still in singapore

hello! i'm still in singapore til thursday i think. foo and i have been trying to figure out what the next move would be. options were australia, new zealand, southeast asia, home. we just didn't know what order to do it in. our return tickets to the US are for late november, but it is an option to move the ticket dates closer and come home sooner. which isn't a terrible option. i know it seems like it would be ridiculous to end traveling before i have to, but after a full year of not having my own space or a stable routine, it's seeming like an appealing option. but then i thought about it more and decided that i would probably regret it my whole life if i didn't take this opportunity to travel and explore, because chances are it will only get more difficult to do as i get older. and right now it's winter in new zealand. so we're going to explore southeast asia for a month or two, then head to australia and new zealand, then home right before thanksgiving.
so for the past two weeks, we've been hanging out in singapore. it's pretty hot. we went bowling with foo's cousins, which was super fun. we've been having this dessert at a place in chinatown called Traditional Desserts. it's basically my favorite thing ever. it's flavored ice, shaved into a giant mountain with toppings on it. i think we get it like 3 times per week. soooo good.

the family has a maid named grace who is from the Philippines. (lots of families here have maids from other countries) she lives here and works all day, everyday. she's about my age and so i've been chatting with her. she has a five year old son who lives with her mom at home, and she hasn't seen him for a year and a half. she gets off work one sunday per month. i've never had a maid (well, we had theresa, but that's for 3 hours every other week.) and so i have had a bit of a hard time having one. mostly i feel really sad because she doesn't have an opportunity to have any real emotional connection with anyone. she left her whole life a year and a half ago, and while she gets paid here, which she couldn't at home because there was no work, she also gave up a life. she's only a maid here. not a friend or a mom or a daughter or anything. and i have a hard time with a week of no friends. she's going on a year and a half. so anyway, i try to be extra friendly to her. on her last sunday off work, foo and i took her out for the day. super fun. plus i don't think she gets to have fun days ever. so we met her and took her out to dim sum (like chinese tapas) for lunch. then we walked around chinatown and ate some traditional desserts. then we took her to see a movie. we saw ghosts of girlfriends past, which was surprisingly not terrible. i think she had a fun day.

yesterday was my birthday! foo and i didn't tell anyone because for my birthday i really wanted to just hang out with her. it seems like we'd get to hangout all the time, but somehow there is always someone who needs to do something with us. since it was my birthday, i got to be the boss. and we got traditional desserts for breakfast. normally we would get real lunch because foo really needs 'real food', but instead we went to a movie and had popcorn for lunch, because i didn't want to spoil my snack with lunch. then we went computer shopping, i think we're going to buy a cheap laptop for traveling. planning travel things is soooo much easier with a computer, rather than sitting in internet cafes for hours. after that we went to dinner at this cute little place called naive. not sure why they called it that, it seems like a poor choice. but it was a vegetarian restaurant which is so nice. i really prefer not picking meat out of my food. it was delicious. then foo's whole family started sending her text messages like 'why you did not tell me its kittie/kathie/kate's birthday? you goodfornothing!' no one knows my name. well, everyone sort of knows it. i am called several variations of my name. so anyway, we made it home at 10pm or so, and her aunty lai ngan made me a birthday cake! it was so nice! so the family sang me happy birthday and we ate delicious cake. her aunty lai ngan runs a cake baking business out of the home. yessss! then they said that at swensen's (which is like the denny's of singapore) they give out free ice cream on your birthday! so it was 11pm by then, so we hurried and got ready and headed to swensen's. i got my free ice cream! it was called firetruck or fireengine or something. it was three scoops of ice cream (vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry) and a half a banana and three cherries and whipped cream. and a candle! so that was very exciting.

oh yes, travel plans: so we're heading around southeast asia first, doing super last-minute planning. i think we'll head by bus or train to thailand, and we're going to vietnam, cambodia, laos, malaysia, and indonesia. i have to apply for visas in most of these places, so i should probably get on that. foo doesn't because she has a singaporean passport. i'm always more expensive when we travel.
then in early september i think we'll head to australia and new zealand and hike and work on farms and explore. then home for thanksgiving, and i think i'll move to chicago around then.
that's about it for now.
love
katie

china

i'm back in singapore now, but in china the blogspot website is blocked so i couldn't write any of the adventures then. so here are the last two weeks:

we got to shanghai and foo's friend sheep met us at the airport and brought us back to the apartment he shares with his wife, irene. sheep (whose real name is shaw-ming) is called sheep i think because his last name sounds like the word for sheep in chinese. i think. he is taiwanese and irene is from hong kong. and they are living in shanghai for irene's job.

