Last day in Delhi

Yesterday we went to the train museum and a planetarium. An indian astronaut has been in space as part of a joint USSR India mission. Though the planetarium show was an intro to our solar system 101.

Today we went to an american diner style restaurant for brunch, then walked around in a nice park, checked out a couple tea stores and are now waiting to take a taxi to the airport.

Actually I am supposed to be online to double check the flight times. I should get on that soon :)

typhoid or a flu

I've been sick the last couple days.

I had a fever and a cough. I looked it up in our guide book and narrowed it down to either a bit of a flu or typhoid. Probably just the flu. The lonely planet also said that 25% of visitors to India get some sort of respitory illness from their visit - so I am just that lucky.

Anyway I'm feeling much better now, though my body gave me a couple cold sores as souveniers. So thanks to that I am temporarily less good looking :)

I don't know why, but the touts in Jaipur were super aggressive. After a couple were getting a bit -lacivious- I had to become a bit -vociferous-. But it didn't count as a melt down.

But today we took a bus to Delhi and so far it has been pretty good. Broad sidewalks, grassy medians, tuktuks with meters and the tout possee here so far has been pretty laid back.

We are both pretty much "done" with India. After travelling for the last 2 and a half months, the heat and the layer of tout harrassment we get - we are out of energy to really engage or sightsee much for the last few days here. Plus it's raining.

We have met alot of great and interesting Indians while here though.

The first guy we met was Raj, an NRI (non resident indian) living out of london who gave us a free cab ride and shared with us his thoughts on India and the (communist) west bengal govt of Kolkata.

We met a few boys on our first train trip to Veranasi. There was a group of 4 of them sitting on our bunk area. One boy was moving across the country, closer to Kashmir, as his father was in the military and was being transferred. The three other boys were just hanging out to say goodbye. After they left we talked a couple times to the boy who was moving up north.

In our bunk appeared 3 coworkers who worked for the railways. One guy was a real talker and he kept talking and talking to us - you could see his co-workers feeling a bit uncomfortable. One of the co-workers also worked as a spiritual advisor to people designing their homes to maximize the energy flows by, among other things, keeping rooms aligned to magnetic north in one direction and the rotation of the earth in the other direction. The real talker didn't really buy his friends consultancy business so it ended up being a heated discussion.

Just before arriving to Veranasi the train was filled by boys on their way to school in Veranasi. There we were surrounded by about 10 boys in our area. It was cramped at first but we had some good conversations, especially with one charmer named VeeJay who said he was dating about 50% of the girls in his class.

On a trip to Abu Rd Station we met three business people (one man who owns a cotton seed oil refinery) and talked to them about indian culture (drinking vs non drinking) and religion (jainism vs hinduism) and feminism (indian vs western families).

On a bus trip to Udaipur we met the son of a brigadier doctor and had some good conversations about India vs China, nuclear power and religion (Hinduism vs Sikkism).

On the train trip to Jaipur we met a retired man, his wife and the mother in law of his son who were also travelling around India. They were from the south and they had one daughter and one son working in IT in Canada. I tried to make a joke to ask who was making the father in law's dosas while they were travelling. The answer: "the cook". Doh.

So travelling on public transit has been quite rewarding. You get time to spend with people that have at least a little in common with you (they are going the same way).

in Bombay Today

Kim and I are now in Bombay. Bombay is the Bollywood capital of India so we had to go see a Bollywood movie.

The movie we saw was called Singh is Kinng. We really enjoyed it even though it was all in Hindi with a couple English words thrown in.

From what we could tell, a village idiot like an inspector Clouseau or a Mr Magoo accidentally becomes the gangster boss, helps out an old lady who, as it turns out happens to be the mother of a girl he fell in love with, teaches the real gangster some lessons about his friends, and they get married in the end.

The production values were really good with scenes shot in India, Egypt and Australia. Some water stunts, car chases, music choreography and a Snoop Dogg cameo were more than we expected.

