Showing posts with label cars and boys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cars and boys. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Monday, November 25, 2013
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Monday, September 12, 2011
"Check please!"
"'moke breaks... brah"
gotta love Fridays
Mason loves Fridays
Jammin'
"nice tan, brah."
Saturday with the sistas. By Sunday I was completely wiped out. But I did see the 49ers run all over Seattle.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Don't Let the Sun go Down on Me
Disclaimer - Ok so I was hoping to finish this before going to Beijing because I knew that I would have limited access here, but I went out and partied instead so I am publishing now. I figure none of you really care about time-line accuracy all that much anyway as long as the stories keep coming so I am just going to publish it as is...
Wow! The trip is rapidly coming to a close. Justin and i leave Vietnam tomorrow for Beijing for ten days or so, before going our separate ways and eventually arriving home in Toronto. Justin by way of Berlin, Zurich, and Frankfurt. In what is sure to be the longest two days ever! And me in the opposite direction via Tokyo and San Francisco. By far the saner route. I am super excited because I planned an extra ten days in SF to get reacquainted with my old stomping ground. But perhaps most excitingly I am going to do a four day hiking/camping trip in Yosemite, while I am by the Bay.
Wow! The trip is rapidly coming to a close. Justin and i leave Vietnam tomorrow for Beijing for ten days or so, before going our separate ways and eventually arriving home in Toronto. Justin by way of Berlin, Zurich, and Frankfurt. In what is sure to be the longest two days ever! And me in the opposite direction via Tokyo and San Francisco. By far the saner route. I am super excited because I planned an extra ten days in SF to get reacquainted with my old stomping ground. But perhaps most excitingly I am going to do a four day hiking/camping trip in Yosemite, while I am by the Bay.
Why am i telling you all this now? Well this will likely be my last blog post until I get back from Yosemite and I don't want to have to re-tell or apologize about it then. I am lazy! As most of you probably know Google and China have broken up so I wont be able to access my email or blog while I am there. China also doesn't get along with Facebook much so we are going to be pretty off grid, which we be interesting I am sure.
Alright now that everyone knows what my I will be doing for the next three weeks and can breathe a deep sigh of relief, let's focus in on what we have been doing for the last two weeks here in northern Vietnam.
From Nha Trang we took a hilarious overnight bus to Hoi An. Thank God Justin is so fussy* because we got perhaps the worst possible sleeper compartments, at the back. But Justin wasn't havin' it and bitched until we got moved to more civilized single sleeper seats closer to the front. To be fair he is about two feet taller than the next tallest Vietnamese traveler. I was never so grateful. On that bus ride I also severed all ties to my American-ness, at least when talking with locals. That is until last night when the USA's stunning World Cup performance forced me out of the proverbial American closet. Just couldn't help but shout my nationalism from the top of the crowd surf at Finnigan's. But wait I am getting ahead of myself...
We got into Hoi An about mid-morning. And by mid-morning I now mean 9 am, because Justin and I are getting very used to 5 am arrivals and wake-ups. After settling in at our hotel, perhaps our favourite of the trip the Hotel An Phu. We went to explore the picturesque old town of Hoi An.
Hoi An is famous as a shoppers paradise, but I hadn't figured on buying much there. Why? Don't ask me I am clearly delusional. Everything there is tailor made, including the shoes. And I knew once I had ordered my 13th pair of custom made shoes that Hoi An was going to be trouble for me and my budget.
And indeed it proved to be. In addition to having two suits made I got several collared shirts, three pairs of shorts, three additional jackets, several dresses and a new rain coat. Basically a new wardrobe. Why? Because I am worth it! And clearly a bit insane. We were having a great time wandering around town everyday and shopping, going to our tailors appointments and eating the best and cheapest pho anywhere in Vietnam. We even managed to fit in an afternoon bike ride to the local beach one day. But our great time was brought to a screeching halt when we were violently and verbally assaulted by two small shop keeper ladies at the Blue Rose tailor's shop.
Hoi An is famous as a shoppers paradise, but I hadn't figured on buying much there. Why? Don't ask me I am clearly delusional. Everything there is tailor made, including the shoes. And I knew once I had ordered my 13th pair of custom made shoes that Hoi An was going to be trouble for me and my budget.
And indeed it proved to be. In addition to having two suits made I got several collared shirts, three pairs of shorts, three additional jackets, several dresses and a new rain coat. Basically a new wardrobe. Why? Because I am worth it! And clearly a bit insane. We were having a great time wandering around town everyday and shopping, going to our tailors appointments and eating the best and cheapest pho anywhere in Vietnam. We even managed to fit in an afternoon bike ride to the local beach one day. But our great time was brought to a screeching halt when we were violently and verbally assaulted by two small shop keeper ladies at the Blue Rose tailor's shop.
We had ordered the bulk of our fashions from these two feisty, pushy gals and had been having some trouble with them over the last few days with regard to alterations. Most of my stuff had turned out pretty good and the girl helping me, let's call her Cindy Lou, was pretty good about agreeing to alter the few items that were not perfect. But it took some definitely diplomacy to get my stuff exactly the way i wanted it. I think my year at Fashion Crimes definitely helped steer me clear of any major conflict. Justin on the other hand was having nothing but trouble getting his shop girl, let's call her The Fire Breather, to make even the most basic of changes to his suit and two pairs of shorts. The suit, a beautiful navy blue herringbone, was almost there but the shorts kept coming back looking worse and worse.
Finally, the day before we were leaving we went back to see the final alterations on the shorts. Unfortunately they weren't ready at our appointment time and the girls asked us to come back in an hour. No problem we had plenty of other appointments that afternoon, including going to pick up my 13 pairs of shoes!!!!! So we agreed to come back an hour later. Well they still weren't ready an hour later, or even in fact two hours later.
Finally, the day before we were leaving we went back to see the final alterations on the shorts. Unfortunately they weren't ready at our appointment time and the girls asked us to come back in an hour. No problem we had plenty of other appointments that afternoon, including going to pick up my 13 pairs of shoes!!!!! So we agreed to come back an hour later. Well they still weren't ready an hour later, or even in fact two hours later.
Eventually we had run all of our other errands and we were anxious to get all of our stuff from Blue Rose so that we could get to the post office and ship everything before we left the following evening. When we showed up at the shop again the girls were busy helping fit a group of three American guys for suits they were thinking of ordering. The ladies were noticeably more friendly with us now that these other customers were present, which both Justin and I noted since over the last two days they had gotten progressively more surly and short with us.
I suppose it hadn't helped that Justin had been involved in a minor altercation when he asked if he could take one of their magazines to the shoe cobbler and show them a photo of a pair of Derby's he was hoping to have made. The Fire Breather was very hesitant but eventually had acquiesced. Unfortunately the cobbler had been keen to keep the picture and she cut it out of the magazine. When he returned the missing photo did not go unnoticed and the FB was furious. Justin was obviously embarrassed about the incident and had tried to make it up to the FB by bringing her a new Vogue that I had picked up in Bangkok. But she was not to be assuaged I suppose.
I suppose it hadn't helped that Justin had been involved in a minor altercation when he asked if he could take one of their magazines to the shoe cobbler and show them a photo of a pair of Derby's he was hoping to have made. The Fire Breather was very hesitant but eventually had acquiesced. Unfortunately the cobbler had been keen to keep the picture and she cut it out of the magazine. When he returned the missing photo did not go unnoticed and the FB was furious. Justin was obviously embarrassed about the incident and had tried to make it up to the FB by bringing her a new Vogue that I had picked up in Bangkok. But she was not to be assuaged I suppose.
So on the night in question, when we turned up for the third time and the girl's asked if we could come back in another half hour, I had had it and said that if the shorts were in transit, as they promised, then we would just wait. In the meantime I paid for the remainder of my items and had them packed up. Shortly there after the shorts and Justin's suit arrived. Well actually the suit had been there the whole time and was conveniently located on the floor in a dusty heap. He went into the dressing room hoping for the best but it was not to be.
After so many alterations the shorts were horrible. They looked frankly awful, and while it was a bit sad neither of us could help but laugh at the hopelessness of them. Justin announced that he wasn't going to take the shorts. Unfortunately one of the American guys was at that very moment haggling with the Fire Breather about the price of his potential order. After seeing Justin's displeasure and not being able to get the FB to come down to a price he was willing to pay he balked and decided he needed a night to think about it. And so they left.We were promptly blamed for the failed sale.
After so many alterations the shorts were horrible. They looked frankly awful, and while it was a bit sad neither of us could help but laugh at the hopelessness of them. Justin announced that he wasn't going to take the shorts. Unfortunately one of the American guys was at that very moment haggling with the Fire Breather about the price of his potential order. After seeing Justin's displeasure and not being able to get the FB to come down to a price he was willing to pay he balked and decided he needed a night to think about it. And so they left.We were promptly blamed for the failed sale.
Justin was by now wearing the suit and checking to see if any of the alterations he had requested there had been made. None had unfortunately. But the Fire Breather was in no mood, and her simmering blood quickly spilled over into a boil when Justin suggested that perhaps they should return his deposit and he would leave with nothing. The FB sprang at him like a wild cat, charging with an enormous pair of shears. She threatened to hack the suit from end to end with Justin still in it. And refused to consider returning his deposit. She then sprang at me grabbing my other purchases, including the SHOES and threw them into the back of the shop, which led into the house. What ensued was a confused, terrifying, and frankly outrageously funny but tense negotiation. At one point I made a play for my belongings and was tackled into the staff washroom and locked in, in the dark.
Eventually Cindy Lou, who had played a supporting, but equally as aggressive role in the standoff, and Justin managed to ink out a deal in which Justin would pay for the suit and they would return me and my belongings. Frankly he didn't have much choice. We left a bit stunned and with a distinctly bitter taste in our mouths. In the end it worked out though because Justin found a lovely gay gentleman at a neighboring show who offered to make the shorts and some final alterations to the suit for a good price.
We also managed to put the whole thing well behind us after we met Randy the ex-pat American who runs a local used bookshop, and on his advice had the best dinner of the trip, possibly of life at the Mango Rooms. We really splashed out, which was frankly still pretty reasonable. But, we bought a 50$ bottle of wine, a 2004 Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley. And we ordered the chef's special tasting menus. It was divine. Prawn tempura and crispy scallops. Delicious duck with a chocolate sauce, and seared tuna. Mangoes with sticky sweet condensed milk. I could go on but I don't want you to be too jealous.
Eventually Cindy Lou, who had played a supporting, but equally as aggressive role in the standoff, and Justin managed to ink out a deal in which Justin would pay for the suit and they would return me and my belongings. Frankly he didn't have much choice. We left a bit stunned and with a distinctly bitter taste in our mouths. In the end it worked out though because Justin found a lovely gay gentleman at a neighboring show who offered to make the shorts and some final alterations to the suit for a good price.
We also managed to put the whole thing well behind us after we met Randy the ex-pat American who runs a local used bookshop, and on his advice had the best dinner of the trip, possibly of life at the Mango Rooms. We really splashed out, which was frankly still pretty reasonable. But, we bought a 50$ bottle of wine, a 2004 Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley. And we ordered the chef's special tasting menus. It was divine. Prawn tempura and crispy scallops. Delicious duck with a chocolate sauce, and seared tuna. Mangoes with sticky sweet condensed milk. I could go on but I don't want you to be too jealous.
We left Hoi An the next evening for our final overnight bus ride, thank God, and headed for the big bad city of Hanoi. We arrived the next day exhausted and of course sweating uncontrollably. Thankfully we knew where we were headed and so we didn't have to do the usual thumb up our ass dance while we attempt to find accommodation. Instead we went straight to the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel. We weren't planning on staying there, obv. I mean dorms come on people, who do we look like? But we knew that was THE place to get advice and a few of our friends from Vang Vieng were working there as tour guides. We ended up staying at the aptly named Lucky Hotel down the street, but not for long. We booked an overnight train trip for the next night to Sapa. But first we had to get our Visas at the Chinese Embassy. Big mistake.
The Chinese guard took one look at Justin and me, in our short,s and flat out refused to let us in the embassy. He eventually handed us a bullshit list of pre-conditions on which he might let us. But the list was so long and filled with ridiculous things like having a photocopy of our health and travel insurance translated in Chinese. Health and travel insurance, what's that? Or having a letter from each of our embassies declaring that we are in fact who our passports say we are, also in Chinese. Um isn't that what the passport is for? Anyway we figured out pretty quick that we were going no where fast. So instead we went back to to Hostel and arranged to hire a local agent to go and process our Visas for us. It probably cost us twice as much and definitely took twice as long, but it was money and time well spent. By they way my Visa cost twice as much as Justin's, what's that all about eh?But at least we got them and we could still make our train to Sapa.
Sapa is a stunningly beautiful mountain town, reminiscent of Switzerland. Well as reminiscent of Switzerland as you can get in Northern Vietnam, but it was gorgeous nonetheless. We spent two relaxing and more importantly cool days wandering around town, taking a swan peddle boat,( totally a highlight) and going hiking to see some of the nearby villages. It was so lovely to wake up and see the valley and surrounding mountains out our window, and smell the freshly cut wood. We also ate some delicious meals at the Sapa Boutique Hotel. But before we knew it we were heading back to Hanoi for the Halong Bay 2 night, 3 day booze cruise.