general things about china: just about nothing is vegetarian. everyone always wants to be first in line, no matter what, and they will push you out of the way to get there. beer is cheaper than water. street food is better than restaurant food, and way cheaper. they produce and sell fakes of just about everything. people spit a lot and clean out their ears in public places. also, china is huge and there is so much amazingness to see it would take months. probably longer.

we got there on a wednesday i think, and on friday foo and i flew from shanghai to beijing to see the great wall. we actually flew to a city outside of beijing, and took a train to get there. it went 330km/hr, which seemed pretty fast. then we took a taxi to the hotel we were staying in, which we booked online in advance. so we got into the taxi and told him the name and address of the hotel. he didn't know where it was (which is not a surprise, in retrospect, because it seems like no taxi driver in china actually know where anything is. i don't understand this.) so he called the hotel and got directions. which he was unable to follow. foo got out our map (which was mostly sort of accurate) and tried to help him find it. he stopped and asked someone for directions. and we still didn't find it, so he stopped the car, got out, and asked a woman on the street where it is. we drove some more. and then we found the street, but the wrong way of the one-way, so we had to go around. finally we arrived at the 9 dragons hotel, which is in a narrow alleyway called a hutong. hutongs are sort of like old-china streets, only big enough for one car at a time, but they aren't like alleys really, because front doors of homes and schools and stores and restaurants are there. mostly they're just very small streets.
so we got in the hotel, which turned out to be a hostel. in the lobby the room prices were posted. our room was something like double what we paid online. and there was an hourly rate. so basically it was a classy joint. our room was pretty nice though. a/c, a tv, private bathroom, everything worked. we went to see tiananmen square, which is a huge open paved block in the city with lots of important buildings around it. i think the people's congress is there, and mao's mausoleum, and the place where mao first declared the people's republic of china. then we went to a street called wang fu jing which has lots of people and food especially at night. we went down a 'small eats' road and they had scorpions on sticks, still alive, that you could eat. as well as starfish and i think sea horses. lots of other food involving meat or seafood. but it was exciting.
the next day we went to the summer palace, which was more or less a terrible day. the summer palace is pretty impressive actually, even though it was terrible. i think emperors lived there way back when. and it's like a park. a long trail with a lake in the middle and lots of nice bridges and trees. somehow i managed to not see a map at the entrance, so we walked the long way around the lake. we bought the expensive tickets so we could tour all the buildings, but by the time we got to the buildings we were both so tired from walking and getting pushed and shoved by chinese people who always would like to be in front of you, or where you are, that we left. after that i wanted to go see a temple with a 46.5 ton bell, so we got in van/fake taxi and the driver totally ripped us off, so i was really mad and unable to enjoy the bell temple. mostly we walked in, past all the other smaller bell exhibits, and looked at the giant bell, again, very impressive, like most everything there, and then headed back to the hostel. in the hutong, we went to the little shop next door to the hostel and i got ice cream and foo got a giant bottle of beer. my little cup of ice cream cost more than the liter of beer. both were very sorely needed though. we then decided to do less touristy things because we both always end up hating them.