Tomorrow we are heading up north to Rajasthan which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful areas in India.

Agra and the Taj

So we did get to Agra eventually. We had a little bump getting accommodation because the first place we went to wanted 600 rupees, which is a bit high - but they wouldn't go down any. Fortunately the place next door had equivalent rooms and offered them for 400 rupees without any negotiation required.

Sometimes we are pretty good at negotiating prices. At one place the owner jokingly waved his finger at us and said that we were not Canadian/American but Indian. Especially Kim. Kim is more Indian than me. I tend to give in earlier than she does.

After a bit of lunch we headed straight to the Taj. It's really impressive. By impressive I really mean impactful. When you first see it, it causes a bit of a emotional pause - a little wow. Then you forget about it as you get close and check it out. But then when you look back at it again, you get that same little wow.

sahaja yoga

So our train wasn't actually 5 hours late. It ended up being 8.5 hours late. "That's India"

On our first day in India we met a English guy - but Indian by birth - named Raj who really liked to use the phrase "that's India" for things. For example, In Calcutta the metro line doesn't start running until 2pm. I asked him why? And his answer was "That's India". So the 8 hour late train didn't really phase anyone.

But while waiting we (mostly Kim) were approached by a religious group who had just attended a conference and offered to give Kim some Mandi/Henna tattoo. While Kim was getting a tattoo their leader explained to me their beliefs. The details are on their website at www.sahajayoga.com. The gist is that there are 7 energy centres in our body and that cosmic rays come down through these energy centres and break off in a prismatic way to charge the other centres. To reach enlightenment you need to remove the barriers to and within these energy centres. The sacrum is the most sacred of the centres and represents innocence and is/was the most pure at birth.

The cosmic rays are not necessarily cosmic rays, but because the highest known energy is cosmic, they call them cosmic rays.

It was an interesting discussion. They were going to teach us sahaja meditation if they could find a dark and quiet room but the could not. Which is ok by us anyway - I'm not the type to go or let Kim go into a dark and quiet room with strangers.

in a dusty internet cafe

The train to Agra - where the Taj Mahal is - is 5 hours late. So Kim and I are in a tiny dusty internet cafe near the trainstation in Gorakhpur. The room is the size of a wide hallway decorated with a Hindu poster, a small Hindu shrine.

Of the Hindu characters we both like Ganesh. The one that looks like an elephant. Ganesh used to have a human head, but there was a misunderstanding: Ganesh's father went on a trip and when he got back he did not realize that the man sleeping in his wife's bed was his more grown up son, so he took his son's head off. After realizing his mistake he put the nearest head he could find back on his son's body.

But since very Hindu Vernanasi, we have been visiting Buddhist sites.

First, near Veranasi is a relaxing place called Sarnath which is where Buddha gave his first sermon. Hence they call it the "birthplace of Buddhism". There are buddhist ruins there that marked the spot. It is also a very nice place to hang out, away from the Veranasi crush.

Second, further away - a 4 hour train trip and 2 hour taxi - is Karnath which is where Buddha died. There is a stupa marking where he was cremated and a famous 'resting buddha' statue that was recovered. Also there are Thai, Cambodian, Sri Lanka, Japanese and Vietnemese temples and monasteries there.

Kim and I stayed in the Vietnemese (buddist) monastery.

This is the first time either of us has stayed in a monastery, so we weren't sure if there were any rules or expected behaviours. A monk first showed us to the Buddha shrine, we took our shoes off - but didn't do much else. He then asked if we were looking for a place to stay and we said yes. Then a guy showed us our room and said it would be 300 rupees.

Unfortunately there was a power outage which meant that we had to go to bed at 6:30pm. I slept well and had lots of crazy dreams. In the morning we were woken up around 6ish by little monk boys quietly chanting and ringing a bell while walking clockwise around a statue outside of our window.

