India... WTF

I just got back to NY so i may not remember everything that happened a few weeks ago but i'll try since that way i don't have to update each person separately, and it'll be good since i can barely remember what happened yesterday. We left mumbai and went to udaipour where there are a few sights to see but the country was on strike b/c of gas prices. Luckily for us we were in a prob the nicest hotel i've ever seen, let alone stayed in, so we did a short tour of the city palace and went swimming for the entire day which was great. What happened on our flight is a perfect example of how retarded india is... our flight to delhi was at 7:45 so we arrived at the airport at around 6:15pm. When we got there we were informed that our flight had taken off at 4:40pm. Now, what kind of retarded airline moves a flight FORWARD 3 hrs? Well, an indian airline, kingfisher to be exact. Anyways, we stayed overnight and flew to delhi the next morning.

Delhi, similar to mumbai, is a total shithole. We were all kind of tired for traveling for so long so we kind of just took it easy in delhi, went shopping for souvenirs and met up with david and sima with who i would travel for the next 2 weeks. Just to give a little background, david just finished law school (and sima is about to start) and was offered a year off from his firm since they didn't have enough work for him so they decided to go to india and work at non-profits. my parents wanted to see david and sima before they left for america that night since david is one of my oldest and closest friends, so we all had lunch and hung out in the afternoon until my family left.

we took a rickshaw back to the hotel and on the way got stopped for about an hr b/c a 2 way street turned into a one way street and there was literally nowhere for our rickshaw to go. What does it mean that a 2 way street turned into a one way street? exactly what it sounds like. The cars going in the other direction decided to come on the other side of the road so that the entire road was at a standstill for 1.5 hrs until a random 12 yr old started directing traffic and we were finally able to slither through. just one example of how chaotic and unorganized india can be.

Anyways, the next morning we had a flight from delhi to ladakh, which is the northernmost region of india and way up in the himalayas in kashmir (which is supposed to be a dangerous region but we didn't really come close to any violence). The himalayas are really incredible, huge mountains that dwarf the rockies but are completely barren except for the tips of them which are snowcapped. Also, most of india is incredibly loud w/ everyone honking and yelling 24/7 but in the ladakh, all you can hear is the constant flowing of streams and the occasional cow mooing. the change of pace was really nice and it didn't feel like india at all. We took the first day to get used to the altitude since the towns are pretty much all at around 12,000 feet. The next morning we woke up to go see leh's buddhist monastery's morning puja, which is basically shacharit for buddhists. The monastery is at the top of the mountain that overlooks leh (the largest city in ladakh) and we watched them blow their horns from the top of the monastery as well as watch them pray their morning prayers. we stayed till about 10-10:30 and then walked around leh for the rest of the afternoon. We had arranged to stay in the owners cousins house in a town about 30 minutes outside of leh called phyang b/c they were having a mask festival the next day which only happens once/yr. this would be our first of many days with no running water and no electricity. We also met up w/ one of david and sima's friends named april, who also happened to be traveling in the himalayas so we tagged along with her and would remain together throughout the himalayas.

It's a tiny town, even for the himalayas, and probably had only a few hundred ppl. As we walked around we met a girl who invited us in for tea w/ her family. We ate and drank w/ them for about an hr before leaving and going back but it was really interesting to see how they live, the way they grow vegetables in their front yard and then eat them for dinner, and they had also taken in a girl from a poorer family a few hrs drive away although she wasn't allowed to sit with us when we all had tea. Anyways, the next day we went to the mask festival which was completely insane. It was basically a bunch of buddhist monks that were dancing around (seemingly drunk) with no purpose that we could understand but were probably playing out an ancient tale or something of the sort. There was one hilarious moment during what seemed to be an intermission where some monks in masks picked up the youngest monks there on their shoulders, maybe they were 2 0r 3 yrs old, and started running around and the kids started crying and couldn't be comforted. The audience seemed to love that.

