Gulping the Ganges

          Varanasi. We met two mostly respectable individuals who told us Varanasi was their favorite city in the whole world. I would say they were mostly right. Like the rest of India, it took some time to understand Varanasi’s appeal. Obviously, you can’t immediately love somewhere whose alleys are strewn with cow sh** and trash. But more than that, our first evening, we took a walk along the famed Ghats on the river Ganges, and my mind wasn’t blown. I was like, isn’t this supposed to be what it’s all about? I’M NOT SEEING IT. But also similar to India, Varanasi is like a fine bottle of aged wine, smeared in cow sh** and lying in a pile of trash. The more you walk along the ghats, the more you appreciate them. The kids playing cricket on the steps and hitting homeruns into the Ganges, everyone taking their baths in the Ganges, the bodies getting cremated besides the Ganges, people doing their laundry in the Ganges, people fishing in the Ganges, and people trying to take you on boat rides on the Ganges (most common of all!). The more you think about it, and the more you see, the more you realize how special this place is. There’s an ancient feeling to the city. It feels like you’re walking around the Far East version of Roman Ruins. Yeah the flies, the trash, and the occasional misstep into cow sh** can wear you down, but once you get past that minor factor, the alleyways in the old quarter are spectacular. I mean, I don’t know if I’m the only one, but do you always read these guidebook/blog descriptions about narrow winding mazes of alleys that are meant to just get lost in? And then you get to these “narrow winding mazes” and you find that for the most part they aren’t that narrow and certainly aren’t enough of them to constitute a maze. Well, Varanasi is the real deal. Varanasi should be the gold standard of “narrow winding mazes.” I know I said for the most part Indians aren’t the friendliest, but in Varanasi they are for the most part very considerate in giving directions to all of the tourists lost in the maze. I mean, these crumbling, ancient alleys, AMAZING! Temples to the left, temples to the right, and the people! And that’s part of the appeal of Varanasi. We never meant to get lost in the maze, we were just simply trying to get back to the hotel from one of the Ghats, and ended up having such a wonderful morning. I don’t know who they are, or what they are, but my best guess is they’re like a mystic, or a close equivalent to a pupil of the Hindu religious establishment. Like the Hindu religion itself, they seem a tad crazy. They seem to be the Indian versions of hippies. They just hang out in their costume with all their crazy paint on their face and just sit on their blankets on the Ghats and perhaps meditate? Though to the outside bystander it just looks like they’re staring at the river, half crazed. But it’s not like there’s just one or two of them, there’s a whole horde of them! So they definitely bring their own “vibe” to the whole Varanasi scene.

             Second night, walking along the ghats we saw people setting up for a ceremony/”thing” and we’re like, let’s catch a little bit of this. What comes to follow is some strange song and dance ritual that involves bells, fire and incense using various fire and incense holders. It wasn’t some sort of sad little ceremony because there were huge crowds for it! Huge crowds always seem to validate whatever it is that needs validating.

         You find as the days go on, even the riverside ghats become more beautiful. You start appreciating the “ghat life,” the homeless Varanasi people are somehow better than the homeless Kolkata people because they get to be homeless on the steps of the ghats at least. And then there are the cows that add a whole ‘nother dimension of absurdity to the situation (goats too). This was heightened by the fact that there are not roaming cows in Kolkata and Darjeeling (West Bengal state used to be different I think?). So it was our first introduction to the “holy” cow experience.  Cows at every turn. Cows in the alleys, cows in the streets, cows in the Ganges. Dirty cows, and clean cows. My working hypothesis is that some cows have human benefactors that wash them and feed them anything that isn’t trash. I believe that to be true because I took a picture of a very nice looking cow in an alley and a man sitting next to the cow starting thanking me profusely for taking pictures of his well-groomed cow.  It’s simultaneously hilarious and awesome that these people love the Ganges and cows so much that they bath right next to cows that have smeared themselves in their own sh** and rolled around in trash. Not to mention bits of their dead countrymen that accidently blew into the river. I don’t know how much a strong belief in the holy properties of the Ganges River outweighs the seriously suspect water quality, or whether these sanitary considerations are entirely absent when it comes to bathing and more importantly rinsing your mouth with the Ganges. But I love to see it happen, and chuckle inside. There is some sort of atmospheric attraction or gravitational pull to the Ganges when in Varanasi. You see this in the western loonies that have embraced everything Varanasi is about. Mainly, donning traditional garb, drinking water out of the tap and bathing in the Ganges. I’m not going to lie, there was a brief time I entertained the thought of taking the plunge, but I figured the few drops that made it on me when some a**hole purposefully splashed me during my boat ride would suffice. Speaking of the boat ride at sunrise, also awesome. We got to see a group of boys having a swim lesson in the Ganges. Some half-crazed Yoga teacher screaming at his acolytes from his perch above the ghats. I have to say, for some strange reason in my mind I thought the funeral pyres were going to be on boats that floated down the river, but they just get burned riverside. Much less pomp and circumstance, but I guess life isn’t Norse folklore.