the next day we went to the great wall. also, get ready for this, i'm about to blow your mind: the great wall is not actually one giant continuous wall. i had no idea. it's little segments of a wall, but not even in a straight line. who knew? it sort of makes the thought of it a little less exciting. we decided to go the the section called simitai, which is farther away but less touristy and crowded than badaling, the closer section. so we drove for about two hours with 8 tourists and a crazy chinese man who drove like a bat out of hell (more on driving in china later). we got there and took a cable car up the mountain (there is also the option to walk. not a smart option if you want to a) be home before dark b) walk for the next week) and then a sort of train up a little more. it wasn't really like a train. it reminded me of the mine train at six flags. only it just went up the mountain. and then we climbed up to the actual wall. which was so steep and with so many stairs and really high up. finally, on the great wall, being followed by a small man with brown teeth who was trying to give us a tour of the wall, and then at the end would try to sell us a book on the great wall. i told him right away that i didn't have enough money to buy his book so he stopped following us. thank goodness. the great wall is impressive. the section seemed like it was probably many miles long. the wall is built on a mountain, so anyone trying to invade china would have to be pretty much a mountain goat to even get to the wall, then they would be shot with arrows by the chinese guards in the towers on the wall. the towers are built two arrow-shots apart so anywhere anyone tried to cross the wall they could be stopped. the wall itself is built of stones and the outer layer is made with lime and glutinous rice. pretty interesting, huh? and the view is amazing. mountains and mountains and wall as far as you can see. and not too many tourists, which was a plus. so we made it back down into the cable car, which i will try to post a photo of, because this thing looks like it was recycled from some other faraway place that used it when it was new in 1945 or something. basically the car is like a small metal booth which holds two people, facing each other. the walls only go up waist high when you're standing, and you could open the door yourself. it seemed pretty rickety. this conversation happened really high in the air in the old squeaky car:
katie: how often do you think these things get safety inspected?
foo: uhh, this is china. i don't think they do safety inspections.
nice.
but we made it back.
and that night went to a vegetarian buffet restaurant. which had mediocre food, but i was so excited to not have to pick meat out of my food it was the best meal ever.

next day my butt was really sore, and we decided to take a break from touristy things.

back to shanghai, on a domestic china flight which seemed sort of unsafe.

in shanghai we mostly ate a lot, saw some buildings, ate dinner with foo's relatives.
we went to another city called nanjing, which is the site of a terrible massacre in the late 30s. something like 300,000 chinese were killed by the japanese military. it is still a sore subject in china because the japanese still have not admitted any guilt. we toured the museum, which is huge, and sort of less serious-unbiased-facts than i'm used to in a museum. don't get me wrong, there are still lots of facts, but also clear evidence that china is still very angry and wants japan to know they did something wrong. there were lots of parts with poster and plaques that said, in summary, 'the historical factual evidence which is completely irrefutable and is found to be totally accurate and true by all of these important organizations proves that japan was a terrible terrible jerkface and in the wrong completely and they broke all the rules and they cannot dispute this because...' lots of that. but also photos of lots of terrible things that happened. basically, the japanese soldiers were given instructions that there were no rules, go in, kill, rape, burn, torture. and in addition to chinese soldiers, they killed lots of civilians. irony of the day: in the museum there was a certificate of gratitude/'you're doing the right thing', sent to some sort of missionary folk in china who were housing refugees of the massacre. from adolf hitler.

this past weekend we went to yellow mountain. pretty much the most beautiful place on earth. 6 hour bus ride there, then up a cable car (much nicer than the one at the great wall) then an hour hike to the hostel. the hostel was the most terrible hostel in the world, and since it was located on top of a mountain, they could charge really whatever they wanted. so it was about US$25 per person (expensive by any hostel standards, especially china) to sleep in a tiny room with 8 beds. the bathroom had chunks of food and hair clogging the drain and there was no toilet paper or soap and the room was mold and full of bugs. and the beds were wooden pallets with a pad on top and sheets that definitely weren't washed between guests. foo found a fingernail clipping on her bed. soooo gross. anyway, back to the amazing part. the day we got there we did a 9km hike. hike isn't really what it was, it was all stairs. maybe like 4 km down stairs then 5 km back up. it was 5 hours total. and it was all through mountains. if you've ever seen chinese paintings of tall jagged looking mountains, these are the mountains that painting was based off of. it was amazing. and soooo high up. until we got to the bottom, of course, then it was sooooo high to the top. and there is a little food shop in the middle. guess what. there are small but very very stong middle-aged-to-older-men that carry supplies up there. like two giant jugs of kerosene, or four cases of water, tied to a stick which he balances across his shoulders. the 9km was really hard. my legs were very sore and still are a little bit. after the 9km, somehow there was another hour and a half to get back to the hostel. also, foo is afraid of heights. who knew? i didn't. but she sure was nervous on some of the 'trail'. i'm not sure how people did this, but the path is made of concrete, somehow magically just like stuck on the side of a mountain. i'm sure there are very strong steel supports that go into the mountain and stick out to support the path. my question is, how did they get there? there appears to be no way to do it. it's on the side of a very steep mountain. it's not like you could just walk up to it.

