking at us and smiling.  Some dude walking around with a big looking camera even got us to pause for a photo, maybe for a newspaper.  Then, the music changed.  It went from being instrumental and recorded, to being a live, single voice chanting.  The chant was slow, sounded nasally and female, and was in Pali I think.  People shifted their posture so they were now sitting facing the aisle rather than the stage.  Some had their hands in their laps, looking down, and some were looking up with their hands pressed together at their chest.  We turned to face the aisle as well. 

A bell started ringing, about one chime every ten seconds.  Then we saw from the same direction we had come, a procession.  In front were two men carrying a bell shaped gong between them.  In the back was a man holding a golden parasol.  And in the center of the procession, under the parasol, an old monk.  As the monk walked past, people on both sides of the aisle bent and touched their foreheads to the ground over and over.  When he came by us, it was very difficult not to bow.  The monk finally reached the stage and sat down in the golden throne.  The chanting continued.  It was beautiful and well orchestrated and felt like just the right amount of ceremony to end our visit to the most overtly Buddhist country of all that we had visited. 

We decided to leave before the monk started talking, because that seemed like the least disrespectful course of action.  Picking up our shoes, we took the sidewalk all the way back out of the alley, put our goodie bags on the table at the entrance, and felt grateful for the chance to witness Union Day, Buddhist style.

Buddhism

All three countries we have visited so far have Buddhist temples, monks, and certain observances.  But Buddhism does not really feel the same in any of them.

In Japan, the temples looked like slight alterations of Shinto shrines; a threshold gate, a sacred altar with statues, and those really familiar Japanese roofs.  In Cambodia, they look like a stand of shiny little golden tinsel trees in front of stone Buddha statues, wearing a gold cloth apron.  In Thailand, they look like a golden Buddha statue standing inside mini royal palace. 

In Japan, the monks wore in white.  In Cambodia, orange with a parasol and in barefeet   In Thailand, also orange (we saw one with sandals and orange socks).  The Bangkok subway even has a sticker depicting the four kinds of people you should give up your seat to:  the elderly, disabled, pregnant, and monks.

Buddhism, for a religion that is built on giving up desire and not forcing yourself on others, seems somewhat pushy in Cambodia.  Lots of Angkor temples have statues inside with caretakers encouraging you to take their incense and pray.  It may or may not have been just a way to make money.  Japan's temples were far less aggressive with their sales pitch.  Thailand's Buddhist temples remain to be experienced.  But I don't know how much we will get to see of these, since we are off to the northern hills.  For the next three days we will be bamboo rafting and riding elephants and staying in villages north of Chiang Mai.  Back to the blog from Myanmar, most likely.  Josh's Angkor Wat posts are awaiting better internet so we can post pictures.  Stay tuned.

(Post by Hammad)