Along the riverside you’d stumble upon temples full of gold, full of beautiful sandstone carving; there’s a miniature Nepali temple full of exquisite wood carvings. And all of these things are just hanging out so casually. Things that just don’t exist in America.  Like public bathrooms totally tiled in marble.  We got to see some inspiring classical Indian music. Although the crowds weren’t there to validate this guy, he said he was a “gold medal” winner of the Sarod instrument in India, and only 40 or so individuals even play this instrument in India. He was playing 1,500 year old pieces which was IMPRESSSIVE. They have a whole range of indigenous instruments that make beautiful sounds. I mean you can’t hate on Indian culture. When it comes to its cuisine and its arts, it stands alone. But like the bottle of wine, it’s just covered in sh** and lying in a pile of trash. I mean we had to see this guy in a bakery café with a bunch of loud Canadians and that’s how a world-class musician in India gets to squeak out a living-playing bakery gigs on the side. Since then, I’ve been on the hunt for full on, professional performances, but they seem few and far between. He did mention a festival at the monkey temple in Jaipur (excellent setting) where all the best musicians from India come to play for a week from sunset to sunrise (due to the heat I think). Needless to say, that one’s been scratched into the bucket list. We were at least able to catch another excellent classical performance with the most famous Indian instrument combination, the sitar and table, before our time in Varanasi was finished.  A must see destination in India.

A validation of Kolkata’s intensity. We met many people who said Varanasi was the most intense place they’ve visited so far in India. What with the attention you get from hawkers, the utter filth, the fair amount of homelessness and poverty. None of these people had made it to Kolkata yet. And we were honestly like, thank God. Varanasi was like Disneyland compared to Kolkata. We met one other person who was making the same route as us. A lone traveler from Minnesota. He was still clearly shell-shocked about Kolkata and just wanted to talk about it with someone. It seemed like he hadn’t done too much travelling because it was clear Kolkata left its mark on him. He said he was scared to leave his hotel room in Kolkata. So it wasn’t just us who thought Kolkata was insane.

Now you’re surely like, “WOW, the tea, the architecture, the culture, you made Kolkata and Darjeeling out to be amazing, and now Varanasi, does travelling get any better than this?!?!” Besides the abject poverty, the utter filth, and the sometimes inhospitable people, let me enter in another of the India negatives-transportation and the Indian beauracracy. All the blogs said, get your train tickets, get your train tickets now, get your train tickets yesterday, get your train tickets last week, these things fill up WEEKS in advance. Now we heard similar stories about the accommodation situation in Myanmar, and it ended up being totally fine, not one place was fully booked. We thought, the trains were just going to be like Myanmar. And besides, you can never know how long you want to stay in a place until you get there! Additionally, the blogs all talked about the foreign tourist quota, tickets that were designed specifically for people like us! FOREIGN F****** TOURIST QUOTE MY A**. Our first experience with the lovely tourist quota was in Kolkata for our Kolkata up to Darjeeling train. We have a pleasant walk to the train station, no line at the counter, she says “oh yes, two tickets available for the train you want.” We’re like, fantastic! She says, “oh but you can’t buy them here, you must go to the foreign tourist office on the other side of town, it opens at 10 am.” It’s 9:00 o clock, we’re like, OK, not ideal but we can still get there right when it opens. We reach the office around 9:30 and see that there’s already a crowd outside of the office but realize we’re close to the flower market we wanted to quickly see. We decide to see the flower market but turn around at 9:45 to make it to the ticket office right when it opens. The crowd is actually some sort of queue and we get our number 21. I was expecting like 5-6 tourists at this office but there’s a crowd of Bangledeshi’s that qualify. TWO HOURS LATER, “21.” We were lucky, a German said he waited 4 hours. Two 1980’s computers were powering the process with a screen full of what looked like pure code. Thankfully, those two tickets were available. We say to each other, oh it must just be Kolkata, the other stations will be better. We get to New Jalgaipuri the next morning (the jumping off point to Darjeeling). We walk over to the counter and say, are there are any tickets to Varanasi in 5 days time? What we interpreted was that yes, there was potentially, but you’re going to need to come 4 hours before the scheduled departure, I can’t sell you tickets in advance. Now, I haven’t been to Eastern Europe, but until I do, I can say New Jalgaipuri is the biggest sh**hole on earth. Think hot dusty ramshackle of a town with none of the positives I’ve mentioned before and all of the negatives. We were like, “Oh great, yeah I’d love to spend potentially all day in this lovely town with the outside possibility of getting stuck here for a night.” We sign up for Cleartrip, the online Indian version of Kayak or something, and yes, booking trains is amazingly easy. EXCEPT, all of the trains are indeed full, and we are forced to settle for the waitlist. A lottery system of sorts. Because!!!! Of course you are not able to book foreign tourist quota tickets on the internet! Only at the stations! The Indian government is like “hahah F U tourists!!!!!” So we are waitlist number 4-5 for the Varanasi train.  There are also quotas for other groups like people in the military or the elderly or disabled.  When those tickets are not used up or when people cancel their tickets, the extras go to the people on the waitlist.  If there are not enough, your ticket is cancelled.  We get to the train station and thank God, we made it on the train. Also, we found there was an upper class waiting room which is CRUCIAL. Because we came to find out in Kolkata, you are sitting ducks for beggars when you are standing and waiting for a train.  Back to Varanasi. Again waitlisted, you figure out 4 hours before whether or not you make the train or not. 4 hours before the train, we find we didn’t make the cut! We run to the train station and thankfully there is an extremely nice and helpful man at the foreign ticket counter (maybe the first). By a pure miracle we get a train that night to Delhi and from there a bus to Jaipur, a trip of 19 hours as opposed to 17 going straight from Varanasi to Jaipur. He also gave us a lecture about never getting waitlisted tickets on the internet. Because, we may or may not get a refund on our waitlisted tickets. The government will let us know IN 90 DAYS AT LEAST. Again, a big slap in the face! Well, we say, OK, you are a really nice man, can you help us book some of our other tickets. Oh no, of course you can’t book other routes from an office, you have to do it at each respective station. STUPID, another slap! So our refund is pending; we make it to Delhi, wander around the station for 1 hour because no one can give us a clear answer on where the damn bus to Jaipur leaves from, some people are trying to help, some people are trying to scam us. But we made it.

