Mallopolis Singapore

M.C.Escher's 'Relativity' famously depicts a paradoxical architectural design of stairs, platforms and doorways that, despite your best efforts to escape, form an enescapable prison for the mind. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg

Replace the stairs with escalators, the platforms with designer stores and the people with rich sino-asian kids...and you have the Mallopolis that is Singapore - a veritable city of malls. Set in a tropical climate, one gets escalated from mall to mall, food court to food court, Gap kids to Gap kids and so on.

My first day there, fully aware of what to expect, I did a mall tour. Each block is another mall with connecting bridges. Even along a major six lane road that leads around the Colonial District, there's a sign that says "Shopping Mall" and an arrow pointing into a darkened fire exit staircase...but sure enough, it leads straight back into the wealthy, crowded stream of shoppers moving in and out of MacDonalds', Addidas stores, LV, ETC...

The Marina Bay Sands is an impressive new complex where a boat shaped platform sits 56 floors atop a three tower block hotel, from which one can see the entirety of Singapore. For the guests, it includes a rooftop restaurant and pool where, in an effort to push the limits of architecture and willing spenders' cash, the edge of the pool really is the edge of the building. The lifeguard needs a whole new set of skills, including sky diving.

The rooftop looks down on a bay where lines of balloons form the shape of Singapore and in the corner a new museum, oddly shaped like a fat fingered hand is being built. Having been rejected from the casino as I lacked my passport that day, I was alerted to the museum having been set alight by one of the welders working on the monstrous aberration of a building. A whole chunk of the building was lit up in flames, melting what looked like a plastic covering and charring the side of the building. It was hot enough to leak on and set alight the top platform of the cherry picker where the welders were working. As if watching a Sky One special called When Things Get Destroyed 3 with a commentator with a strong American accent narrating the incident, I gauked mouth wide open, fecklessly, as the two welders fearing for their lives and in panic, descended the extended beam of the cherry picker. Eventually, the fire died down naturally, after several failed attempts by the fire services to get to the site, since the only access way to the construction site...was by water. Unfortunately my camera had ran out of battery.

On the way back to the hostel, I was treated to a free performance by the Fillipino voice orchestra who, among others, performed Michael Jackson's 'Man in the Mirror' and 'Heal the World'. I couldn't help but be reminded of the famous YouTube clip of the Fillipino prison inmates forced to perform 'Thriller' for exercise (if you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o). And a performance of 'Santa Clause is coming to Town', which felt really odd in a tropical climate.

It was an eventful day.

Merry Christmas

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas to all my readers. I'm currently in Australia, taking a brief break from traveling to enjoy some family bonding over a mix of homemade and Mr. Kipling mince pies, a spectrum of cakes and vegetables that are out of season for the southern hemisphere this time of year.

You'll find me amongst the wrapping paper still floating settling after a flurry of excitement; boxes of new electronic items vomitting cardboard, polystyrene and instruction manuals; a box of Cadbury's Roses with only the fruit filled chocolates left (because nobody likes a cherry jelly filled chocolate over a hazelnut vanilla fudge supreme); Maltesers melting down the side of the couch; barely breathing, watching a film with our eyes closed as to put all our remaining energy into digesting a delightfully collossal meal and our respective weights in chocolate.

Happy holidays.

Fumble in the Jungle

My minibus turned up late, but much to my delight, I was the only one going to Taman Negara that morning - perhaps the weather had put everyone else off. The driver was an elderly Malaysian Hindu and second generation Indian. I've found that the older Malaysians speak excellent English because they grew up in a Malaysia that was still under British rule or if not, then the education system was still very much influenced by it. We had several hours to talk about Malaysia, its politics, history, ethnic diversities, etc...

He eventually noticed I was trying my best to keep my eyes open and so suggested I have a nap. The road to Taman Negara wound between the hills of the Cameron Highlands to descend into the jungle. As such, the car was constantly veering left, then veering right, then back to the left, etc... Lying horizontally being tilted up and down like a seesaw, blood and several of my organs would rush to my head for a handful of seconds, before being thrown into my feet, like the furniture inside a boat on choppy seas all sliding one way, then the other. One minute I was chewing on my Adam's apple, the next minute my lower intestines were halfway down my left leg; this wasn't going to work. Eventually the road leveled out and I managed to get just under an hour's sleep.

We arrived at the boat jetty in Kuala Tembeling at 11:30 am, the boat to Kuala Tahan, the town closest to Taman Negara's park headquarters, wouldn't arrive until 14:30. While waiting, reading the LP guide, sitting in the shade, I saw something moving in the longer grass on the bank of the river, just 10 metres away. It was a lizard, the length of my leg, its head the size of my hand (and if you've seen me play guitar, you know I have big hands) bathing in the sun.

I walked over slowly to try to get a closer look, but it knew I was coming so dived into the longer grass slightly further down the bank. It then popped its head up and watched me attentively, waiting for my next move - dare I compare it to the scene in Jurassic Park where the park ranger gets eaten by the Veloceraptor because he's keeping his eye on the one staring at him from the bushes, but it was exactly like that...minus the gory ending. I would have happily have turned around and headed back, it couldn't get much better than a giant lizard.