Originally we weren't sure we could afford to do the Hanoi Backpackers legendary booze cruise, the appropriately named Rock Long Rock Hard Halong Bay tour. But I convinced Justin that we could not go to Beijing and spent two weeks with my family without having one last party in Vietnam. As far as the tour goes there isn't really much to report, well more accurately there isn't much to remember. Highlights included: one very naked drinking game, rock climbing, Justin playing an epic game of volleyball against the local Vietnamese, for beer. His team lost, but he was definitely team M.V.P. Skinny dipping with the phosphorescent plankton. O yea and sex on the barge. Not Justin or me of course. It must have been some other hooker. We were supposed to go wake bordering but there was something about a broken boat, i kinda missed it because I was too busy buying beer.
The Chinese guard took one look at Justin and me, in our short,s and flat out refused to let us in the embassy. He eventually handed us a bullshit list of pre-conditions on which he might let us. But the list was so long and filled with ridiculous things like having a photocopy of our health and travel insurance translated in Chinese. Health and travel insurance, what's that? Or having a letter from each of our embassies declaring that we are in fact who our passports say we are, also in Chinese. Um isn't that what the passport is for? Anyway we figured out pretty quick that we were going no where fast. So instead we went back to to Hostel and arranged to hire a local agent to go and process our Visas for us. It probably cost us twice as much and definitely took twice as long, but it was money and time well spent. By they way my Visa cost twice as much as Justin's, what's that all about eh?But at least we got them and we could still make our train to Sapa.
Sapa is a stunningly beautiful mountain town, reminiscent of Switzerland. Well as reminiscent of Switzerland as you can get in Northern Vietnam, but it was gorgeous nonetheless. We spent two relaxing and more importantly cool days wandering around town, taking a swan peddle boat,( totally a highlight) and going hiking to see some of the nearby villages. It was so lovely to wake up and see the valley and surrounding mountains out our window, and smell the freshly cut wood. We also ate some delicious meals at the Sapa Boutique Hotel. But before we knew it we were heading back to Hanoi for the Halong Bay 2 night, 3 day booze cruise.
Originally we weren't sure we could afford to do the Hanoi Backpackers legendary booze cruise, the appropriately named Rock Long Rock Hard Halong Bay tour. But I convinced Justin that we could not go to Beijing and spent two weeks with my family without having one last party in Vietnam. As far as the tour goes there isn't really much to report, well more accurately there isn't much to remember. Highlights included: one very naked drinking game, rock climbing, Justin playing an epic game of volleyball against the local Vietnamese, for beer. His team lost, but he was definitely team M.V.P. Skinny dipping with the phosphorescent plankton. O yea and sex on the barge. Not Justin or me of course. It must have been some other hooker. We were supposed to go wake bordering but there was something about a broken boat, i kinda missed it because I was too busy buying beer.
We came back to Hanoi incredibly hungover, Justin, and incredibly drunk, me, and decided we needed one last hurrah with all of our tour buddies. It was epic. I think we ended up as some place called Hair of the Dog, but I can't be sure. The next day was a definite recovery day, and in fact we spent our last three days in varying stages of recovery. Except for one night out to see both England and America kick ass. But recovery generally included lots of movies. Yea Sex and City II, and lots of internet(ing) in air conditioning. We are sooo cultural.
Our last night in town Justin thought it would be wise if we got a good night's sleep, which would have been wise, but I had other plans. So i went out on the lash, came home at 4am. Somehow I managed to through all, or most, of my stuff into my backpack and took a quick (snoreless) snooze before our cab arrived at 5am... and here we are heading to the Peep's Republic.
Now I don't want to give too much away, but since I am finishing this a few days late I will give a postscript update and tell you all that I got a little belliges at the airport when security told me I couldn't bring my new Swiss army knife and fork set as a carry-on. To demonstrate that my knife posed no serious threat to anyone, because it was dull as shit, I whipped it out and dramatically slashed at my arm several times. Well the North Vietnamese airport guards were definitely caught off guard, but they are pros at dealing with wild Americans with knifes so they just got all Viet Con on me and made several violent stabbing gestures with the knife, which I presumed meant, "listen lady you might not be able to cut yourself with this but you could still jab it into someone if you tried hard enough, trust us." And confiscated it. And on that note love you all and see you on the flip side...
*Let the record reflect that Justin's "fussiness"s is a view expressed solely by the author in relation to a specific event, and is in no way intended as a general description. I believe he would prefer the word particular
Our last night in town Justin thought it would be wise if we got a good night's sleep, which would have been wise, but I had other plans. So i went out on the lash, came home at 4am. Somehow I managed to through all, or most, of my stuff into my backpack and took a quick (snoreless) snooze before our cab arrived at 5am... and here we are heading to the Peep's Republic.
Now I don't want to give too much away, but since I am finishing this a few days late I will give a postscript update and tell you all that I got a little belliges at the airport when security told me I couldn't bring my new Swiss army knife and fork set as a carry-on. To demonstrate that my knife posed no serious threat to anyone, because it was dull as shit, I whipped it out and dramatically slashed at my arm several times. Well the North Vietnamese airport guards were definitely caught off guard, but they are pros at dealing with wild Americans with knifes so they just got all Viet Con on me and made several violent stabbing gestures with the knife, which I presumed meant, "listen lady you might not be able to cut yourself with this but you could still jab it into someone if you tried hard enough, trust us." And confiscated it. And on that note love you all and see you on the flip side...
*Let the record reflect that Justin's "fussiness"s is a view expressed solely by the author in relation to a specific event, and is in no way intended as a general description. I believe he would prefer the word particular
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Fun in the Nha Trang Sun
Our trip up to Nha Trang was fairly uneventful although I did have Valium induced nightmares. I had never taken it before, and after the OxyCotin incident of 2005, don't worry it was prescribed not abused but nevertheless, I know I have a sensitive reaction to percription drugs so I only took half the Valium. Even still I had two horrible dreams. In the first one I was on the elevator in my building but I couldn't move my arms, because of the Valium, so I couldn't push the button for my floor and had to stand there helplessly riding up and down. People would get on and off the elevator giving me stange looks. While I stood completely immobile and sort of out of it. When ever someone wasn't looking or if I was alone on the elevator I would try desperately to swing my limp arms up to push the button for my floor. But I could never get to it. At one point I was sort of leaning against the buttons groaning softly and possibly drooling. Awful! In the other dream I was lying in my pod on the bus, ( our bus had sleeper compartments which were sort of podlike,) but it was as if I was in an open eyed coma. Everyone around me was talking about me like an invalid. in this one I think I definitely was drooling and generally looked like a vegetable. I could hear everyone talking about me and looking concerned but I couldn't move or respond. It was very, "blink once if you can hear me." Anyway I did manage to get some sleep eventually, once the Valium wore off I think, and we pulled in to beautiful Nha Trang early the following morning. On our way into town I woke up in time to see one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen.
The bus dropped us off near the centre of the main town so Justin and I set off to find accomodation and get a coffee. We've learned over the last few months that nothing says fresh meat to the touts more than wandering around town in the early morning with your backpacks. Doing so leaves you open to endless hassle and constant shouts of, "you look, my hotel. Cheap price." etc etc. So I left my bag with Justin at one of the hotels and went off to investigate rooms for us on my own. We ended up staying at a reasonable enough place called Oasis Guesthouse, where we had two huge beds, and a TV, plus two beautiful windows overlooking the sea. The sea views pretty much sold us and at $12 a night it was justifiable, although probably more than we would have liked to spend. I know I know, we have gotten so cheap! The biggest pain in the ass about the hotel, and indeed about Nha Trang, is that water shortages in the country have really effected the hydro-electric power supply and so Nha Trang is forced to go without power every other day for about 12 hours. It turned out to be a major pain in the ass.
After we learned about the alternating day power outages we decided to organise our stay in Nha Trang so that we were out as much as possible during the days without power. Of course, given our luck we arrived just as the power was cut, which meant we would have to spend our first day in Nha Trang going without. God life as a traveler is stressful. We were both pretty worn out from the unrestful bus ride and would have loved to have spent the day sitting around in the air conditioning watching telly but decided instead to take a nap and then go exploring. Rough eh? We also decided that we would need to come up with a daily plan to avoid the boredom and overheating that no power can contribute to.
I was looking forward to doing some more scuba diving and Justin wanted to snorkel so we planned that for the next power outage day. We spent some of our first day in town scouting out dive and snorkel options. And then wandered around the main area of Nha Trang for a while and went to the beach. Off in the distance we could see the cable car which ferries mainlanders over to a small island called VinPearl, home to Nha Trang's very own water and amusement park. It didn't look too far away so in the afternoon Justin and I decided to walk over to it and get some more info about VinPearl Land. We knew we'd have the next day to hang out in town and go to the beach, watch movies etc in full air conditioned glory. So we thought we might want to spend our last day in town sans power over at the water park. It turned out to be a bit further than we thought but since Justin and I have both gotten unacceptably fat* in the last month or so we figured the excersise would do us good.
We were able to organise our diving/snorkling through Rainbow Divers, the oldest dive shop in Vietnam, so that Justin and I could go out on the same boat and dive the same sights. I ended up doing a Nat Geo specialist program, which was really just glorified fun dives. But fun they were indeed. I wouldn't say that the diving in Nha Trang is amazing. It certainly wasn't as good as Koh Tao. But it was quieter and there was some interesting wildlife and coral. Justin and I both found it a scenic trip, especially any view which included our eye candy for the day. I never did get his name but he was a super cute instructor, and he had a very sexy/cliche tattoo of a hammerhead shark on his right shoulder. Justin and I fought over who got to be in a fantasy relationship with him. Justin even took shameless pictures of him under the disguise of getting some great landscape shots. Quetaine! I am pretty sure he was on my team so I claim victory on that one. Of course he was busy instructing some blonde Swedish chick who was doing her open water certification but that is beside the point. I am sure he was madly in love with me regardless.
While in town we also took the oppurtunity to do a small bit of pampering. Nha Trang is famous for its mud bath spa so Justin and I went for the day to see what it was all about. It was pretty funny actually. I was surprised how many of the visitors were Vietnamese and not foreign tourists. And that definitely added some culture** to the experience. First you get a semi private mud bath outside. They have dozens of them all in varying sizes. That way you and your group can take part in the bathing togehter. There were entire families, complete with infants, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc all mud bathing together. Sometimes as many as 12 to 15 bathers all in one tub. They kept putting Justin and me into heart-shaped tubs together, which we of course found hilarious. After the mud bath you are meant to sit out in the sun for fifteen minutes to let the mud harden. I noticed that many of the Vietnamese seemed to skip this seemingly important step, but I figured it was because in general the Asians don't like too much sun exposure. Unlike us whities they loath getting tan. Imagine that! After the mud hardens you take a thorough shower and then run through a sort of high powered hose obstacle course for a final cleaning. The final step involves sitting in another tub, heart-shaped for us of course, with natural hot spring mineral water. The only problem with that was it was about 35 degrees already and so the last thing we wanted to do was sit for twenty minutes in a hot tub. But we figured our skin is worth it. And besides no good beauty regime is pain free right? So we suffered throught the near heat stroke and left feeling gloriously rejuvenated.
On our final day in Nha Trang we decided we had to make the trip over to Vin Pearl to check out the amusement park. The ride over was awesome, except for the older gentleman with the facial whiskers that were almost as long as Justy's ponytail. It was difficult not to stare. The amusement park itself was sort of underwhelming. It was no Wonderland that is for sure. But the water park was a total blast. We had a grand old time pretending we were 14 again. And since it was a weekday we almost never had to wait in any lines. We did have one sort of scary moment near the end of the day when we were waiting in line for one last amusment park ride. We were next on when the ride stopped and a woman appeared to be completely passed out. I am not sure if she fainted or what but it took two men to carry her off the ride and they appeared to be unable to get her to come around. Justin and I didn't wait around to see what was going to happen next since the crowd was growing and the situation appeared to be spiraling in a dark direction. We hightailed it out of there and got on virtually the next cable car back to Nha Trang. It was getting fairly late by then so we had a quick dinner and made our way back to the hotel where we were getting the bus up to Hoi An.
The bus dropped us off near the centre of the main town so Justin and I set off to find accomodation and get a coffee. We've learned over the last few months that nothing says fresh meat to the touts more than wandering around town in the early morning with your backpacks. Doing so leaves you open to endless hassle and constant shouts of, "you look, my hotel. Cheap price." etc etc. So I left my bag with Justin at one of the hotels and went off to investigate rooms for us on my own. We ended up staying at a reasonable enough place called Oasis Guesthouse, where we had two huge beds, and a TV, plus two beautiful windows overlooking the sea. The sea views pretty much sold us and at $12 a night it was justifiable, although probably more than we would have liked to spend. I know I know, we have gotten so cheap! The biggest pain in the ass about the hotel, and indeed about Nha Trang, is that water shortages in the country have really effected the hydro-electric power supply and so Nha Trang is forced to go without power every other day for about 12 hours. It turned out to be a major pain in the ass.
