8.31.10 - Sawadee Ka, Thailand!

After my arrival in Bangkok on the 14th of August, Julia and I headed out on the 16th to the south of Thailand for a two week vacation on the beaches and islands of enchanting Thailand. It was an amazing two weeks, filled with so much amazing food, drinks, dancing, beach-bathing, sunsets, sunrises, boat rides, motor bike riding, and just a general good time. Now I am back in Bangkok, and have begun the serious business of researching what I want to do while Julia is at work 6 days per week. I have been looking into cooking classes, which I’m thinking of doing once per week. I also have been contemplating the idea of taking Thai language classes.
Learning any new language can be daunting. In fact, Julia and I had a long, inconclusive conversation about the complex irregularities of the English language last night, and the possible means and reasons for the change and development of language. Should the language be made more regular in order to facilitate an easier grasp of converstional English, seeing as how it has become the “universal” language in the sense that it facilitates business and tourist transactions all over the world? Needless to say, neither Julia nor I came to a consensus on the topic. But it did get me thinking about what I love about language, and what makes English so difficult to learn. The English language is full of rules, and then is constantly breaking those rules with exceptions for no apparent reason. We have many tenses, once we don’t even realize we use until we reach the 8th grade and are told that we have been speaking in the present perfect tense. Who knew?
In order to get a better understanding of what I was up against when it comes to learning Thai, I was reading a webpage in which the author stated that Thai is much more simple than English in that respect. There is often no use of past or future tense – everything is in the present tense, and the meaning is changed only by the words used in the sentence (ie the verbs do not need to be conjugated, but always remain constant, and time is delineated by the use of the words “will”, “already” or “in the past”). There are no masculine or feminine nouns as there are in Latin languages. There are no articles or particles (a, and, the), and there is no plural. So by reading this first page you start to think that learning Thai might actually be an attainable goal. This of course is before you have ever tried to speak Thai to a Thai person. Once you have done this you understand why so many Westerners don’t even bother. Although the grammar and syntax of Thai might be more simple, the tonal variations and the vowel sounds of the words are so complex that to the untrained ear you might not ever hear the difference between one word that is spelled the same, but when pronounced in different tones can mean completely different things. The author of this article gives a good example:
“A word can have several meanings depending on the tones, for example the sentence 'mai mai mai mai mai' (with varying tones), can mean the ‘new wood doesn’t burn does it?’. This is where the confusion sets in, such as the word kii, which could mean ‘ride’ or ‘shit’ depending on which way you say it. Even worse is the similarity between glai, where only a falling tone differentiates the meaning from ‘near’ and ‘far’.” (http://www.1stopbangkok.com/speak_thai/tones/, 2008)
So, perhaps at this point you can understand why I am sitting in my apartment writing about the complexities of the Thai language. If not, let me elaborate. I know how to get to the train station. I know how to buy a ticket, what stop to get off at to enjoy some food, go shopping, or visit Julia at her job when she gets off work. I know how to say hello and thank you. I know where the grocery store is, and where the open air night market is. But, once I am done with all of these things and I want to catch a motor bike back to the apartment, I don’t know how to pronounce the name of the drop off point! I can get myself to any number of locations, do any number of things, but I can’t tell the driver how to get me home. Of course I’m not going to sit here in the apartment all day until Julia comes home from work. I’m going to go out and give it a try anyways, once I have done my yoga and gotten properly attired (Thai women always look fabulous I have discovered, and short of wearing high heels, I’m going to try to look fabulous as well if I have to leave the house) I’m going to go shopping and cook dinner for Julia and I tonight. I’m going to make green curry with vegetables and rice, one of our favorite dishes. Not from scratch of course because I don’t have the utensils to make the green curry paste myself, but I’ve discovered that anything with copious amounts of coconut milk in it is just by nature absolutely delicious. Thai food is amazing! Ah well, wish me luck ☺