Let’s get back to that taxi ride from Varanasi to the train station to Delhi. We are so sick of waiting at train stations, so we’re going to time it perfectly and not have to wait. The station is 20 minutes and allot 1 hour to get there. Rush hour, the transportation grid, like the rest of Varanasi, seemingly run in alleys. I thought I was tough, I was cool, for conquering Saigon traffic. Childs play. They play by a whole different set of rules here in India. This tuk tuk ride was the ride of our lives. I have to hand it to him, he somehow knew we were on a strict deadline because he was driving like a madman. Traffic doesn’t just meld together like a baitball (in Asia). Traffic here plays constant games of chicken until one or both vehicles veer out of the way. I mean, it honestly and truly felt like we were not actually in real life, but he was instead playing Mario-cart, where a crash would just mean that the car spun around in a few circles and then you could continue the race. Our driver, literally (no embellishment here) created his own lane in the median. It felt like we were parting a red sea of traffic. Again, I was just like this. Is. Insane. I look over to Libby and she’s just gripping the side of the tuk tuk muttering a prayer (as she has been doing almost constantly while in India). But we made it with minutes to spare, and we did not have to wait! Ha ha ha. Oh yeah, and the only tickets available were 3^rd class AC (6 classes total). We were like, oh what difference could there possible, there’s simply three rows of sleeping berths instead of two rows. Who knew what a difference it could make!!! Libby was like “3 AC is where families with crying babies go.” Our little area turned into a daycare for babies of sort replete with screeching and screaming. Thankfully the train was only 12 hours.

But to truly enjoy India you need to suppress those experiences from your memory, so instead of thinking about all those things I just described, I prefer to think wallah! We arrived in Jaipur. I’m growing weary of places characterized by their color. The pink beaches that are hardly pink. The blue stone beaches that are hardly blue. The Pink City that is hardly pink. Yes, some of the buildings are pink, but you don’t go to the fort overlooking the city and see a sea of pink. In fact, you also see lots of blue, which makes me wonder how blue, the “Blue City” (Jodhpur) is really going to be. The dubious color title aside, Jaipur is an excellent city. There’s none of the charm existent in Varanasi, but Jaipur more than makes up for it with the excellent sightseeing.  First our travels brought across brilliant woodcarving. Then we found amazing sandstone carving here in India. But Jaipur has something even better-Marble carving. You’re traipsing around these huge forts in the boiling weather and you’re just like, there better be something worth seeing here. And every time, you’re like yup, this is incredible. Really I’ll just let the pictures do the talking. Firstly, because I’m really tired of writing. And secondly, because it’s really just like, take tuk tuk to tomb/temple/fort/palace, enter tomb/temple/fort/palace, be amazed, and take lots of pictures.  Go back to hotel.  Shower.  Recuperate.  Bad movie on TV.  Sleep.  Repeat.

Internet is too slow for pictures but they will come…eventually. 

THE RAJ

My mind, body and soul are all melting here in the desert. Writing this blog from Jaipur where the high is supposed to hit 111 degrees today. The only oasis in sight is home, 12 blooming hot days from now. We shall see how this blog goes; I told Libby I think the heat has actually been slowing my brain down. On top of it all, I got hit with the infamous Indian stomach issues here in Jaipur. Libby got hers in Darjeeling. But let’s start from the beginning. Calcutta.

