mumbai

mumbai is a truly amazing city, one that i very quickly fell in love with upon spending some time in colaba. kingfishers at leopold cafe (made famous by gregory david roberts´ shantaram), cups of chai under the gateway to india, walks along the chaotic covered market on the causeway and extremely outgoing fellow travelers make the city an intoxicating blend of colonialism, tourism and modern india.

after the train ride from chennai and the epic battle with the cab drivers, i spent most of the first day there sleeping in the hostel that i found with the help of an old man who was patrolling the early morning streets looking for someone to shepherd into a a place to stay. i woke up in the early evening, a perfect time to take in the people watching at leopold, where before long i had had drinks with an older swedish man who was some sort of telecom mogul and two danish girls, one of whom was an actress in sean penn´s into the wild. she thought it was quite funny that her billed role in the film was "danish tourist." they had earlier made friends with a wild german fellow named jan who later joined us and we wound up having a couple of beers on the breakwater near the gateway. a very productive first night in mumbai was just beginning.

it was very early in the morning by the time we decided to retire, though jan and i decided it was the perfect time to find a cup of chai. he quickly gave up on the search but i found a stand that was buzzing with locals, even around three a.m. one man noticed me observing the goings on and struck up a conversation. obviously, he was a tour guide and he asked if i would like to go around town with him. he seemed nice enough so off we went after talking for a few hours. the sun had just come up and the city was back to its crazy self. my new friend mayur decided to take me to his house in the colaba slum, also heavily discussed in shantaram. mayur´s house was on the top of a few others in the slum and he showed me his great view with the utmost pride. i spent the majority of the day with him there, before going to a fish market and having him take me to a few other spots around town off of the gora line.

i spent a few other days with mayur in the slum before leaving for dubai and new york. it was truly remarkable to see how those people live and to see the level of happiness that they exude at every turn. i found it to be interesting that the slum was the only place in india where i was not hassled for money, where no one attempted to scam me for anything. the people who needed the money the most were the most friendly people i met in that country. traveling there was very stressful at times and lovely at others, but the few days in the slum was unforgettable and made the six weeks in india truly worthwhile.

chennai to mumbai

train ticket secured, i walked across the street from my hotel to the chennai egmore station to board the six a.m. train to mumbai. chaiwallahs and other sellers of various goods were already out in full force, making it a perfect india train riding experience. making it an even more perfect experience was the fact that i had gotten a ticket on the most basic class of travel on indian trains. i had the lowest of three beds hung from the ceiling of the train, meaning i was packed against the wall by the rest of the travelers on that half of the berth.

the ride got underway almost on time, surprisingly, and i was glad to leave the station as it is not pleasant to wait on the tracks for an extended period of time in indian train stations - the local folks seem to rather enjoy using the tracks as a public toilet when they are unoccupied by the large, light blue train cars. they also open the water spigots that line the tracks in the stations and use them as impromptu showers whenever possible. stagnant water along with human waste along with the heat make for a truly memorable olfactory experience.

needless to say that i was concerned about the 26-hour ride that i had in front of me. after the first few hours, however, i realized that i was truly enjoying the trip, listening to my ipod and sporadically engaging in conversation with folks who were especially interested in my seattle mariners baseball cap. the only drawback that i could find about the lower train class was that beggars are not removed from the cars. in the air conditioned classes, the train conductors are pretty good about keeping people out of the cars who have not purchased a ticket, but they don´t seem to mind in the lower classes of travel. every so often i would be prodded by a beggar who had found himself lucky enough to encounter a gora in the sleeper class. one boy didn´t want money from me, he only wanted the remainder of a bottle of coke that i was drinking.

i had fallen asleep for a couple of hours, as it is pretty difficult to stay awake when it is very warm and you have a nice breeze coming through the window to keep you cool while listening to old sigur ros albums. i was jolted awake by a woman who pulled off my hat and headphones and grabbed my face in her hands. she was a really incredible looking creature, probably in her fifties, with stark white hair tied in a pony tail, hands and face died with henna, chains joining the piercings in her ears and nose and stunning green eyes contrasted against her chocolate brown skin. she stared at me for an uncomfortably long period of time, released my face from her grasp and said, "thank you, i have now seen the soul of god in you eyes." she disappeared out of the berth and up the aisle, leaving me to deal with the rest of the onlookers, whom by that point were numerous. each of them were giving me a stare that i can´t really classify, unclear as to what they meant by their glances.

it is impossible to go hungry or thirsty on indian trains as there are constantly chaiwallahs and wallahs of other drinks and snacks patrolling the train cars trying to make a sale, each screaming at the top of their lungs what they are selling. even in the middle of the night it is possible to procure some sort of treat, if you are able to look away from your sleeping quarters for a second. this is a very dangerous game, however, as it requires the dedication of a sentinel to protect your bed from those who have boarded the train without making a reservation with hopes of jumping into a bed with someone who isn´t paying proper attention to share a place to sleep for the night. even if you are asleep and someone sees an opening, they will not hesitate to take it and try to get into your bed with you. this was another thing that only happens in the sleeper class on trains.

