The Maya ruins are a whole different ball game though; the history behind the temples and the sacrifices and religious ceremonies held at Chichén Itzá are incredibly different from temples and religious beliefs in Asian.

I hired a guide for the ruins – something that I definitely don’t always do – it’s a hard trade off. On the one hand, I love learning new things and getting all of the nitty-gritty details and then on the other side is the fact that the only time I can afford a guide is when I’m en masse touring through a place with a dozen or so other English speaking tourists.

But I’m so thankful that I sucked it up and tottered around the grounds with my tour group learning about theories and history surrounding Chichén Itzá. As the tour guide explained the ritual sacrifices that took place at the various temples at Chichén Itzá, I had to really take a step back from my Christian upbringing.

I remember the hullabaloo surrounding the animal sacrifices in South Africa in preparation for the World Cup – and it’s kind of like that for me. It’s a completely foreign concept and I have to actively work not to place judgments on their religion based on my own upbringing and Western ideals.

The coolest part of the whole compound in my opinion was the ball court. Just north of the iconic pyramid temple of Chichén Itzá is a huge Mesoamerican ball court. The game was incredibly difficult to play and could last days and weeks according to archeologists. Although the information is mostly gleaned from the reliefs carved into the stone, in short, the popular theory is that the captain of the winning team was then decapitated upon his win as an honor to the gods.

The various temples are also all built to align perfectly with the solstices and movement of the sun along with strategic echo chambers that bounce sound off of the buildings and can then send the sound traveling around the complex – one of those things you just have to witness to really understand.

So, despite my feeling of being cattle shlepped from place to place around the grounds, I loved my guide and his fantastic introduction into Maya culture and beliefs!

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2. A Little Bridge…Temples, Kids, and a Green Guitar
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But I also love Los Angeles.

And I feel like backpacker or passing travelers can easily come to LA and see all of the bad. But! with the eye of a local (I lived in the city for exactly and precisely two years to the day), it can be an incredibly fun city with awesome spots that aren’t in any guidebook.

So in defense of Los Angeles, and because I truly recognize it’s a hard city to love as a tourist (and this is partly referencing scathing words by another travel blog recently), I’d like to outline my perfect day in Los Angeles…and yes, it probably requires hiring a car to get it all done…or better yet, Couchsurf in the city and your host just might show you around! :-)

Spend a Day in Los Angeles…Shannon Style

So, here it is my friend, my perfect day in LA. Now that I no longer live in the city, these handful of spots are the “must-visits” every time I return. This will take you from breakfast until dinner and all of the snacks and fun you need in between…and if you visit just one of these places, make it lunch at Aroma…it’s truly my favorite LA restaurant.

Breakfast at an LA Institution, The Griddle Café

Start the day out right with a jaunt into West Hollywood for pancakes at The Griddle Café…the line can be absolutely ridiculous (just skip this recommendation if you’re visiting on a weekend…you’ll perish of hunger before you’ll be seated). On a weekday though, the experience is worth the small wait – they’re known for their enormous pancakes but the French Toast is also worth a try…this place makes my list of top ten breakfasting experiences.

A Trendy LA Lunch at Aroma Café

Located in Studio City (in the Valley) the Aroma Coffee & Tea Company was walking distance from my house while I lived in LA and has some of the best food in the city. It’s healthy, it’s quirky and even the fact it’s unbelievably trendy can’t take erode my love for this café.

Even during the very busy lunch rush you can usually snag one of the mismatched tables; then order up the Goat Cheese + Walnut Salad (my personal favorite – the dressing is killer and the herb encrusted goat cheese is generous and comes out pleasantly warm and candied walnuts hide underneath the layers of spinach), and either people watch (always fun in LA) or read a book.