8.13.10 - Delhi continued

Ahhh so now that I’ve been home, washed the dirt off my face, arms, legs and feet, and slept in my jail cell that I’ve become rather fond of, I feel much better about my trip to Agra yesterday. The plus side of the non-A/C seating was that on the way back to Delhi, I had the whole bench to myself and could stretch out and sleep – it was fabulous. Especially when we stopped for 2 hours so that the rest of the tour group could visit some obscure temple to honor Krishna, whose birthday it was. We had stopped in his birth town for dinner earlier (I had the most tasty samosas and chai ever, and also walked around town with a guide to find the world’s most well-hidden ATM to pay back my benefactor) and I got to watch a terribly cheesy movie depicting Krishna’s kidnapping and reappearance, which I’m assuming is typical to this season. It’s a bit like Christmas in the States I guess; people are all out on the town, shopping for each other and for offerings to leave at the temple, decked out with strands of jasmine in their hair and beautiful sarees on. It was a nice cultural experience, and a few of my fellow travelers took the time to explain to me where we had stopped and why it was important. But when we pulled up to the place where they would go to the temple, nobody told me what was happening and everyone just piled into autos and left. I decided that I would just as soon stay in the bus and sleep. Also it was the perfect opportunity to pee in the woods, which I did promptly once I discovered we would be stopped there waiting for a few hours. All in all, it wasn’t a terrible trip. I arrived back to my cell at 4 in the morning and was able to sleep a few more hours before the heat made it unbearable.
Delhi is hot. Really hot. And dusty. And I think the entire city is under construction; everywhere you go there are roads being torn up, two lanes of traffic being funneled through a passageway barely big enough for one lane of traffic. There are cranes, backhoes, and piles upon piles of dirt which all turn to massive mud puddles when the deluge of rain comes. All of this has the combined effect of making me exceedingly glad that I’m leaving tomorrow. But for now I’m going to make the best of my time here. I’m off to use the internet, then go exploring. Tata!