I forgot to mention that most of the culture in the himalayas is tibetan since china is occupying tibet a lot of them have come to northern india through the himalayas (mostly on foot). Anyways, over the next few days we traveled to various buddhist monasteries, all which appear to be on the top of the world and incredibly remote. We also continued to not have running water and the hotel prices ranged from $3-7/night so were were pretty nasty. The views throughout the himalayas were insane, each town that we passed was green with the surrounding mountains being completely bare. we spent 3 days traveling around kashmir and the farthest we went was about 4-5 hrs out of leh, up one of the scariest mountain climbs that exists in the world into lamayuru. anyways, the himalayas was def one of the top highlights of the trip and it was cool to see such a diff part of india.

once we left the himalayas we flew back to delhi, then took a 12 hr overnight sleeper train to pathankot. We went 3rd class on the sleeper train and unfortunately, one of sima's bag was stolen. thankfully it didn't have her passport or wallet but it did have her ipod and a few other valuables so that sucked. we were then deciding whether to take a toy train which our guidebook said had some scenic views, or a regular cab to get to dhoromsala, which is where the dalai lama lives and has his main temple. We decided on the toy train and prob should've realized that it was a bad idea when the 6 hr ride cost only $0.30. lonely planet said that we shouuld make sure to get a seat so when the train pulled up david ran onto the train and one kid tried to cut him off and he literally took the kid by the arm and threw him off the train and the kid landed flat on his back. Once we got on the train and got seats we realized why it cost $0.30. Basically, it was a nightmare. It was packed beyond anything we'd ever seen and the type of ppl on the train were all the poorest ppl there are in india, which is really saying something. it is impossible to describe how crowded the train actually was and so we just sat there with all our stuff, with ppl sitting so close to us they were virtually on our lap. We realized a few hrs into the train ride that it was actually my bday which added to the experience.

Once we got to dhoromsala we found a place to stay and realized that the entire town was made up of really weird hippies (although really weird hippies is kind of repetitive, but wtvr), most of whom were israeli. we visited the dalai lama's temple which was really interesting and we saw the nuns praying with the monks (even though you can barely tell the diff btwn the men and women b/c they all have shaved heads and they wear the same red robes) as well as lots of monkeys which i enjoyed. We chilled in dhoromsala for a few days, or to be more exact, in mcleod ganj which is the town right next to dhoromsala.

After that we took a train to amritsar which is the home of the golden temple, which is a holy sikh site where they get about 60,000 religious pilgrims a day. The golden temple was really spectacular. It had 4 outer walls in the shape of a rectangle, with a moat and then the golden temple in the middle of the moat. It's called the golden temple for obvious reasons (you can see it in the pictures above) and it was cool to see a crowded place that was crowded with religious pilgrims rather than tourists. Since it's a place for religious pilgrims, they offer free meals for the ppl (which we ate despite the fact that it's the lowest quality food you can possibly have) as well as free accomodations, but we decided to splurge for a hotel room which was prob the right move.

After the golden temple we went back to bangalore, which is where david and sima had been living for the yr. They actually had a beautiful 3 br apt (even by american standards) and we hung out there for a few days and i got to meet some of their friends in india. David and sima both changed a lot over the course of the yr, mainly with their standards for living being lowered dramatically. For example, when i first saw them in delhi i asked them to tell me something cool that happened to them and they told me a story that ended up w/ them getting a box of ritz crackers, which is apparently a delicacy in india. When we were in the himalayas sima saw some powerlines and became extremely excited and said "maybe we'll have a few hrs of power at the next place we go" (which ended up not being the case unfortunately). And one of the perks of their fancy apt was that it had 24 hr hot water, a rarity in india.

One last note - big shout out to abbe pick for forcing me to do this blog... excellent idea.

bye!

