What an amazing experience Orion and I are having! Phnom Penh is a very mellow tropical capital city. Lots of mopeds and motorcycles and tuk-tuks. And palm trees everywhere, but especially along the Tonle Sap–a river that joins the Mekong River near our hotel. There is a beautiful park along the river with international flags blowing in the gentle breeze.

The weather is WARM, lovely warmth after the recent cold in CA. It’s pretty humid, and we’re doing just fine with the temp. We had the air con on last night in our hotel.

The food is DELICIOUS! And very inexpensive. Tastes similar to Thai with lots of lemon grass.

We love our hotel. It’s alittle more pricey for Cambodia than we’d prefer to pay, and it has great atmosphere and is quiet and comfortable with beautiful colonial wood work in our room. There’s also an 11-foot or so python in the garden…in a cage.  🙂

Today we visited the National Museum which is an architecturally beautiful building and the Royal Palace which has lots of very ornate art and architecture to see. In the Silver Pagoda, we saw a life-size gold Buddha with 9500 diamonds in it, the largest of which is 25 carats! It was breath-takingly exquisite.

We also visited Tuol Sleng Museum, the site of much torture and imprisonment of the Cambodian people who were believed to oppose Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It was a Very powerful and at times horrifying experience for us to visit here.         

Tonight we’re seeing a couple of films in English at the Mekong Restaurant next door to the internet place–50 cents per movie. One of the films is about the history of the Khmer Rouge and the second is about the land mines in Cambodia. Not uplifting, fun topics, but important parts of the Cambodian experience and culture.

Tomorrow we leave for Siem Reap, the city near Angkor Wat. It’s a six hour bus ride for $10. We’re taking the luxury bus with hostess, water, bathroom on board, air con. We’re excited to be going.

I’m loving it and being with my son Orion wonderful.

Two days in Beijing means I have to choose my highest priorities. The Divine worked with me to easily give me everything I most wanted and more. 🙂

Going to the Great Wall is pretty much an all day undertaking, wherever you go to see it. The hostel at which I am staying has its own tour to the Secret Wall. They were right. No other tourists in sight, spectacular vistas of The Wall, and a delicious vegetarian lunch afterwards. What more could I want? The most breath-taking part is in the vistas as The Wall snakes its way over the top of the ridges and disappears into the far distance.

I also had an amazing, unexpected tour through the hutong area of Beijing. The hutong area is Old Beijing, with narrow streets and many of the cities poor living there now. I wanted to visit this area, and didn’t think I would have time. As fate would have it, as I was walking out of the Heavenly Temple area, a man with a bicycle with a two-wheeled cart attached behind asked if I wanted a ride. At first I said, "No." But when he asked he again, I decided to take a chance and see if he could safely take me through the traffic to Tiannamen Square.

As we pulled out into the traffic, I asked him to be careful. He nodded his head "Yes" although I’m not sure he really knew what I said. In reality, I was probably safer with him than walking there on my own. He KNOWS this city!

To get to Tiannamen Square, he took me through the hutong area and showed me all the sights there, including old Chinese characters written on doors and ancient, worn sculptures. He even took me a famous Peking duck restaurant in this area that had photos of international dignitaries who had eaten there, including Al and Tipper Gore!!

The last morning here I walked to the Forbidden City, which is so immense and ornate it is tough "to get my mind around it." The Chinese emperors who lived here during the later dynasties lived a life that is hard to imagine. Just think as opulent as you can and you’ll still be thinking much smaller and less than it is in reality. It was a fun way to spend the morning!

I’m feeling pretty tired about now, and I’m glad to be going home to my husband, Orion and Nichola, and my life in California. I’ve played hard and explored and had experiences beyong my wildest imagination. I am so grateful for the abundance in my life and to have shared this journey with you.

Images from Xian…I am now back in Xian at the Cross-Cultural Solutions home base where the heat works wonderfully, there is plenty of hot water, and the food is delicious and healthy. It is time for me to leave the program and Xian and to travel on my own for a few days.