8.12.2010 - Agra

So my hovel was not any more forgiving in the light of the early morning, given that during the night it converted into my very own small brick oven. It was too hot to sleep under the mosquito net because the meager fan couldn’t penetrate the material. And there is only one outlet in the entire room, occupied by the aforementioned fan, so I couldn’t plug in my mosquito repellant device, which had been working quite nicely for me in Bangalore. Even though I was exhausted from traveling I couldn’t sleep, partly because I was so damn hot, and partly because I was worried about the ceiling caving in on me. I was going to do some research today about the best way to visit Agra (check the price of a bus ticket, train ticket, etc.), so when I got back to my cell last night I asked the night worker what it cost to take their bus tour. He informed me that they only go on Thursday (today) as Friday is their day off, and that I could take A/C or non-A/C. Seeing as how I have from my mother inherited an insatiable desire to find a bargain, and also because when I spend a long time in A/C I often get headaches and sore throats, I chose non-A/C. It might be hot in Delhi, but I preferred to feel the wind on my face to feeling the A/C giving me goosebumps and a head cold on the 5 hour ride to Agra. I realized that I would be much easier to take the bus that would come pick me up at my hostel, and drop me off at the points of interest (the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal) than it would be to take a train to the Agra station, and then be hassled by every auto-rickshaw driver in a 10km radius to swindle me out of my rupees and take me on the scenic route to the Taj Mahal.
So I decided just to go with the non-A/C bus tour. I would be picked up and dropped off at all the proper places, and it would be a set price that would require no bargaining on my part. Now, I might have chosen differently if I had realized that what was meant by “non-A/C” was that I would be sitting in the front of the bus with the driver and 6 other Indian men, all of us on benches as there are no actual seats in the front of the bus. I am once again the only woman, and once again, everyone is staring at me. If there is one thing I can say that I really don’t appreciate about certain other cultures, is that the men can stare all they want and it is not considered inappropriate. But if you, as a woman, so much as look up to meet their gaze you are considered to be coming on to them! Arrrggggg! It is sooooo frustrating! So I appease myself by looking out the window at the beautiful scenery flying past us, and plugging my ears to blog out the incessant horn-honking. The driver is all too liberal with the horrific, high-pitched, dissonant sounding horn, and the flies are biting at the mosquito-bite wounds on my legs. All signs point to a very bad decision on my part. I was greedy about my sight-seeing. I should have just stayed in Havelock an extra day or two, and then flown on directly to Thailand. I could have sat on the beach, gone for an extra dive, hung out with Daniel and my hottie dive instructor Vikas, drank Kingfisher, and worked on my tan. Instead, I thought to myself, “I can’t leave India without seeing the Taj Mahal” when in fact, after seeing it, I rather think that I could have. The problem with seeing huge tourist attractions like this, is that they are swarming with tourists. And along with the tourists come super abnoxious and pushy salesmen. For example, I’m waiting at the bus for the rest of my (non-punctual) fellow travelers to come back, and there is some very persistent seller of carvings standing at the door to the bus and telling me he loves me. Having told him to go away and leave me alone several times has not helped; in fact I’m beginning to think he doesn’t know what the words mean and just likes to hear me say them so I’ve resorted to ignoring him.
The other great charm of this particular tourist attraction, is that if you are an Indian, it costs you 20 rupees to get in. If you are a foreigner, it costs you 750 rupees to get in. And there are absolutely no ATM’s within a 50 km radius of any of the major attractions here. I was told by the driver when we stopped at the first site that there would be an ATM where we stopped for lunch. I hadn’t had time to find one the night before, and I naively supposed that at a site that attracts such huge crowds there would surely be an ATM on the premises. So we stopped for lunch and when I ask where the ATM is, the waiter points to the right outside the door. Thinking I am in luck, I walk out the door and turn right. There is no ATM. Upon further questioning, I discover that the ATM is a 1km walk to the right of the restaurant. And my tour director tells me there is not enough time to walk there and back before we have to leave for the Taj. I tell him I simply don’t have 750 rupees and have to stop before we get there. He has other plans. He commissions one of my fellow passengers to lend me the money (which was humiliating, especially considering 750 rupees is quite a lot of money), and then the bus is going to stop on the way home at an ATM so I can repay him. I don’t exactly look the part of a dependable return of money. I’m sweating like a pig in my white kurta and it looks like I’m trying to be the runner-up for a wet T-shirt contest. People won’t stop staring at me, which I guess is one of the great treasures of traveling India as a single white woman. Don’t get me wrong, the Taj Mahal is incredibly beautiful. And the Red Fort is also quite impressive. But I think spending two weeks in a gorgeous, secluded tropical island and discovering the amazing experience of diving spoiled me. I was so relaxed and at peace with myself. I should have known better than to come back to the chaos of the mainland to tackle Delhi on my own. I should have just bought some post cards and told a couple of white lies and left for Thailand immediately. Ah well, hindsight is 20/20. But now I’m sitting on a bus, sweating and being bitten by flies, and waiting for the rest of my tour group to get back here so that we can head back to Delhi. After today, I am actually looking forward to my jail cell! It’s amazing what perspective can do for you. And had I known that everyone was going to be late, I would have taken the time to pee before getting on this god-forsaken bus. But I didn’t, and god only knows when my next chance will be. Ladies bathrooms aren’t exactly a commodity at the places we’ve been stopping at the roadsides, and men just pee wherever they damn well feel like, so it’s really not fair. I mean, I have no qualms about peeing in the wilderness, but it’s not exactly appropriate for a woman to pop a squat on the side of the road so I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Time will tell I guess?