The LP guide said that the three hour boat journey sailing up river through the jungle to Kuala Tahan is a highlight for many. Well, I fell asleep. There were some great views, but after about 6 or 7 minutes, I was bored. Then the rain started. It hammered down all around us, but we barely got wet, even though all we had was a little tin roof separating us from the elements above (but not the sides). We went through two downpours of heavy rain before reaching camp.

The town was a collection of makeshift shacks on the banks of the river opposite the park entrance. The restaurants that line the river front are supported by floating barrels and made of, what looks like, discarded wood that has floated downstream. Everyone and his uncle sells tours of the jungle, though I think there are actually only a few companies (at least two), but everyone wants to be a commission making intermediary.

I decided to do a night jungle walk as, only planning to be there for 36 hours, I had no time to spare. The guide, clearly a veteran of this mini-jungle walk to the point of boredom, knew exactly where everything would be or was. We saw scorpions poking their heads and pincers out of their nests waiting for prey; snakes sleeping in trees; glow in the dark mushrooms; stick insects; and large spiders by the bucket load. He taught us that the trick to spotting them was to shine our torches at eye level out into the distance and any very bright, almost diamond like reflections, are spiders' eyes.

The next day, I was up early for my day long trek. I set off into the jungle at 9:00 for four and half hour trek, alone. There's only one trek available for those wanting to do a short day trip, and unfortunately, it's so overused, the likelihood of seeing any very exotic flora or fauna that this 130 million year old jungle has protected...is improbably low.

I followed the river upstream until I turned off to for a quick steep climb to the longest canopy walkway in the world. Suspended some 30 odd metres above the jungle floor, it was quite fun when I first stepped out on to it, swinging left and right on a plank of wood with some suspension wires either side, but by the end of the first walkway, I was ready to move on...though I had to finish it, then climb back up to continue on my trek. The climb continued to a peak at 344 metres known as Bukit Teresek which provides a great view of the jungle. I rested there a while to regain my breath before descending back into the murky depths of the jungle and far lesser used and far muddier trail.

At some point on my journey, I saw a small worm sticking straight up vertically from a leaf. I watched it bend over backwards, use (what I thought had been) its front end to stick to the ground, then flop over again and so forth. This allowed it to move in any direction, much like a slinky does going down a set of stairs. It wasn't until later, when after slipping in some mud, I found three crawling in my shoe, trying to dig through my sock to break the layers of my epidermis and suck on my blood. Leeches.

OK. Don't panic. You've read about this in the LP guide. You can handle this. 'Flick them sideways' was the advice I had read. I pushed my index against my thumb, holding back all the strength my spindly fingers could muster. I lined up the first one, squirming against my sock, I let loose a fury of index led power firing it into the bushes at a 45 degree angle. Score. One down. Two to go.

I lined up the second with a new found confidence. As it has a tendency to, hubris led me astray. The first flick didn't send this one flying, so he latched on harder, contorting its body in all directions. The second flick did nothing. Nor the third. It knew this was likely to be the only chance at a meal potentially in its lifetime, so it was fighting with all its might. I pulled my sock away from my skin to see if it had penetrated through; it moved with the sock, suggesting it hadn't. I took my shoe off, the third fell into it, so I catapulted it out with full force of my arm.

Now I was locked in battle with the second leech again, it trying to get into my sock and me, standing on one foot, holding the other in my hand, hopping in the mud and swinging my shoe around, all the while flicking incessantly in all directions like a trigger happy cowboy and trying not to lose my balance like a cartoon character on a  tightrope. I can imagine that the local exotic birds looking down at me, sniggering and waging their bets on the leech, while I fumbled and grumbled.

A successful flick had the leech come off my sock, but try to latch on to my finger. I threw my hand like I wanted it to come off, launching the little shit into the bushes. I had felt a very light, but sharp pinch on my finger before I sent it packing to find a blood buffet elsewhere. I'll try to maintain the small scratch on my index was a leech bite, but don't hesitate to call me on it, if ever I bring it up.

Another few hours walk and I was out the jungle. I rewarded myself with my packed lunch, a shower and an afternoon nap. My shoes were so incredibly covered in mud, they were unrecognisable. Faithful companions through the Arava desert, halfway across Malawi to Livingstone and all across India, I sadly had to leave them behind, along with a t-shirt and a pair of linen trousers, so drenched in sweat and mud, they were beyond repair.

After a good night's rest, I was up early and on the bus back to Kuala Lumpur and the next day to Singapore.

Cameron Highlands

After three hours of sleep, I was up, my stomach churning, but ready for a five hour minibus. Unfortunately I chose the wrong seat and though the little Asian women next to me had plenty of space to stretch their little legs, I dared not ask to switch... even though my knees were firmly pressed under my chin, as the seat in front was broken, permanently in the reclined position.

Luckily I just missed the rain. The weather had been a major issue in deciding whether to come here and on to Taman Negara, but I had decided that the Eastern Monsoon wasn't going to stop me doing anything I wanted to do. I checked into a hostel where the only bed available was in a dorm in the attic of this chalet, though very clean and well kept, it was unfortunately at the top of the stairs and so quite noisy. I attempted to sleep for an hour before my tour, the rain somewhat soothingly hammering down inches from my face on the roof...unfortunately, the voices of the other guests weren't so soothing.