After we learned about the alternating day power outages we decided to organise our stay in Nha Trang so that we were out as much as possible during the days without power. Of course, given our luck we arrived just as the power was cut, which meant we would have to spend our first day in Nha Trang going without. God life as a traveler is stressful. We were both pretty worn out from the unrestful bus ride and would have loved to have spent the day sitting around in the air conditioning watching telly but decided instead to take a nap and then go exploring. Rough eh? We also decided that we would need to come up with a daily plan to avoid the boredom and overheating that no power can contribute to.
I was looking forward to doing some more scuba diving and Justin wanted to snorkel so we planned that for the next power outage day. We spent some of our first day in town scouting out dive and snorkel options. And then wandered around the main area of Nha Trang for a while and went to the beach. Off in the distance we could see the cable car which ferries mainlanders over to a small island called VinPearl, home to Nha Trang's very own water and amusement park. It didn't look too far away so in the afternoon Justin and I decided to walk over to it and get some more info about VinPearl Land. We knew we'd have the next day to hang out in town and go to the beach, watch movies etc in full air conditioned glory. So we thought we might want to spend our last day in town sans power over at the water park. It turned out to be a bit further than we thought but since Justin and I have both gotten unacceptably fat* in the last month or so we figured the excersise would do us good.
We were able to organise our diving/snorkling through Rainbow Divers, the oldest dive shop in Vietnam, so that Justin and I could go out on the same boat and dive the same sights. I ended up doing a Nat Geo specialist program, which was really just glorified fun dives. But fun they were indeed. I wouldn't say that the diving in Nha Trang is amazing. It certainly wasn't as good as Koh Tao. But it was quieter and there was some interesting wildlife and coral. Justin and I both found it a scenic trip, especially any view which included our eye candy for the day. I never did get his name but he was a super cute instructor, and he had a very sexy/cliche tattoo of a hammerhead shark on his right shoulder. Justin and I fought over who got to be in a fantasy relationship with him. Justin even took shameless pictures of him under the disguise of getting some great landscape shots. Quetaine! I am pretty sure he was on my team so I claim victory on that one. Of course he was busy instructing some blonde Swedish chick who was doing her open water certification but that is beside the point. I am sure he was madly in love with me regardless.
While in town we also took the oppurtunity to do a small bit of pampering. Nha Trang is famous for its mud bath spa so Justin and I went for the day to see what it was all about. It was pretty funny actually. I was surprised how many of the visitors were Vietnamese and not foreign tourists. And that definitely added some culture** to the experience. First you get a semi private mud bath outside. They have dozens of them all in varying sizes. That way you and your group can take part in the bathing togehter. There were entire families, complete with infants, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc all mud bathing together. Sometimes as many as 12 to 15 bathers all in one tub. They kept putting Justin and me into heart-shaped tubs together, which we of course found hilarious. After the mud bath you are meant to sit out in the sun for fifteen minutes to let the mud harden. I noticed that many of the Vietnamese seemed to skip this seemingly important step, but I figured it was because in general the Asians don't like too much sun exposure. Unlike us whities they loath getting tan. Imagine that! After the mud hardens you take a thorough shower and then run through a sort of high powered hose obstacle course for a final cleaning. The final step involves sitting in another tub, heart-shaped for us of course, with natural hot spring mineral water. The only problem with that was it was about 35 degrees already and so the last thing we wanted to do was sit for twenty minutes in a hot tub. But we figured our skin is worth it. And besides no good beauty regime is pain free right? So we suffered throught the near heat stroke and left feeling gloriously rejuvenated.
On our final day in Nha Trang we decided we had to make the trip over to Vin Pearl to check out the amusement park. The ride over was awesome, except for the older gentleman with the facial whiskers that were almost as long as Justy's ponytail. It was difficult not to stare. The amusement park itself was sort of underwhelming. It was no Wonderland that is for sure. But the water park was a total blast. We had a grand old time pretending we were 14 again. And since it was a weekday we almost never had to wait in any lines. We did have one sort of scary moment near the end of the day when we were waiting in line for one last amusment park ride. We were next on when the ride stopped and a woman appeared to be completely passed out. I am not sure if she fainted or what but it took two men to carry her off the ride and they appeared to be unable to get her to come around. Justin and I didn't wait around to see what was going to happen next since the crowd was growing and the situation appeared to be spiraling in a dark direction. We hightailed it out of there and got on virtually the next cable car back to Nha Trang. It was getting fairly late by then so we had a quick dinner and made our way back to the hotel where we were getting the bus up to Hoi An.
*Justin and I have thankfully rebounded from being fat and are making our way back onto team thin
**see previous post regarding the definition of cultural activities
Friday, May 21, 2010
"Excuse me, do you know how far we are from the tubing place?"
When the 17 year old Brit asked Justin the above question about how far we were from Vang Vieng it finally dawned on me exactly what we were getting ourselves into. I had heard rumours and seen the infamous "tubing videos" but like most things nothing really prepares you like experience. And what an experience it was. I can't remember all of it and most of it is NSFB (not safe for blogging,) but Vang Vieng definitely ranks up there on the fun-o-meter. We got into town in the late afternoon, and after getting ourselves set up at the guesthouse the boys from my trek recommended we went to explore. Vang Vieng the town is not very pretty. But the surroundings are gorgeous. Set in a lush river valley, surrounded by densely covered green cliffs, Laos is stunning. But VV itself seems to be in a prolonged state of haphazard development. Development which I would guess is going to be underway for at least the next ten years. In the meantime there are plenty of bars and restaurants endlessly playing Friends and making french fries to satiate even the drunkest Brit. Since apparently they "love Friends."
While wandering around we wandered across the bamboo bridge to the shanty town with the most important landmark in town - the Bucket Bar. It was early so nobody was there except some employees and some hardcore drinkers but one of the bartenders gave us all the important details about Vang Vieng - mainly when and where to get free buckets of whiskey. It turns out that if you time it right you never have to spend a penny on drinks in VV. And when you get your free bucket at the Bucket Bar, you can pour the liquor yourself. It seems they don't mind making stiff drinks because the mix is more expensive than the whiskey. So that pretty much sums up the whole VV experience except for the tubing, and the sandwiches, which was about the only things we did or ate for three days.
Tubing, which we only really did once was unbelievable. You show up at the top of the river with your tube and right away you get a free shot, or six. In fact most people don't even make it past the first three bars because they just ply you with free shots, rope swings, diving platforms and zip lines. Oh yea and one place has free french fries. But we did actually manage to release our hold on our shot glasses and tube down river. After our fist night in town Justin and I had met and made friends with Mike and Mark of Scotland and Wales respectively. And so we were tubing with them. Over the course of the day we managed to also pick up, Luke, Tom, Luke (Tubes,) Ciaran, Jaylene, Travis and a whole other whack of tubers. We stopped at the mud bar and played mud volleyball and had mud tug-of-war. We went to the massive slide, which I later found out is deadly. I did manage to make it down the slide OK, although Jaylene (not brown haired,) landed hard on her back and still has a bruise. I also successfully did the rope swing once. The second time was not so successful. But at least I wasn't seriously injured like some. We were all actually pretty good about avoiding the acrobatics while completely inebriated.
There isn't much after the slide bar, but actually that was the really beautiful part. No bars or loud drunks just you in your tube with all that scenery around. If only the river had been higher we would have really enjoyed it and not have been constantly scrapping the rocks and getting stuck. We decided to get out early because of the late hour and shallow water and take a tuk tuk back into town. The six of us became a bit of a posse, well except J and Travis because they hightailed it out of VV the next day. But the guys and Lize had quite a party over the next two days.
I got propositioned to have sex with a guy from each of the Celtic nations in one go. That's Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, in case you were in doubt. It was quite difficult to turn that one down, but I managed. My inner slut hated me though. But don't feel too bad for me I managed to have plenty of fun in VV. Thankfully though Justin and I had discussed not getting stuck there and so after three days we were definitely ready to go. And so we bid adieu to the delicious street sandwiches, which we had be living on, and the Tiger Whiskey and made for the capital. From here we are heading down to Siem Reap in Cambodia early tomorrow. But we have enjoyed Vientiane and particularly loved the COPE exhibit about the USA's covert bombings in Laos which have left the country horrifically scarred, literally.
While wandering around we wandered across the bamboo bridge to the shanty town with the most important landmark in town - the Bucket Bar. It was early so nobody was there except some employees and some hardcore drinkers but one of the bartenders gave us all the important details about Vang Vieng - mainly when and where to get free buckets of whiskey. It turns out that if you time it right you never have to spend a penny on drinks in VV. And when you get your free bucket at the Bucket Bar, you can pour the liquor yourself. It seems they don't mind making stiff drinks because the mix is more expensive than the whiskey. So that pretty much sums up the whole VV experience except for the tubing, and the sandwiches, which was about the only things we did or ate for three days.
Tubing, which we only really did once was unbelievable. You show up at the top of the river with your tube and right away you get a free shot, or six. In fact most people don't even make it past the first three bars because they just ply you with free shots, rope swings, diving platforms and zip lines. Oh yea and one place has free french fries. But we did actually manage to release our hold on our shot glasses and tube down river. After our fist night in town Justin and I had met and made friends with Mike and Mark of Scotland and Wales respectively. And so we were tubing with them. Over the course of the day we managed to also pick up, Luke, Tom, Luke (Tubes,) Ciaran, Jaylene, Travis and a whole other whack of tubers. We stopped at the mud bar and played mud volleyball and had mud tug-of-war. We went to the massive slide, which I later found out is deadly. I did manage to make it down the slide OK, although Jaylene (not brown haired,) landed hard on her back and still has a bruise. I also successfully did the rope swing once. The second time was not so successful. But at least I wasn't seriously injured like some. We were all actually pretty good about avoiding the acrobatics while completely inebriated.
There isn't much after the slide bar, but actually that was the really beautiful part. No bars or loud drunks just you in your tube with all that scenery around. If only the river had been higher we would have really enjoyed it and not have been constantly scrapping the rocks and getting stuck. We decided to get out early because of the late hour and shallow water and take a tuk tuk back into town. The six of us became a bit of a posse, well except J and Travis because they hightailed it out of VV the next day. But the guys and Lize had quite a party over the next two days.
I got propositioned to have sex with a guy from each of the Celtic nations in one go. That's Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, in case you were in doubt. It was quite difficult to turn that one down, but I managed. My inner slut hated me though. But don't feel too bad for me I managed to have plenty of fun in VV. Thankfully though Justin and I had discussed not getting stuck there and so after three days we were definitely ready to go. And so we bid adieu to the delicious street sandwiches, which we had be living on, and the Tiger Whiskey and made for the capital. From here we are heading down to Siem Reap in Cambodia early tomorrow. But we have enjoyed Vientiane and particularly loved the COPE exhibit about the USA's covert bombings in Laos which have left the country horrifically scarred, literally.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
I'll see your Chang and raise you a Singha. Buckets are trump!
Justin and I had every intention of skipping full-moon-party-central Haad Rin when we got to Koh Phangan. So when we arrived we headed straight to the Northeast to a reportedly beautiful beach area known as Ao Thong Nai Pan Noi. And beautiful beach it was. Unfortunately it was also full of honeymooners and families. And while I like a honeymooning family just as much as the next girl, if I am not actually on my honeymoon or with kids I don't really want to spend all my time with them. You know? Besides Justin was overwhelmed by all of the showy heterosexuals. I mean he accepts our lifestyle, as he puts it, but he doesn't really want to watch straight people make out constantly. So after one Thai cooking class, the lamest Songkran known to man, and perhaps one of the best dinners of the trip so far we had exhausted the charms of Ao Thong Nai Pan Noi by day three, and decided to bite the bullet and make for the debauchery of Haad Rin.
We managed to find a really charming bungalow, for cheap, since we weren't in town for the full moon. Our place was on top of Mushroom Mountain, (I'll give you one guess why they call it Mushroom Mountain,) with a beautiful view overlooking the whole bay. At first we thought being at the opposite end of the beach and up on the hill away from the party zone would shield us from the all night revelry. But after the first night we realized that the only way to sleep in Haad Rin was to get blindly drunk and pass out, especially since noise travels more over water than land and we faced directly out over the bay. That first night we took it easy and were home by 2 but even with ear plugs we were up till well past 4 am. We made sure to rectify that the next two nights but not even bothering to go home until 4. We were aided in that effort by the infamous gulf island buckets. Basically childrens beach pails full of Thai whiskey, coke and red bull, a lively combination. (We skipped the red bull, because we are responsible drinkers. But didn't skip the whiskey because we're clearly not THAT responsible.)
The best thing about Haad Rin was that the beach, which was basically deserted all day since everyone is out all night. So we had the beach and the bay practically all to ourselves everyday till about 4pm. The crowd at Haad Rin are really 4pm to 4am kinds of folks. Other than that there really isn't much to write home about as far as Koh Phangan is concerned. I suppose if we had stayed for the Full Moon Party, which is tonight by the way, we might have more of a story. But instead we left Koh Phangan for Koh Tao, Koh Phangan's smaller neighbor to the North.