another danger at night are the projectiles that are launched from the sides of the tracks by kids trying to have a good time. someone in an adjacent car was struck by a rock around two a.m., forcing the conductors to go around, waking everyone on the train and instructing them to shut the blinds, making the remainder of the ride rather uncomfortable without the natural ventilation provided by the open windows, which are actually just squares cut out of the side of the train with bars over the openings. needless to say, this proved to be a rather sleepless night.

the train pulled into the mumbai dadar station around six a.m. dadar is not one of the major stations in the city and i was therefore accosted by the gaggle of taxi drivers who had congregated outside the gate. i sat down on a curb, hoping that my indifference would force them into dispersing, though i had no such luck. quite the opposite, in fact, as a pair of drivers snatched one of my bags and put it into their cab. i was headed for colaba and they told me that they would run the meter, so i found myself to be quite fortunate. about fifteen minutes later, we were on the colaba causeway and i was getting out of the cab, handing them the amount of rupees dictated by the meter. of course, these two idiots pulled out a sheet of paper with the "meter conversion" rates on it, a list that stated that i owed them rs. 850.

a fifteen minute cab ride in new york city doesn´t cost $17, so these two were in for it. i demanded their names and the number of the cab so i could call the transit police, at which point the argument really got going. too tired and sick of the two idiots to continue, i handed them the money. when i asked for my change, they told me i had not paid them, so they owed me no change and kept asking for the original amount over and over again. at this point i got out of the cab, pulled the driver out and coincidentally discovered the money i had given him under an elastic band up his sleeve. the other driver jumped out of the car and threw my bags on the sidewalk before the two of them sped away.

i had been welcomed back to mumbai in true indian fashion!

pondicherry to chennai

definitely the most interesting bus ride of my time in india, the short three hour jaunt from pondicherry to chennai proved to be high quality bang for your buck entertainment. rs. 53 (roughly one dollar) for the three-hour trip, which although not one of the more scenic drives, was one of the more expeditiously completed legs of my journey, due to the fact that it traveled along an actual, legitimate highway, therefore allowing the bus to go more than 40 km/hr.

since there were several wide lanes in which to drive and since it was india, people had idea that they could drive as fast and as outrageously as they pleased. this is all in good fun until people start cutting off the massive and overpacked 18-wheeler trucks that are also flying down the road. my fellow traveler and i were crammed into the back of the bus with our backpacks and an indian woman had sat down next to me, who decided to use my leg as an arm rest. apparently, the social stigma of indian men sitting next to white omen doesn't apply the other way around.

looking out of the very dirty windows, we witnessed yet another event that i will never forget. a small car cut in front of a huge truck. the truck had to attempt to to swerve out of the way, unsuccessfully. the truck then fell on its side, slamming to the pavement with such force as to throw its passegers through the windscreen. the men skidded down the road in front of the truck and i would be surprised if any of them survived the ordeal. it was one of those things that happens in slow motion, and the noise of the crash was quite remarkable.

we later saw a few more accidents, but none were as intense as the truck crashing. the longest part of the trip as getting into chennai, which is a sprawling, filthy, indian city. negotiations were made with a rickshaw driver who took us to the backpacker area and further negotiations were made for a place to stay for the night before we could find train tickets to escape chennai.

after dealing ith multiple 'travel agents,' who claimed there ere no seats on any trains for a couple of weeks, we went to the main train station and were able to purchase tickets for the following day. my friend was off to delhi, going north on a 33-hour train and i was heading 26 hours west across the country back to mumbai on a sleeper class ticket, the lowest class on long distance indian trains. this was going to be a true india experience. total cost for the ticket was rs. 400, about eight dollars.

kumily to pondicherry

after a few days of peace and quiet in kumily, it was time to move along and the girls that i was with headed to a different hill station, the guy that i was with headed to bangalore and i decided to make the long overnight trip to pondicherry. the only bus that was going from kumily to pondi stopped in a place called cumbum where i waited for a few hours for the second bus to arrive. the second bus was a "sleeper" bus, which meant that instead of having seats it had small beds hung from the sides of the bus. this seemed like it would be a pretty nice way to travel at first glance, but having fairly extensive experience with the way in which buses are piloted around in this country, i knew that i was in for a long fourteen hours.

laying down in the "bed" to which i was assigned was a chore in and of itself and as soon as the bus began to ramble down the road it took quite a bit of concentration to hold on to the small rail that was meant to be keeping me from falling off of the thing. this is all on top of the basic chaotic nature of travel in india, with people screaming at each other, cars and scooters dodging cows in the road and there always seems to be one person who has to cycle through every one of the ringtones on his or her phone until one is deemed suitable. this could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours. either way, its not particularly pleasant.

arriving in pondi in the early hours of the morning was also not pleasant as i was the only foreigner on the bus, which meant that the rickshaw drivers would be especially hard to deal with. i guess you could say that i was a bit lucky that these were the fiestiest of rickshaw drivers, including three who decided to have a shoving match during which a few punches were thrown to decide amongst themselves who would be taking me to a guesthouse. i sat on the curb for about a half an hour while this unfolded and finally one gentleman emerged victorious. he took me to a few places which were full and in the end i wound up about ten kilometers out of town in a homestay which was cheap and decent enough for my purposes.