so we made it back to shanghai. i bought some fake converse sneakers. they're green. also, at the fake market, when someone i'm with wants to buy something, i have to walk away. because pretty much anywhere a white face goes, the price goes up. by a lot. one woman refused to sell a bag (fake jimmy choo, maybe?) to irene's friend stella, who is actually from shanghai and buys bags from this woman often, while there were white people there. stella told the woman we couldn't understand anyway, but the woman wouldn't sell to her. so we had to go away while she bargained the price down.
other things about the trip to china:
i bought a book on the street, obviously not legally printed, for like US$2, only to get home, open it up, and find that it was missing pages 15 to 78. there are tons of stores with pirated cds, dvds, and games. i don't even know where you'd buy the real thing. the dvds are about US$1, wii games are about the same price. amazing.
oh yes, china drivers: everyone drives like a crazy fool that wants to die. pedestrians will be run over if they're not very very careful. and everyone honks their horn like it's their job. as far as i can tell, the car horn can signal the following things:
-i am going to overtake your car (on the highway)
-don't change lanes, i'm going to pass your car (also on the highway)
-move, you are where i want to be
-don't move, i'm going to drive to where you want to be
-i'm going to drive somewhere i shouldn't, get out of my way
-i am angry because you beat me to the space we both wanted to occupy.
being in a car in china is a very scary thing. on a highway with two lanes, one going each direction, drivers create a third lane for passing other cars which goes down the middle of the highway, on the dotted line. and cars from both directions use this secret magic mystery lane to pass cars in front of them.

so it goes like this: let's pretend i am driving a van carrying 10 frightened tourists to the great wall. i am driving like i'm on a suicide mission, and there is a giant truck in front of me going a little too slow. and there is a string of giant trucks and also small cars coming towards us in the other lane. without slowing down, i will honk my horn 8 to 10 times as i swerve a bit to the left, drive up the center stripe, between both giant trucks, so there are three vehicles side-by-side on the two lane highway, all traveling at high speeds. and then i will continue honking while i swerve right, back into my lane, missing the giant truck behind me by 6 inches or so, and the oncoming traffic by about the same margin.
ok, now let's do it again and again for the next two hours!

this is driving in china.

another exciting bit: on the way to the airport to come back to singapore, we took the mag-lev train. mag-lev means magnetic levitation. so this train floats, basically. and it is propelled by some sort of rotating magnets. i'm sure that's not totally accurate, but it involves magnets and travels really fast. like 430km/hr. it was very exciting.

now i'm back in singapore, sweating pretty much all the time. foo's granddad is such a peer pressure drinker. he's always trying to share a beer with us. this weekend foo and i are supposed to remove the rats which have infested her parents' house while they've been living in vancouver. i predict that i will be the one to deal with the dead rats.
and then to australia in a couple weeks!
i'll try to update more often so it's not so long next time.
lovelovelove
katie

in singapore!

dearest everyone,
i'm in singapore now! i got here on the 14th of may. i've been slacking a bit on the blog so i'll try to get you all caught up.

i left st charles on wednesday at 6am or so, and took 4 very long flights to get here. first to denver, then seattle, then to tokyo and finally singapore. folks seem pretty worried about the swine flu. when we landed in tokyo, we had to sit on the plane for an extra 20 mins or so while some japanese health officials came to collect health surveys and take our temperatures with thermal cameras. there were 8 or 10 of them, all wearing goggles and masks and some sort of paper robes. i passed the test i suppose, so on to singapore. where i got my temp taken with more thermal cameras.

i got in right before midnight on thursday the 14th, and let me tell you the singapore airport is wonderful! i got off the plane and went to stand in a line maybe 4 people deep, which took about 10 minutes, maybe less. that was customs. which i didn't realize because it took so little time. then when i got to the baggage carousel, my luggage arrived within about a minute. and i walked through the line of 'nothing to declare' and that was it, i was in singapore! and was met with the hottest nighttime weather ever and lots of humidity. it was a bit of a shock. like breathing super-hydraded air. nancy foo picked me up and guess what: folks drive on the left side of the road. not a thing i thought about. but it makes me panic everytime we turn because i feel like i'm going to turn into oncoming traffic.