Hike Runyon Canyon for a Look at the Hollywood Sign

Hopefully you’ve let your food settle and thoroughly relaxed at Aroma for a couple of hours because now it’s time for some exercise…LA style. Runyon Canyon is located right at the base of the Hollywood Hills and walking distance from the main touristy sites on Hollywood Boulevard – the Canyon has two main hikes (don’t go left at the start unless you want to partake in what my friend Jenn and I dubbed the Suicide Trail…it’s a bit hard) the path straight and then to the right is enough to get your blood pumping and also offers three awesome views:

• A fantastic vantage point for the the Hollywood sign and all of the mansions in the Hollywood hills.
• Clear views over Downtown LA, Hollywood, and straight out to the Pacific unless it’s a smoggy day.
• Full opportunity to people-watch and hunt down some of those “plastic fantastic” people I previously mentioned…as well as the opportunity to see that LA really does have normal people too…they’re up there sweating and puffing just like you. :-)

Oh, and there’s never a dull moment in Los Angeles; in February 2010 the Hollywood sign was hijacked in an effort to stop the current plans to develop houses on the hill around the famous sign:

Then, over the subsequent days after the hijacking it morphed. I caught site of this last month:

I can’t promise you’ll get quite so entertaining version of the Hollywood sign to look at, but you will get some great pictures.

Head back home after the hike for a shower (or stop off first at all of the touristy attractions in LA on nearby Hollywood Boulevard). Relax before heading out for dinner and drinks out in the city.

Feast on LA’s Best Indian Food at Electric Karma

It’s tasty and the closest you’ll come to feeling like you’re dining in India… Electric Karma has a great ambiance and opt for dining on the covered back patio at the low tables with cushy pillows. As for food ideas – their palak paneer (one of my favorite Indian dishes) is incredible and the garlic naan is spot on.

Head over to Venice Beach or the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica

Both Venice Beach and Santa Monica make a fun date night if you’re a couple. Stroll the along the boardwalk on Venice Beach and you’ll pass the very full paddle courts, games of volleyball and tons of street artists…don’t forget to dodge the roller-bladers though!

Santa Monica would be the more kid-friendly option. The Santa Monica pier is walking distance from the promenade…or you can hunt down any of the spots bars and nearby clubs for dancing and drinking.

Once you’ve digested all of your amazing Indian food, you CANNOT leave the Third Street Promenade without a visit to Pinkberry. They have this delicious frozen yogurt chain all over LA in case you’re all “foodied out” at this point…but make sure you don’t miss it.

Wrapping up the Day

At this point, the more party-tastic might be looking for the current hot-spot club in LA…and honestly, they can change monthly so it’s best you Google it…but you could easily entertain yourself for the whole evening in Venice or Santa Monica if you’re not seeking out the “scene” in LA.

So that’s it! That’s my perfect day. I’ll be honest though, there’s no regard for budget here, just my favorite spots so doing all of them in one actual day could be pricey.

Oh, and cheers and thanks to my LA friends who cart me around to these spots now when I come to visit…would cry if I had to skip dinner at Aroma.

Photo thanks to jleighb and rlerdof.

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“Lady, you buy our bracelets or who knows what will happen to your bicycles…”

At that point, I think my jaw dropped.

The Backstory

Laura and I rented bikes for a day of exploring the Angkor temples closet to Siem Reap – and after a pretty harried bike ride down a dusty and trafficky road we were grateful to chain up our bikes to a nearby tree with some pretty pathetically thin chains.

As we bent over our bikes several of the children selling information books and bracelets surrounded us and proffered their goods. We good-naturedly tried to joke around with the kids and steer the conversation elsewhere from the buying of yet more bracelets…it didn’t work.

At that point we very firmly (but still smiling) declined buying any of the bracelets, books, necklaces, and handmade knickknacks. We had just finished chaining up the bikes and were ready to head into Angkor Wat when the oldest of the girls sized up the situation and looked me straight in the eye when she hit with that line:

“Lady, you buy our bracelets or who knows what will happen to your bicycles…”

Then, at my shocked and incredulous look she quickly back-stepped a bit:

“Oh no lady, we won’t do anything to your bikes…but if you buy bracelets then we will watch them for you…otherwise who knows what will happen to them…”

The Internal Debate

Laura and I were both pretty taken aback by the situation but quickly recalculated and with a brief glance agreed that one of us would buy the $2 worth of bracelets now and the other one would pick out something when we came back for our bikes.