after taking a nap, it was time to secure transportation. i asked the man who was running the homestay if i could rent a bike from him and he called a friend who quickly appeared with a real deal motorcycle, not a scooter or moped or anything, a motorcycle. i have gotten to be very good at driving the scooters in traffic in asia, but was a bit intimidated by having to shift gears on a much more powerful bike. i jumped on it and took off into traffic and ever since have been in love with motorcycles.

it was an especially great way to get the lay of the land in pondi, which is an old french colony that still retains a great deal of its french history. combined with modern india, it makes for quite the interesting place and is easily navigable due to its simple grid layout. north and south of the city are nice, clean beaches which at times are empty. riding the indian-made bajaj motorcycle to discover new places to swim in the bay of bengal was an excellent way to spend a few days until my friends met me in pondi. we took the trip to auroville on one afternoon which is a sort of cult-like city that is meant to be based in no way on politics, cultures, religions or anything of that nature. the few thousand inhabitants of auroville only are there to devote their lives to discovering what was referred to as the "ultimate truth." there is a very large spherical structure in the center of the town that looks like a giant gold golf ball, inside of which is a crystal ball that is supposed to have some sort of truth discovering power. it was definitely an entertaining place to visit.

i think the most interesting experience that i had in pondi was on a ride out of town towards the homestay where i spent my first week here. people had been setting off fireworks for days and none of us could figure out why until i came upon a procession of people setting them off and throwing flowers on the road. they were also pulling behind them a cart with a dead body on it, which was neatly dressed in traditional indian clothing. obviously, it was a funeral procession on the busiest street in town during the busiest time of day which made the traffic that much more outrageous. on top of that, the flowers that were being thrown around had also attracted a large number of the local wandering livestock. amidst the fireworks, dead bodies, traffic, screams of mourning and the general chaos that is india, were dozens of cows, buffaloes and goats that had emerged to eat the flowers that were being thrown. it made for quite the scene, especially since there were three such processions occuring one after the other.

on top of all of this, the absolute insanity of the situation had forced to buses to collide and all of the passengers had disembarked to scream at the opposing bus driver. if you have read shantaram then you have an idea of what this might look like. it seemed as if there were two tribes of people getting ready to go to war with each other as soon as one group or the other acted first. this is all happening on a two lane road, which is used by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis, around five in the evening which was the beginning of the local rush hour.

i was on my way out of town to check out of the homestay where i was an move into town to hang out with my friends. i gathered my things, returned the bike and keys and then jumped in a rickshaw that came to life with a sound i had never heard before and then dozens of people rushing towards the little three-wheeled device screaming at the top of their lungs. they began to pull the driver out of the seat and one man was furiously attempting to detach a chain from the rickshaw while the group of people were screaming at the driver. the man working the chain got it free and then pulled his small dog out from under the wheel of the cart. the dog was alive and had a few scratches, but was very happy to have been removed from the situation.

the driver rushed to the man and began to bow and prostrate himself on the ground, touching the dog owner's feet and asking for forgiveness. the owner touched him on the head and he stood up, continuing to apologize. he then shoved me back in the rickshaw and took off down the road, waving to friends in passing as if nothing had happened, asking the two standard questions that all rickshaw drivers ask young travelers, "where country are from," followed by, "want smoke marijuana." why in the hell that guy had tied his dog to a parked vehicle is still a mystery to me, but it certainly was interesting.

in the span of an hour i had seen quite a bit of things that really are impossible to accurately depict in words.

kochi to kumily

after having made friends with a few traveling brits in fort kochi, it was decided to head east into the mountains to visit the periyar wildlife reserve outside of kumily in kerala. the trip consisted of about six hours of being thrown around on a classic indian bus, with hard seats and instead of having glass for windows, only a few metal bars were in place to keep all appendages inside the vehicle. these sort of trips were much more stressful traveling solo and having a group of friends with which to enjoy the ride made it a much more fulfilling experience.

the most interesting part of the journey was that none of the indian men who boarded the bus would sit next to the english girls with whom i was traveling. the men would rather stand or sit three to a seat than sit next to them. at one point when there were no more sitting or standing options, a man pulled me by the arm to the seat across the aisle where one of the girls was sitting and told me that i should be sitting with my people. this came as quite a surprise but everyone took it in stride and it turned into a bit of a joke. regardless, the social taboo that is sitting near a western woman for an indian man became quite apparent. it could very well work the opposite way, that western men should not sit next to indian women, but i haven't had the chance to test this theory as of yet.

the periyar wildlife reserve is quite a beautiful place and we trekked to the top of a peak about one thousand meters high, which allowed for a really incredible view of the western ghats on one side and the deccan plateau into tamil nadu on the other. there were a few issues with leeches but all in all it was a very nice way to spend an afternoon. no animals were spotted, however, which was not surprising, especially for one of the guides who had been working in the area for decades and had only once seen a tiger.

animals or not, it was quite nice to get into the mountains for some fresh air and a much more relaxed atmosphere in general.

mysore to kochi

i elected to get on another overnight bus from mysore to reach kochi, which is in kerala, the southernmost province of india's west coast - self proclaimed to be "gods own country." the twelve-hour adventure south was relatively uneventful, except for crossing the provincial border from karnataka into kerala, which is also a wildlife reserve. a few small trees had been knocked over across the road and there were buses and trucks and all sorts of conveyance gathered around the trees. it was the middle of the night at apparently, a couple of elephants had gotten adventurous and decided to knock the trees into the road. they were youngsters, most likely elephant teenagers, so this made sense to me. the two elephants stood on the side of the road observing their handiwork and the chaos that it had created.