Koh Tao is basically a scuba divers paradise. I wasn't sure if I wanted to dive on this trip, but I brought my PADI id with me just in case. But when I got to Koh Tao I realized that not diving would be ridiculous. It would have also have been insanely expensive, since the resorts give you crazy financial incentives to dive, i.e if you dive you can stay here for free. So I decided to do the Advanced Open Water course. AOW meant I was going to do 5 dives in 3 days including a deep dive, a navigation dive and a night dive. But that wasn't enough for me, oh no. I had to go and blow the budget on getting Nitrox certified and do my first tech dive. For all of you not up on the diver lingo those are basically really bad ass.
Nitrox is when you dive with an enriched oxygen tank that lets you dive deeper longer. To get certified for that you have to take a special course and an exam, and do two Nitrox dives. On my second Nitrox dive I got buddied up with two guys from the States. Team America as we were infamously called. We got the nickname after our second dive. We were only supposed be down for 50 minutes, although I had enough air for probably twice as long. At about minute 48 I signalled the other two guys that we needed to head back. They both gave me the international/underwater signal for fuck that we're not going back yet. I figured well alright we can stay another few minutes. At about minute 68 I started to panic and signalled them that we really needed to head back, again I was poo pooed. At that point I didn't know what to do. I could a.) surface and swim back to the boat alone or b.) stick it out with my buddies (a.k.a. dudes who do what the fuck they like because that's what they learned in America.) Since I had not been the one navigating and had no idea how far from the boat we actually were, and since I had by far the most air I figured sticking with Team America was best. After all I am a nationalism right?
Once we finally began to head back to the boat, around minute 71, I freaked again because even though they tell you to trust your compass I had a sinking feeling we weren't heading anywhere near the boat. I was so disoriented that I finally decided to surface and figure out where we were. And it is a good thing I did because the dive instructors told me later that they were minutes away from putting on their gear for a search and rescue mission. But once they spotted me with the zoom lens they didn't have to come find us. It turns out that we were heading in the right direction but we were a good 70 meters from the boat, which sucked cause I had to swim on the surface to get back. We got a decent ribbing when we did eventually get back to the boat, since we were now almost 20 minutes late and the boat was expected back at Ban's (the dive school) for the night dive immediately.
I totally blamed the guys, (stupid Americans) although at least initially it was as much my fault as theirs. But I did learn a valuable lesson. You are only as strong as your weakest diver and if one diver needs to surface or head back as a buddy you are obligated to do the same. I wish the guys had listened to me in the first place because it would have saved me the panic attack. On the other hand I did get a few really massive hauls of the Nitrox which wasn't so bad, and definitely made me feel amazing later. Nitrox is addictive.
My last day in Koh Tao I decided to do my first tech dive. Well actually they up-sold me on the tech dive by buying me free beers and telling how cool I would be. It didn't hurt that Craig, from Kelowna*, was going to be my instructor. Tech diving is the ultimate as far as I am concerned. If you get certified as a tech diver you can dive with multiple tanks and in the really advanced stages you can even use recirculating air, which means you can basically live underwater. You also use tech equipment to do cave and cavern diving, and when you want to go really deep for certain wreck dives etc.
Diving in Koh Tao is awesome, but not just because the diving is good. In fact I am sure it is just ok, but the atmosphere is amazing. All of the travelers and dive instructors are really cool, and everyone just hangs out and makes new friends. And all of the bars have live bands that play acoustic music, which according to our new friend Philip is, "actually shit, but people seem to like it." It is a bit like scuba diving camp, but in Thailand and with booze and sex. (Although I guess sex is pretty standard at camp too, eh Lauren? I wouldn't know.) We made some great new friends. And I did get to met Jim who is Koh Tao legend. He's a dive instructor famous for getting all of the Swedish chicks that are NBO, (that's Next Boat Out. charming right?) Jim became quite a good joke among a few of us. In fact we met more cool people in Koh Tao than we have anywhere else so far on the trip. We also met some wackos but that's not a story for the blog. ( Read ask Justin about that one.)
We stayed in Koh Tao six days and I was genuinely depressed to go. More sad I think than anywhere else we've been so far," and at least 20 % of that is because..." ( Sorry that is an inside joke. Shameless I know.) But before we knew it it was time to up and leave. Next stop Chiang Mai in the north where Justy and I are going to become professional Thai masseurs...
*Craig is from Kelowna which means he is obviously a babe.
We managed to find a really charming bungalow, for cheap, since we weren't in town for the full moon. Our place was on top of Mushroom Mountain, (I'll give you one guess why they call it Mushroom Mountain,) with a beautiful view overlooking the whole bay. At first we thought being at the opposite end of the beach and up on the hill away from the party zone would shield us from the all night revelry. But after the first night we realized that the only way to sleep in Haad Rin was to get blindly drunk and pass out, especially since noise travels more over water than land and we faced directly out over the bay. That first night we took it easy and were home by 2 but even with ear plugs we were up till well past 4 am. We made sure to rectify that the next two nights but not even bothering to go home until 4. We were aided in that effort by the infamous gulf island buckets. Basically childrens beach pails full of Thai whiskey, coke and red bull, a lively combination. (We skipped the red bull, because we are responsible drinkers. But didn't skip the whiskey because we're clearly not THAT responsible.)
The best thing about Haad Rin was that the beach, which was basically deserted all day since everyone is out all night. So we had the beach and the bay practically all to ourselves everyday till about 4pm. The crowd at Haad Rin are really 4pm to 4am kinds of folks. Other than that there really isn't much to write home about as far as Koh Phangan is concerned. I suppose if we had stayed for the Full Moon Party, which is tonight by the way, we might have more of a story. But instead we left Koh Phangan for Koh Tao, Koh Phangan's smaller neighbor to the North.
Koh Tao is basically a scuba divers paradise. I wasn't sure if I wanted to dive on this trip, but I brought my PADI id with me just in case. But when I got to Koh Tao I realized that not diving would be ridiculous. It would have also have been insanely expensive, since the resorts give you crazy financial incentives to dive, i.e if you dive you can stay here for free. So I decided to do the Advanced Open Water course. AOW meant I was going to do 5 dives in 3 days including a deep dive, a navigation dive and a night dive. But that wasn't enough for me, oh no. I had to go and blow the budget on getting Nitrox certified and do my first tech dive. For all of you not up on the diver lingo those are basically really bad ass.
Nitrox is when you dive with an enriched oxygen tank that lets you dive deeper longer. To get certified for that you have to take a special course and an exam, and do two Nitrox dives. On my second Nitrox dive I got buddied up with two guys from the States. Team America as we were infamously called. We got the nickname after our second dive. We were only supposed be down for 50 minutes, although I had enough air for probably twice as long. At about minute 48 I signalled the other two guys that we needed to head back. They both gave me the international/underwater signal for fuck that we're not going back yet. I figured well alright we can stay another few minutes. At about minute 68 I started to panic and signalled them that we really needed to head back, again I was poo pooed. At that point I didn't know what to do. I could a.) surface and swim back to the boat alone or b.) stick it out with my buddies (a.k.a. dudes who do what the fuck they like because that's what they learned in America.) Since I had not been the one navigating and had no idea how far from the boat we actually were, and since I had by far the most air I figured sticking with Team America was best. After all I am a nationalism right?
Once we finally began to head back to the boat, around minute 71, I freaked again because even though they tell you to trust your compass I had a sinking feeling we weren't heading anywhere near the boat. I was so disoriented that I finally decided to surface and figure out where we were. And it is a good thing I did because the dive instructors told me later that they were minutes away from putting on their gear for a search and rescue mission. But once they spotted me with the zoom lens they didn't have to come find us. It turns out that we were heading in the right direction but we were a good 70 meters from the boat, which sucked cause I had to swim on the surface to get back. We got a decent ribbing when we did eventually get back to the boat, since we were now almost 20 minutes late and the boat was expected back at Ban's (the dive school) for the night dive immediately.
I totally blamed the guys, (stupid Americans) although at least initially it was as much my fault as theirs. But I did learn a valuable lesson. You are only as strong as your weakest diver and if one diver needs to surface or head back as a buddy you are obligated to do the same. I wish the guys had listened to me in the first place because it would have saved me the panic attack. On the other hand I did get a few really massive hauls of the Nitrox which wasn't so bad, and definitely made me feel amazing later. Nitrox is addictive.
My last day in Koh Tao I decided to do my first tech dive. Well actually they up-sold me on the tech dive by buying me free beers and telling how cool I would be. It didn't hurt that Craig, from Kelowna*, was going to be my instructor. Tech diving is the ultimate as far as I am concerned. If you get certified as a tech diver you can dive with multiple tanks and in the really advanced stages you can even use recirculating air, which means you can basically live underwater. You also use tech equipment to do cave and cavern diving, and when you want to go really deep for certain wreck dives etc.
Diving in Koh Tao is awesome, but not just because the diving is good. In fact I am sure it is just ok, but the atmosphere is amazing. All of the travelers and dive instructors are really cool, and everyone just hangs out and makes new friends. And all of the bars have live bands that play acoustic music, which according to our new friend Philip is, "actually shit, but people seem to like it." It is a bit like scuba diving camp, but in Thailand and with booze and sex. (Although I guess sex is pretty standard at camp too, eh Lauren? I wouldn't know.) We made some great new friends. And I did get to met Jim who is Koh Tao legend. He's a dive instructor famous for getting all of the Swedish chicks that are NBO, (that's Next Boat Out. charming right?) Jim became quite a good joke among a few of us. In fact we met more cool people in Koh Tao than we have anywhere else so far on the trip. We also met some wackos but that's not a story for the blog. ( Read ask Justin about that one.)
We stayed in Koh Tao six days and I was genuinely depressed to go. More sad I think than anywhere else we've been so far," and at least 20 % of that is because..." ( Sorry that is an inside joke. Shameless I know.) But before we knew it it was time to up and leave. Next stop Chiang Mai in the north where Justy and I are going to become professional Thai masseurs...
*Craig is from Kelowna which means he is obviously a babe.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
The Fab Four
After the whirlwind of Agra we boarded a train and headed to Delhi to meet my parents who were flying in for the week from Beijing. They were due to arrive at 2am and then a driver was meant to pick us up and bring us to Rishikesh. My parents flight landed on time but no sign of the driver. So I called the hotel to find out where he was and where we should meet him. They told me that he was 45 minutes away. Bummer. Well forty five minutes turned into three hours and 27 minutes of roaming rate phone calls between me and the hotel. Needless to say we were not happy campers when we did eventually locate the driver resting with his eyes closed in his car, without a sign or even any indication that he was looking for us. Luckily I got the back seat with all the luggage and fell right asleep for the five hour drive to Rishikesh. I say lucky because Justin unfortunately had to sit up front and had a near heart attack as our driver pulled some NASCAR-eque moves: passing cars, speeding and swerving to avoid potholes, cows and other road obstacles. When we arrived in Rishikesh Justin was white as a ghost.
We all sleep for a few hours first thing and then went to explore the city and have some lunch. I didn't think so at first but over the next two weeks I came to find Rishikesh exceedingly beautiful. It is in the Ganga river valley, in the north east of India, surrounded by the smallest of the Himalayan foothills and very close to Nepal. (The Ganga is the same at the Ganges but is only referred to in the plural further south were the river diverges into several waterways.) We didn't do much else that first day, but we made up for it over the next week.
My mum is a machine I tell you. She insisted that we cram as many 5 am wake up times into the next five or six days as possible and so we went white water rafting one day, and hiking at sunrise the next. We got up a dawn another day to do a Jeep safari and bike ride along the canal. And everyday Mum would barely be able to walk when we got home but still she said, "Guys, I've signed us up for (blank) at 6 am tomorrow, and were going to walk there instead of taxi. Isn't that great?" The white water rafting turned out to be everyones favourite. I particularly enjoyed the lead up to the rafting when Justin kept saying , "I am not sure your mum is going to want to do that." Or "Jean wont want to do any class III rapids I don't think." Which was a very sweet gesture except that my mother was constantly like, "O lets go rafting," or "We don't really need a safety briefing, it's obvious... don't fall out." Which made me laugh because her enthusiasm was such a hilarious contradiction to Justin's panic masked as concern. There was even a hilarious encore performance on hiking day when after 11km of steep downhill we reached the main road for the final 3km, and Justin said
"I think maybe Jean might like to take a rickshaw back into Rishikesh." Nice try J.
I loved that hike, which we obviously did at sunrise since that is the Jean Amabile special, to a small temple at the top of one of the foothill peaks. From there we could see the sun rising over the snow capped Himalaya in the distance. It was a pretty powerful moment, just ask the girl who was meditating there when we arrived like a heard of elephants. The large noisy American kind. From there we descended along a steep mountain path, and all the time I was thinking, "boy if the foothills are this rough I can't imagine what the actual mountains would be like." Eventually we came to the Neer waterfall, which spilled into a beautiful reservoir where I took a refreshing dip before we had to pick up and continue on our hike. Poor Justin didn't bring any appropriate hiking shoes and he took a couple spills during our hike. In fact although i know he loves my parents I think he could have done without the Mattimore family gusto. We're not actually that fit or adventurous but we sure can fake it. With mum at the helm the week absolutely flew by.