All of the kids were grinning widely at our sudden about-face and eagerly proffered their colorful basketfuls of bracelets so that we could adorn our arms with several of the light brown bamboo woven circles.

What’s the Solution?

So here’s the conundrum…what would you have done in this same situation? As a traveler I hear all of these opinions:

• Don’t give to beggars, give to local support organizations…
• Don’t buy from street children because they should be in school and you only encourage them to sell goods to tourists…
• Donating to kids on the streets contributes to their exploitation and abuse in countries like India, so don’t give your spare change…

And all of this is well in good in theory. But what about in practice? I caved in this situation and bought goods from the kids – in fact, I bought boatloads of bracelets from the little ones all throughout my time in Southeast Asia…it’s really hard to say no – and in a few cases I bought the bracelets from my niece, but other times purely out of guilt.

It’s just, I don’t know where the middle-ground is…I do have the money to donate to the occasional beggar, and certainly to give a bit of money here and there to the kids. In some cases, I would whip out a spare banana from my purse to those kids begging for food…and about 60 percent of the time they accepted it gratefully; then there’s the 40 percent who just wanted the cash and walked away from the food – it’s those situations that make it all so discouraging and confusing at times.

As far as the kids who basically brokered a soft-core bribe at Angkor Wat for the bikes…yeah, I paid them, which likely means they’ll do it to other tourists too. And while I don’t regret the decision per se, I’m still pretty conflicted about how to deal with these situations on my travels.

Any thoughts?

Related posts:

1. A Little Bridge…Temples, Kids, and a Green Guitar
2. A Little Exploring…Say Wat? Cambodia’s Angkor Wat
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Like a dog onto the scent I darted a quick look around the room, scanning the paintings and then moving my eyes to the small white attribution plaques under each painting. I’d been searching the met for about 45 minutes already for the section of the museum holding a large collection of Edgar Degas’ works (yes, I should have just asked…don’t ask me why I didn’t).

At this point my search seemed ridiculous, I had already explored the Met for about four hours and it was on my way out that I spotted a postcard in the gift shop of one of my favorite Degas paintings – I really love Degas and had no idea the Met had some of his artwork in their collection so I unbundled myself from my jackets and scarves and headed back into the labyrinth in a long and drawn out search for his artwork.

And then I spied a large sculpture in the middle of the adjoining room.

Suddenly I was surrounded by a roomful of Degas paintings on every wall – and that’s when the contentment set in.

I don’t fancy myself a connoisseur of fine art, but there is just something that I really, really like about his dancer drawings. There’s a whimsy to them and a grace that draws me into the ballet studios where his dancers practice – I can almost hear the music as they go through their paces.

So, although I was nearing a hungered exhaustion, I stood and stared, thought, pondered, dreamed, wandered, and then pondered some more.

And I concluded that I like his artwork even more now that I’ve seen a larger representation of his work.

I spent the entire hour long metro ride home appreciating the unexpected lift in spirits that seeing his artwork left me with :-)

Other highlights from The Met:

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Current Vegetarian Mexican Food Situation

As for the current moment, I’ve been in Mexico for four days now and concluded that I’m going to be eating the same basic handful of foods for the next three months. I knew that Central and South America were heavily meat eating cultures…but somehow I wasn’t anticipating the amount of fried foods, mushrooms, and cheese that I would consume! Add that to the basic beans and rice and you have a pretty clear picture of my current diet.

On a very big up side, it’s all been incredibly tasty! And the deserts are excellent; I’ve fallen for the churros here – the churros, and the charming young girl selling the churros who knows that my Spanish is still rusty and yet still can’t manage to slow down enough for us to clearly communicate beyond the basic transaction and some of my bumbling attempts to make conversation. As for the churros, I know that I have access to them in the states, but only now have I fully discovered the joy of ending each day with a bag full of hot and cinnamon-y fried goodness.

The backpacker side of Cancun is distinctly different than the resort areas, the hostels are right in the middle of a mostly Mexican neighborhood so all of the food is cheap and plentiful – about two dollars buys a complete meal of the most mind-blowingly awesome quesadillas – unlike in the States, these messy tacos and quesadillas are filled to the brim and then loaded up with sour cream, cheese, and a wide range of salsas, onions, and pico.