Herro Prease from china! (and the end of cambodia, dubai and beginning of india)

It’s been a while since I posted b/c in china I was unable to access my blog b/c of what is called “the great firewall” (which I thought was a really clever name) which is basically the Chinese gov blocking certain sites including facebook, youtube and of course, my blog. Why they would block my blog is beyond me, but wtvr.

I got to phnom penh and rented a motorcycle. This wasn’t a little crappy motorbike, this was the real deal. The streets were a little easier to drive in than the cities in Vietnam, although I only rented a bike in hoi an in Vietnam which is a smaller town and not one of the larger cities but since I was more confident I decided to do it in phnom penh, the capital of Cambodia. Cambodia has an awful recent history and in the 1975 a group called the khmer rouge took over and tried to move to an agricultural society and set the year back to year 0. They then killed anyone who didn’t follow them and about 15 km outside of phnom penh they have the killing fields, which is where they just killed a shitload of ppl. So I decided to try and go to that, but after driving on my motorbike for about 45 min, I wound up in the worst slum I’d ever been on a dirt road which was now wet and pretty much a mud road with puddles about 6 inches deep. I wanted to take a picture but I was too scared to take out my camera. It was the first and only time in asia that I felt threatened. I got lost for a little while, drove around some more and then decided to call it a day. I got back to my hotel, went to sleep and traveled to china the next day.

So just to give a little background on my plans for china, my dad was going to be there on business so once he was there I figured I’d meet him and get a free hotel room. Once I was gonna meet him he figured he’d take off a week or so and travel around china with me and maybe go to india (since that’s where I was heading after). Once he was taking some time and touring my mom said that she wanted to come as well and then that happened my sister wasn’t going to just be left in the US all by herself so she came along also, so it turned into a family vacation.

During world war II my grandfather lived in shanghai to escape the nazi’s and so we went to try and find the area where he lived. In past 20 yrs shanghai has been transformed from dirt roads to huge skyscrapers b/c the gov decided to just kick ppl out of their homes, knock down the old buildings and make new ones, so we were worried that my grandfathers old home wouldn’t be there. But, we went to the jewish museum there and we found the area where he lived and we even found the exact address where he lived since his roommate in shanghai (who lives in NY and was my grandfather’s good friend) was in the jewish museum’s archive and had his address. We went to the address and luckily the gov hadn’t knocked it down yet and it looked as it did 65 yrs ago. It was a total shithole but really cool to see. the ppl that lived there were as interested in us as we were of them and they gave us a tour of the apt where he lived even though we couldn’t communicate b/c he didn’t speak any English, although my dad does speak a drop of mandarin. After that we went to the world fair which is being held in shanghai this yr and it was fun walking around but the world’s fair really sucks. The line to get into any booth of interest was between 4-6 hrs so we walked around for most of the day and then left.

The next day we toured around the city, went to various markets, parks, etc. The funniest thing about china is that we were freaks. Ppl stare at you and whenever we would stop to take a photo, Chinese ppl would come up to us and ask to be in a photo with us. Stopping to take a family photo meant taking 50 pictures w/ random strangers. We were literally celebrities. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that we’re white or American or what, but it was pretty hilarious. It got old after a little while but who can complain about being too popular. Also, the t-shirts in china are hilarious. The Chinese wear English shirts that don’t make any sense. Sometimes it will just be random letters put together so it will say something along the lines of “thay grutsen yutrander”, sometimes it will spell stuff incorrectly, but most of the time it will be all spelled correctly, but it won’t make any sense so it will say something like “staten island’s largest fuel dealer”. No one that has ever been to staten island would want to be associated with it, and I don’t think of being a fuel dealer (whatever that is) as being a particularly cool job. Anyways, we were pretty much kings and it was excellent.

We then went to Beijing where we went to the great wall (which was my highlight of china) and climbed all the way to the top of the mountain until u could walk no further. One funny note – on the great wall a guy came up to me and my sister and asked to take a picture with us. My parents had already turned around b/c they got tired so I said I’d take one of him and my sister and then she could take one of me and the Chinese guy. However, when he gave me the camera it was on playback mode and I saw the last picture that he had taken, which was just him and another white guy. What is on this Chinese guy’s picture cabinet in his house? Is it just him with random white ppl? I really don’t get it. Over the next days we went on to see the forbidden palace (very cool), tianemen square and various other tourist sites all of which were interesting to see.