We get into Kolkata around midnight and successfully withdraw money and hire a prepaid taxi. First time dealing with an Indian and he tries to shortchange us 100 rupiah, around $1.40. It honestly hasn’t been at all unmanageable since with the pricing/negotiating/bartering. It just served to reinforce our initial fears we read from the blogs and guide book. The taxis in Kolkata appear to be 40 to 50 years old, ours was no different. From that instant you stepped into the taxi you knew you were in a very different place. Driving along the streets you see rows of bodies. I’ve read that since the earthquake, the Nepalese were sleeping in the streets with tents. Well, it seemed that Kolkata was like Kathmandu, except without the tents. And 365 days a year. Thankfully the cabi was helpful with waking the attendant at our hotel and helped move the homeless people and their cardboard out of the way. What I envisioned Cuba to be like, I seem to have found in India. Everywhere in India, we still use the old-style of keys. The door locking mechanism here in India are ancient, yet delightful. Locked by similarly ancient Indian padlocks. Even the padlocks have their own charm here. Only after these few weeks do I realize how amazing our hotel in Kolkata was. For 15 dollars a night, there were multiple elevator attendants ready to zoom you up on the antique style elevator. The “Telegraph,” the Indian version of one of my favorites was slid under your door every morning. The restaurant though… a dark wood bar looking out over a multitude of tables spread out over of a beautiful marble floor. When we saw it packed with Indians on our first night, we knew to try it. We ended up going back the next night. Brilliant service, impossibly cheap food. I don’t know if it was the British or the Caste system but sometimes you receive amazing service. Not sure if The Broadway’s restaurant is going to be beat here in India.

The guidebook says Kolkata is meant to just walk around, so that’s what we started out doing. Stopping every 10 blocks or so to get a chai for 4-6 rupiah (6-9 cents). For breakfast, we got either Samosas (5 rupiah) or puri with potato curry (10 rupiah). After one morning, I tallied up our expenses and found that we spent 65 cents. One friend got his haircut for 50 cents. As if the taxis weren’t enough, the dozens of foot-rickshaws, people actually pulling other people as a mode of transportation help ensure your mind that you are in fact in a very different place indeed. The crumbling British architecture in concert with the sheer energy of this place, it is the most different place in the world, I’m convinced. You walk down the street and you have dozens of people taking their showers at the local water pump, markets set up on the streets and an impossible mass of cars, trucks, motos, rickshaws, bicycles trying to get through an alley. In trying to find the first-mover in what makes India, India, the answer became quite obvious. The population per square kilometer in India is 382. In comparison, America’s is 33.

You, like myself at one time, are probably thinking, “this is it, this is the place, the food, the culture, the architecture, THE PRICES.” And then you walk down a certain street and get bombarded emotionally, existentially. In rapid succession. First maybe there’s just the filthiest man walking towards you with his arms outstretched and complete desperation in his eyes putting his hand to his mouth, the universal symbol here for give me money so I can eat. Then maybe you pass a man with a limb missing, or two, or three, doing the same thing, except this time at least he’s seated. Finally, maybe you have a women with a young baby her arms. The baby’s stomach is extremely bloated, like what you see in African aid commercials. After one of those triple whammy’s, my mind is reeling, “is it right to have a strict rule on absolutely no money to beggars? Those people seem like they realllly need it? What does 10 rupiah even matter?” But then you fall back on your original rationale, “there’s hundreds and hundreds of them, who are you to choose who gets it or not.” In the end, you’re just left thinking this is insane.  Any empathy results in emotional stress and mentally wears you down.  I was honestly thinking, wow, I am so proud of Libby for handling this. When Libby stops on the street and in a really strained voice goes “I don’t know where we are, we’re lost; we need a break, I can’t do this.” We weren’t actually lost, but thankfully, there was a western style café across the street and we run into the AC to seek shelter from the storm. These scenes can’t help but shake you to the core. The most poignant one for me being a baby playing by itself in a pile of trash. But there’s countless others, the little boy really wanting my hat, a lady stroking my face, a young autistic boy hugging my arm. And it’s not just poverty, it’s the trash and grime everywhere, the stench of urine and feces (though I will say Varanasi had Kolkata beat on that one), and the heat that just slowly makes your blood boil through it all.

I will say as time continues to pass, the shocking scenes of poverty seem to fade away, and you are slowly left with the memorable, highly photogenic images of Kolkata. There’s an authenticity here that you don’t find in the more touristy places. Libby and I would go whole mornings and afternoons before spotting a single other tourist. I never knew until walking into a delightful little café/restaurant that Indians ate with their hands. Like Burma and its teak, India seems to be blessed with a preponderance of marble and it really goes a long way with making things look good. And only in Kolkata do you walk around 3 filthy blocks before stumbling upon this magnificent palace that belongs to the family of a Maharaja (Indian Royalty). After bribing the spear wielding gateman (instead of getting the Tourist office permission??), we got a tour of a palace where original Reubens and Morillos are decaying in the intense humidity. There’s a purported 90 different colors of marble used to make the most beautiful floors imaginable. Hence the name, the Marble Palace. But at the time of our departure to Darjeeling, we were more than ready to jump ship.