the most interesting thing about taking the overnight buses is that you arrive in the towns just as they are waking up and you get to see what goes on in the early morning in all of the different places. what goes on in the early morning is very similar to what goes on during the rest of the day - not very much. a lot of standing around and spitting, which seems to be the favorite past time for all men in india.

the bus arrived in ernakulam and i took the short ferry to kochi where i was accosted by autorickshaw drivers and hotel owners at the dock. i now refuse to give people who hassle me my business so i walked away from them and into the little town which is wonderful. it is very relaxed and full of friendly people, though i came to find that the hotel i booked into lacked hot water.

kochi is famous as a portuguese, dutch and chinese fishing and trading village from the 1500's . there are still giant chinese fishing nets on the shore at fort cochin, which the fishermen still use today. they are run on cantilevers and only used at high tide when the current is going the right way, but they are remarkably interesting contraptions that are made of teak wood and have been standing for centuries.

all in all, it was well worth the trip to kochi to get away from the chaos of the rest of india.

mumbai to mysore

i escaped my sort of prison that was shunde, china to hong kong a few weeks ago. i spent a week in hong kong waiting for my visa to india to be processed and then made my way to the airport to jump on a flight to mumbai. my experience in china was so unfair, even by the standards of my employers, that they offered to purchase a plane ticket for me to wherever i wanted to go. of course, when i said i wanted to go to india, they retracted the offer and only after me really screaming at them did they stand by their word. it is amazing how many times on a daily basis people in asia, and from what i have heard from other friends, people in the developing world as a whole, will try to do whatever sort of dishonest thing that they can to get out of spending money.

no matter where i have gone, there have always been people trying to run some sort of scam. i arrived in india in the early hours of the morning and had made a reservation at a hotel near the airport. when i showed the address to a cab driver, he, of course, told me that the address doesn't exist and that he would take me to a cheap hotel, the entire time showing me some sort of identification card that should have been a dead giveaway that i was in for it. it was 3 am and i just wanted a bed to sleep in, i didn't really care at that point.

so the cab driver takes me to a hotel, which looks decent enough and i am immediately escorted into a room where the quick talking boss sits me down and asks for six thousand rupees for the bed for the night, two beers, breakfast and a bus ticket to goa. i was planning on going to goa anyway, so i figured this was pretty sweet and handed him the money, drank my beer and went to bed. i got up around noon the next day, had my breakfast and went to the "bus stop" which consisted of two plastic stools with a tarp over the top of them. the operator of this bus stop told me my bus would be there in a half an hour. a half an hour later, it would be there in another hour. i wound up sitting at the bus stop for over five hours waiting, during which time i did the math on my room for the previous night. i had spent about 150USD on something that i could have gotten for around 30. i also realized that the hotel was in the dead center of a slum so if i had been smart and left the place, i would have had nowhere to go.

a 17-hour busride dropped me in mapusa, goa, where i went to anjuna. anjuna is a really nice little beach town perched on top of a cliff that drops into the water. i was very pleased about this and even more pleased about the accomidation that i found. a hotel run by an elderly couple for 250 rupees a night. perfect! it was a ten minute walk on the beach to the ever popular "shore bar" and i spent a week there before traveling south to margao to catch a train to mangalore.

margao is pretty basic, not much to report on it. i got my train ticket and spent a night in a place that had a tv in it - i realized i hadn't seen sportscenter since feburary and it was excellent. the train ride the next day however, was not. 10 hours to mangalore in 3AC class, which means there are six cots hung from the ceiling of the train, three on each side of the berth. these trains and horrifyingly filthy, cockroaches everywhere, people spitting and throwing food, screaming babies and there was even a domestic dispute in the adjacent berth. needless to say i didn't get any rest, but it certainly was an experience.

mangalore is just as non-descript as margao, even though i did find an electrical outlet converter so i could finally recharge my ipod. i had to spent a few extra days in mangalore because i was too sick to travel anywhere else - enough said about that.

i then got on another ten-hour busride southeast over the western ghats and up onto the deccan plateau to mysore, which is a very crazy place. the maharaja's palace is in mysore along with the devashara market and a few other fun things to see. the con artists here are also first rate because marijuana is legal in this province. one guy started chatting me up about some music festival and next thing i knew i was sitting in a house operated by a man who claimed to be a national bodybuilding champion from the 1970s where they make incense and essential oils. i was pretty much forced to purchase something so i got this oil that keeps mosquitoes away - it actually works!

the guy that originally started the scam then took me to a bar where he and his two friends ordered drinks, which were obviously on me, and started smoking weed. one of them claimed to be some sort of palm reader and said that he would read my palm if i bought him a small bottle of whiskey. i bought it because it cost nothing. the guy started chugging the whiskey and smoking weed simultaneously - he had taken notes from bill murray and chevy chase in caddyshack. he then was far too messed up to read my palm so i left, highly entertained.