My first foodie lesson? Ask about the salsas before I dive in and slather it all over my food. Although I’m pretty proud of my tolerance for spicy foods, the colorful green and red salsas can be incredibly deceiving. The red salsa at one vendor was solo un poco picante (only a bit spicy) similar looking salsa elsewhere had my forehead perspiring while my lips went a bit numb on the inside and my nose started dripping.

Fun times.

And Now, the Promised Haiku

I’ve been off the road for a good four months now and was gladdened to know that some things never change…no matter what country I’m in, I continually discover the joys of the cold shower.

Ode to the Cold Shower

Spray drizzling weakly
Fleeting, I dash in and out
Wet kisses tingle.

Photo thanks to Scaredy_Kat and Daquella Manera

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I’m not sure what it is about music, but it just bridges gaps. Perhaps it’s the nature of music – inclusive; everyone who can hear it feels a part of the experience.

Laura’s green guitar and with a hand-embroidered Laotian pink strap was like a magnet for all of the children hawking bracelets and guidebooks near the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. As soon as our tuk-tuk puttered to a stop at the Wat the children came running from all directions.

I won’t lie, their purpose was two-fold because as much as they were immediately drawn to Jixie (the green guitar, yes, it had a name), they were also incredibly keen on guilting us into buying one of everything they were selling..

Laura and I were absolutely exhausted from a day hiking up the steep ruins of Angkor, not to mention we were grimy, hungry, and just a little cranky when we made our tuk-tuk made the final stop for the day to watch the sunset over a nearby lake. Our grand plan was to relax by the lake in solitude and eat our sweetly salted pineapple fried rice.

Then all of those plans came crashing to a standstill as a dozen kids of various ages held our hands, petted, cajoled, begged and looked longingly at the green guitar – the brave kids even snuck out a hand to pluck the guitar string.

At this point Laura and I were fighting the experience; I absolutely love children, and they generally love me too…ut I was tired, so we pushed ourselves along toward the lake’s edge with the tightly packed throng of children still latched on while we encouraged them to go target other tourists.

But the guitar was just too much to resist for the kids and we had no choice but to surrender to the moment. And once Laura pulled the guitar back out, the kids transformed. They had quickly ditched their baskets of bracelets and instead perched on our laps, hung around our necks, and sang with us dozens and dozens of songs. Everything from Frère Jacques (they knew it by heart…it helps them win over tourists if they can sing/count in multiple languages) to a cutesy Thai pop song that I just now got stuck in my head again for the first time in nearly a year!

Through it all though, it occurred to me that the guitar was the bridge – its presence altered the kids from a pushy hard-sell (which is a hallmark of the children around Angkor and Siem Reap in general) to a genuine experience where the kids were more interested in our attention and affection rather than our Western dollars.

And that experience was amazing. As memorable as the temples in fact. The sound of their young voices singing aloud – confidently from the older girls and with a weak timidity from the boys and little girls – rejuvenated our spirits more than our planned quite introspection would have ever. For that I am incredibly grateful that Laura decided to bring Jixie to the temples that day – it’s my sweetest memory from Angkor.

As a PS of sorts – expect a video of this soon! They were too cute not to film  :-) Oh – and most of these shots were actually taken by the kids!

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And that’s when he hit me with my favorite advice from him:

The Advice

“Shannon, it’s just money. It’s not worth you being in a miserable situation, I’ll buy you a ticket and you can come home tonight.”

The Grand Canyon with my Dad

The Back-Story

My dad isn’t one of those pageant parents, so when I told him I wanted to travel out of the state for an Irish dance competition (the Southern Regionals – I had to go!) he promptly collaborated with one of the dancer’s guardians so that I could tag along with them – girly dance competitions are not his scene at all but it was fine for me to go chaperoned.

Well, the only problem with this situation. The other dancer was a righteous bitch who hated my guts and sadly, I didn’t know that before we left.