And since we were big pimpin' on Pat and Jean's dime we got to stay in a suite with a TV and watch the Olympics every morning while having coffee and oatmeal in bed! Our suite was fine although way overpriced at 3,000Rs a night and the service at the Tapovan Resort was less than stellar. After our driver fiasco I had a week long feud going with the hotel staff over the price of the ride. And was livid at how much they were planning to over charge us to wait three hour at the Delhi airport. I mean honestly does it really make sense for four white people to try to find one Indian driver without a sign. I think not. Anyway, once my dad threatened to write to every US newspaper about it and I told them I would be contacting Lonely Planet they acquiesced and charged us the standard rate for taxi service. They really should have done more but that's fine we will definitely write to LP about our experience there. There must be dozens of hotels in Rishikesh worthy of a Bible mention instead of the Tapovan Resort.
Before we knew it my parents were off heading back to Beijing by way of Delhi, and Justin and I were headed to our new rooms at a different guest house. I can't remember the name but it is across from the 3rd Eye Restaurant near Laxman Jhula, if you're headed that way. For 250Rs each Justin and I had our own rooms for a week. That was a big splurge for us, since we have been sharing a room, and usually a bed, for the past two months. Anyway I'd recommend that place over Tapovan any day. Although you might ask them to run a duster over the room before you settle in.
During our second week in Rishikesh Justin and I had some alone time, which we probably needed. I took kayaking lessons a few days with Ayodahan, my new Indian boyfriend. He's 20 so he is about the right age for me. If you (the reader) are friends with Justin and me on Facebook you can check him out in Justin's album from our rafting trip. He is in one of the last pictures where we are sitting on the raft and Justy has his arm around him. So cute. We had a good time together. He taught me some Hindi in addition to the basics of kayaking, and I taught him some English. Mostly the importance of cheesy English expressions and puns. Like for example "go big or go home." Good one for rafting. Or
a delicate balance." (I.e. just getting your kayak to go straight sure is a... And also
"Don't make a mountain out of a molehill." Or,
" a fish in the boat is worth two in the river," I modified that one myself. And one of our puns - Surf and Turf. Anyway you get the idea. Ayodahan barely got any of this I was mostly just talking to myself to keep from freaking out about flipping upside down. I am not very good at the Eskimo rolls and waiting for him to paddle over to me for a t-rescue while trying to avoid slamming into a rock was not exactly relaxing. I figured the less practice on the rolls I was required to do the better. Thus don't flip over.
Those rolls are tricky primarily because your instinct tells you to get your head out of the water as fast as possible, what with the whole not being able to breath thing. But in fact when you do rolls you actually want your head to come up last, (how's that for irony) because your kayak will only actually roll if you start with the hips. If you try to pull yourself over head first you simply wont make it, and then you will drown. Or at least that is how it feels. Oh and don't forget you are still in whitewater. (Read shitting yourself.)
If you do have to bale, and I am obviously not speaking from personal experience here, (since I am a star kayak-er) you have to pull off your splash guard, which can be panic inducing in and of it self, (so I am told.) And you have to locate your paddle and kayak so they don't whack you in the head. Grab your paddle if possible. (The guys were constantly telling us the paddles were worth more than we were.) Then, and this is the mortifying bit, you have to grab a hold of Ayodahan's rescue kayak at the front, lie on your back, and straddle the kayak upside down while trying not to choke as you get pummeled with mouth fulls of the Ganga River. Once you have cleared the whitewater looking extremely graceful, believe me, you have to watch as poor Ayodahan hauls your 25 k, plus water, kayak out of the rushing river and swing it back and forth to get as much water out as possible. And to finish off this glamorous water ballet you have to get back into the kayak - you and your helmet, life jacket, splash guard, wetsuit and all. (probably for the third time -or something like that, again I am only speculating here.*) I was pro obvs.
In addition to kayaking on my own, Justin and I took a whole bunch of yoga classes with this super dynamic guy named Amit. Both Justin and I had a crush on him, but since I had already claimed all of the rafting guys Justin got dibs on Amit in our fantasy league. We got to do a whole bunch of yogic stuff that neither of us had ever done before including a whole class of kundulini yoga and laughing yoga. That's right I said laughing yoga. It's great by the way.
We also hiked out one day to the now desolate, former Ashram of the Beatles guru Mandrblahblahblah. (Read I don't/never could remember the dude's name but it started with an M if your googling.) Anyway in the 60's and 70's this guy was huge and the Beatles all went to his Ashram before writing Sgt. Pepper, makes sense now eh? Although I think Ringo only stuck it out for like a week. The place is totally deserted now because the guru pulled a Tiger Woods with a whole bunch of the women devotees and that didn't go down so well in the 90's. (Feminists, always ruining everything.)
It was kind of amazing /really creepy, especially as it started to get dark. It took us forever to find the place, hence the getting dark. Which may have been because we kept asking directions by saying, "Hey Ji (sir) Beatles Ashram? You know, where is?" Maybe if we had ever remembered the guru guys name it would have been easier. It also didn't help that the gate out front was locked and said No Entry all over it. We actually walked right past it and continued on for 500 meters before someone gave us a clue. (Read led us there.) Anyway, it was a pretty awesome Ashram, surround by nature and set into a hillside. It reminded me a really big fancy camp, complete with meditation bungalows, which were a little kooky igloo/solitary confinement-esqu, but they were built in the 70's so I forgave. In one of the dorm rooms we actually found some original cartoon drawings done by who knows who, but let's say the Beatles cause it's cooler, which featured a whole whack of song lyrics and titles from the Sgt Pepper album.
AnyIamtheWalrus, Rishikesh was amazing. Justin and I have been talking about how it was the first place were we were genuinely sad to leave, with no restlessness etc. I mean don't get me wrong I am excited for what's next but I would definitely go back to Rishikesh and hang out there for a while. The only bummer was that I didn't get to do a multi-day trek, because it was still a bit too early in the hiking season and I couldn't find anyone to take me alone or any other groups that I might tag a long with. Oh well something for next time. This week we are in Varanasi and then next week we are at the Ashram. I can't believe that the India leg of the trip is actually 2/3 over.
Highlights of Rishikesh
Mum and Dad
The guys at De N Ascend (spelling is incorrect, will edit later.)
Amit
The food - We ate salad can you believe it!
rafting, kayaking, yoga, hiking, biking, safari-ing and general badassness
THE OLYMPICS
Oh yea and I almost forgot Justin and I went to get our teeth cleaned and each got a new pair of prescription eyeglasses made. Yes all of the health care that is not covered in Canada, (for Canadians, I wouldn't know anything about health care. Health care what is health care?) is super cheap and amazing here.
Lowlights
leaving on Holi
leaving the day of the Canada-US Gold Medal Hockey game - very poorly planned. (And no I don't want to talk about it.)
leaving
oh yea and Tapovan Resort - beware!
*I only had to bale out of my kayak twice, and perform the above mentioned act of mortification once.
We all sleep for a few hours first thing and then went to explore the city and have some lunch. I didn't think so at first but over the next two weeks I came to find Rishikesh exceedingly beautiful. It is in the Ganga river valley, in the north east of India, surrounded by the smallest of the Himalayan foothills and very close to Nepal. (The Ganga is the same at the Ganges but is only referred to in the plural further south were the river diverges into several waterways.) We didn't do much else that first day, but we made up for it over the next week.
My mum is a machine I tell you. She insisted that we cram as many 5 am wake up times into the next five or six days as possible and so we went white water rafting one day, and hiking at sunrise the next. We got up a dawn another day to do a Jeep safari and bike ride along the canal. And everyday Mum would barely be able to walk when we got home but still she said, "Guys, I've signed us up for (blank) at 6 am tomorrow, and were going to walk there instead of taxi. Isn't that great?" The white water rafting turned out to be everyones favourite. I particularly enjoyed the lead up to the rafting when Justin kept saying , "I am not sure your mum is going to want to do that." Or "Jean wont want to do any class III rapids I don't think." Which was a very sweet gesture except that my mother was constantly like, "O lets go rafting," or "We don't really need a safety briefing, it's obvious... don't fall out." Which made me laugh because her enthusiasm was such a hilarious contradiction to Justin's panic masked as concern. There was even a hilarious encore performance on hiking day when after 11km of steep downhill we reached the main road for the final 3km, and Justin said
"I think maybe Jean might like to take a rickshaw back into Rishikesh." Nice try J.
I loved that hike, which we obviously did at sunrise since that is the Jean Amabile special, to a small temple at the top of one of the foothill peaks. From there we could see the sun rising over the snow capped Himalaya in the distance. It was a pretty powerful moment, just ask the girl who was meditating there when we arrived like a heard of elephants. The large noisy American kind. From there we descended along a steep mountain path, and all the time I was thinking, "boy if the foothills are this rough I can't imagine what the actual mountains would be like." Eventually we came to the Neer waterfall, which spilled into a beautiful reservoir where I took a refreshing dip before we had to pick up and continue on our hike. Poor Justin didn't bring any appropriate hiking shoes and he took a couple spills during our hike. In fact although i know he loves my parents I think he could have done without the Mattimore family gusto. We're not actually that fit or adventurous but we sure can fake it. With mum at the helm the week absolutely flew by.
And since we were big pimpin' on Pat and Jean's dime we got to stay in a suite with a TV and watch the Olympics every morning while having coffee and oatmeal in bed! Our suite was fine although way overpriced at 3,000Rs a night and the service at the Tapovan Resort was less than stellar. After our driver fiasco I had a week long feud going with the hotel staff over the price of the ride. And was livid at how much they were planning to over charge us to wait three hour at the Delhi airport. I mean honestly does it really make sense for four white people to try to find one Indian driver without a sign. I think not. Anyway, once my dad threatened to write to every US newspaper about it and I told them I would be contacting Lonely Planet they acquiesced and charged us the standard rate for taxi service. They really should have done more but that's fine we will definitely write to LP about our experience there. There must be dozens of hotels in Rishikesh worthy of a Bible mention instead of the Tapovan Resort.
Before we knew it my parents were off heading back to Beijing by way of Delhi, and Justin and I were headed to our new rooms at a different guest house. I can't remember the name but it is across from the 3rd Eye Restaurant near Laxman Jhula, if you're headed that way. For 250Rs each Justin and I had our own rooms for a week. That was a big splurge for us, since we have been sharing a room, and usually a bed, for the past two months. Anyway I'd recommend that place over Tapovan any day. Although you might ask them to run a duster over the room before you settle in.
During our second week in Rishikesh Justin and I had some alone time, which we probably needed. I took kayaking lessons a few days with Ayodahan, my new Indian boyfriend. He's 20 so he is about the right age for me. If you (the reader) are friends with Justin and me on Facebook you can check him out in Justin's album from our rafting trip. He is in one of the last pictures where we are sitting on the raft and Justy has his arm around him. So cute. We had a good time together. He taught me some Hindi in addition to the basics of kayaking, and I taught him some English. Mostly the importance of cheesy English expressions and puns. Like for example "go big or go home." Good one for rafting. Or
a delicate balance." (I.e. just getting your kayak to go straight sure is a... And also
"Don't make a mountain out of a molehill." Or,
" a fish in the boat is worth two in the river," I modified that one myself. And one of our puns - Surf and Turf. Anyway you get the idea. Ayodahan barely got any of this I was mostly just talking to myself to keep from freaking out about flipping upside down. I am not very good at the Eskimo rolls and waiting for him to paddle over to me for a t-rescue while trying to avoid slamming into a rock was not exactly relaxing. I figured the less practice on the rolls I was required to do the better. Thus don't flip over.
Those rolls are tricky primarily because your instinct tells you to get your head out of the water as fast as possible, what with the whole not being able to breath thing. But in fact when you do rolls you actually want your head to come up last, (how's that for irony) because your kayak will only actually roll if you start with the hips. If you try to pull yourself over head first you simply wont make it, and then you will drown. Or at least that is how it feels. Oh and don't forget you are still in whitewater. (Read shitting yourself.)
If you do have to bale, and I am obviously not speaking from personal experience here, (since I am a star kayak-er) you have to pull off your splash guard, which can be panic inducing in and of it self, (so I am told.) And you have to locate your paddle and kayak so they don't whack you in the head. Grab your paddle if possible. (The guys were constantly telling us the paddles were worth more than we were.) Then, and this is the mortifying bit, you have to grab a hold of Ayodahan's rescue kayak at the front, lie on your back, and straddle the kayak upside down while trying not to choke as you get pummeled with mouth fulls of the Ganga River. Once you have cleared the whitewater looking extremely graceful, believe me, you have to watch as poor Ayodahan hauls your 25 k, plus water, kayak out of the rushing river and swing it back and forth to get as much water out as possible. And to finish off this glamorous water ballet you have to get back into the kayak - you and your helmet, life jacket, splash guard, wetsuit and all. (probably for the third time -or something like that, again I am only speculating here.*) I was pro obvs.
In addition to kayaking on my own, Justin and I took a whole bunch of yoga classes with this super dynamic guy named Amit. Both Justin and I had a crush on him, but since I had already claimed all of the rafting guys Justin got dibs on Amit in our fantasy league. We got to do a whole bunch of yogic stuff that neither of us had ever done before including a whole class of kundulini yoga and laughing yoga. That's right I said laughing yoga. It's great by the way.