Darjeeling

Looking back, Darjeeling doesn’t seem a part of India. I believe mostly due to the heat. It’s not like Europe, as someone said, but certainly a relative oasis to the rest of India. To be honest, Darjeeling wasn’t exactly how I pictured it. For one, it’s not quaint. As one German I met put it, “100,000 people IS a small mountain town for India!” The architecture was ugly, that of a developing country mostly, prices like that of a tourist town, mediocre food, but it didn’t matter. Because Darjeeling might have changed me more than any other place in India.

Enter-Darjeeling tea. Darjeeling was life-changing in that I was able to experience tea in ways I never thought possible. Like Scuba diving to skiing, I don’t know if Tea will ever beat out Coffee due to the simple fact that Coffee has more caffeine than Tea. But! I think Tea has more nuanced and sophisticated flavors and mixing capabilities of tea-highlighted by our designated Tea Guru-are seemingly endless! Darjeeling had the wonderful walking paths, beautiful tea gardens (they call fields of tea gardens) on sloping hills with the tea factory in the background, and they had the colonial charm (we had afternoon tea at an old colonial era hotel). But, Darjeeling didn’t have it all in one, all the beautiful things of Darjeeling were punctuated by hordes of people, ugly buildings and the stench of pony S***. I mean, it was so India that there were food stalls across from the pony stables. But what they did have was Nathmull’s tea room. Where I was able to taste dozens of types of Darjeeling tea and where I got my initial education from the tea master.

Let me give you a brief review. There are two types of tea bushes, Assam and China.  Many of the best teas these days are grown from hybrids of the two.  There are three main types of teas that all come from the same leaves: black, green and white. These teas only differ on the drying process they go through. Black teas are fully fermented, meaning they are exposed to oxygen and undergo fermentation due to a catalyst from the crushed vacuoles inner liquid (if my memory serves me) (vacuoles are crushed during the “rolling” process). Black teas are the “Darjeeling tea” with their signature golden coloring. Green tea is semi-fermented meaning they are just exposed to oxygen for a lesser amount of time. And white tea undergoes no fermentation. They simply take the finest leaves (the tips), and dry it (not totally sure). Anyways, white tea has the most delicate and light flavor but also has the most antioxidants. I decided to focus my attention on the Black teas. The bushes are harvested 4 times a year-called flushes. Spring and fall yield the most expensive teas. Spring since they have the lightest most flowery taste and fall since the monsoon rains of the third flush give a nice bold flavor to the 4^th or Autumn flush. The second flush is noteworthy because there’s an insect call muscatel (or that’s just the name of the tea type) that use the leaf or something and give the tea a smoky flavor. I’m coming home with the intent of giving as many tea tastings as possible.

Anyways, that was my purist experience with tea. Equally satisfying was our time with the Tea Guru, in Kurseong. Kurseong is a small town 22? Km south of Darjeeling but still in Darjeeling province and so sells “Darjeeling” tea. If Kurseong had Nathmull’s tea room, there would be no reason to visit Darjeeling. Except if you wanted to see the world’s third highest peak, which was shrouded in clouds for our 4 days anyways. Kurseong was the small mountain town we had made Darjeeling out to be in our minds. Beautiful tea gardens, hills, quiet. Not to mention we stayed at an awesome little converted tea planter estate. We only planned on staying one night and upon arrival, immediately switched it to two nights. What was most special about this place however, was the resident tea mixer. He wasn’t a tea purist but he was what we called the tea guru. He had a whole menu full of amazing concoctions he mixed himself. Using ingredients like apples, oranges, honey, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper he brewed perfect concoctions. For like A DOLLAR!!!! What he did was bring the water to a boil with the ingredients in it first and then added the tea when it cooled to proper tea brewing temperature. I have some of his recipes, but whenever the café opens, assuming he’s not like 100 years old by then, he’s coming to train the staff.  Libby was bedridden for most of our time in Darjeeling proper. So she had to watch me as I came back from my 14 cups of tea tasting session bouncing off the walls from all that caffeine. We kept trying to get her out of the room (cinderblock walls made for a very “soothing” environment), but every time she tried to walk, she vomited all over the streets of Darjeeling. The great thing is India is so dirty that no one cares that you are puking in the middle of town square. The people, not being the friendliest, won’t bother you either.