by this time i am pretty fed up with this guy following me around and spending my money for me, so i tell him i am going to get something to eat and then go back to my hotel. he takes me to a restaurant and orders something for me, then holds out his hand and asks for money for showing me around. it is more of an insult to give these people a small amount of money than no money at all so i gave him 10 rupees and told him to go away.

as soon as he left, i realized everyone in the place was looking at me with a very disappointed countenance. one of the waiters came to my table and said, "your friend is a very very bad man." obviously he hadn't seen the seinfeld where babu baht says this to jerry, but it sounded exactly the same. i had to laugh because of all this.

at least the con artist is not a respected member of society in india.

china likes to rock the party

during the past week, i have been to a few parties, which have been most interesting. the first was the birthday party for the young girl whom i am teaching, her 13th. all of her classmates from her school were in attendance, singing karaoke, playing games and generally having fun. there are a few western fast food joints in shunde, pizza hut, kfc and mcdonalds, all of which comprised the menu for the affair. pizza hut in china is an especially interesting place as it is a full-service sit-down restaurant where people go for a fancy night out. it is relatively very expensive and is almost treated as a gourmet establishment. similarly, the upper middle class people of this city are also under the impression that the fords that they drive are quite luxurious.

the people that i work for are very wealthy and have a brand new seven series bmw, but all of the things that make a luxury car a luxury car are in english, so they are of no use to them. it is awfully contradictory for a people obsessed with industriousness and maintaining economies of scale to have things that are completely useless. i guess that this family is rich enough to not care about being able to read the gps screen in their new bmw.

the birthday party was quite entertaining and i was very popular as all of the kids got a chance to practice the english that they had been learning at school. one little guy was especially funny. he asked me if i liked living in china. i told him that it was really cool. he had a very confused look on his face and asked me why. when i responded with the standard, diplomatic answer of, “the people are all really nice,” he looked even more confused and said, “what people have you been talking to?” i found this to be extremely funny and came clean with him, that it wasn’t an ideal place to be. he appreciated my honesty.

a few days after the birthday party, i was invited to attend a housewarming party for one of the extended family members of the people for whom i am working. when people here move into a new house, they throw huge blowouts and this one was in a giant room of a posh restaurant. before things got underway, everyone was chatting, smoking and not letting a single toothpick go unused, per usual. all of the guests sat down and all of a sudden the lights turned off and disco balls began shining, smoke machines were going full-blast, lasers projected designs of happy faces and stars on the walls and of all things, the theme song from the magnificent seven began to play. as quickly as it started, it ended, and no one in the room seemed to be impressed by this. it seemed as if this is something that happens at every gathering. maybe it is.

a man jumped onto a stage at one end of the room and began yelling into the microphone. chinese people love microphones. they have some sort of obsession with them that, like most things here, i can’t quite wrap my head around. everyone applauded at intervals of the man’s speech and then the food was served. it is easy for me to eat at these kinds of places because the head of whatever animal is being presented is always on the plate. i had never eaten piglet before. well, maybe i had. i guess i never would have known it without the head of the animal being displayed.

they do a great job with doing different things with shrimp here and all of the shrimp dishes are always fantastic. the shrimp that were served at this meal were served whole in their shells as usual, but this time, everyone was eating the entire thing, head and all. i tried this but found that it was not worth the trouble that came after eating one whole, which included spending ten minutes picking the shell and legs out of your teeth. this could be part of the appeal, as these people love picking their teeth almost as much as they love screaming into microphones. i decided it was more effective to peel the shell off of the damn thing and just eat the meat. it certainly tasted better.

the night after the party, i walked around the corner to the market near my apartment to get some drinks and a snack. while i was on my way, i noticed a very large and very dead rat in the street. it was the first one i had seen in over a month here, which is why it attracted my attention. dead rats and lizards and things of that nature are extremely common in cambodia and people there are way more hungry than they are here. i bought a bottle of iced tea and a bag of cookies and headed home. as i turned the corner, i noticed that a person was holding the rat that had been in the street and that person then turned and took the rat back into his house. if my cantonese were any better,

i would have taken the time to explain to the man that i had just seen something on the news about the prices for pig products dropping below the price of corn, forcing the government to put a floor in place – surely he could spring for at least a trotter. maybe he knows something the who doesn’t know, that you can get swine flu from eating pork. or maybe its just that dead rats are in season this time of year.

now i know why i haven’t seen many dead rats around town.

a few hygiene issues

i haven't been sleeping very much (or at all, really) since i have been in china because i can't seem to adjust to the sheet of plywood that i have for a bed. its not literally a sheet of plywood, but it might just as well be one. i took these pictures last week from the balcony of my apartment. the one on the left was taken at 7 a.m. and the one on the right at 7 p.m. shunde is a city of a little over one million people and it is astonishing how dirty it is, even after having been to other drastically underdeveloped places around asia and also to massive cities. this place makes bangkok look like something about which al gore could only hope to dream.

this place, however, is quite developed. in fact, it seems to be drastically overdeveloped. there are highrise apartment complexes all over the place. these places just can't be full because there is nowhere for all of these people to work in this city, unless they are driving an hour each way to guangzhou. they could be, but it seems unlikely given the way in which these people operate.