My afternoon blitzed through everything that a tourist would want to see in the Cameron Highlands (but nothing that the trekker might want to see). We started with the Boh Tea Plantations which were the highlight of the tour. The (tourist) factory sits in a valley surrounded by rolling hills of a labyrinth of bright green tea plants that don't grow taller than three feet and are separated only by a few inches. It's worth coming to the Cameron Highlands just for this view.

The rest of the tour involved a quick visit to a Butterfly Farm (most were dead, I imagine because it's the winter, so a bit of a morbid site), a strawberry plantation (actually just a shop with strawberry ice cream, waffles, etc...and a small plantation where you can pay an extortionate amount to pick your own), a Chinese temple and a rose garden (which we skipped).

If I could have stayed longer, I would have to do some of the long walking treks available in the area. Unfortunately, time was limited.

After all this, I was back in bed to rest up for the next day.

The Blue Diamond

Off the plane and straight to the bus station...oh wait...where's the bus station? The LP guide was wrong. My world was turned upside down. Where the bus station should have been, stood only a concrete frame of a building, littered with the remains of a mall centric civilisation and the odd hard hatted Malaysian construction worker wandering around it, like a scene from a post-apocalyptic zombie film.

A travel agent across the road with a lone Malaysian standing at the door smoking - a sign of life that used to be! Maybe he'll know something. He knows exactly where the station is, but in a fit of rudeness chose not to tell me, and instead to ignore me completely. I felt it a good opportunity to release some of the anger I had me carrying around in my emotional backpack. Soon after, another travel agent was far more helpful and set me on my way. Stuck in traffic, it took over an hour and a half to get to the makeshift tent on the outskirts of the city that was the new bus station.

I was soon on the next bus to Georgetown on the island of Penang another 5 hours driving North. Buses aren't usually anything special, but this bus was different. The chairs were almost fully reclining couches with built in pillow and a furry rug like cover with an 80s vibe pattern. Quite tired from an early morning and long day, I slept most of the way ... until suddenly we had arrived.

Where were we? I had no idea.Was this the bus station in Georgetown? Let's wander around. The only thing that suggested any urban activity was a fair that was quickly shutting down. I finally figured out that the bus had brought us to a main bus station on the island just across the bridge to the mainland, but no further into the island. So Georgetown was a little way away yet. I hailed a taxi and was in the city centre with 20-30 minutes.

When I arrived at the The Blue Diamond hotel (the name of a very famous band, but also my dad's band back when he was at university), a dimly lit bar and restaurant were being harassed by a local cover band. Plenty of travelers were enjoying the ok music, but ghastly singing. I wandered through to the reception, but no one was there. Back outside, I looked at the band to see the drummer, an older Han looking Malaysian man, pointing at me with his drumstick. Eventually he gave up trying to tell me something through interpretative percussion, stood up slowly, put his drumsticks down and walked over "Hi, how can I help you?" he asked in perfect English.

He had a young boy show me the dorm. A few stained mattresses thrown into a large room; at best it was grim, and at worst, I could picture three rats wearing visors, smoking discarded cigarettes and drinking while playing a game of poker. No thank you. I took the room with a double bed and a shower, which though a little on the grim side, permitted enough privacy from the griminess to feel comfortable.

I awoke to find the city as dead as the night before. A small Indian restaurant was open for breakfast, so I ventured in, in hope of finding some Poori Bhaji. The waiter came over and I pointed to the closest thing on the menu to Poor Bhaji. He shook his head and pointed to a small section for Parathas (or Pratas as it's spelled here). Ok. I pointed to one under that heading. The waiter shook his head and then pointed to two of the ten items under that list. I gave up. Just bring me whatever.

Georgetown bloomed with life once 10:00 am struck. It has a strong colonial past as a former British port, chosen to rival the Dutch in the Straits of Melacca, a money making shortcut in getting between India and China. The Indians were brought here to work the tea plantations and with them they brought Islam and Hinduism. So there are plenty of mosques and colourful temples to be seen, often with a cross-pollination of influence (e.g. Chinese dragons and upturned roof corners on the biggest Hindu temple in Georgetown, opposite a Chinese temple and just down the road from the city mosque). Malaysia is the pinnacle of multiculturalism (regardless of it being officially a Muslim country) and Georgetown captures the older spirit of that multiculturalism.

In the afternoon, I visited Kek Lok Si temple. A top a hill a large bronze Buddha (currently shaded by a newly constructed Chinese style gazebo) stakes the title of largest Buddha in the world. A line of annoyingly tout like women run shops that line the steep climb up to the temple. Plenty of small rooms are filled with Chinese style Buddhas laced with the Hindu Swastika and a great view of Georgetown and Penang Hill covered in a lush forest.

That evening, I attempted to try some Baya Nonyan food, a local Malay people that have descendants from everywhere I imagine. Already feeling slightly queezy, a meat roll filled with lumps of indigestible fat, bone and gristle, covered in some greasy skin and turmeric flavoured rice, which quickly became very sickly, didn't help (and still makes me feel ill writing about it!). I cut my losses and didn't finish the meal.

The owner of the hotel/drummer of the band had seen my guitar the night I had arrived and suggested I jam with the band the next day. I was happy to oblige. The band were much better this evening however. The previous night they had let anyone come up and join them, so what I had heard that night was an out-of-tune straggler, not the actual band. During the evening, the singer and lead guitarist invited me up and handed me the guitar. Uh oh.