8.11.10 - Intro to New Delhi

I'm sitting on the airplane to Delhi, and I'm trying really hard to be excited about it, about seeing the Taj, but I'm just not. I miss the islands - I miss the clean air, the turquoise sea, and sitting in the Cafe at night chatting with Vikas and Daniel (dive instructor and really cool traveler, respectively). The only thing I don't miss is beign ravaged by mosquitos, but who is to say that this won't happen in Delhi too? After all, I'm still in the plane. I haven't booked a room yet, but I'm just going to take a taxi to these places listed in Lonely Planet in a pretty centralized area, and then just taking a day trip to the Taj. Guess I'll just see how it goes and make decisions later.
Later that night....
Holy shit!!! I'm staying in a total shithole! Excuse my language, but in this instance it is totally appropriate! I'm laughing just thinking about it because it's obviously totally my doing, and you never know what to expect in India. But word to the wise: when "crusty" is used as a descriptive word in Lonely Planet, it is not a vague term to describe a rustic location, it is actually a very accurate description of a terribly unkempt room! The paint is actually falling from the walls because it is so water logged that it can't stick to the cement anymore. So here I am, in a city I didn't really want to come to, living in what I would imagine to be similar to a jail cell that has fallen into disrepair. And this, my friends, is what happens when you decide to fly by the seat of your pants in Delhi. I'm trying not to think about beautiful Havelock Island, because it will make my hovel so much more unbearable, but just to laugh about it and think of it as a great adventure. Probably the best part about this whole ordeal tonight, is that when I gave the address to my taxi driver, he didn't know where it was. That should have been my first clue. But often in Bangalore the auto drivers wouldn't know where my house was and I'd have to direct them there, so I didn't think anything of it. And maps are pretty much useless as most people never use them and so they don't help you communicate where it is you want to go. Anyways, my driver called the hostel twice or maybe even three times for directions (thank god I had written the number down) and after much turning around and going in circles, I took out my Lonely Planet, looked at the map of the neighborhood, and directed my taxi driver to my hostel. He drives around the city for a living, and I, who have never been to the city, and am not a native of the country, am telling him how to get to a hostel on some obscure street of the Connaught Place district!! Ridiculous!!! I walk into my first choice of hostels and of course there is no vacancy. So I trek to the next one and walk up the skinny steps with all my bags hanging on me like a pack horse. I arrive in the empty lobby and look out on the terrace. There are about 5 or 6 men sitting there in their skivies watching Indian soap operas, and they all turn to stare at me. No one makes any motion to greet me or to come take care of me or even acknowledge that this is a hotel and that I am a prospective source of income. I look around me to be sure that I haven't walked into someone's living room, because this is what it feels like. Then, since no one has greeted me, I say, "hello?" and after a pause, one of the men gets up and comes over to me to begin the proceedings for booking my overpriced hovel-room. At the point in the proceedings where I write in the log book where I am from, the man is convinced that Connecticut is a city, and tries to tell me to write the state, not the city. He thinks I don't understand, and I keep telling him that yes, Connecticut is a state, and yes I live there so I do know that this is true. I eventually resort to pulling out my Connecticut driver's license and show him that Granby is the city and Connecticut is the state. Finally he believes me and says, "Oh, I don't know where that is. Is it in the south?" I tell him it is nearby New York, and then am led to my room by a man in his underwear. Seriously, he was one of the gentlemen sitting on the terrace in the rain watching soap operas, and he is wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. What the hell??? Where am I? I am in the same country, and yet I am worlds apart from where I just left. My jail cell is hot as hell, and it has one tiny little fan and one tiny little window. At least there are screens. But the door is practically falling off the frame so an army of mosquitos could easily fit through, thus negating the purpose of screening the windows. I decided that if I was going to spend a night in this hell hole I was going to do so after a nice cold beer, so I head to a pub nearby and enter an entirely different universe. The bar is highly air conditioned, darkly lit, and covered with posters of famous American musicians: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Kurt Cobain, and on the radio Nickleback is blaring circa 1995, and a whole group of young Indians are singing along. To top off the bizarre atmospheric charm, the waiters are wearing khaki newsboys hats and blue collared shirts, as if this is the epitome of American style or something. I am certain that I am one of the very few women in here, and for sure I am the only woman who goes out alone. I may be the only white woman to ever set foot in here, at least one would think so by the way everyone is staring at me, but that can’t possibly be true because this place is another gem in the Lonely Planet guide book on New Delhi so I’m sure others have ventured here before me. Well my food is here, so I’m about to eat and possibly have another beer, then head back to my hovel. Perhaps it will be more forgiving in the light of day?