while i was on my way to hong kong and macau a few weeks ago, i met a dutch man who was very funny and the first person i had met in shunde who spoke fluent english since i came here. he was, of course, leaving. we were joking about the swine flu outbreak and as i write i am remembering that we were going through hong kong border checkpoints joking about it on may 1st, the day that the first case was confirmed in hong kong. anyway, he was talking about a previous business trip to china, which was before the sars outbreak in 2003. he recalled seeing a sign in an elevator that read, "no spitting."

before coming to this part of the world, i was under the impression that people in asia were obsessed with cleanliness, that it was something over which they took great pride. i found this to be the case in cambodia, where people would sweep the dirt off of their floors made of dirt until their brooms were worn all the way down. they did the best with the cards they were dealt. people in thailand are of a similar mindset. but the people in china, at least in this city, really are not concerned with cleanliness, hygiene or generally just doing things that are in the best interest of one's health. i tried to find dental floss the other day to no avail. the concept of a daily shower is lost.

these people don't have the same viable excuse as the rest of seriously impoverished asia, or even the rest of seriously impoverished china - they all have running water, electricity, cars, etc. both of the apartments i have lived in here have given me nightmares. i couldn't sleep in the first one most nights because it was so disgusting. i am still cleaning up after the previous tenants of my second place.

instead of taking their garbage from their apartments to the garbage bin on the ground floor of the building, people just let it pile up in front of their doors until someone else handles the situation. certainly it saves them the trip, but it also attracts massive amounts of massive cockroaches, rats and other critters. it doesn't seem to me to be overly difficult to take out the trash with you when you leave the building. it is what i do each day to keep bugs out of my apartment, but all of my neighbors keep so much waste around that there is nothing more i can do to combat the bugs than keep a full arsenal of various anti-bug weaponry on me at all times.

i guess these people are used to having filthy, disease ridden insects and rodents in their general vicinity, but there is no reason for that kind of thing. there is no reason to spit in an elevator or anywhere else for that matter. there is no reason to use the horn on your car when you are turning instead of your blinker. since nobody pays attention to horns being honked any longer, i asked one of the people that i work with what they do to get someone's attention when there is an actual traffic emergency. this question was met with utter confusion and is a perfect example of the disparity in methods of logical reasoning between the east and west.

a welcome break

after spending almost four consecutive weeks without having a real conversation in english with another person or being able to successfully order and consume food, the expiration of my chinese visa was the most welcome pain in the neck i could have come up with. this meant that i had to leave the country for a period of time to have the visa renewed and now here i sit in a swanky hotel in hong kong enjoying my break from the monotony of shunde. monotony is an understatement of the highest degree.

hong kong is what you would get if you put new york and london in a blender and then poured out the mix onto a series of islands in asia. it is a truly wonderful city, architecturally reminiscent of vancouver. i guess i should now reword that thought and say that vancouver is architecturally reminiscent of hong kong. the throngs of people are everywhere, in crosswalks, on the mtr, in restaurants, and for the first time in my experiences in big cities, i truly enjoyed it. there is something very different about this city that is quite difficult to verbalize. whatever that x-factor is, it certainly is a great one.

i made my way around the city today to the best of my abilities. traveling via mtr to all of the must see markets and massive edifices, photographic opportunities were ample and duly observed. regretfully my lack of unadulterated internet access prevents me from putting them online at present. the street in which nothing is sold except live fish is quite the treat, especially when the people kill, scale and clean the fish on the spot before they are wrapped and dispensed to the patrons. the first few instances of this aren't exactly pleasant, but once the initial issues with fish that are still moving while they are being cleaned are overcome, the workmanship with which the fish peddlers operate is quite impressive. omnipresent on this street were the feral cats for obvious reasons.

also made it through a massive outdoor market of any sort of "engrish" t-shirt you could find. things with slogans such as "death is egzalent" abound and it seems that those who purchase the shirts either don't know what they say or are trying to make some attempt at irony, as almost everyone in hong kong speaks english fairly well. it was quite interesting for me to observe all of these traditional markets stuck in between the alleys of one of the major financial centers in the world. in the shadow of the aig, bank of america and hsbc buildings, you can get a fish scaled and gutted for 35 hong kong dollars.

i think i could live here for some time.

shunde, not shenzhen

whoops! when the man who i am working for told me over the phone that i would be going to shenzhen, i was very excited, especially after doing a little research online about the city. suspicions were raised when i stepped off of a plane in guangzhou, but i figured i was just going to be driven to shenzhen and that they had gotten a deal on a flight from bangkok or something of that nature. when the driver stopped in shunde, i was a little frightened but have learned to go with the flow while in asia. shunde is a relatively small and very quiet city where i have yet to find a bar and all the restaurants shut around eight in the evening - not really my scene, but it will be good for me.

i arrived at the office where i am working, a very nice construction company here in shunde and waited for a couple of hours to be taken to a restaurant by the brother of my boss who owns "the clubhouse." he was extremely proud of himself for having produced a bottle of budweiser for me. he went on to order some food and i knew getting into the adventure that is china that this would probably be the worst part, but the apartment they put me in made the food look like prime rib. the first plate of food that arrive was full of really nice stir fried vegetables and squid. ok, i can handle that - except the squid was still moving. the next plate that came was a small bird that i would have pegged as some kind of pheasant and i am still hoping that it was because the head on the plate looked remarkably like that of a pigeon. next came a really nice stew with what looked like beef and some water chestnuts. it was very good until halfway through eating the entire plate, my boss, who speaks english, sat down at the table and said, you like cow stomach lining? he then ordered some really nice friend noodles and dumplings and spring rolls. i was conveniently too full of cow stomach to enjoy the nice stuff.