We then went to dubai which is in the united arab emirates. We were going to have to have a stopover on the way from china to india, so we figured that we’d do it in dubai which is a really cool place to go anyways. If you think that dubai doesn’t want any jews, well then you’d be correct. We were all stopped at customs for about an hr b/c we had Israel stamped on our passport and then all of a sudden a guy came up to us and then just pushed us through, but they clearly weren’t thrilled that we were there.

Dubai was quite hot but awesome. They built a gigantic palm-tree shaped island in the middle of the ocean which we went to go see. Then we went to the 2^nd biggest mall in the world, which to me didn’t sound that impressive if only b/c the first biggest mall in the world is in Minnesota. My logic went like this: if someone told you that “the first biggest _____ is in Minnesota, but here’s the 2^nd biggest ______” wouldn’t you say something along the lines of, how important can it be if the largest one is in Minnesota? Well apparently, no, you cannot. In the mall they had indoor skiing so we obviously went. It’s pretty funny to go skiing in the middle of the desert when it’s 105 outside so that was fun. Next we went to the tallest building in the world, I believe it’s around 170 stories or so and is beautifully built. Finally we went to a fountain show which was at the mall under the tallest building in the world and it was quite entertaining. The most amusing part of the day was def the skiing, but it was great being in dubai all day and just saying to yourself “I can’t believe I’m in dubai”.

We got to india yesterday and from the airport we went on what is called a “slum tour”. Basically they take you through the worst slum in all of Mumbai, which has to be one of the worst slums in the word and it was a pretty insane introduction to india. They drive you to the slum and then you walk around w/ a tour guide for 2.5 hrs. I thought we’d be in the jeep the whole time but damn, those are some serious slums. It is the place where slumdog millionaire was supposed to take place, but slumdog millionaire seems like a 5 star hotel compared to the actual thing. They showed us different industries that they have in the slums and said that this particular slum produces $665 million/yr but considering there are 1 mil ppl in the slum, that’s $665/pp each yr, and that’s not including the money that is going to the ppl who actually own the shops so these ppl don’t make much more than $1 or $2 each day and live in a big city where rent is pretty high… not a great situation. Most ppl work in recycling type jobs like chopping up plastic and cardboard, basically work that is all done by machines in other countries. One man’s yearly output of recycling cardboard could prob be done by a machine in about 5-10 min and therefore they get paid about $1/day. It was just insane to walk around and see a family of 4 living in an apt smaller than a car w/ no plumbing or electricity. There are a few toilets for the million ppl that live there and the place was as dirty and smelly as any place on earth. Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures, but what an intro to india that was.

Today we went to the sites in Mumbai, a few temples, the laundry district, which is a street that’s filled w/ water and men are just standing there hitting the shirts in the water (once again, something that is done 10x more efficiently by machines) and a few markets. In Beijing and shanghai, if there were no Chinese writing on the shops you often wouldn’t be able to tell what country you are in, but there is no mistaking india. Every time I stepped out of the taxi I thought to myself, damn, this is india.

PS - I haven't shaved in about a month so i finally shaved it into a beard after we got to china... but now that i am in india i have shaved off my beard and have a full fledged stache. it is a thing of beauty but you will have to wait until the next post to see it. well worth the wait.