The bassist and drummer were awaiting instruction from me on what to play while the crowd stared on. Err do you guys know Jack Johnson? No...eeep. I did my best to explain the chords to the bassist and hoped he would just pick up on it as the crowd was getting impatient. I performed 'Sitting, waiting, wishing' and though the bassist didn't quite catch, on stunting the chorus, the drummer was quick enough to grab the beat. Luckily, some drunks started dancing, hopefully because they were enjoying it and not out of pity. Nonetheless, the song finished without too many more bumps.

A guy from the crowd jumped up and asked if I needed a hand on the bass. Unfortunately he still didn't know any of the songs I knew. I attempted to perform Obadiah Parker's acoustic version 'Hey Ya' by Outkast, but lacking a capo my hand soon began to cramp and I had to give up. Tail between my legs I handed the guitar back, was given a short parting clap and retreated to the safety of a computer.

The next day I left early for the Cameron Highlands, 5 hours East of Georgetown on the border between the state of Perak and Pahang.

Edit

Apologies for the last post, it wouldn't let me either edit it or post anything new. I've now proof read it to an acceptable level.

The horror, the horror

Phnom Penh is a dusty and smoggy city which is on the brink of becoming modern. Most streets are wide, traffic continuously moves though relatively safely and controlled (regardless of the stampede of roaring mopeds that can sometimes be unpredictable), most buildings are low (if more than just a line of shops in open garages, then not higher than a few floors) and a few recent tall, but not quite skyscraping buildings (there seems to be a lot of development on this front).

After an excruciatingly long walk from the bus stop to a street food restaurant mentioned in the LP guide, I was finally permitted to try the supposedly staple food (but very difficult to find in tourist areas): Bobor (mentioned below). I did however feel sorry for letting my stubbornness drag Sarah (the German girl) along for the ride...though I did carry her bag which was significantly heavier than mine (props to her for carrying it around SE Asia so far!).

We found a hostel then hit some of the major inner city sites. Apart from independence monument and the Royal Palace, there isn't much to see on that front. It was more interesting to see the city teeming with life (e.g. playgrounds full of kids and their parents, locals dancing in organised classes on the riverfront and the odd beggar cleaning their kids in the street).

Saturday was a very productive day. We started early with the Choeung Ek killing fields 15km South of the city. It's a small field of mass graves from the genocide perpetrated by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge from 1976 to 1979. A tower stands directly in front of the entrance with darkened glass casing up the middle and a cross-pollination of Chinese and Indian symbolism littering the upper levels with upturned roof corners, seven headed snakes and imposing Garudas. Built by the Vietnamese in the late 1980s, it contains the skeletons (literally) of 8985 people found on this site so far - this is just under half the total expected murdered at Choeung Ek.

After signing a forced, but nonetheless legally binding confession, often blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs, the guards (supposedly soldiers trained from adolescence to believe their victims to be criminals) would beat their victims with bamboo sticks, axes or farming tools (which I suppose represents the regime's genocidal obsession with agricultural based communism). The local farmers were completely unaware of this due to the loud party music used to cover up the screaming and Deet (insect repellent) used to cover the smell (and kill any survivors of the beatings).

Their skulls are on show in the centre of the tower. It's utterly harrowing to be stared in the face by the empty sockets of the consequences of one of the 20th century's worst atrocities and one of humanity's greatest flaws: the interplay of identity and violence (see Amartya Sen's book of the same title for more on this subject). The glass casing is open on one of the lower floors to display skulls that have been specifically beaten with an axe or bamboo stick. On the bottom floor are the rags and clothes worn by the victims.

Walking around the grounds, our guide pointed out bones in the ground. Small white fossils sticking out the dirt...one a skull, the other a jawbone, another a hipbone. Then the killing tree where mothers were made to watch their kids be bashed against it, before suffering a similar fate themselves - an important part of the regime was to kill of the intelligentsia, wealthy and elites to start back at year zero. By killing the children of those people, they were both destroying the grass at its roots and avoiding creating any rebels to the regime.

It's shocking in itself that something so atrocious could happen during our or just before our lifetime, but just as the Holocaust, Rwandan genocide, among others, it should remembered, lest we not repeat our mistakes. However, I was shocked at how the victims, having not chosen their fate, are on display for all to see. I can't imagine how it must feel to be a relative of someone who went missing during the regime's rule, to think their remains may be staring back at you in this glass casing. Why are they not given a proper burial? Why even dig them up? It hasn't been done in the concentration and extermination camps of the Nazi regime. My mum made a good point that it may simply be cultural differences. I'll have to leave it at that.

The museum of S-21 is similarly as harrowing, but more so because it has been left the way it was found, except for the bodies of 14 torture victims which were interred in the courtyard and photos in each respective room now display how they were found.

After this heavy morning, we hit the Russian market for some souvenir shopping and to get some last minute presents. Unfortunately poor, we had to walk back the immense distance to the hostel...and then even further on, as we were looking for a travel agent so that Sarah could buy her bus and boat ticket to Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam. Tired and exhausted, we made it back safely after an incredibly productive day.

On Sunday, I flew from Phnom Penh to Kuala Lumpur and got on the first bus to Georgetown, Penang.