Besides the abject poverty and the utter filth, I will enter another of the India negatives-the general population of people. Myanmar people are the nicest, most honest people in Asia, but really the rest of Asia comes really close. India, on the other hand, is decidedly the worst. To be fair, there are some really nice and helpful and friendly Indians out there. Enough to at times think, maybe I’ve been a little hard on the Indians, maybe they actually are as nice as other countries. But then you run into a string of douchebags/you name it, and you’re like “ugh, yep, I was right with my first assumption.” A little bit of it must come from the New York-esque thing where they are around so many people every day that they just sort of shut off their public self. Another bit is from their unfortunate cultural habit of staring (really hard) at you, but primarily girls, and then not smiling when you stare at them back and sort of say, “yes I see you staring for a past respectable amount of time, so you should smile and make it less awkward.”  The second bit only being exacerbated when you remember their unseemly reputation for rape in this country. And finally, you yourself sort of end up shutting yourself off to potentially friendly people in India because 99 percent of the people that say “hello” “excuse me” “let me help you” “where are you going” ect ect ect want to either take you to a place where they can get a commission and scam you. Or, they’ll just ask you for money after they “help” you.

Back to the travels. After four days in the cold but refreshing weather, I started to get the sniffles and so was happy to be off to Varanasi and the heat. Ha! Why would anyone be looking forward to 105-110 degree heat, I don’t know!!! 

Northern Thailand

Vindication has never felt so sweet. Over these past few months Libby has waged a subtle yet largely successful psy-ops campaign to influence the minds of both my parents, and (I think) hers, and maybe even you handful of readers. The campaign dealt with the perception of who does all the “planning” on this nothing short of EPIC trip. I’ve already conceded my position that Libby does all the navigation, (usually I’m driving the moto), picks the hotels, and figures out what sights we need to see in the cities. This admission I think has also ceded my credibility over the larger picture components of this trip. But Indonesia and Northern Thailand was the ultimate test. Before we went to Indonesia, Libby made it clear that Indonesia was my show and vice versa for Northern Thailand. As you know Indonesia was a SLAM DUNK and Northern Thailand was uneventful.  Although that is surely relative. Going to a new place in the world should never be a negative experience and if it is you probably have the wrong mindset going into it.  Which brings me to a brief segue.

I forgot to add the one sentence I wanted to say to convey to you guys what made our German friend (in Indonesia) so compatible to travel with on our road trip. In the ridiculously small pack he brought with for a 6 day trip, he put a FULL ROLL OF DUCT TAPE (which is now helping keep my sandal together). If that doesn’t seem awesome to you and doesn’t convey “extremely compatible travelling personality” then I think we have differing perspective. Which brings me to my next point. During our road trip we met this older couple in a few different places along the route and had dinner with once. They were lamenting about how horrific and terrible one of their days had been on the road. Afterwards when the German and I were talking over a beer I mentioned how we seemingly had a different perspective/personality than that couple. I was trying to make the point that primarily we were tougher people, but more essential is that we wouldn’t let the discomfort of a dirt road and monsoon define our day as terrible. It gets to the larger point where you lose the gratefulness of travelling (they were 30 something and didn’t seem to have any real plans of any sort save to keep on travelling) and you lose perspective of a) how awesome travelling is and b) everything new you get to see/experience should be seen as a positive. Obviously this precludes something truly terrible like getting robbed, ect. This mode of thought (in my opinion) extends to this mindset of the “slow travel ethos.” First to be able to have the “slow travel ethos,” most of the people have given up their professional aspirations back home. Even if they haven’t, what I’ve noticed with the “slow travel ethos” is you start taking time for granted and inevitably start travelling at a slower rate. I’ve even noticed it in ourselves, where we sometimes lack the drive and motivation we had in Burma when we would take a 13 hour night bus, roll in at 5 am, and go do 12 hours of sightseeing, rinse and repeat. But there’s no denying that special feeling when you go to an inspiring location for the first time. That’s why I’m convinced it’s better to maximize locations rather than go slow and just take it all in. For instance, whether it was seeing the sunrise at Inle Lake, scuba diving for the first time, hearing a Formula One engine for the first time, you lose that tingly, hair standing on the back of your neck sensation after a while (maybe by even the 2^nd time). That in my opinion is the most important thing of travelling, more important than “connecting with the locals.” For instance these Germans, who were travelling so slow, only covered the South Pacific islands and Indonesia in 17 months! Anyways, my point being that these people are usually the ones that are aghast and astonished when we tell them how much ground we planned to cover in 4 months. One particularly obnoxious older German compared our trip to “seeing Europe in a week!” I beg to differ, I do agree that every legendary location should be seen at a minimum of two times. Once to take pictures and once to just soak it in. This was uttered by the CEO of an executive headhunting firm in Paris (obviously he knows what’s up). My one exception to being particularly picky about sightseeing are, obviously, HOT SPRINGS. Doesn’t matter how crappy hot springs are, they are always worth it, every time. 