Siem Riep, Cambodia

Quick note that I forgot from the previous post: on our drive back to Hanoi from halong bay in Vietnam our van was pulled over by the police. Why were we pulled over? Apparently for no reason, but that didn’t stop the police from forcing the driver to give him $40 in order to not go to jail. Basically, we were pulled over b/c there were a bunch of white ppl on the bus and therefore, we must have a lot of money. The driver paid the $40 (which is about ½ months salary, which is actually really high for Vietnam) but then everyone on the bus decided to chip in $1 so he got $16 back and was very thankful. It was pretty interesting though being stopped by the police for literally doing nothing wrong and then being forced to pay a bribe or go to jail… don’t see that very often in most other countries. On to Cambodia…

Siem riep, Cambodia, is famous for it’s temples which were built by kings roughly 1,000 yrs ago or more as a testament to both the kings that built them and different forms of Buddhism, depending on when it was built. I decided to do the smaller temples first to sort of build up to the larger ones, which includes Angkor wat, which is what siem riep is famous for. First thing I noticed about Cambodia was that there are a ton of beggars, most of them little children and they all have a routine. For the kids between 3-5 yrs old they will come up to you and try to sell postcards and say “hello sir, you want postcard?” they will then count from 1 to 10 in english and say that it’s 10 for $1. If that doesn’t work they count to 10 in Japanese, if that doesn’t work 10 in Spanish, then Vietnamese, then Cambodian and then Chinese. Then they ask what country you are from and start listing random facts. So I say I’m from the USA and the little girls automatically go: iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, florida, population 300 million, st Louis. It was kind of bizarre but I guess it sometime works. And I guess it’s better than vendors in Vietnam who just yell “hey you”. It was clear the kids didn’t even know what was going on and there would be times when I’d keep walking and the kids would just keep talking to themselves trying to see if they could remember 1-10 in all the different languages and doing their whole routine even though I was 50 feet away. Once they’re over 6 they get a little more complicated and start reciting only the capitals of various countries and say “if you buy magnet for $1 I tell you capital of USA” as if them telling me the capital of the US would be some incredibly joyous occasion for me. But then after not buying their magnets they will say “ok, ok, capitol is washington DC” as if I had won our battle and I suckered them into telling me for free. Once they’re over 10 they start selling serious stuff like scarves/food/clothing and are more pushy than they are cute and will follow you for a few hundred feet. It was kind of annoying and sad at the same time, but hey, It’s Cambodia and I believe their unofficial slogan is “shit happens”.

I started going around the temples and they were pretty cool. A lot of them looked like what you’d expect to see in some ancient movie that had temples in it and I later found out that they filmed parts of Indiana jones and the tomb raider movies here. Anyways, there were various temples as each was built by a different king but I didn’t find the temples on the first day that incredible in retrospect (b/c at the time I thought they were incredible) b/c compared to what I was going to see the next day it was nothing. At one of the temples I met an cool girl from philly and we decided to grab a few drinks that night which was fun and decided to go out the next night as well. In between drinks we had gotten a foot massage from fish which I had never seen. Basically, there are a ton of little fish in a large tank and you stick your feet in and they bit off all the dead skin. It was a really odd sensation but it was $3/hr and came with a free beer.

The next day was crazy. I rented a bike to get to the temples which were each about 7km away from each other, but the bikes in Cambodia, shockingly, aren’t exactly like the bikes in the US. Mine was meant for a child and wasn’t meant to be ridden more than 5mph. I figured I could take the heat b/c it was only about 100 at the hottest part of the day whereas I had just gotten back from hanoi and halong bay where it was about 125. I started out going to bayon which is a temple that is made up of 216 smiling faces that are Buddha like faces but molded after the king. Each of the towers has 4 faces on each making 54 towers in total. It was pretty cool and a really massive structure. Walking up and down these stairs was absolutely insane as not only were they completely worn, slippery, and sloping downwards, but Cambodians (and apparently all s.e. asian countries) have incredibly small feet and so I could barely get more than my toes onto the stairs. I read in a guidebook for Cambodia that I bought in Vietnam for a little over $1 that i “wouldn’t be the first person lost to the stairs” and I could see why. Anyways, after that I went to ta prohm which is more of the jungle temple and there are some absolutely massive trees that grew on top of the temple and it’s roots came down 10 feet or more to touch the ground. It was also really cool. Then for the mother of them all – Angkor wat.