8.9.10 - Andaman Islands Continued

I am writing this from the safety of my room so don’t be alarmed – I decided to do a night dive while here in the Andaman Islands, and it was the most incredible experience ever!! Everyone I’ve told seems to be very worried that going in the ocean at night is very dangerous because it is when the sharks feed, but the people I went with have been diving for the past 8+ years, and they do a couple of night dives per week, and they are still alive with no shark-bite related injuries. I knew that if I left the Andamans without doing it, I would regret it forever. So I decided to suck it up and just do it. We hadn’t seen any sharks yet, and I hoped my good luck would continue, plus if I was scared there was always my cute dive instructor to rescue me ☺
As it turns out, diving at night is a lot like diving in the day, in that once you get down there, you are so enthralled by the magic that is going on around you that you are not even thinking about sharks. It is a more slow-paced dive than a daytime dive because you are mostly looking for macro-life, and things often hide from the beam of your flashlight so you have to move more slowly. It is so incredibly dark under the water, and at this time it was new moon, so there was literally no light coming from above the water. The visibility is low and all around you is darkness and the weird noises of the ocean; if diving during the day is like being in a different world, then night diving is like being in an alternate universe. When you take your flashlight and shine it upwards, you realize that dancing all around you are little under-water aliens! There are hundreds and thousands of tiny little planktons, all different species, with translucent bodies and little glowing orbs floating inside them. Some have tails like sperm, some look like centipedes, some with rotating propellers on their tails – there are so many varieties you are constantly in awe of this little thing swimming around in the spotlight. If you catch them in your fingers they can fragment as a defense mechanism and then the pieces go on living. Shining your flashlights on coral also bring out the colors in a new way – pinks, purples, reds, orange, blue – they were so beautiful! The fish were mostly sleeping, or they would see the light and hide, but we did see some amazing lobsters and shrimp, and I had to try my best not to think about how delicious they would be grilled and dipped in garlic butter.
We swam for about an hour looking at all these amazing creatures, and at the end of the dive we swam over to the anchor line, grabbed a hold, and turned off our flashlights. All around us the sea was lit up by the glow of a thousand tiny lights – the zoo plankton emit a glow as another form of self defense, to warn other plankton that there might be danger near (in this case in the form of our large, moving bodies), which is a phenomenon called bioluminescence. All around us the plankton were glowing like a universe of stars, and there we were suspended in complete darkness and the only way to tell where someone else was floating was to look for their outline in the bioluminescence around them lighting up whenever they moved. It was like magic – the weightlessness that water gives you made you feel as if you were floating in outerspace, with the stars swirling around you with every move you make. It was breathtaking, so startlingly beautiful. I couldn’t believe that my life had led me here, to see this, to do this; how so many turns of events set into motion months ago had brought me here to this place to be hanging in the darkness, illuminated by life. When we finally ascended and broke the surface, the water was dark, glassy, calm and cold. We got into the boat shivering and had chai and cookies (one of my favorite diving rituals, but even better at night because you are so cold). As the boat started to move and we made our way back to the island, the water was lit up by the bioluminescence created by the movement of the boat through the water and sprayed back to trail us in lights. From the bow of the boat to our wake, the water sprayed back behind us in one continuous sparkling stream, undulating with the ripples of water created by the rhythm of the motor. I don’t even think I can adequately describe how beautiful it was to watch, just perfectly mesmerizing; sitting on the edge of the boat watching the glow dissipate in the water behind us, I felt alive in a new way, like I had been woken up from a long sleep. I knew that at that moment, I was doing exactly what I was meant to be doing, moving in quiet darkness through the effervescent water.