Libby agrees with me about how all traveling experiences, good or bad, are always positive in that they are a good experience to have and in some way expand your understanding of the world and yourself.  She also loves the tingling excitement of experiencing new things (the best part of traveling in her opinion); however, we differ a bit when it comes to time.  She thinks that you often have to choose the perspective: seeing a city or getting to know a city.  It takes time to get to know a city, its culture and idiosyncrasies.  We were fortune to have that experience in Ho Chi Minh.  Living there for 8 months allowed us to get to know people’s tendencies and how the city works.  Obviously, living there for years would further increase this knowledge.  However, that takes long-term investment.  You can’t speed the process.  Seeing a city is different.  You see the important sights, wander the streets and try the food.  You can say that you have seen it but not that you know it.  Our traveling is seeing as much as possible as fully as possible.  (this was written by Libby)

 So after this not so short segue, we’re back to my original point.

The seemingly erratic 4 month itinerary. I’m going to go out and say it, my baby child. My version of Picasso’s Guernica or The Weeping Woman. There I said it. Palawan, my idea. Indonesia, my idea. India, my idea. Burma was planned so along ago, I’m willing to cede partial credit to Libby. And Northern Thailand, Libby’s idea.  As a child, it was the first country Libby found out about in South East Asia so she really wanted to visit Northern Thailand. It wasn’t bad by any means, it was just more of a minor league location and we’ve been sticking to the big leagues.  Let’s start with the bad, and continue on with the good. We meet so many damn Germans travelling that it’s clear that something in their collective cultural conscious places a high value on travelling (and rightly so). But I can’t give a good answer to these Germans as to why we don’t see more Americans. It’s certainly not due to a lack of us. Part of the answer I’ve come to find out, is that that all the Americans are in Thailand. I think Southeast Asia is so far from America that we only get fed national tourism stuff (ie the stuff Thailand is most established with). I have to say that the travelers in Thailand seem to have a lower IQ than travelers in other countries. I can’t say this definitively, but I can definitely say that I met the stupidest person to date in Chiang Mai. She was Canadian, but when we were talking about teaching abroad she was like “yeah I’ve got a friend who teaches somewhere, North Korea I think.” It took a lot of self-control to keep a straight face and move the conversation on. There were some other similarly dumb statements made on her part but that single sentence stands out as the dumbest thing I’ve heard in Asia. I wanted to be like, “ohhhhhh coooooooooooooool, North Korea seems like a GREAT place to live and work, I’ve always wanted to go!!!!!!!” Additionally, she was with her posse of girlfriends, and they were like, “yeaaaaaaa, we’re headed down south for the full moon party.”

What I wanted to say was “ohhhh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, watch out though (then in my deepest darkest Aziz Ansari style voice be like), DON’T GET MURDEREDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.” I figured if she didn’t know about North Korea she probably had never heard of the highly publicized murders in Southern Thailand (not to mention she confused amphetamines with sedatives in regards to drugging elephants).

Anyways, I’m just glad we’ve moved past the Southeast Asia infatuation of not having any rules. But really, it’s very true, that the cooler places you travel to, the cooler people you meet. We hung out with the most people in Flores, and it’s a very simple idea that good people have good ideas. It’s the basic idea The Island tries to express albeit in a very hollywoodized way (Libby made me watch it).

 We spent a few days diving with the son of Spain’s foreign minister. The most sociable man I’ve ever met, didn’t matter if they were drunk 19 year olds spouting out about an independent Quebec, or me. The former private chef to the owner of Chelsea football club was with us for a day (she kept her cards pretty close when I was trying to find a magical cooking secret). And finally, a real legend, Michael. Michael was something out of a Joseph Conrad novel. We must’ve met 6 different people who met Michael as he was traversing Eastern Indonesia by land on his way to Bali to get his macbook fixed. He was doing ethnographic fieldwork in East Timor, one of those guys we read about in College. And it was hilarious seeing him interact with westerners again for the first time. He was a little off his hinge, and was slightly disillusioned with his mission, as he was ending his two year fieldwork. But he was great. He spoke so fast our German friend said he couldn’t really understand him and if I tried to recap what exactly what we all talked about, well, I couldn’t. I don’t really know myself. But he obviously had some amazing stories about pig sacrifices gone wrong, the 70 year old missionary that essentially started his own cult with the natives, ect. I mean if we had another month in Indonesia we probably would have ventured over to East Timor for a visit. And just the uncanniness of how many times we ran into Michael, physically and via acquaintances, was hilarious. We saw him 4 times in less than 24 hours around one city. And every city we went, we met new people and would get to talking and Michael would come up. “The anthropologist? Was his name Michael? YEAAAAAAA, we met him in blah blah blah, he was something else”. 

Also, those 17^th month travelers, we also got a sense of the limit of how authentic travelling you can get. It’s called East Timor without a car and translator/guide. It really reinforced my previous iteration of the need for $$$ when going to the National Geographic style places. They stayed in East Timor for 30 days and couldn’t really tell me what they did exactly, save for, “everything was extremely difficult, roads were hardly existent, English was nonexistent, everyone wondered what you were doing there (traveling being a foreign concept to this area), and everyone would gather and stare at you.” Michael would have been the perfect excuse to go! And East Timor is still on the list, just maybe the back of the list.   One of the delicacies in East Timor being pig intestine boiled in its own blood.