"I'm going to the other side of the island! - You ain't going without me, Freckles"

After my last post, I attempted to organise a scuba diving trip. I decided to opt out because, though cheap, it wasn't worth the money to see a lack of interesting underwater life. Instead I decided to do a short trek across the small all but uninhabited island of Koh Kong off the coast of Sihanoukville with an Israeli guy who had lived there for the last two years as part of an investment project to turn it into a future scuba diving haven and mini resort for those wanting the remote island experience (without ever being too far from civilisation).

The seas on the boat ride there were almost sickeningly choppy. Unable to read, I had to sit forward facing, glued to the horizon, like one of the many statues I saw at Angkor, for two and a half hours. Upon arrival, it was clear that construction was still ongoing; the boathouse made from discarded semi-logs, the locals hard at work hammering and sawing while putting together precariously balancing frames for small huts.

The trek began by heading through an area that had clearly been deforested for building materials with lots of young and low bushes, but quickly sped up into an uphill climb into the jungle. At the peak, the jungle in front of us, we descended by climbing down boulders using a rope tied to a tree at the top. Vines wrapped around trees, wrapped around other trees, plants growing off anything and in any direction (some looked like potted plants that had been unpotted and thrown with a strong enough velocity as to make them stick to a vertical surface).

Each square inch was its own ecosystem. My Israeli guide told me about all the different plants and how the locals use different roots to make tapioca and jelly or woods to build their houses (which all end up crumbling to the ground after two years due to termite infestation), the environmental effects of the locals' deforestation and lack adequate waste system....as well as a few stories about Boa Constrictors and Vipers. I felt I was being guided by John Locke (no, not the political philosopher known for helping write the Constitution of North Carolina, but the conspicuously named character from Lost). For a moment I thought he would walk out the jungle with a boar on his back proclaiming lunch was ready.

The hour of climbing and descending to the other side of the island was followed by a boringly long walk along a beach (7km to be exact). We eventually stopped for lunch, then turned back.

Upon our return, I managed to sneak in a quick, refreshing and well-earned swim before jumping on the boat for another two and half hour boat ride. Luckily the seas had calmed and I managed to sleep.

I have plenty more to write, but unfortunately it's 2:00 am and I have a bus to catch in 5 hours...

Culinary Frights and Delights

Cambodian delicacies involve eating anything that is fresh, cooked with subtle herbs and spices with a Pan-Asian feel that hints at a fusion of Chinese (fish, soy sauce, rice, etc...), Indian (curries, coconut, chapati/rotis) and French (chewy baguettes). Here are just some of the local delicacies and staple dishes I've tried over the last few days:

Amoc: A coconut soup with fish fried in a banana leaf (though you rarely get to see the banana leaf, so I'm skeptical of the street vendors preparation), is meant to capture the quintessential freshness of Cambodian food. There's some sort of stringy cabbage/seawood which is difficult to cut through. In taste, it's pretty good, subtle spices and coconut. In texture, it feels like someone has opened up an audio cassette, unraveled the tape and dumped it hot water.

Bobor (Rice Porridge): This is supposedly a staple dish of Cambodia eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Lumps of rice floating amidst pork and seafood with a healthy amount of salt and Cambodian pepper (a speciality of the southern region). It's quite nice, but just as simple as the translation suggests. And  it's also ridiculously hard to find in touristy areas...

Fried Cricket: Fried until crunchy and infused with herbs, these little critters provide a tasty but insubstantial snack. The shell is like an edible shrimp shell or a large fish scale.

BBQ Snake: I think we tried a simple garden snake, but communication isn't always as clear as needed when you're putting these foreign things in your mouth. There wasn't much meat along the spine, just small slivers I would pick off and pass out. It was a tasty but tough white meat, like a rubbery fish, with a bright red/orange skin that was like a thin rubbery crackling.

Tarantula: On the bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh (and then Sihanoukville), small stalls have bowls of crickets and huge fried, black, hairy spiders. Everyone took pictures of the spiders, but no one wanted to try it. I was dared to, but had just eaten a plate of friend rice - inhaling it for fear of the bus leaving without me - so feeling full, politely declined. But then, I thought there's no point in wasting time and bought one which I shared with the other travelers on the bus (I mostly gave out the legs, as after all, there are eight, more than I need). Fried in the same mix of herbs as the crickets, the legs, head and central part of the body taste the same as cricket, but far more substantial i.e. the outer shell is meaty, even though the inside is hollow. The bulbous part from which a spider spins its web isn't hollow and isn't very nice either. It tastes very powdery, like compacted raw flour, but looks and feels like solidified gelatin.

Comparable to a veritable jungle of culinary delights and frights, I can't say Cambodian food remotely compares to Indian food, but it's definitely exciting at every turn.

Tomb Rainer

Another long day of buses had my head spinning by the time I traversed Cambodia, but I made it to Siem Reap safely around dinner time. I quickly found a friendly Tuk Tuk driver who suggested a hostel...usually I'm quite weary of such commission based proposals, but he was so shy and reserved, I figured he was genuine...and he was. A dollar a night for a dorm room in a semi-decent hostel - not too bad. However, my sleep was somewhat broken by the recurring concern for the possible presence of bed bugs. My worry was overstated, it was perfectly fine, though not perfectly clean.

I awoke early, rented a bicycle, and cycled to the city of temples. I wasn't sure whether I was going to spend two days seeing the sights or just one, but luckily the price of a three day ticket is equivalent to two days worth of one day tickets, so I just got one day. And by the end of that day, I was all templed out. Don't listen to Lonely Planet, a day is more than enough.