We also hiked out one day to the now desolate, former Ashram of the Beatles guru Mandrblahblahblah. (Read I don't/never could remember the dude's name but it started with an M if your googling.) Anyway in the 60's and 70's this guy was huge and the Beatles all went to his Ashram before writing Sgt. Pepper, makes sense now eh? Although I think Ringo only stuck it out for like a week. The place is totally deserted now because the guru pulled a Tiger Woods with a whole bunch of the women devotees and that didn't go down so well in the 90's. (Feminists, always ruining everything.)
It was kind of amazing /really creepy, especially as it started to get dark. It took us forever to find the place, hence the getting dark. Which may have been because we kept asking directions by saying, "Hey Ji (sir) Beatles Ashram? You know, where is?" Maybe if we had ever remembered the guru guys name it would have been easier. It also didn't help that the gate out front was locked and said No Entry all over it. We actually walked right past it and continued on for 500 meters before someone gave us a clue. (Read led us there.) Anyway, it was a pretty awesome Ashram, surround by nature and set into a hillside. It reminded me a really big fancy camp, complete with meditation bungalows, which were a little kooky igloo/solitary confinement-esqu, but they were built in the 70's so I forgave. In one of the dorm rooms we actually found some original cartoon drawings done by who knows who, but let's say the Beatles cause it's cooler, which featured a whole whack of song lyrics and titles from the Sgt Pepper album.
AnyIamtheWalrus, Rishikesh was amazing. Justin and I have been talking about how it was the first place were we were genuinely sad to leave, with no restlessness etc. I mean don't get me wrong I am excited for what's next but I would definitely go back to Rishikesh and hang out there for a while. The only bummer was that I didn't get to do a multi-day trek, because it was still a bit too early in the hiking season and I couldn't find anyone to take me alone or any other groups that I might tag a long with. Oh well something for next time. This week we are in Varanasi and then next week we are at the Ashram. I can't believe that the India leg of the trip is actually 2/3 over.
Highlights of Rishikesh
Mum and Dad
The guys at De N Ascend (spelling is incorrect, will edit later.)
Amit
The food - We ate salad can you believe it!
rafting, kayaking, yoga, hiking, biking, safari-ing and general badassness
THE OLYMPICS
Oh yea and I almost forgot Justin and I went to get our teeth cleaned and each got a new pair of prescription eyeglasses made. Yes all of the health care that is not covered in Canada, (for Canadians, I wouldn't know anything about health care. Health care what is health care?) is super cheap and amazing here.
Lowlights
leaving on Holi
leaving the day of the Canada-US Gold Medal Hockey game - very poorly planned. (And no I don't want to talk about it.)
leaving
oh yea and Tapovan Resort - beware!
*I only had to bale out of my kayak twice, and perform the above mentioned act of mortification once.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Got To Goa
We arrived in Goa in the afternoon thinking we could just hop in a rickshaw to Agonda. Unfortunately Agonda was quite a bit further than we thought and it turned out we needed to pull a rickshaw, bus, rickshaw combo to get there. No sweat for us, Justin and I are old pros. Getting to the bus station and finding the bus was easy, but as we got on board the conductor stopped us and mumbled something incoherent about our bags. We were trying to figure out what he was saying while standing on the practically empty bus when he pointed to the roof indicating that that is where our bags needed to go. So I told Justin I would figure it out. Now I was assuming that he was going to get some guy to take care of the bags, but instead he took off to the chai stand leaving me standing there looking at a ladder up to the roof. Well, I guess I am on my own.
I hoisted Justin's pack on my back and started climbing the ladder . I had gathered quite an intrigued crowd, mostly men who started watching me and discussing my bus scaling technique. I managed to get to the top no problem but then started to feel a bit panicked because getting to the top of the ladder was relatively easy but actually getting from the ladder to the bus was going to be another matter. I employed a sort of awkward inch worm shuffle, covering myself in dirt and grime while prostrating on the roof of the bus. But at least I didn't fall or dropped the pack in the process. A success, since as I slid onto the bus I was shimming awkwardly side to side and had several white knuckle moments where the pack lurched to one side or the other. But I made it. I tentatively darted across the corrugated metal roof to the rack and clip the pack to the frame so that it didn't go flying off the back of the bus. I then made my way back to the ladder. And again panic set in. I am sure you have experienced the sensation at the top of a rather steep ladder or hill when you realize you are going to have to swing your legs over the ledge and go back down. And it dawned on me right then that when we arrive I, ( read Justin,) was going to have to do the descent with the pack on. But the crowd watching me had grown and I couldn't very well stay up there on the top of the bus. I had to get down and get the other pack up there. So I swallowed my fear and descended the ladder.Then as I was coming down I saw Justin through the window of the bus sitting facing the other direction gazing peacefully out the window. Hmmm, I thought, what is wrong with this picture? Here I am covered in dust, and in all white I might add, and my strong male companion is resting comfortably on the bus waving at children. But I didn't want to disappoint my supporters now, since I could see they had called a number of other men over to watch me attempt the second pack. So I hoisted my pack and up I went. All the timing fretting and wishing I could stay up there rather than come down again. But again I made it up and back in one piece.
After my time as a Sherpa I got on the bus and Justin, true to form says, "girl you're filthy." Well he didn't say it but I can tell he's thinking it. "That was quite an experience. I had to climb those packs up there myself." I hinted
"good work girl," he said. Obviously the feat was lost on him. And then sure enough we were off. When we arrived in the town where we were meant to disembark I'd figured out what we were going to do about unloading our packs, since it is all I had been thinking about for the last fifteen minutes. While Justin is big and strong I thought his height might make carrying those packs on the ladder actually more difficult. So instead I told him I will climb up and hand the packs over the ledge to you. A rather simpler system. From there we are supposed to get a rickshaw, but there were any only taxis. Of course. Taxis being considerably more expensive.
Justin and I haggled with the lone taxi driver and eventually agreed on the fare to Agonda. Haggling is such an art, especially since you almost never know how much anything is actually worth. But a good rule of thumb is to ask the price, and then no matter what is said cut it in half or maybe even two thirds as a counter-offer. This usually is met by a look of shock indicating that you have greatly offended. Then they will ask you for your real price. And you should repeat your low-ball offer. From there they will give you a counter offer, which you should indicate is equally as offensive. Thank them and begin to walk away, that is when the price usually starts to drop to something in the reasonable range. Once the offers start to get reasonable give an inch and then don't budge. Deal done!
So we get in the taxi and ride out to Agonda. Agonda is beautiful and if I were to go back to Goa, Agonda is where I would go. For four days we sat on the beach without anyone bothering us. We slept in a hut literally 100 feet from the sea. And we met some really nice travelers, including a David Hainey doppelganger, Chad from Vancouver traveling with his eccentric Quebecois father Michelle. Michelle made fun of me for being American," he could tell," he said. Although he did tell me I sounded very Canadian when we were discussing the cheapest places to ski in Europe. Funny guy. Michelle and Chad were cruising around India on an Enfield Bullet. Very cool. It was also in Agonda that we experienced one of the highlight moments of the trip so far.
Agonda, we had learned is a very quiet place. Everywhere is usually dead by 10pm. But on the night we arrived, there was going to be a dance performance at the restaurant affiliated with our huts, Dock 'n' Chill is the name. We were sitting in the lovely lounge area smoking tobacco from the hookah with Chad and Michelle and Justin's friend Heidi, who was the reason we came to Agonda. There was a large party of Indians also there, as well as dozens of other travelers watching the dancing. It was quite a party and then all of a sudden the bar man yelled, "drinks are on the house." That was definitely a first, and took the festivities to a new level. Everyone had a great night dancing, drinking, and generally enjoying the festive atmosphere. At midnight an official showed up to shut the party down. We learned later that this was a very rare event in Agonda, and that the party was in honor of the Goan president of Shell Oil, who was there celebrating his birthday. One of those spontaneously lucky moments in life where everything falls into place and it seems that it is just for you. Actually the whole experience in Agonda was like that.
Highlights of Agonda
partying with Mr. Shell Oil
relaxing on the beach with practically no one else in sight.
meeting other interesting travelers
yoga on the rooftop of the ashram where Heidi is staying
sleeping to the sounds of the waves
Lowlights of Agonda
none, it was perfect
Justin and I were sad to leave a few days later. We weren't sure that we were making the right choice leaving Agonda for another beach town in Goa, Arambol, in the north. But we were planning to meet some other travelers, Sean and Aileen that we had met, and were looking forward to seeing the countryside of Goa, so off we went. We had noticed that the travel infrastructure of Goa seemed decidedly less built up than in other parts of India and so we decided to hire a driver to drive us to Arambol. We also thought that it might be nice to have a local give us a bit of a tour in the capital city. Unfortunately Ashok, our driver, wasn't much of a tour guide although he did stop in Old Goa so that we could see the Basilica Bom Jesus. They have some saint's body in there that hasn't decomposed in over 400 years. They used to take his body down every year so people could celebrate and revere him. But they had to stop doing that a few years back cause some woman bent down as if to kiss his foot and bit off his toe, claiming to be his descendant and wanting to take a piece of her relative home with her.
After touring Old Goa for a while we got back on the road to Arambol. When we got to town we had Ashok drop us off at the hotel that Aileen and Sean were staying and booked a room. At first we thought being on the second floor in the corner unit would be nice, boy were we wrong. About 100 meters away from us was the local Russian trance bar which serenaded us every night and into the dawn. The trance bar really sums up Arambol. Sean later told us that it was totally different when he had been there ten years ago. And I imagine that in about ten years Agonda could have the same fate. It was very built up in Arambol and seemed to be attracting a certain type of tourist. (Read pain in the ass nouveau riche Russians.) There was also a large population of trapped-in-time hippies who must have come to Arambol in the 70's and never left. In fact if they ever stopped smoking charras long enough they might be as startled by the changes as Sean.
The one highlight of Arambol was the Wednesday market in the neighboring town of Ajuna. The market was a hotbed of activity and we went with Sean who is a haggling pro. In fact he taught us a few tricks of the trade. And he was the one who told us that our counter offers needed to be shamefully low. The way he figured if the vendors could give us a two hundred percent mark up without batting an eyelash why can't we suggest an equally outrageous counter offer. Sean is also a shopaholic so it was quite amusing to watch him go full force in the stalls. He was also great because he took us to the Hotel Buena Vista for lunch so we could go swimming in their incredible pool. Thus we avoided the mid day heat at the market. When we got back to the market we were feeling very refreshed while all the stall vendors and other tourists were looking a little lethargic. It was then that we got some of the best deals of the day. I bought a beautiful green silk sari and a silver duvet cover with matching pillow cases. The bedspread and pillow cases cost me all of about $25.00. Imagine getting silk bedding at home for that price?! Justin also scored some great deals on some Indian style shirts and Ali baba pants. Suffice it to say it was a very successful shop.
The only other memorable day in Arambol was Republic Day, which happened while we were in town. In India they celebrate major national holidays totally differently than we do back home. The most distinct difference is that Republic Day is a dry day. Can you imagine no booze on Canada Day? It is almost sacrilegious! But we got around that one. Our buddy Raj, who was our waiter on the beach everyday made us pina colada's and told us that if anyone asked it was just fruit shakes. Thanks Raj! We spent the day getting pina coladaed on the beach, sunning in perfect weather, (sorry Torontoians) and frolicking in the sea. Then in the evening the local football (read soccer) club hosted a five a side tournament. It was actually quite impressive. They set up a full pitch in the sand with lights for when it got dark, and they even had an announcer and music blaring through the speakers. Although you couldn't understand a word he said. We didn't stay to see who won since it appeared the tournament was going to go until the early hours of the morning. But it was a really fun evening in Arambol. And then before we knew it it was time to head to Bombay to meet Teresa and Charlie.
highlights of Arambol
shopping in Anjuna
swimming at the Buena Vista hotel pool
Republic Day
Raj our cabana boy
football tournament
hanging out with Sean and Aileen
lowlights of Arambol
everything else about Arambol, with particular emphasis on sleeping within earshot of the trance club.
I hoisted Justin's pack on my back and started climbing the ladder . I had gathered quite an intrigued crowd, mostly men who started watching me and discussing my bus scaling technique. I managed to get to the top no problem but then started to feel a bit panicked because getting to the top of the ladder was relatively easy but actually getting from the ladder to the bus was going to be another matter. I employed a sort of awkward inch worm shuffle, covering myself in dirt and grime while prostrating on the roof of the bus. But at least I didn't fall or dropped the pack in the process. A success, since as I slid onto the bus I was shimming awkwardly side to side and had several white knuckle moments where the pack lurched to one side or the other. But I made it. I tentatively darted across the corrugated metal roof to the rack and clip the pack to the frame so that it didn't go flying off the back of the bus. I then made my way back to the ladder. And again panic set in. I am sure you have experienced the sensation at the top of a rather steep ladder or hill when you realize you are going to have to swing your legs over the ledge and go back down. And it dawned on me right then that when we arrive I, ( read Justin,) was going to have to do the descent with the pack on. But the crowd watching me had grown and I couldn't very well stay up there on the top of the bus. I had to get down and get the other pack up there. So I swallowed my fear and descended the ladder.Then as I was coming down I saw Justin through the window of the bus sitting facing the other direction gazing peacefully out the window. Hmmm, I thought, what is wrong with this picture? Here I am covered in dust, and in all white I might add, and my strong male companion is resting comfortably on the bus waving at children. But I didn't want to disappoint my supporters now, since I could see they had called a number of other men over to watch me attempt the second pack. So I hoisted my pack and up I went. All the timing fretting and wishing I could stay up there rather than come down again. But again I made it up and back in one piece.