So we've seen two of the four Buddhist pilgrimage sites: Sarnath and Karnath. The other two are: Bodhgaya which is further east and is difficult to access because of the flooding from Nepal; and Lumbini which is in Nepal.

We briefly considered going to Nepal to check out Lumbini and Kathmandu, but the timing was tight because of the time we have and because Kim's Indian visa was single entry so we would have to apply and get another one from Nepal.

But we do think we have time to go to Bombay. Which is meaningful to me because of Gonzo in the first Muppet Movie.

in Varanasi now

We took the overnight train and arrived in Varanasi this morning. It's still hot here. As hot as Calcutta.

We are staying in the old city. The old city is like the medinas of Morocco (e.g. Fes) or Jerusalem, where all the buildings are connected along winding paths up and down through the city. We have also heard the Muslim call to prayer being played, so that is also reminiscent of those other old cities.

The other attribute of these types of cities is that we always get lost in them. Touts use this to help "guide" us to our hotel - by guide I mean walk in front of us and try to get into the hotel before us to claim a commission.

Today we visited the main burning ghat where bodies get cremated and their ashes put into the Ganges river. There were about 4 bodies being burned and we could see a queue of 3 or 4 bodies waiting to go up there. I also found out today that by the burning ghat is a building of people waiting to die --- so this addresses my earlier question about whether or not Hindus want to die or just be cremated in Varanasi - I think the answer is both.

Regarding the burnings, I couldn't see much in the fire but did Kim see a leg.

We are both feeling a bit run down by the constant touts. It is also apparently dangerous to be out at night here so we'll be hiding out in our hotel.

Going to Varanasi tonight

Kim and I are taking an overnight train to Varanasi tonight.

Varanasi is important to the Hindu relgion. Hindus, like Buddhists, belive in re-incarnation where after you die, you move into a different circles (based on your performance in your last circle), the goal is to eventually get to to the point of reaching enlightenment - at least this is how Buddhism works - and once you have reached this point you are done - the suffering ends - you stop re-incarnating.

Anyway, the reason that Varanasi is important is that it is a kind of re-incarnation loop hole. If you can die in Varanasi you get to skip to the end of the re-incarnation cycle.

So Varanasi is famous for some of it's crematorium ghats (stairs by the Ganges), where bodies are cremated as well as for it's purification ghats.

That said, with Hindus, I'm not sure if you actually have to die in Varanasi or if you have to be cremated there to finish re-incarnation.

Not really related, or possibly directly related to re-incarnation, there are lots of vegetarian restaurants in India.

Calcutta traffic report

Today in Calcutta...

Calcutta has too many people, too many constant horns, too much dirt.

Everywhere you look are crowds of people. Crowds of vehicles.

Here there is so much people and vehicle traffic: I can't imagine they are actually going anywhere - they are all just moving around to fill the spaces in the traffic - to split off and to form new crowds.

Destitution

So, yesterday I posted that the beggars I had seen weren't desperate and dying. But this wasn't meant to judge, I had meant to counter the image I had of Calcutta.

Anyway, yesterday, we were on a block lined with destitute people sitting on the sidewalks the whole way down. On one sidewalk there was a mother and father sleeping under a tarp, while their 4 year oldish naked son was playing on the traffic side of a steel barrier. Here the whole family was destitute. Here there is another level of poverty.

Hello from Calcutta

Kim and I arrived today into Calcutta. Not that it's called that anymore, it is now called Kolkata which keeps the english pronounciation more correct.

It took the cab driver over an hour to get to our hotel 22kms away. The cab was prepaid, so the message here is that there is alot of traffic to deal with.

There are cows occasionally on the side of the road. So there are sacred cows here.

The air is really polluted. Tastes a bit like Cairo in that sense. Because we both had to get up early this morning for the plane we are both wearing glasses instead of contact lenses - which I think might be a good thing because otherwise it would probably be stinging our eyes.