On the way in, there were hordes of tourists flocking in on buses and in the chariots of autorickshaws, overtaking me from all angles. At least I didn't have to worry about finding it, I could follow the stream of white all the way to the Ocean of Milk (see below).

I decided to skip Angkor Wat, the largest and most famous of all the temples, as being the most impressive, I thought I would save it for last. Instead I first approached Angkor Thom, crossing the moat on a large bridge manned with the heads of the past emperors of the Angkor empire all staring me down, each with a slightly different grimace. At the entrance to the central temple of Angkor Thom, known as Bayon, I met a friendly gay couple that were visiting the temples after a half marathon around them the previous day. I would end up running into them again and again.

Bayon was an impressive place to start. The bas-reliefs on its lowest level depict various wars between the Khmer people and the Chams (Chinese), a constant back and forth of roaring elephants, masses of soldiers and brahmans running up trees. The upper levels were more impressive as the emperor's head could be seen smiling wherever I looked and the temple tops towered above me.

I cycled on, heading East, and thought I would take a shortcut to the next temple. I suddenly found the path becoming more beaten and jungle like. I suddenly felt like I was in an episode of Lost, racking my brain for tips on boar tracking from John Locke. Having already been lost in Petra, I thought it better just to turn around and not waste my time. In retrospect, given the number of landmines in Cambodia left over from its several bloody wars, it was definitely a good idea.

I then started whacking out temple after temple. All very similar, they are based off either the Buddhist or Hindu temples of India, having been exported out here in the first half of the first millennium. They very much remind me of Mamllapurnam in Tamil Nadu, but much more intricate and bigger. Most were built between 10th and 12th century, shortly after those in Tamil Nadu.

One of the most impressive, but ultimately busiest, was Ta Phrom which has been overgrown by the jungle. Several trees have grown around the stone blocks carved with intricate stories and dancing Asparas, the roots pouring over walls and into the ground below, protecting but inextricably changing its structure. The second Tomb Raider was supposedly filmed here, involving a scene where Angelina Jolie picks a lotus flower before diving into a pool according to the LP guide.

At the next temple, I ran into some girls that I had very briefly met in Halong Bay on a boat tour. Though 2000km separated these two sites, it's still not that surprising to find travelers following the same path. They had joined forces with a guy that I had very briefly met on the bus from Hanoi to Hue in Vietnam. He had told them a bloated story about the bus hitting a telephone pole - I made sure the girls heard the true story that the bus had just pulled down some telephone wires and we sat and waited for an hour while the bus driver helped untangle them. It wasn't quite the drama they had been told.

I decided to stop for lunch at one of the many restaurants available along the journey. There I happened to run into the same gay couple I had met at the entrance. We ate together (I tried minced and bbq frog - the cliché rings trues - it tastes like chicken) and eventually once the rain let up, we continued on our separate ways.

More temples. More temples. And another bloody temple. I eventually found myself falling asleep in the courtyard of one. All of a sudden time had flown by and it was getting late. I wanted to make it to Angkor Wat before sundown, as I didn't really want to be cycling back in the dark. I rushed the 5km bike ride and made it there just in time.

Angkor Wat isn't as impressive as I had hoped. It is imposingly large, but does not have the wonder of the Treasury at Petra or even the Taj Mahal in Agra...hence why it only just missed out being the 7th Wonder of the World. The bas-reliefs on the lower level are however very impressive and, as a Hindu temple, depict scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana which I got introduced to in India.

The most interesting and as such most famous is the churning of the Ocean of Milk, the story of an epic battle between good, represented by Shiva, and evil, represented by a six headed snake and various demon gods, all in a tug of war. Shiva is in the form of a tortoise who, upon spinning, churns the Ocean of Milk to release some sort of syrup of immortality. I'm undoubtedly not doing it justice by describing it in such a lack of detail, but nonetheless it was great to see it before the light ran out. I can't say the same for the depiction of Lord Rama's battle with Lanka and his return Ayodhya represented on the last mural; the sun was too low to see it properly.

A storm was fast approaching as I left Angkor Wat, I quickened my pace and even began running as the dark clouds gathered overhead. I cycled as fast as I could, weaving in and out of the back lights of buses and tuk tuks in the dark for the 6km return to the hostel. Unfortunately I didn't beat the rain, but the rain did beat me. It was hammering down like the gods throwing a bucket of water on me from just off stage. I made it to the ticket booth where I found shelter for an hour to drain my shoes, trousers and t-shirt. I made it back to the hostel much later than I had planned, but nonetheless content that I had done it safely.

After a shower and another session of draining my clothes, I headed out for dinner. As soon as I hit the main road, I ran into the friendly gay couple again. They had already eaten, but decided to drink with me while I ate excellent Khmer bbq skewers. They had then planned to get massages, so I thought why not join them.

For $2, we sat side by side in an open courtyard just off the night market to receive a 30 minute foot, leg and shoulder massage. It certainly wasn't the best massage I have ever had, but it was excellent value and less unpredictable than my massage in Varanasi (and I like to think well earned after a hard day's cycling in the rain). The three girls giving us the massage followed a pattern that made it easy for them to follow each other, doing exactly the same technique at the same time. I must admit that I was overwhelmed with a sense of British awkwardness when all three girls worked their way up our calf muscles (safe), thighs (Danger Will Robinson), hips and crouch (not appropriate), then leaned forward resting their hands on the grooves of the lower Iliac crest. Luckily, they quickly descended back to the feet. Crisis averted.