Fast forward a bit and she has now spent the past two days of the competition making my life terrible – alternately name calling and articulating extreme hatred for me whenever her grandmother wasn’t around. Then she openly laughed at me when my hard shoe just happened to fly off of my foot and land in front of the judges…

…ok, so maybe that last one was funny, but she laughed at me maliciously, and there is a difference.

What I Learned from Him

Anyway,  jump back to me on the scrunched up and perched on top of the closed toilet seat in the bathroom of our hotel and contemplating my dad’s offer to come home no matter what the expense.

That’s actually all I needed, the reassurance that I could leave if I need to, that I wasn’t stuck without a choice due to unfortunate circumstances (me being underage and all). I ended up staying for the last few days. And my shoe flew off again (damn that buckle), but my dad’s advice stuck.

His Advice and My RTW Trip

See, I make my RTW backpacking sound like roses and flowers all of the time, but backpacking on a budget was a real brutality at times. There were the marathon 24 hour bus rides, attempting sleep on rickety trains (vomiting on said trains), sweaty hikes uphill in search of an incredibly elusive hostel, and bribing people w/money to get out of unfortunate circumstances. And though it was often these same experiences that made my best stories (and I actually kind of love when a few things go wrong and I get an awesome “holy cow can you believe I survived that” story out of it) I always knew that, at the end of the day, I probably wasn’t truly stuck.

There’s an out. Ok, yes, paying $150 for a hotel rather than the planned $20 hostel sucks, but at the end of the day, my dad’s advice held true– there’s probably an out and you’re just not seeing it. And particularly if it’s just money; if that’s all its going to take to make your life suck a whole lot less, then sometimes it’s just worth it.

And the money thing is only one aspect to it – my dad’s advice altered my point of view (even at the awesomely angsty age of 16).

What it taught me was that we normally do have an “out” from situations even when they seem hopeless. There is something that can be done if we are open to looking for it, some other solution or perspective we haven’t yet seen.

Now, when I’m on the road and something is going wrong on my travels, I really try to take a moment and assess how I’m perceiving the situation versus the reality of what I can actually do to change it. Perception versus reality; I’m still working on recognizing the difference, and when I can, my traveling woes aren’t quite so bad.

Have you ever had these type of situations on your travels…when you just didn’t think there was a solution?

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First off a thanks to everyone who reads the site, and an apology for slacking lately. I’ve been weary; it’s the best word I can think of to describe it – this travel site and I needed a little break. I’m back in the saddle though and wanted you to know in case you noticed  :-)

Travel Update and the Site!

• This week last year I was in Cambodia; I spent Valentines Day with 200 kids at the FLO orphanage outside of Phnom Penh…it’s such an incredibly content memory and I still carry with me the warmth and love from last year with the kids.
• This year I’m in Los Angeles visiting friends, and I’m just as content; I’ve missed a lot of the people here and it’s been great to bounce around and seeing old friends and old haunts that I love – doubly awesome is are the handful of neat new spots that are so LA but not in an obnoxiously trendy way (or maybe only kinda!).
• I head to Mexico next week and am looking forward to really and truly being back in travel mode…I’ve been missing it and feeling a little discombobulated lately…getting back out there should help set some of that straight…plus I’ll have more interesting stories…which has is contributing to the discombobulated feeling.
• Also, people really enjoyed the post a few days ago about Ireland…and I love that so many other travelers feel this strange tug toward Ireland…it’s just such a magical country…and they have Guinness, which can’t be overstated ;-)

Highlights from the Travel Community

• I was honored to make the fantastic list of 40 Bloggers living lifestyles outside of the “norm” or template as his site calls it. I was psyched to make the list at Untemplater, but doubly interested in the 39 other great bloggers with neat back-stories and many of them are also avid travelers.
• Dave and Deb caught the most amazing photo of a leopard in the wild at the Yala National Park in Sri Lanka – I was awed by the beautiful animal.
• I really love the list Troy compiled at GoBackpacking of 10 great travel movies - I haven’t seen very many of them and there are quite a few indie and alternative movies…props to him for creating such an eclectic roundup of films that I definitely added to my list!

Cheers and thanks to everyone and I hope that your Valentines Day is filled with love and happiness :-)

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