We have seen some poverty here, but not like you might imagine - if you are like me you might imagined that Calcutta meant crowds of beggars desparate and dieing. But we haven't seen that. There are some beggars on the street and also some just poor people sleeping or keeping to themselves on the street. One boy followed me around and started touching my pocket that held my camera. I ended up slapping his hand away - It was more reactive than I would have wanted to be.

We have also seen Indian yuppies or Indian yuppies in training (puppies?). We were just in a coffee shop drinking iced lattes and iced tea and there was an excited table of Indians argueing/working together on what sounded like a group business school project.

I didn't notice this at the time, but they were all speaking English. But I did notice at the time that when speaking English, they have the same Indian accent Indian people have at home. I suppose that the accent is portable is obvious, but from that I felt a connection to the Indians who live here and the Indians I know at home.

I don't think we will spend much time in Calcutta (Kolcata). Maybe we will try and find tigers outside of the town somewhere.

More Laos

In Luang Prabang we rented a couple bicycles and rode to a waterfall. We didn't get to the waterfall we were looking for, but did end up in a small village type area which was pretty cool.

We kept running into Darren and Jody from England there, so we travelled with them to Vang Vieng. Actually, on the flight to Luang Prabang, they were sitting next to us on the airport bus, then coincidentally were sitting behind us on the airplane and then we saw them two or three more times in the village and then coincidentally their seats on their bus down to Vang Vieng was again right behind ours. So really we were travelling with them without having to do anything.

Vang Vieng is famous for inner tubing down the river. You rent an innertube and then float down the river. As you float down the river, you float by many many bars playing techno and using poles and ropes to pull the tubers in. Many bars have swings or ziplines to throw you into the river. One bar had Mud volleyball/mud wrestling.

Kim suffered an injury while mud wrestling, so to be safe we took her to the French embassy in Vientiene to have Monsieur Docteur check it out.

Kim's injury is minor - But we saw lots of people on crutches and with broken arms etc coming out of Vang Vieng. Monsieur Docteur told Kim that she was the third person he saw from Vang Vieng the day she was there.

So Vang Vieng is super fun, but also stupid fun.

in Laos

Kim and I arrived here yesterday by plane. One weird thing about the plane trip is that occasionally tiny bits of ice would fall on me from somewhere above.

Luang Prabang is a small town and very laid back compared to the cities we visited in Vietnam. Sometimes, even, there are no cars on the road!

We booked a couple bus tickets and will be going to Vang Viet tomorrow.

Hanoi

We've been in Hanoi now for a couple days.

The 31 hour train trip was ok. At one point there was a big thump - big enough so that a water bottle fell and hit Kim waking her up. Then after about 5 min the train stopped completely and there was a very long announcement in Vietnemese. We were sharing our compartment with two and a half - one was a toddler - but they did not speak English so could not tell us what happened. The lady under my bunk made a chopping motion on her neck so I interpreted that to mean either a suicide, or that the engine on the train had been killed.

Later another Vietnamese guy came and visited the guy under Kim's bunk who told us that the train hit and killed a motorcyclist and dragged him for awhile. That was too bad.

The visitor also wanted me to give him my ticket after I was done using it. I agreed, but didn't know why he wanted my ticket. I figured it was some kind of fraud and, later, thought I should have said "no, unless you can tell me why".

When leaving the station, the attendants punched his ticket but were careful to actually take our ticket. Our guy wasn't happy but I wasn't going to go and insist that the attendents give me my expired ticket so I could give it to a stranger. So there was some sort of scam there.

We got into a taxi from the station because we had our big backpacks. However the cabby went around the old city lake - we knew our hotel was between the station and the lake and not requiring a scenic tour around the lake. Plus Kim was watching the meter and it was clicking Kilometers inconsistenly (popping) at maybe at a rate of 5x the actual distance. Ie we would go 20 meters and it clicked 100 meters. So forced the cab to stop confronted the driver and gave him 50,000 dong instead of the 74,000 on the cab.