we went to a place called a hawker center for breakfast the next day. a hawker center is like a big outdoor foodcourt, with lots of stalls selling different kinds of food. all wonderful. i had soymilk which was just made so it was still warm. and noodles and carrot cake (not the carrot cake you're thinking of...this one's salty and does not actually involve carrots. i think it has turnips) and some other food, all wonderful. and get this: super super cheap! each plate of food you order costs maybe 2 singapore dollars ($1USD = 1.5-ish sing dollars). it is, in fact, cheaper to buy all your food at the hawker center than to cook for yourself at home. amazing. i wouldn't be able to eat there without someone who is chinese though. i wouldn't know what anything is. and i wouldn't know what is good. anyway, thank goodness for chinese food and chinese people.

there is a wet market by the hawker center, and that's got raw meat and produce and such. we bought amazing fruits! after eating fruits here, i feel totally uninterested in 'western fruits'. i don't know how i ever choked down an apple, because this stuff is sooooo much better. thus far i've tried rambutan, which is reddish and sort of hairy, luku-something which is also wonderful, and mangosteen which is my new favourite fruit of all time. get this: in the US you can only get mangosteen at super special supermarkets and it's like $60/lb or something ridiculous. here, it's like $2/kilo. i'm not quite sure how to describe it because it's so different than anything i've had before.

one of nancyfoo's cousins told me that they (chinese people, i suppose) show love through food. and my goodness do i feel loved. susan west came to visit a week ago, and we took a bus to malaysia. KL is the city we went to (kuala lumpur) and we stayed with her auntie dilly. we got massages and foot reflexology (which hurt a lot, in a good way i think. based upon the intensity of pain i'd say all my organs need a little tlc). we went up into the petronas towers, which are two identical towers that are veryveryvery tall and have a bridge between them on the 30-somethingth or 40-somethingth floor. inside is a huge shopping center and lots of food.
one night we went and had fancy dinner at a place called noble house with foo's aunt's father-in-law, who it seems is a very very important man in malaysia. he has a title which i think is 'datuk'. i thought she kept calling him doctor ng, but no, it was datuk. i'm not sure how you get this title, but i think it involves having a good deal of money. he owns a timber company. anyway, there are lots of rules about how to act that i, as a white girl, don't know. so foo sat next to datuk ng, which is a very important seat. and being in that seat, you have to eat all the food put in front of you, which is a huge amount. i sat next to foo, so i was able to eat less. but i guess the idea is that you eat to show the host that you like the food and that you appreciate it. seems ok until the 4th or 5th course of the meal, then it gets harder. but he was very very nice and made sure i had actual vegetarian food, which no one else does. i have been ordered several 'vegetarian' dishes full of shrimp and fish and chicken. seriously. so i had noodles and tofu and veggies, all good. everyone else had several more courses than that.

moving on, we came back to singapore and have been eating a lot. lots and lots. fruit and noodles and rice and ice cream. susan had to buy gifts for her family (16 of them...) so we headed to chinatown. chinatown singapore is the cleanest chinatown i've seen. it's pristine. lots of stuff to buy and lots of food. i think it seemed a bit watered-down and touristy, but it's still really neat. also, by looking at someone, foo can tell if they're from singapore or mainland china.
we also went to little india, which is considerably grittier. we went to a vegetarian restaurant, where you eat food with your hands. that is a skill. i had no idea. it takes some practice to be good at eating with your fingers. you eat only with your right hand, and sort of much the rice and curry sauce and vegetables with your fingers, then pick up a bit so the food is sitting on your fingers (hands are palms-up) and then sort of push the food into your mouth using your thumb. i need way more practice at that.

there's so much more to write about! i'll write about the family in the next post.

oh also, the most important thing i've learned here so far: if you don't want to eat anymore, leave food on your plate. i'm used to finishing up what's in my glass or on my plate when i'm finished eating. and the host can offer more food, but i just say no. not here, oh no. the second my plate is empty i get served more food, because it is assumed that i am still hungry if i have finished everything on my plate. this is a hard lesson to learn. i could have eaten more than i thought was physically possible, and if i forget to leave food on my plate, i get more. lots more. and as it turns out, it is impossible to say 'no' to a chinese woman. so if i finish eating and my plate is empty, i just put a little more food on my plate and leave it there, which seems like a huge waste but is so very worth it to avoid being practically force-fed more very delicious food.

so, so far, the food is delicious and the weather is very very hot. i think i could get used to singapore...

the photos

here are the photos so far, and thanks to nancyfoo for organizing the albums:

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=316181232292625089/l=464854013/g=8904398/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

back to ba

after puerto madryn, we headed to buenos aires for a couple nights, where we stayed in this crazy hostel in bunk beds. we shared a room with several people who livedslashworked there. there seemed to be one bed that was permanently someone´s and the others just rotated through the unoccupied beds. and the day we were leaving, this guy in our room discovered that something like $1800 had been stolen from the safe deposit box in the hostel. you need two keys to get into it, one that they give you and the other that they keep at the desk. so pretty obviously it was someone who worked there. and in about 4 minutes they stole several months worth of pay. so, sorry to john from san francisco who lost a ton of cash. i would probably cry.
anyway, we went north from there to puerto iguazu where we saw some huge waterfalls. i thought it was going to be a three hour adventure and that´s it. oh no. we walked around for several hours in the sun. but it was pretty amazing. maybe foo will post some pictures of it...
the scenery up north is much nicer than the rest of the country. most of argentina is a desert. but the north has trees! and rain! and an amazing waterfall.
we were going to do a full moon tour of the falls that night, but it was really cloudy. we kept asking the desk at the hostel if the tour company would cancel, and the tour company kept saying ´check back at 6.´ then ´check at 6.30´ then 7. and our bus left at 7.10. it was clearly going to be a cloudy, even stormy night. i asked for a refund because i didn´t want to go, clearly we couldn´t see the moon. the lady had the money out on the desk, but then the other lady was on the phone with the tour people. at about 7.07, the tour people said it was still on. we wouldn´t get a refund, they hadn´t cancelled. so we ran to the bus, bought tickets, and went. we got to the falls and clearly there wasn´t any tour. so after about an hour of waiting for someone to talk to us from the company, they got the park guide to tell us that there would be no tour, it doesn´t make sense to have a full moon tour when there was no moon to be seen. duh. no one from the tour company seemed to want to take any responsibility for this, for not telling us what was going on. and the bus had long gone, the next one wouldn´t be for an hour or so. oh my. i was annoyed. because i knew before we left the hostel that we couldn´t do the tour. so now i had lost at least two hours and bus fare. and no one would explain anything. i got a bit too annoyed i guess, and spoke very firmly to a man with a tour company shirt on. i asked him why no one told us earlier when a bus was still there. he just told me i could get a refund from the hostel and walked away. not the answer i was looking for. anyway, we eventually got back and had a pretty mediocre dinner. the next day nancyfoo explained to me that i was a jerk to the developing world at the waterfalls the night before. probably true.
we met this canadian woman named jennifer. and so the day after the falls we took a bus to paraguay. apparently they have very cheap electronics because at night things can be shipped across the border and you don´t have to pay taxes at the border. so we went there, via brazil. so we got an exit stamp on our passports out of argentina, then passed through brazil (where i need a visa and supposedly cannot go) and into paraguay, not getting an entry stamp in either place. we shopped in a really overwhelming market, almost bought a 4-band unlocked phone, but then didn´t. i got a dress and nancyfoo got a hammock. and we walked back across the bridge into brazil where customs just pointed us past all the other people filling out declaration forms, and we walked to a bus stop where the colectivo took us back into argentina, getting an entry stamp at the border. so for a few hours, i was apparently nowhere.
then we got the bus back to buenos aires that night. we arrived here yesterday, got a private room with a private bathroom. living in luxury here....
we went to china town for dinner. i made nancy order in chinese because when her parents were here and ordered in chinese we got better food than when we ordered in spanish. and sure enough, the food was good.
today we sent clothes to get washed, praise jesus, because it is not awesome to take a shower then get dressed and immediately smell bad again.
and then we went to the recoleta cemetery. that´s where evita is buried. so we got to see the grave. the cemetery is pretty amazing. it´s all bricked on the ground, no grass. and the graves are all sort of little houses. it´s all tall and stone and cement. i´ve never been to a cemetery like that before.
i think that´s it for now. i hope you´re all doing well.
love
kt