Jerome-Cross Cultural Solutions China Program Director, Committed, Heart-felt, Amazing

Anne and Jocelyn–Assistant Directors, Fun, Insighful, Extremely Capable

I went out for a short walk in the park near our home base. It was idyllic…

parents and grandparents who wait daily for their children to get out of school

a small group of singers and musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments playing and singing on a small hilltop surrounded by trees and rocks,

smiling and admiring a Chinese woman’s grandchild

talking with a young woman and her 6-year-old son, "the teacher gives my son too much homework, I think. My son needs time to play so we come here to the park. Many parents think the teacher gives too much homework, but no one says anything to the teacher."

young and old people walking and strolling together

a group of 7 or 8 elderly men playing a card game

the apartment building where we live on the 8th and 9th floors.

I treasure this beautiful city and people of Xian. My heart has been deeply touched by the people here. Jerome, the director of the Cross-Cultural Solutions program in Xian is brilliant, kind, generous and magnificent. I feel so grateful and blessed to have experienced this city so deeply.

My cruise on the Yangzi River to see the Three Gorges was more of an
adventure than I anticipated. I went with five other volunteers from
the CCS program. We began our journey by flying from Xian to Chongqing,
which is a large, modern port city on the Yangzi. After wandering
around looking for a place to have dinner, we found Pizza Hut and
decided some Western comfort food sounded great. I ordered a small
veggie pizza and, as a special treat, a hot chocolate. I haven’t had
cheese since arriving in China. It tasted great!

We were then taken to our boat and to our room, which the six of us
were sharing–an interesting adventure in itself. I immediately asked
how to turn on the heat. The response from our Chinese guide was a
puzzled look and then a sad shaking of her head, followed by the
information that there was no heat any where on the boat! I had to take
a few deep breaths to keep from freaking out. As you may recall, before
booking my place on the trip, I specifically asked if the boat was
heated.  I was now committed to three days on a boat with no heat in
the middle of winter. Temperatures were probably somewhere in the low
50’s and 40’s, and the sky was overcast and drizzling at times.

Another important thing for you to know was the trip had been booked
on a domestic cruise, which meant we were traveling with Chinese people
who were on holiday. (A woman in our group speaks fluent Mandarin.)
There were things I enjoyed about this, including playing mahjong with
them for an afternoon and sharing their delight in the cruise and in
seeing the beauty of their country. The down-side was listening to all
of the announcements in Chinese and listening to Chinese karaoke, which
was just down the hall from our room.

The next three days I spent living in my hooded fleece top and down
jacket and enjoying the spectactular scenery of the Yangzi. The sides
of the Three Gorges rise dramatically toward the heavens, often with
steep rocky cliffs extending from the water to the sky.

The immensity
of the gorges made it difficult to accurately judge the height.
Depending on the location, it was 1000 to 1500 feet above the water
line is our best guess. It was peaceful and quiet with occasional
shipping boats passing by loaded with coal, cars, and semi-trucks.

In addition to the Three Gorges, we also visited the Three Small
Gorges, which took us to the Three Mini-Gorges, which we traversed in
small wooden boats lead by a Chinese man in a big tropical-looking hat
who sang songs to us and tried to get money from us. He was very
persistent at times. Several Westerners gave him money saying he
wouldn’t take no for an answer. I won this "round" with him. I was not
willing to be manipulated.

All of the Gorges were beautiful and special. When we were in the
small boat, I dipped my hand in the water and it was lukewarm, much
warmer than the air. At the end of the trip, we saw the world-famous
Three Gorges Dam, which is nearing completion. The water level has
already risen 100 meters with an additional 75 meters planned. Several
small towns and temples have been relocated to higher ground.

The dam is immense in width-1.4 miles-as it spans the Yangzi. Here
are other statistics about this famous dam at this link:
http://www.moafs.org/newsletter/April%202002/3gorgestats.htm.

At the end of the cruise, we took a taxi to our hotel where we had a
reservation in Yichang. When we arrived, it was a beautiful, very fancy
hotel with a big chandelier and columns in the lobby. I was excited.
Now I was going to have some heat. To my dismay, there was NO HEAT in
the lobby, which did not bode well for our rooms. They reassured me
there was heat in our rooms. I am nearly at my limit for tolerating the
cold. I think I’ve got it worked out to keep warm tonight. Thank
goodness!  🙂

Even though there have been challenges, I’m delighted I did the
cruise. If I know what I know now, I might not do it again although I’m
sure a boat for foreigners in the warmer weather would have been MUCH
more comfortable.