A short night's sleep and another 12 hours of bus journey... I have now arrived in Sihanoukville. It lacks the gritty but fun flare of Siem Reap, as it is more of a relaxed seaside beach town. Tourism has rendered the locals bars, restaurants and other services exactly the same, though pricier, however. I feel myself getting bored already, though I have met two European girls with whom I am sharing a room. Some company should make this trip a little more bearable.

I'm hoping to spend the day scuba diving tomorrow and off to Phnom Penh for my final two days in Cambodia.

Good Morning Vietnam

Apologies for the delay. I think I mentioned in my last post that Jo was arriving the next day - well she did, safely at that, and left this morning, heading back to London after traveling a good chunk of Vietnam. To summarise, the last two weeks have been a montage of traveling related ailments and mishaps, with such little time to catch my breath in between, that I only now have found the time to write this post. I will do my best to make this brief and to the point with highlights characterised as best my memory can serve.

The first two days were spent in and seeing Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam since its reunification in the late '70s. The non-touristy parts of the city has the drab greyness of a British sky, that accompanies the standard Communist architecture, especially the more recent monuments. However there is a sprinkle of European and Far-Eastern spirits here and there due to the century of French colonisation and a strong Chinese influence that comes out in the older buildings (e.g. temples, assembly halls, pagodas, etc...) due to their millennium of Vietnamese occupation. The Old Quarter is particularly charming with generally little organised street lighting, but an orchestra of coloured lights coming mostly from shops that spill out onto the streets, overhanging Chinese lanterns and the stream of motorbike headlights that are in perpetual migration.

Compared to India, it's a sanctuary where I find peace and quiet, for Jo, it was a surreal chaos of sound, light, smell....and especially shopping. We made full use of the local shops, buying trinkets galore for relatives and friends back home, DVDs of questionable origin (that after viewing a few, have a tendency to switch between Russian and English as well as having a music that is so distorted and out of tune, it could be the soundtrack to a circus horror film), a miniature guitar (to keep my skills up), etc...Jo was quickly inducted into the world of street negotiation.

On the third day we did an organised tour to a national park called Tam Coc, South-West of Hanoi where we cycled a short distance in the rain between its odd but incredible geological protrusions (similar to those of Halong Bay, Tam Coc is known as the Halong Bay on land), boated through caves, saw two Chinese influenced temples/assembly halls for consecutive Emperors, that, in a story not dissimilar to Shakeapeare's Macbeth, involved a general killing the Emperor (and all other heirs) and taking his wife.

The fourth and fifth days were spent at Halong Bay - you haven't been to Vietnam if you haven't been to Halong Bay. The same rocky protrusions, rounded and covered in tropical greenery, but rising hundreds of metres from the water, are both intimidatingly imposing, but altogether make a very serene and calm setting. The water is incredibly calm on which sits fog that melds into the sky - especially because it was a cold grey English day when we went (after being forgotten at the hostel even though we were ready on time and waiting, the weather put a damper on our two day trip). We got to see an impressive cave only recently discovered, kayak on the water, enjoy several meals and sleep all on this large dhow. Unfortunately, Vietnamese food did not seem to agree with Jo, which meant the time on the boat was spent resting and avoiding the cold, rather than enjoying all the activities. We made the most of it nonetheless.

That night we took our first overnight bus journey in Vietnam from Hanoi to Hue, the old capital of South Vietnam after it was freed from the Chinese by Nguyen Hue. Jo's bad luck managed to get a last minute ticket on the bus, as she found herself being rudely awaken by an old American hippie dressed like a fisherman who decided that the best way to get to the toilet in the middle of the night was to climb over her rather than walk around the aisles.

We spent the day in Hue enjoying the Imperial City which, though not quite worth the trip there, was still good to tick off.

The next day we were on another bus to Hoi An where we spent two full days and nights. The capital of the cloth industry, Hoi An is known for its tailored suits and dresses. I regret not having enough time to sit down, pick out a suit and have it made from scratch, especially given how cheap it is (hopefully I can in China). The city is a quaint river side town with plenty of European and Chinese charm and thus attracts a lot of tourists. However for every tourist, there is a tout; the women running the market are as relentless as the Indian autorickshaw drivers. This began to grate our irritability with the locals. Nonetheless, we found a really nice restaurant that we enjoyed so much we went back the second night.

From Hoi An, we flew to Ho Chi Minh City to avoid another overnight bus. It was especially useful given than Jo was only here for two weeks - two more nights spent on a bus would have been two nights of holiday wasted. Another serving of bad luck meant that Jo had had a cold for a few days before the flight. Apart from the perpetual runny nose, drowsiness and general feeling of illness, this badly affected her sinuses which gave her an excruciating pain upon landing. Somehow we pulled through.

After checking in to a decent, but not special hotel, we wondered down the road to see the local area and perhaps organise a tour - we were particularly interested in finding a beach trip. A fortuitous encounter with James Heller and Laura Smith, a couple we know well from College of Law (in fact, James, Jo and I are signed up to the same firm and were in the same class together). They had been traveling China and Cambodia previously and had been joined in Vietnam by Laura's parents. They were headed to Mui Ne, a beach town four hours away, the next day. As such, we leaped at the opportunity - not only could we get to a beach and get back in time, but we could join our friends too.