after the food adventure came the apartment adventure. up four flights of stairs and into what looked like an average american apartment. i met my chinese housemate, a man in his fifties who works for the company where i work. spoke no english but seemed nice enough. i then saw my "room," literally six feet square, which means i am unable to lay down. the bed had a "mattress" that might as well have been a sheet of plywood. i can deal with all of this, but when i saw the "bathroom," i almost came unglued. i had to restrain myself from screaming as to avoid insulting my hosts. the toilet is a hole in the ground, which is fine, but the hole leads to nowhere - what a convenience - an inhouse outhouse! upon further inspection i realized that this hole also doubles as the shower drain, which means that yes, when you take a shower you are standing in, well, you get the picture.

i went to see a new apartment today which i will be moving into tomorrow.

good guys go to heaven, bad guys go to pattaya...

...reads the most popular shirt that is purchased by the fifty-something white men, the majority of whom are from the uk and us, who have come to pattaya in search of a thai wife, girlfriend, or generally to be able to get away with things that are seriously illegal in their countries of origin. pattaya is reffered to by some as the asshole of the world and after being here for two weeks, the description is most definitely warranted. the only thai people that are here are the working girls who have come from small villages in the north of thailand to make enough money to either support their families or support their relatively extravagant lifestyles.

the cultural outlook on selling one's body in thailand is obviously and shockingly different that in the western world. speaking at length with a brit who owns a bar adjacent to my guest house on pattaya tai has allowed me to gain more insight into this part of thailand than i thought i would and in some cases more insight than i really wanted. stories of thai girls with thai boyfriends who sell their bodies to some old white guy from indiana so that she could buy her thai boyfriend the hot new nokia phone abound in pattaya and unfortunately, you don't have to go looking for this kind of trouble - it looks for you. diligence is of the utmost importance in a city where it is impossible to go ten feet without hearing, "sexy man, come here, thousand baht."

there are three main streets running north and south in pattaya, beach road, soi two and soi three. beach road turns into walking street which truly is amazing. if you possess the necessary fortitude to brave the working girls and ladyboys, the people watching on walking street is unmatched anywhere in the world. soi six is to be avoided unless you have a sense of humor and an open mind - only ladyboys work on soi six. walking street is comprised of more bars in about 500 meters than are in the entirety of some american states. obviously an exaggeration, but not by much. this photo was taken in the early evening on walking street, i didn't have the guts to bring my camera with me during prime time. it is truly indescribable.


the beaches in pattaya leave quite a bit to be desired. pattaya beach, just nort of walking street, is centered on the city sewage runoff. fairly indicative of the entire place if you ask me. a fifteen minute moto ride to jomtien beach is worth the trip, still filthy though sans sewage. my guest house/apartment is at the corner of pattayatai and soi rungland, well east of walking street. however, it still is in the running for the loudest, noisiest intersection i have seen, including 42nd street and broadway at times square. the drag races that go on at two am in front of the 24 hour beer garden next door produce an astonishing amount of noise without taking a break. ever.

the traffic in this photo is headed towards walking street and the photo was taken at 2 am on a monday morning. new york isn't the only city that never sleeps. even though it is a terrible place to try to get some rest, the food stands on the corner are absolutely fantastic.


khao paht gai le quidtetieau muu a roi krab. having thai lessons has been very enjoyable, i have picked up all of the useful phrases and know numbers well enough to not be fleeced by local sellers of wares, which are numerous. i have also picked up the street slang from my moto driver friend, bo, who plays pool at the bar next to my place. he wears a dead gecko in a case around his neck and beat me with one hand.

pattaya isn't for everyone, certainly not for me.

next stop china!

phnom penh to ko chang

stepping on a crowded coach outside the old market in phnom penh at seven am is quite an experience to say the least. a few other westerners are along for the ride, but the vast majority of the sixty or so voyagers are khmer, attempting to manage children, luggage and the general level of stress that inherently accompanies any sort of organized activity in southeast asia. even negotiating with a moto driver in cambodia is a process that could take upwards of a half an hour, especially if two drivers feel the need to have an extended argument over the rights for your transportation.

the bus journey initially seemed as if it were going to be an average cruise through the kampuchean countryside. the most difficult part of trips leaving phnom penh is actually getting out of the city. this process is laborious and takes at least an hour and a half on a good day. having done an excursion to siem reap the weekend before, i was well prepared for the reality of traffic regulation in the city. however, i was most certainly not prepared for the two televisions in the bus that showed dvd's of khmer karaoke for the entire seven hour ride at full volume. any hopes to catch some sleep on the bus rapidly dissipated. at least none of those savvy to the inner workings of khmer karaoke chose to participate.