Since that incident we have got into some good cabs and another one that required a confrontation and early exit (this time I only gave the guy 20,000 dongs instead of the 54,000 and climbing). Fortunately we have found that the little cabs seem to all have doctored meters, while a couple companies (minh linh - white cabs with green lettering and hanoi taxi) have reliable meters. So if we look for a cab, we usually wait for a white one with green lettering. In a white and green cab I think the cost from the station to our hotel the first night would have been 15,000 dong. So in the end my giving the original scammer 50,000 dong was pretty generous.

We had a pretty busy day yesterday visiting the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex, the Hoa Lo Prison museum and a water puppet show.

Ho Chi Minh specifically requested a cremation, but he is a national hero so after his death they locked him away in a huge monument to his life.

The Hoa Lo Prison (aka Hanoi Hilton) is the same prison that John McCain stayed at during the Vietnemese war. The story of the museum was more about how the French colonists had tortured and violated the revolution's comrades before and during Vietnam's independence struggle in the 50s. Regarding the American's held there in the 60s and 70s, they portrayed that the exact same prison had turned into more as a summer camp with volleyball tournaments and sing alongs. The displays show one side of the story, but at least that side of the story makes us want to know the other side of the story.

The water puppet show was really cool. The had these wooden puppets and would use a bamboo screen and a pool of water to hide the puppets and then tell little stories. Some of the scenes were pretty cute with a little guy swimming after a fish, then doing a backstroke. You had to be there. It's funny to watch a puppet doing a backstroke in the water. There was also a scene where two birds, possibly phoenixes, got together and then an egg popps out of the water, then they get together around the egg and then a baby bird pops out.

Today we took a white and green cab to the Van Mieu temple of literature (the country's first university and then went to a fair trade store called Craft Link. For lunch we took a white and greed to this crazy hofbrauhaus.

Tomorrow we are going on a two day kayak and mountain bike tour in Ha Long Bay. A pretty place near to Hanoi and the ocean (the bay).

Downpours in Saigon

It's raining alot here today. My clothes aren't just damp wet, they are wring it out for a litre of water wet.

We are thinking of taking a train up to Hanoi. Originally we were going to stop in Hoi An and Nha Trang - both beachy - but if it's so wet, it doesn't make sense. Plus we already did alot of beachy in phuket and sihanoukville.

So we are heading, through the rain, now to see if we can book some sleeper bearths in the overnight train up there.

Beef Lok Lak, Pho and Pad thai

Yesterday I had a beef lok lak in Cambodia. Lok Lak is small chunks of beef in a ginger gravy with a pot of black pepper sauce. The sauce was awesome. Cambodia has a famous Kampot black pepper that grows in the Kampot province. It's part of their "pepper culture".

Today we had some Pho in HCMC and it was good. To me it was less beefy, less salty or possibly msg than at home. For herbs there was the regular basil leaves and another herb that looked a bit like dandelion. Overall the soup was a cleaner or clearer than I've had back home.

But food will depend on which restaurant you go to... What pho tastes like in Vietnam is like asking what sushi tastes like in Vancouver. There are trends and that is interesting but the different cooks will have some influence.

For example, in Thailand I had the best pad thai I've ever had. It was at a restaurant called Lin Pin in Bangkok. I don't really like Pad Thai, but this one was really good - there was this aweseome crunchyness to the peanuts, which when I looked further I realized wasn't the peanuts but some dried shrimp. The bean sprouts were meatier, the basil that came with the meal was a full on handful of basil (like if you bought 2 or 3 of those fresh basil packs from Safeway and just threw it down on the plate.

I (and Kim too) also had the worst Pad Thai - we got it from the Bangkok airport. It smelled too fishy. When we landed in Phuket Kim barfed. Then she barfed again into my fleese jacket in the car on the way to the hotel. So after picking out the barfy pad thai that absorbed into my fleece - we stopped having Pad Thai.

going to Vietnam tomorrow

Tomorrow we are heading to Vietnam. We are going to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon, aka Hochy, aka HCMC).