Angkor wat was absolutely massive and I was def glad I saved it for last. It was about 1.5 square km’s which, in comparison, is larger than the entire old city of Jerusalem. It had a massive moat about 600 feet wide and then a really high wall so there was only one entrance and five main towers. It also had a huge walkway leading up to the temples which felt pretty grand as you were walking on it b/c it led up to the temples. It was not only the largest but also in the best condition out of any of the temples. The carvings were still pretty clear on the wall. You could climb up to the tops of the towers (via staircases they put in b/c even when it was brand new, they made the stairs hard to climb b/c it was supposed to be like ascending to heaven which isn’t supposed to be easy), walk around the place and really do whatever you want, absolutely nothing was off limits. Some of the younger kids there decided to walk off the side of the walkway and go swimming in the moat and the guards didn’t care at all. It was pretty cool seeing such a monumental structure that’s been so well preserved as usually there’s only a small piece of it left (such as w/ the temple in Jerusalem) but this was almost entirely entact and absolutely massive. Describing it really doesn’t do much and after looking at my pictures, neither did they but it’s better than nothing. That night i went out w/ Isabel again and this time we were a little more adventurous as we bought a small bottle of rice whisky (which has cobra’s and scorpions in the bottle). We had a few drinks after and got to see the town a bit more as we walked around after dinner but for $0.50 beer you don’t even realize how much you drink. I was planning on taking a 9am bus ride to phnom penh which takes about 7 hrs, but I woke up completely hung-over so I decided instead to go back to Angkor wat and I ended up taking an elephant ride to various temples near Angkor wat. It was pretty awesome b/c what could possibly be bad about riding an elephant and it was definitely a hilarious experience. One last note about the temples - b/c we’re in asia there are a million Chinese tour buses and Chinese tourists are sooooo annoying. Not only do they take pictures of everything, including the normal stuff like temples etc. but also: grass, trees, dirt, gravel, rocks, hats, every single staircase ever built, food stands, clothing stands, little children, adults, anything with water, any insect or small lizard. Also, they are all professional photographers and therefore decide it’s ok to stand there for 10 minutes taking a picture of a few trees. I got into a little argument with one or two of the chinese bus groups when I walked through a picture that took 15 min to set up, but thankfully I am 6’3 and had a solid foot over anyone that was going to take on and we didn’t have a language in common so the altercations ended pretty briefly.

I took the bus to phnom penh in the afternoon and was more or less what you’d expect from a $6 bus ride that takes 7 hrs in Cambodia. It was incredibly bumpy, the top of the bus swayed like no bus ever should and the driver didn’t slow down when he picked ppl up on the bus. I always thought that when ppl try to drop you off somewhere and say “we’ll slow down and you just jump out” was a phrase, but apparently they take it quite seriously in Cambodia. I got on at the first stop and off at the last stop so I was fine, but for anyone didn’t they would have to run to jump on the bus b/c the driver refused to slow down to anything under 6-8mph and while one girl and her mother where jumping on the bus, they almost died b/c the mother couldn’t carry the child and run quick enough to catch the bus. This wasn’t the fancy bus though b/c by the time I booked my ticket, the fancy bus ($8) had already been booked. Gotta love Cambodia!

I’m in phnom penh tomorrow and then I leave for china the next day.

Pictures in order:

1. sitting at bayon

2. jungle temples

3. angkor wat from outside the moat

4. some pictures on the wall in angkor wat

5. angkor wat

6. a delicious dinner, i love the few pieces of lettuce mixed in with the bugs to make it appetizing

7. me and isabel

8 & 9. Riding an elephant

10. getting a fish massage

11 & 12. Angkor-wat

13. Bayon temple (one with all the faces on the towers)

14: ta prohm, the jungle-y temple

15-17. various smaller temples