8.4.10 - Andaman Islands Continued

Okay, I have to admit that while I have been lax in posting new entries on my blog as of late, I still have been writing, and adventuring. Internet access has not been what it was in Bangalore, and I’ve been on the move, so I apologize for those of you who have been waiting with baited breath after that cliffhanger I left you with regarding my Andaman Island experience…
So, as I was saying, diving has opened my eyes to a whole new world! I thought I would be so scared, but when you get under the water, there is so many new things to see and so much to be excited about that you’re not even thinking about all the things you were nervous about in the first place. On my second dive we were in a coral reef, and my instructor motioned for me to come over to one of the rocks and hold on to it to maintain my balance while we looked at the cleaner fish. He had told us earlier that if you float still enough, they will come over to you and clean your hand if you put it out, which is what we tried to do. But they spotted all the mosquito bites on my leg and swam right over and promptly began nibbling on my legs! It was so ticklish, and apparently I was just the variety they needed after a constant diet of fish-scum. They form symbiotic relationships with various species of fish and clean them constantly, which I can imagine would grow old after a while. Diving was a new way to experience the beauty of the ocean. I grew up going to the beach every summer, entire days spent in the sand and the water, and I’ve always loved it, but now I have an entirely new appreciation for the complex world that the ocean holds.
The Andaman Islands have a mystical, magical feel that one often finds in places that are largely untouched by humans…from the moment I arrived on the ferry, one look out the window showed me why people move here, fall in love with the islands, and never come home. The landscape is filled with rolling hills covered in palms, greens, mangrove trees and the long-rooted banyan trees as well, all covered by a mist that rises like steam from a bath on a cold winter night. The days here in August are filled with clouds, sunshine, mosquitos (fondly referred to as “mozzies”), and torrential rains. In May, however, it got so hot here that the water reached 31 degrees C – which I believe is about 90 degrees F! All the coral was killed and bleached by the extreme water temperatures. Some of it has already started to grow back, and when you spot the iridescent glow of live coral amid the algae-covered bleached coral it is so spectacular I can’t even imagine what it might be like to have the whole ocean floor look like that. But August is as close to perfect as I think might be possible. Almost every night and every early morning, you are lulled to sleep by the sound of the rains on the tin roofs of the huts and the soft whirr of the fans. The sun breaks through for a few hours in the morning before an afternoon shower or two and then the sun will come back out. I think that in contrast with crazy, busy, dirty, loud mainland India, these Islands seemed even more of a paradise to me. They were exactly what I needed after a full month in Bangalore. Of course, if too many people know how fabulous this place is, it will soon cease to be this amazing. So perhaps I should delete this entry and all others concerning the gorgeousness of the Andamans?

8.2-10.10 - The Andaman Islands

Nothing is every easy while traveling in India. For example, two days before we were scheduled to leave for the Andamans, the second leg of our flight was cancelled. And Sarah faithfully called every single person who could possibly have anything to do with the tickets we had purchased and not one of them could help arrange another flight from Chennai to Port Blaire. They told us our best bet was to get to the airport early and figure it out there. So at 3:30 in the morning on the 2nd we left for the airport, and arrived around 4:30am. In fact, we were so prompt, the ticket desk wasn't even open yet! So we waited till 5am and were first to the ticket desk, and after much deliberation it was determined that they couldn't help us either and that we should have called the airline and figured this out in advance (refer to previous bit to see how that didn't work). We finally just decided to get to Chennai, and then figure the rest out from there. We arrived in Chennai, picked up our luggage and ran to the supervisors desk, where we with some other unfortunate travelers followed the supervisor around like lost dogs waiting for him to get us on another flight. I have never been so happy to be issued a ticket in all of my life. I thought for sure we would be stuck in Chennai for the night, and I didn't want to miss out on any island time. If I had known then how cute my dive instructor was going to be, I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on any diving either but at this point I was still blissfully ignorant.
We arrived in Port Blaire, the entrance way to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Of the hundreds of islands in the chain, only 33 of them are inhabited, and foreigners were just allowed to enter the islands in 1995. The Nicobar islands are still off limits to tourists, and there are certain tribes that are so hostile to outsiders that they have practically no contact at all with the outside world. After the 2004 tsunami, the Indian government flew over one of these islands with a hellicopter to see if the natives were ok, and on the beach they looked down to find a group of men from the tribe, alive and well, wearing nothing but loin cloths and aiming their arrows at the hellicopter.
Anyways, so after our arrival in Port Blaire and all the customary paperwork, we caught the ferry to Havelock Island where our reservations were. After a few hours, we landed at the jetty, and took a rickshaw with us and our collective 50lbs of luggage to our resort. It was so incredibly beautiful! We were the first tourists of the season at this particular place, and it was so quiet and peaceful, just us and the caretakers, the two dogs Frodo and Sam (after the lord of the rings hobbits), and the aforementioned good-looking dive instructor, Vikas. The next morning Sarah and I started our dive classes, which involved getting over the initial instinctive fear of breathing under water, and learning other various skills that would be helpful to have if anything should happen under water like what to do if you run out of air, or if your air tube malfunctions. All of these things while you're thinking about them in shallow water have the potential to really freak you out...I mean, it's scary! But the minute you go on your first dive, and you are weightless (if a little clumsy) and surrounded by things you have only ever seen in National Geographic, all your fear dissappears and you are so enthralled with the magical world in front of you that time goes by at a different pace. You can be diving for an entire hour, and feel as if you just descended. It was beautiful....
But I must go, my time is up at the internet cafe...much much more to say later.