After my time as a Sherpa I got on the bus and Justin, true to form says, "girl you're filthy." Well he didn't say it but I can tell he's thinking it. "That was quite an experience. I had to climb those packs up there myself." I hinted
"good work girl," he said. Obviously the feat was lost on him. And then sure enough we were off. When we arrived in the town where we were meant to disembark I'd figured out what we were going to do about unloading our packs, since it is all I had been thinking about for the last fifteen minutes. While Justin is big and strong I thought his height might make carrying those packs on the ladder actually more difficult. So instead I told him I will climb up and hand the packs over the ledge to you. A rather simpler system. From there we are supposed to get a rickshaw, but there were any only taxis. Of course. Taxis being considerably more expensive.
Justin and I haggled with the lone taxi driver and eventually agreed on the fare to Agonda. Haggling is such an art, especially since you almost never know how much anything is actually worth. But a good rule of thumb is to ask the price, and then no matter what is said cut it in half or maybe even two thirds as a counter-offer. This usually is met by a look of shock indicating that you have greatly offended. Then they will ask you for your real price. And you should repeat your low-ball offer. From there they will give you a counter offer, which you should indicate is equally as offensive. Thank them and begin to walk away, that is when the price usually starts to drop to something in the reasonable range. Once the offers start to get reasonable give an inch and then don't budge. Deal done!
So we get in the taxi and ride out to Agonda. Agonda is beautiful and if I were to go back to Goa, Agonda is where I would go. For four days we sat on the beach without anyone bothering us. We slept in a hut literally 100 feet from the sea. And we met some really nice travelers, including a David Hainey doppelganger, Chad from Vancouver traveling with his eccentric Quebecois father Michelle. Michelle made fun of me for being American," he could tell," he said. Although he did tell me I sounded very Canadian when we were discussing the cheapest places to ski in Europe. Funny guy. Michelle and Chad were cruising around India on an Enfield Bullet. Very cool. It was also in Agonda that we experienced one of the highlight moments of the trip so far.
Agonda, we had learned is a very quiet place. Everywhere is usually dead by 10pm. But on the night we arrived, there was going to be a dance performance at the restaurant affiliated with our huts, Dock 'n' Chill is the name. We were sitting in the lovely lounge area smoking tobacco from the hookah with Chad and Michelle and Justin's friend Heidi, who was the reason we came to Agonda. There was a large party of Indians also there, as well as dozens of other travelers watching the dancing. It was quite a party and then all of a sudden the bar man yelled, "drinks are on the house." That was definitely a first, and took the festivities to a new level. Everyone had a great night dancing, drinking, and generally enjoying the festive atmosphere. At midnight an official showed up to shut the party down. We learned later that this was a very rare event in Agonda, and that the party was in honor of the Goan president of Shell Oil, who was there celebrating his birthday. One of those spontaneously lucky moments in life where everything falls into place and it seems that it is just for you. Actually the whole experience in Agonda was like that.
Highlights of Agonda
partying with Mr. Shell Oil
relaxing on the beach with practically no one else in sight.
meeting other interesting travelers
yoga on the rooftop of the ashram where Heidi is staying
sleeping to the sounds of the waves
Lowlights of Agonda
none, it was perfect
Justin and I were sad to leave a few days later. We weren't sure that we were making the right choice leaving Agonda for another beach town in Goa, Arambol, in the north. But we were planning to meet some other travelers, Sean and Aileen that we had met, and were looking forward to seeing the countryside of Goa, so off we went. We had noticed that the travel infrastructure of Goa seemed decidedly less built up than in other parts of India and so we decided to hire a driver to drive us to Arambol. We also thought that it might be nice to have a local give us a bit of a tour in the capital city. Unfortunately Ashok, our driver, wasn't much of a tour guide although he did stop in Old Goa so that we could see the Basilica Bom Jesus. They have some saint's body in there that hasn't decomposed in over 400 years. They used to take his body down every year so people could celebrate and revere him. But they had to stop doing that a few years back cause some woman bent down as if to kiss his foot and bit off his toe, claiming to be his descendant and wanting to take a piece of her relative home with her.
After touring Old Goa for a while we got back on the road to Arambol. When we got to town we had Ashok drop us off at the hotel that Aileen and Sean were staying and booked a room. At first we thought being on the second floor in the corner unit would be nice, boy were we wrong. About 100 meters away from us was the local Russian trance bar which serenaded us every night and into the dawn. The trance bar really sums up Arambol. Sean later told us that it was totally different when he had been there ten years ago. And I imagine that in about ten years Agonda could have the same fate. It was very built up in Arambol and seemed to be attracting a certain type of tourist. (Read pain in the ass nouveau riche Russians.) There was also a large population of trapped-in-time hippies who must have come to Arambol in the 70's and never left. In fact if they ever stopped smoking charras long enough they might be as startled by the changes as Sean.
The one highlight of Arambol was the Wednesday market in the neighboring town of Ajuna. The market was a hotbed of activity and we went with Sean who is a haggling pro. In fact he taught us a few tricks of the trade. And he was the one who told us that our counter offers needed to be shamefully low. The way he figured if the vendors could give us a two hundred percent mark up without batting an eyelash why can't we suggest an equally outrageous counter offer. Sean is also a shopaholic so it was quite amusing to watch him go full force in the stalls. He was also great because he took us to the Hotel Buena Vista for lunch so we could go swimming in their incredible pool. Thus we avoided the mid day heat at the market. When we got back to the market we were feeling very refreshed while all the stall vendors and other tourists were looking a little lethargic. It was then that we got some of the best deals of the day. I bought a beautiful green silk sari and a silver duvet cover with matching pillow cases. The bedspread and pillow cases cost me all of about $25.00. Imagine getting silk bedding at home for that price?! Justin also scored some great deals on some Indian style shirts and Ali baba pants. Suffice it to say it was a very successful shop.
The only other memorable day in Arambol was Republic Day, which happened while we were in town. In India they celebrate major national holidays totally differently than we do back home. The most distinct difference is that Republic Day is a dry day. Can you imagine no booze on Canada Day? It is almost sacrilegious! But we got around that one. Our buddy Raj, who was our waiter on the beach everyday made us pina colada's and told us that if anyone asked it was just fruit shakes. Thanks Raj! We spent the day getting pina coladaed on the beach, sunning in perfect weather, (sorry Torontoians) and frolicking in the sea. Then in the evening the local football (read soccer) club hosted a five a side tournament. It was actually quite impressive. They set up a full pitch in the sand with lights for when it got dark, and they even had an announcer and music blaring through the speakers. Although you couldn't understand a word he said. We didn't stay to see who won since it appeared the tournament was going to go until the early hours of the morning. But it was a really fun evening in Arambol. And then before we knew it it was time to head to Bombay to meet Teresa and Charlie.
highlights of Arambol
shopping in Anjuna
swimming at the Buena Vista hotel pool
Republic Day
Raj our cabana boy
football tournament
hanging out with Sean and Aileen
lowlights of Arambol
everything else about Arambol, with particular emphasis on sleeping within earshot of the trance club.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Boy, it's stressful in "God's Own Country."
We took a local bus from Pondicherry to Chennai airport. We were the only goras on the bus. If you want to get a sense of India, a real sense, skip the first class air-conditioned sleeper cars and take a ride in the unreserved sections of a train or bus. The amount of pushing and shoving to get on the bus baffles the mind, especially when compared to the unimaginable courtesy of the same passengers once the journey is underway. One minute a man, woman and (or) child is shoving you so hard it seems they could crush you and not five minutes later when they lightly brush your leg they apologize so profusely and genuinely, you can't help but laugh at the ironic contradiction. I am reading "Shantaram," a well known novel by an Australian fugitive in Bombay who describes this contradiction thus. India is a place of necessity. The amount of pushing ans shoving to get on the bus is necessary if you don't want to get left behind. But it is equal to the level of courtesy necessary to make the journey afterward, on the crowded bus, as pleasant as possible.
During the bus ride I felt a huge sense of elation, partly because we were moving on to somewhere new, but mostly because I was feeling well enough to actually get there. At the front of the bus was a sign that said its maximum capacity was 48. There were at least 70 people crowded on around us, and when we rolled out of town we picked up several more. Each bench seat had room for two, but in every row except ours there were three people seated. So when an elderly woman got on and asked to sit with us, we had to oblige. Unfortunately Justin is a solid head taller that the next tallest Indian and he was already uncomfortably folded into our seat with our backpacks a day bags strewn about us. So I, in my elation, gave up my seat to the old woman and sat on the floor. Well, she was horrified and throughout the whole of the journey looked at me with shock and scorn, and continued to pat the minuscule amount of space between her and Justin with an an expression that said, "How could you possibly prefer to sit on the ground when there is plenty of space for you right here."
When the bus finally rumbled into the dusty city of Chennai we were directed where to jump off, and I mean that quite literally as the bus never actually came to a stop. From there we walked to the small international airport to await our departure to Trivandrum. We had given ourselves plenty of time, since India is famous for turning 1 1/2 hour journeys into day long affairs. And so we were quite early for our flight and set up shop at the airport. For a while we wandered around the many stands and shops, but there wasn't much to do at Chennai international and so we eventually ended up sitting in corner waiting for our gate announcement.
While waiting we met another pair of travelers, our first really, who we seen around in Pondicherry. It is amazing how in this enormous country you continually see the same travelers in different places. We started chatted with them and eventually exchanged contact information. We weren't planning on going to Goa, where they were headed but we told them that if we changed our minds we would get in touch with them. And then all of a sudden it was time for us to scramble for the plane. That is another funny thing about Indian travel. You can be waiting somewhere for hours with no idea where your departure gate is, but once it is announced you usually have only moments to get to the gate or risk being left behind. So we hurriedly said goodbye to Sean and Aileen and boarded the plane for Trivandrum in the southern province of Kerala, God's Own Country.
The first thing I noticed about Kerala, and Trivandrum more specifically, is how much quieter it is than Tamil Nadu. During our ride from the airport to Vakala, where we were staying, Justin and I hardly spoke and the ride was surprisingly quiet and calm. A new sense of serenity permeated the air. It may also have been because we were riding in an Ambassador, the fantastic and iconic white India cabs. Being in an Ambassador for the first time after so many rickshaws felt a bit like being in a tank. It was a longish car trip from Trivandrum to Vakala, perhaps 40 minutes, although it still cost us less than $20. And it was quite dark so we were glad that we had made arrangements for a hotel for that first night in Vakala. We were planning to stay at the Hotel New Heaven for a week, but we knew upon arrival that we weren't going to be there longer than one night.
The room was nothing special and the ceiling fan whined so offensively it sounded like an animal was being tortured all night. Eventually I got up and turned it off, preferring to be woken up endlessly by the heat instead of having that sound creep into my dreams. Both Justin and I had a restless night's sleep that first night because of it, but also because of the mosquito net above up which was set so low that it lay directly on top of our faces and bodies and kept entangling us all night. How a mosquito net can be effective when it is laying right on top of you is beyond me, and in fact I know it is not. So when we woke the next morning our first priority was to scout out new accommodations in town for the remainder of our stay. There were plenty of options and we eventually settled on a place called the Bamboo Village where we got a great deal on a little freestanding bamboo hut. We spent the rest of the day strolling around Vakala beach taking it all in. And actually the rest of the week unfolded in much the same way.
We got into a routine of waking around 8 or 9 going to the Cafe del Mare for delicious coffee and breakfast. I had the same thing everyday. (Hard boiled eggs and toast. I'd prefer soft boiled, but after the deathness, as I have taken to calling my bout of illness in Pondi I am not about to risk Salmonella.) From there we would make our way to the beautiful beach, rent an umbrella for 150Rs and sometimes lounge chairs, and settle in for a full day of sunning, swimming and wave jumping. Vakala has gotten to be more crowded, apparently, in the last few years, but even still there was plenty of space on the beach and also a sense of being in on a still untapped secret.
My only criticism of the place, and it is a sort of catch 22, is that the beach town is actually 5 kilometer or so from the actual Vakala town, and so quite isolated from any real local population. And so, while this isolation from the hectic real life of India provided a nice and relaxed feeling, it also felt a bit false and almost too easy. This also means of course that everyone in Vakala is a tourist or a local who works in the tourist industry. There are a dozen restaurants all serving a variation of the same thing, and tons of shops selling virtually identical souvenirs and garments. I did however, do some shopping at a few places, including a shop run by a pair of brothers from Kashmir who had some of the most beautiful cashmere shawls, bed spreads, and curtains I have ever seen.