back north

we saw the glacier. pretty amazing. and huge. i think 6km by 30 km or something like that. really really big. and blue. and it´s advancing, which means it is still growing. two meters per day, but it also loses three meters per day, so it´s not really getting bigger, just growing and losing bits. lots of bits. we went there with a tour, a little unnecessary, because we could have just taken the bus and looked at it without a guide. anyway, it´s like a huge wall, several storeys high, and every now and then you see giant chunks of ice fall into the water (lago argentino). and you have to stand pretty far away but the noise is incredible. it´s soooo loud to hear the ice fall into the water. that is a pretty good indicator of the size of this thing. amazing. and it´s all blue and icy and makes crackling noises. really cool. also, it´s so far south there are maybe 6 hours of darkness per day. that´s it. i went to sleep with light and woke up with it too.
then the next morning we took the 7am bus back to rio gallegos and then got a 6pm bus to puerto madryn. this was new years day, so nothing was open. so we just sat in the bus terminal, ate fried rice that foo made the day before out of bowls we made by cutting off the top and the bottom of a water bottle. i ate out of the top.
oooh i forgot to write this: we were in el bolson before going to see the glacier, and the last night we were there someone stole one of our backpacks. most of the stuff was in the tent, but we kept the mostly empty backpacks on the side of the tent because it was too crowded with stuff in the tent. anyway, we woke up and my pack was in a different place than i left it, and all the compartments were opened and my stuff was sitting everywhere. and foo´s pack was gone. the guy who worked there told us it was the dogs, because the same thing had happened to some french kids that morning but they found the packs close by.
so we looked for a couple hours around the campsite. nothing. then thought about it for a bit and here´s what happened: that night, someone came through the campground and picked up packs sitting out. one of the french kids´ and mine and foo´s. then they took the packs some yards away and opened everything, threw it all on the ground, took what looked valuable, and stuffed what they wanted to keep in foo´s bag and took off with it. awesome. we are now down one pack. there were two pairs of sandals, one pair of shoes, foo´s expensive rain jacket. all the foreign money she had, other random things that aren´t worth much, but we need them.
so we made a police report. we knew they couldn´t really do anything, but if someone tried to change 500 singapore dollars in a bank there, they´d probably be the first ever, so maybe the popo could find them that way. at the police station, the policeman didn´t seem interested at all, told us it would be impossible to find, and typed up a report which said that foo was japanese. not exactly successful, but i still felt better after making the report.
so that´s why we ate fried rice out of a plastic water bottle.
and we came to puerto madryn, north of rio gallegos and on the east coast of the country. the vegetarian meals we requested for the 18 hour bus ride had giant slabs of processed meat with hard-boiled egg in the middle.
puerto madryn: yesterday i wanted to see the sea lion colony. 17km from here. and you can rent a bike on the beach and 17km isn´t that far on a bike. so we get the bikes and head out. and 3 km down the road we hit gravel. not just a gravel road, more of a sand and gravel mix. let me tell you , riding a bike on sand is impossible. and really loose gravel, next to impossible. two hours later and after two incidents of throwing a bike down and announcing that this is not going to happen, we arrived at the lomeria, where we had to pay 25 pesos each to go look at a sea lion colony. it was neat. not something i need to do again. we ate lunch and rode back, two more hours but infinitely less painful than the ride there. and we got back to the bike rental place an hour early but i was ok with that.
now i´m sunburned and ready to go to buenos aires to eat chinese food and salads.
after that it´s up to iguazu to see the waterfalls. yesssss.

perito moreno

we bought tickets today! to rio gallegos, and from there we can take yet another bus to el calafate, where we can see glaciar perito moreno, which is one of two moving glaciers in south america. i´m not sure what a moving glacier really means, but i guess i´ll find out in a couple days.
i did not realize that argentina is so big. huge. the bus to get to rio gallegos is 24 hours. wow. and we were on a bus 16 hours or so to get to where we are now. so we´re leaving sunday evening for rio gallegos. til then, we´re going to go on a brewery tour and drink lots of wonderful cervezas. and also go to a hill to see wood carved by artists. and maybe another hill. hills are a big deal around here i think. we were going to see a bird museum that has 100 stuffed birds, but decided that the money would be better spent on food because buses are sooo expensive and taking up a considerable chunck of money. today we´re going to pick farms to go to on our way through central america! i´m excited about that. also a bit nervous. i get nervous every time we go to a new place and have to find accomodation and food and everything. not like i think we´re not going to find those things, i think it might just be a bit of anxiety. anyway, i´ll for sure write about the beer tour and the glacier. i think those will be my highlights of the next couple weeks. oh and also, the town we´re in has mountains on both sides. i have some pictures. but it might be a while because it takes forever to upload...
love
kt