It will be a long 12hr Cambodian karaoke ride back up to Phenom Phen and then back down to HCMC. Customs and relations between Vietnam and Cambodia are way more positive than Thai-Cambodian, so the border should be easy.

It's always fun to see a new country so that should be exiting tomorrow.

Overnight in a hut on the beach

Last night we stayed on "Bamboo Island" aka Koh Russei. It is a remotish island that you need to take a ferry to.

My dream was that it would be really cool to stay in a remote beach, in a neat deserted island shack on the beach somewhere. Doesn't that sound cool?

The beach >was< remote - there were just maybe 10 cabins (maybe 4 couples), two bars and some farms. And our shack was pretty neat, airy even.

Unfortunately for me and my sunburn induced desire to go to sleep early, that night, a Friday, was a party night at one of the bars and I think everyone (Cambodian farmers included) on the island came out to party.

I'm not complaining. It's just not what I had fantasized.

How to fix a jellyfish stinging

Kim and are currently in Sihanoukville which is a beach town on the southern end of Cambodia.

The big news today is that I got stung by a jellyfish while swimming near the beach.

I don't actually remember if this is the first time that I got stung, but a couple nights ago we watched a documentary on the "National Geographic" channel about two australian scuba divers that survived being stung by a tiny >killer< jellyfish. The male scuba diver was in the hospital in pain for 2 days, while the female diver was in pain for 2 weeks!

I don't know which >kind< of jellyfish stung me - I only recently learned there was a killer kind - so I asked the bartender near the beach if there were jellyfish. He had a Scottish accent so I'm sure he understood the question and he said yes, but none big enough to be worried about. Being a good bartender, he gave me a lime to squirt on it.

The lime didn't make much of a difference.

But anyway, now 5 hours later, it doesn't really sting that much anymore. Which is good because Kim, being a good girlfriend, had offered to pee on it! (Which I think is actually only for certain spiders - not jellyfish.)

Cambodian food

I did and don't know that much about Cambodia. I knew it used to be a french colony and I've seen a couple war movies that reference it. But alot of what Cambodia is was a mystery to me.

Like when is the last time you went to a Cambodian restaurant?

What do they eat?

Cambodian food has similar foods to Thailand and Viet Nam and Elsewhere.

Like Thailand: You can get a nice chicken or fish curry which tastes alot like the Thai versions with slightly different spices. We had a fish Amok and on a different night a chicken Amok - these Amoks are curries prepared in banana leaves.

Like Vietnam: You can get pho and apparently soups that you make yourself at your table are super popular here. We went for pho last night, but it didn't turn out very well. Kim didn't get a stomach upset from the pho, she just got mental upset when the waiter wouldn't give it to her because it is only served at breakfast!

(That pho is only served as breakfast is still TBD if this will be everywhere.)

Like Elsewhere: We had some nice barbequed spare ribs at a Khmer restaurant.

Cambodia has a couple unique things that I haven't seen elsewhere. We stopped for a quick snack and they had hard boiled eggs. I was going to have one, but Kim warnesed me that there was something "in the egg". Sure enough the girl we were sharing the taxi with was having the hard boiled duck embryos. It's eaten just like a regular hard boiled egg, but dipped in some sort of spice.

I didn't try the egg. Partially because I didn't know my company that well. If I was to start eating it and couldn't keep it down, it would have been worse - I think than to start eating it. My imagination thought that it might feel like eating oysters or wet feathers.

Today, on the bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Phen I tried some roasted banana leaves with rice and banana inside. It was pretty good and filling. Also healthier than the can of pringles we had as well. Kim noticed that some people were eating dried tarantulas as well. I didn't see them on offer - but I might try one - or maybe just a tarantula leg if the chance comes up.

I probably won't try Durian though. It just smells bad so I am not sure the rewards justify opening that curtain.