crossing the border at chamyeam was another adventure, involving changing buses multiple times and having your passport scrutinzed rather closely for no particular reason - they don't look through bags or run them through an x-ray, but passports are of their utmost concern. finally making it through and getting into another bus was a relief and about two hours later, i was waiting for the ferry to ko chang outside of a funny little thai city called trat. leaving phnom penh at seven am put me at the ferry dock at about six pm. luckily, beer was available for purchase on the boat and it left just in time to see the sun set over the north end of ko chang.

reaching the island was difficult enough, having traveled for over twelve hours and not really covering very much territory. getting off of the ferry, a whole new conflict presented itself - thai baht bus drivers. these characters refuse to take you anywhere unless the bus is full. it just so happened that there weren't enough people getting off of the ferry i was on, so this gentleman decided it would be smart to wait an hour for the next ferry to fill the seats on his pick up truck/taxi contraption. myself, a dutch couple and a german couple proceeded to get extremely angry with this man as we had all been traveling the entire day and the guy refused drive us ten feet. eventually, he won and was paid a very high sum for his services, much to the displeasure of his passengers.

ko chang is one of the most beautiful places i have ever seen. i rented a motorbike for the day and rode to every waterfall and beach i could find, but didn't bring my camera as i didn't want to have to be concerned about it while i was in the water.

the trip from ko chang to pattaya was equally ridiculous, "same same but different," as the people is southeast asia say.

north to siem reap

the most difficult part of the journey north to siem reap is simply getting out of phnom penh. the traffic is terrible, though highly entertaining. the journey lasts nearly seven hours, at least one of which covers only a few kilometers leaving the city. once the traffic clears on national road number six, the landscapes and various visual stimuli are wonderful. on one side of the road, which is only intermittently paved, you will see families cooking food and on the other will be a young man on a moto trying to herd his few cattle away from the busy thoroughfare.

the countryside is truly beautiful and almost completely undeveloped as international aid organizations continue their efforts to clear the country of land mines so that people can begin to cultivate the vast open spaces.

after the sun set, the adventure became particularly interesting as those who were previously responsible for monitoring the road crossing habits of the thousands of loose cattle were no longer vigilant. it most certainly makes for an entertaining few hours. driving into siem reap is a welcome respite while sat in the comfort of an air conditioned van, but as soon as the protection offered by the car is gone, the heat, dirt and smell of the city hit you simultaneously. for whatever reason, siem reap is noticably more dirty than phnom penh. most of its side streets are not paved which leads to massive amounts of dust in the air and increase the temperature on the ground. to say it simply, siem reap is not a pleasant place.

ten minutes of driving takes you to the angkor wat temple complex. the series of temples at this site that date back to the 11th century are very difficult to describe and their size and complexity are disrespected by photographic representation.

i found the bayon temple to be the most interesting, as its thiry four towers are each capped by four indivudal faces, each with its own expression. it is especially fun because you are able to climb to the top level of the temple to stand very near to the towers. even though it was incredibly hot, it was better to visit the temples during the low season, as there were relatively few fellow tourists to deal with.

the angkor wat temple itself is massive and something that you have to see to believe!

i was very glad to have visited the temples but i could have done without siem reap and the hellride that was necessary to reach them. coming back to phnom penh was quite a relief - i never thought i would say anything like that!

the first week in the third world

having completed my first week in southeast asia, there have been too many things that i have done, seen and experienced to verbalize everything.

being in phnom penh allows me to truly experience unadulterated asia, complete with abject poverty in all her beauty. other countries in this part of the world have become westernized with mcdonalds, starbucks, etc. cambodia is still recovering from the seemingly little known disaster that was the 1970s. all it takes for one to realize the influence of killing off 98% of a country's population is a stroll down one of the bustling streets of phnom penh. the rare occurance of encountering an elderly person is just that - there are almost zero people older than the age of forty in phnom penh and every single one of them has a personal horror story of the way in which the pol pot regime operated.

visiting the killing fields outside of phnom penh was a worthwhile journey. to see the place where an unknown amount of people were killed is harrowing. indicative of the face of the nation is this photo, two children outside the fence of the killing fields. they wanted me to take a picture of them and then asked me for a few dollars to pay for books so that they could learn. i didn't really care what they spent the money on.

the people here are truly amazing. everyone always has some sort of project going, most of them have to do with repairing one or a series of motorbikes. everyone has their own garage in which any number of projects are completed on a daily basis. i am staying in a relatively poor part of phnom penh and the local laundry service is also the local moto repair shop/fuel station/food stand. the level of convenience is quite remarkable.

the eastern line of the city is drawn by the confluence of the tonle bassac and mekong rivers. the riverside area is full of bars, tourists and the only elephant in the city that walks back and forth twice a day. locals live on the side of the river in the tall grass that usually disguises their presence to westerners. i looked a little deeper into the riverside the other day and found a very friendly youngster who must have been around an aussie at some point, as the only english phrase he could say was, "the dingo ate my baby."among abject poverty is utter opulence. there are few cars on the streets here, but almost all of them are brand new cadillac escalades or lexus suv's. the focal point of the riverside district is the national palace, which is beautiful and a demonstration of complete devotion to the royal family and buddha. the man driving the tuk tuk in which i was riding early this morning stopped everything to approach a monk on the street. he gave the monk a few hundred khmer riel and laid prostrate in the street before him. it was a good thing that he got his blessing for the day as he was responsible for navigating the maze that is phnom penh.
okun jrean!