But back to the good parts of Northern Thailand. At the end of the day, riding elephants and petting tigers are awesome. But I loved it and hated it at the same time. You pay the considerable money, get into costume, ride the Elephant, get your pictures taken, wash the elephant, get your taken pictures taken, and call it a wrap. Fantastic pictures, and really a cool experience at the end of the day. We made sure to ride the elephants bareback. But it couldn’t help but feel a tad bit contrived. I told my parents it felt like Disney land on steroids. The same was true with Tigers.  Ethical considerations aside, it was awesome to pet GIANT tigers. And BABY tigers. But their disclaimer about not drugging their animals wasn’t exactly convincing. The best part of Northern Thailand though, I’d say was when Libby’s parents visited us in spirit, via a fancy hotel room. My oh my how easy it was to lapse into luxury. We were granted 4 nights, and at first we were like “oh 3 nights will be plenty, we don’t need too much time in Chiang Mai.” After about 12 hours we called the front desk and were like, “yeah can we actually get a 4^th night.” Northern Thailand was supposedly renowned for its beauty but both of us were very nonplussed after Indonesia. What makes Thailand so popular, and rightly so, is the delicious food, the right amount of cultural authenticity with a healthy tinge of western consideration (ie town markets geared towards artsy hipster types), and activities that are way different yet easy (ie elephant rides, tiger petting, bus rides to ethnic minority villages). Regarding the markets, Libby said it best when she was like “I can tell how touristy a market is simply by the amount of things I like.”  “Authentic” markets aka markets locals go to for their daily shopping wouldn’t be of much interest to an average tourist.  They contain fruits, vegetables, raw meats, cheap factory made clothing and plastic bata sandals.  The interesting markets in Thailand feature homemade arts and crafts like homemade paper lamps, jewelry, art, and of course ethnic minority made clothing, oh and elephant pants.

 Also, there is the vaunted Thai massage. Honestly, the food and the massages are enough to keep me happy in Thailand, but it all seems a bit mild compared to the places and things we’ve been doing previously. Chiang Rai has two amazing pieces of architecture, one a temple and another a compound of houses, that are both made by what I would call the Thai Gaudi.  But they definitely won’t compare to the Taj Majal. These alone are worth making the trek to Chiang Rai as they yielded some amazing pictures, but there’s really nothing else besides good food and massages.  There are the famous ethnic minority villages and rainforest trekking but we’ve done so much of that in much less visited and more beautiful areas.  At the end of the day, it’s good that we went to Northern Thailand and checked it off the list. However, Bangkok remains in my mind, the crown jewel of Thailand. Everyone is like “oh Bangkok is the s**thole of Thailand.” But they are dead wrong. In fact I think Bangkok is my favorite megacity in Southeast Asia (obviously I can’t compare it to Saigon though) The food, logically so, is the best in Bangkok. Why wouldn’t the cooks want to come to the big leagues? The temples, the best. Great public transportation, clean, and everything you could possibly want from rooftop bars to music clubs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Bangkok is great. Which is why we spent the last leg of our Northern Thailand trip in Bangkok instead.

I don’t know but I bet my feelings towards Northern Thailand probably come across as negative (like Dalat). They weren’t, just neutral. You never know till you go, and now we know. We had the time, used it properly, and can say if you are short on time, go to Indonesia, Burma, or Vietnam instead. Although if you have some weird sort of Tiger obsession, I think Thailand may be the place for you (Elephant riding is in many places, not sure about Tiger petting). Although ideally, you’d fly into Bangkok and spend a couple days before moving to your final destination. Because Bangkok is just great. Did I mention the food???

Also, we moved up our flight so we get even more time in India, what’s assuredly going to be reentry to the big leagues, baby. The Raj. The Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaj!!! I mean, I have a weird obsession/fascination with fine drinks and also a little bit with the Victorian-era British Empire so you can imagine how unbelievably excited I am to get to tour a Darjeeling tea estate with the Himalayas serving as backdrop and then sitting down for some afternoon tea with the champagne of teas!!! Before we decided to make this a reality it was one of my dream travelling scenarios (the other being staying at a traditional Japanese style hotel with full traditional clothing and an onsite Onsen, in case you were wondering). And then Varanasi??????????????????????? To see a funeral pyre floating down the Ganges, I mean wow. Not to mention pink cities, blue cities, golden cities, the Taj Mahal. We’re brimming with excitement over here. Everyone says, get ready, India is going to be intense. But I feel like we just did mild, so we are ready. I mean I’ll feel slightly stupid, and weak, if India proves a touch too intense, and we miss more of the Thailand mild, but we shall see! Don’t know till we go.

In case you were wondering, the tour of India is as follows: Kolkata, Darjeeling, Varanasi, Agra, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jaipur, and ending in Delhi.