Throughout the whole of the week, Justin and I would make a guilty joke about how difficult we were finding life in Vakala and how perpetually stressed out we were. We also made jokes at the expense of other tourists we saw, because despite the beauty of this place, and the indisputable ease with which everything could be attained there were so many sour faces. And Justin commented that it reminded him of that Sheryl Crow song, "If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad." We never did figure out what the bad smell in Vakala was that made everyone look like they were smelling a fart. We vowed not to be like all those other tourists and smiled almost the entire week we were there. Especially because, although it was too easy, after long fall of constant work for us both it was nice to have part of the trip feel more like a vacation than travel. India is amazing but in order to see it that way you have to fight for it a bit, so it was nice to not have to fight at all in Vakala.
We also enjoyed meeting other tourists. The first was a couple from Australia, who we met as we were checking out of the Hotel New Heaven on our first morning in town. Lara and Stewart have an itinerary very similar to Justin and I although they are on a faster track and will be in se Asia by February, avoiding the insane heat that will greet us when we arrive in April. Right off the bat we loved them, and agreed to meet them for a drink that evening at Rock and Roll, the local bar, that never played any rock and roll. Lara and I also exchanged novels we had recently finished which delighted me. And I hope that will be a trend I can continue throughout the trip, picking up and discarding books with other travelers.
Through Lara and Stewart we also met Renee and Mary Ann, or Pierre and Bobby Joe as Justin and I took to calling them. PB and J were also Canadian, from Surrey near Vancouver. Unfortunately it was clear after that first night of drinks that Mary Ann was not a big fan of mine. I accidentally offended her by saying that Ontario has better lakes than BC and that Canadian cigarettes are disgusting. She doesn't smoke but she took it personally, and I was no longer allowed to wear the figurative Canadian traveler badge in their eyes again. In fact they introduced me as the American of our sextet for the remainder of the week. To her credit, Mary Ann did seem to come around about me over the course of the week and when we said our goodbye she hesitated and then gave me a very warm hug. We didn't exchange any contact information but they did promise to find us on facebook. Lara and Stewart on the other hand were headed to Allepey and then to Goa and so we figured we would run into them again. They also promised to give us some tips for the next few legs of our trip since they will be only a few steps ahead of us for the next few months.
There was some unfortunate news which we learned in Vakala and that is that the Indian government has recently changed the laws governing multi entry VISA, making it impossible for us to leave for Nepal for ten days at the end of February as we had originally planned. So we had to reorganize our trip slightly and change our train booking to stay in Rishikesh an extra week. We chose Rishikesh because we can do a trek for a few days from there, which is what we had hoped to do in Nepal. So, even though it is disappointing it isn't going to ruin the trip. What is disappointing is that after going through quite a bit of hassle to make the needed changes we've learned that we could have gotten around the new law in a number ways and still gone to Nepal, but oh well, such is life. We also decided to change our original plan of skipping Goa and we will be arriving there in the next few days. At the end of our week, we were both sad and excited to be leaving Vakala for Kollum and the backwater region of Kerala...
highlights of Vakala
wave jumping - Justin and I loved the Indian Ocean and the waves of Vakala were awesome
great Italian food - at the Italian Cafe
eggs for breakfast - I love Indian food but I can't eat curry for breakfast
shopping - needs no explanation
vacationing - travel is great but vacationing is the real relaxation
cafe latte- at the cafe del mare
umbrellas, lounge chairs, and fruit at your fingertips- while at the beach
getting a tan - a real one I promise
cruising for hot guys - and it was like shooting fish in a barrel
lowlights of Vakala
pouty tourists
Justin got a less horrible but still shitty round of TD- pun intended
crappy music at all of the bars
The Hotel New Heaven
During the bus ride I felt a huge sense of elation, partly because we were moving on to somewhere new, but mostly because I was feeling well enough to actually get there. At the front of the bus was a sign that said its maximum capacity was 48. There were at least 70 people crowded on around us, and when we rolled out of town we picked up several more. Each bench seat had room for two, but in every row except ours there were three people seated. So when an elderly woman got on and asked to sit with us, we had to oblige. Unfortunately Justin is a solid head taller that the next tallest Indian and he was already uncomfortably folded into our seat with our backpacks a day bags strewn about us. So I, in my elation, gave up my seat to the old woman and sat on the floor. Well, she was horrified and throughout the whole of the journey looked at me with shock and scorn, and continued to pat the minuscule amount of space between her and Justin with an an expression that said, "How could you possibly prefer to sit on the ground when there is plenty of space for you right here."
When the bus finally rumbled into the dusty city of Chennai we were directed where to jump off, and I mean that quite literally as the bus never actually came to a stop. From there we walked to the small international airport to await our departure to Trivandrum. We had given ourselves plenty of time, since India is famous for turning 1 1/2 hour journeys into day long affairs. And so we were quite early for our flight and set up shop at the airport. For a while we wandered around the many stands and shops, but there wasn't much to do at Chennai international and so we eventually ended up sitting in corner waiting for our gate announcement.
While waiting we met another pair of travelers, our first really, who we seen around in Pondicherry. It is amazing how in this enormous country you continually see the same travelers in different places. We started chatted with them and eventually exchanged contact information. We weren't planning on going to Goa, where they were headed but we told them that if we changed our minds we would get in touch with them. And then all of a sudden it was time for us to scramble for the plane. That is another funny thing about Indian travel. You can be waiting somewhere for hours with no idea where your departure gate is, but once it is announced you usually have only moments to get to the gate or risk being left behind. So we hurriedly said goodbye to Sean and Aileen and boarded the plane for Trivandrum in the southern province of Kerala, God's Own Country.
The first thing I noticed about Kerala, and Trivandrum more specifically, is how much quieter it is than Tamil Nadu. During our ride from the airport to Vakala, where we were staying, Justin and I hardly spoke and the ride was surprisingly quiet and calm. A new sense of serenity permeated the air. It may also have been because we were riding in an Ambassador, the fantastic and iconic white India cabs. Being in an Ambassador for the first time after so many rickshaws felt a bit like being in a tank. It was a longish car trip from Trivandrum to Vakala, perhaps 40 minutes, although it still cost us less than $20. And it was quite dark so we were glad that we had made arrangements for a hotel for that first night in Vakala. We were planning to stay at the Hotel New Heaven for a week, but we knew upon arrival that we weren't going to be there longer than one night.
The room was nothing special and the ceiling fan whined so offensively it sounded like an animal was being tortured all night. Eventually I got up and turned it off, preferring to be woken up endlessly by the heat instead of having that sound creep into my dreams. Both Justin and I had a restless night's sleep that first night because of it, but also because of the mosquito net above up which was set so low that it lay directly on top of our faces and bodies and kept entangling us all night. How a mosquito net can be effective when it is laying right on top of you is beyond me, and in fact I know it is not. So when we woke the next morning our first priority was to scout out new accommodations in town for the remainder of our stay. There were plenty of options and we eventually settled on a place called the Bamboo Village where we got a great deal on a little freestanding bamboo hut. We spent the rest of the day strolling around Vakala beach taking it all in. And actually the rest of the week unfolded in much the same way.
We got into a routine of waking around 8 or 9 going to the Cafe del Mare for delicious coffee and breakfast. I had the same thing everyday. (Hard boiled eggs and toast. I'd prefer soft boiled, but after the deathness, as I have taken to calling my bout of illness in Pondi I am not about to risk Salmonella.) From there we would make our way to the beautiful beach, rent an umbrella for 150Rs and sometimes lounge chairs, and settle in for a full day of sunning, swimming and wave jumping. Vakala has gotten to be more crowded, apparently, in the last few years, but even still there was plenty of space on the beach and also a sense of being in on a still untapped secret.
My only criticism of the place, and it is a sort of catch 22, is that the beach town is actually 5 kilometer or so from the actual Vakala town, and so quite isolated from any real local population. And so, while this isolation from the hectic real life of India provided a nice and relaxed feeling, it also felt a bit false and almost too easy. This also means of course that everyone in Vakala is a tourist or a local who works in the tourist industry. There are a dozen restaurants all serving a variation of the same thing, and tons of shops selling virtually identical souvenirs and garments. I did however, do some shopping at a few places, including a shop run by a pair of brothers from Kashmir who had some of the most beautiful cashmere shawls, bed spreads, and curtains I have ever seen.
Throughout the whole of the week, Justin and I would make a guilty joke about how difficult we were finding life in Vakala and how perpetually stressed out we were. We also made jokes at the expense of other tourists we saw, because despite the beauty of this place, and the indisputable ease with which everything could be attained there were so many sour faces. And Justin commented that it reminded him of that Sheryl Crow song, "If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad." We never did figure out what the bad smell in Vakala was that made everyone look like they were smelling a fart. We vowed not to be like all those other tourists and smiled almost the entire week we were there. Especially because, although it was too easy, after long fall of constant work for us both it was nice to have part of the trip feel more like a vacation than travel. India is amazing but in order to see it that way you have to fight for it a bit, so it was nice to not have to fight at all in Vakala.
We also enjoyed meeting other tourists. The first was a couple from Australia, who we met as we were checking out of the Hotel New Heaven on our first morning in town. Lara and Stewart have an itinerary very similar to Justin and I although they are on a faster track and will be in se Asia by February, avoiding the insane heat that will greet us when we arrive in April. Right off the bat we loved them, and agreed to meet them for a drink that evening at Rock and Roll, the local bar, that never played any rock and roll. Lara and I also exchanged novels we had recently finished which delighted me. And I hope that will be a trend I can continue throughout the trip, picking up and discarding books with other travelers.
Through Lara and Stewart we also met Renee and Mary Ann, or Pierre and Bobby Joe as Justin and I took to calling them. PB and J were also Canadian, from Surrey near Vancouver. Unfortunately it was clear after that first night of drinks that Mary Ann was not a big fan of mine. I accidentally offended her by saying that Ontario has better lakes than BC and that Canadian cigarettes are disgusting. She doesn't smoke but she took it personally, and I was no longer allowed to wear the figurative Canadian traveler badge in their eyes again. In fact they introduced me as the American of our sextet for the remainder of the week. To her credit, Mary Ann did seem to come around about me over the course of the week and when we said our goodbye she hesitated and then gave me a very warm hug. We didn't exchange any contact information but they did promise to find us on facebook. Lara and Stewart on the other hand were headed to Allepey and then to Goa and so we figured we would run into them again. They also promised to give us some tips for the next few legs of our trip since they will be only a few steps ahead of us for the next few months.
There was some unfortunate news which we learned in Vakala and that is that the Indian government has recently changed the laws governing multi entry VISA, making it impossible for us to leave for Nepal for ten days at the end of February as we had originally planned. So we had to reorganize our trip slightly and change our train booking to stay in Rishikesh an extra week. We chose Rishikesh because we can do a trek for a few days from there, which is what we had hoped to do in Nepal. So, even though it is disappointing it isn't going to ruin the trip. What is disappointing is that after going through quite a bit of hassle to make the needed changes we've learned that we could have gotten around the new law in a number ways and still gone to Nepal, but oh well, such is life. We also decided to change our original plan of skipping Goa and we will be arriving there in the next few days. At the end of our week, we were both sad and excited to be leaving Vakala for Kollum and the backwater region of Kerala...
highlights of Vakala
wave jumping - Justin and I loved the Indian Ocean and the waves of Vakala were awesome
great Italian food - at the Italian Cafe
eggs for breakfast - I love Indian food but I can't eat curry for breakfast
shopping - needs no explanation
vacationing - travel is great but vacationing is the real relaxation
cafe latte- at the cafe del mare
umbrellas, lounge chairs, and fruit at your fingertips- while at the beach
getting a tan - a real one I promise
cruising for hot guys - and it was like shooting fish in a barrel
lowlights of Vakala
pouty tourists
Justin got a less horrible but still shitty round of TD- pun intended
crappy music at all of the bars
The Hotel New Heaven
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Bike Lift
I was listening to the radio last week when I heard the advertisement for She Rides, Ladies Night at the Toronto Motorcycle show. A. I love free and B. sounds like a riot. So I asked Natalie and Lauren if they would like to go with me.
All legs, all the time.
Like a scene out of Manufactured Landscapes. Otherwise known as the Toronto Metro Convention Centre
Harley's baby
All Terrain
my favourite bike!
Yea I am hardcore
Steel Toes
Natalie relaxing with her drink.
Lady cop
Lo, obviously on the pink bike.
I loved the vintage bikes. They were definitely my favourites
Triumphs
sweet
look it has a purse holder.
I'm the Mary, you're the Rhoda.
Fine you can be the Mary.
Natalie that scooter was made for you.
It's too bad it was too big, cause I thought it was awesome.
Lauren's hardcore to.
Not quite as hardcore as this guy though. It takes a strong man to haul his ladies purse at the motorcycle show.
Lauren predicted that we would run into her Uncle Sal, and look there he is with the Ducati
Sal and his bike.
Lauren looks good on the Ducati
Natalie too
We'd been at the show about an hour and I was starting to get comfortable with the heavy bikes. So I built up my courage and hopped onto one of the big Harleys. Which proceeded to fall on top of me. Opps.
I was so mortified, when all the Harley booth peeps swarmed me. Not to mention Natalie and Lauren just stood there taking pictures of me in my moment of horror. This girl was particularly nice. She came right over with two big dudes, screamed,
"bike lift," and they got that 20,000$ bike back on its wheels. It was time to go after that.
Natalie recreating my moment of shame at Jack Astor's
very funny.
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