Mui Ne was a sleepy resort town with a lot less traffic. We found a nice hotel with bungalows amidst a mini jungle and a buffet breakfast to feed an army. The next day, the sun shone brightly enough to break through the clouds and sunburn those not wearing any sunscreen (I learned my lesson in Goa). Jo's only piece of fortuitous genetic inheritance is her ability to turn any burn into suntan, so though red as lobster on day 1, she was golden brown by the time she got on her flight this morning. We rented scooters for an afternoon and wizzed around town to see the neighbouring fishing village and sunset behind it; Jo drove because my lack of coordination and sudden jerky movements aren't made for the delicate wrist action required for accelerating a scooter carefully and avoiding oncoming traffic. She really enjoyed it, so that worked out really well. That night I ate a small garlic baked shark, it was incredibly delicious. And on our last morning we went to see the sand dunes where we had a stalled attempt at sandboarding...or sandsledging to be more precise.

Overall Mui Ne was a great sunny end to our two week tumultuous cruise through Vietnam and for that, I thank James, Laura and her parents, who were gracious enough to invite us along, but above all else were great company.

Jo left this morning and I made a day trip to learn more about what we call the Vietnam war, but they call the American war, understandably. I first went to the Cu Chi tunnels, an hour and a half outside of Saigon (the old name of HCMC and also name of the inner part of HCMC), it was slightly shocking to see how the Viet Cong (the South Vietnamese Communists who were fighting the other South Vietnamese, Americans and other forces) laid gruesome booby-traps of rotating floors revealing bamboo spikes on which the victim would be impailed....especially since the background of the display had painted pictures of Americans stuck in the traps, bleeding and presumably screaming. Unphased by this, the remnants of an American tank or the crater left by a B52 bomber, most of the younger crowd felt the need to try the AK47s and M16s available at the on site shooting range. Now I realise my righteous indignation has a tendency to obviate fun, but I'm surprised that tourists would shamelessly fire the same guns that killed the people who died on that very spot (it's like joyriding a tank through the Somme). It's disgraceful that embracing open markets means allowing the locals and tourists to shame their own ancestry in what they believe to be a harmless mutually beneficial trade.

The tunnels nonetheless were scary. To think people lived and moved around down there is a testament to their will for survival.

Later in the day I was dropped off at the War Remnants Museum, a harrowing and obviously very biased account of the French Indochina war and American war. The pictures of the effects of Agent Orange (a chemical used to kill forestry, but had grave consequences for all life forms for generations to come) are too gruesome for even me to describe.

Overall it was a great holiday and I think, regardless of the stream of almost infinite bad luck Jo has while traveling, she still enjoyed the major sites...and especially shopping and beach. Above all else, I'm amazed at the resilience of my immune system. Not only did not get ill once in India, I didn't catch anything from Jo even though she had every ailment under the sun one after the other.

Tomorrow I take a 12 hour bus to Siem Reap in Cambodia...on with the journey.

Chennai to Hanoi in four easy steps

I'll make this post shortish, especially as a lot has happened, but most of it is uninteresting. As such, I'll do my best to cut out the slower times.

I travelled all day from Cochin to Chennai. When I arrived I was endlessly bothered by touts. In a Zen like state of ignorance of foreign stimuli, I now float by them without so much as a look. They really try hard to get my attention, but it usually works...with one exception. One dude, crawled along behind me in his autorickshaw, every now and again calling out "Rhoom? Yu want rhoom? Rickshaw, rickshaw?". I ignored him for the first 20 minutes, but eventually my now eroded patience and low threshold for irritability had been crossed and he was to feel the wrath of it. Nonetheless, I thought about the situation in a calm and collected manner. I decided I had to make him feel what he was making me feel i.e. discomfort, unease, fear, lack of safety. Unfortunately I couldn't deliver it in the same slowburn fashion that those reactions had been delivered to me, so I thought I best deliver them all in one go for maximum effect.

He called me over and I finally looked his way. With an air of curiosity and a slight frown "Oh! What my this gentleman want?", I wondered over. While he tried his best to use what little English he knew to reel me in, I leaned in closer as if interested and slightly confused...until I was less than a foot away from his face. I then screamed bloody murder with every last breath I could muster throwing my arms to help push out every last bit of air in this diarhetic release of anger.

He threw his entire weight away from me, almost falling out of the open rickshaw. Naturally, shifting his weight that way, he began to turn and hit the accelerator as soon as he regained circulation. Before I knew it he was gone, my throat hurt, but finally I had some peace.

The Salvation Army Guest House I found was grim but bearable. I booked in for two nights.

The next day I had planned to go to Mamallapuram, a former port city where the Pallavas built, what was meant to be, an amazing temple on the shore of the Bay of Bengal around 800 AD. The temple was underwhelming, especially since the photos I've seen of it, all picture a temple longingly looking out to sea while the waves crash on the white sand on which it stands. Instead, it was surrounded by a cruddy barbed wire fence and trees that blocked the view of the water and the usual touts asking if we wanted a guide.

At the entrance, I met two lovely German speaking girls (one was actually German, the other of Persian origin, but had lived in Germany most of her life). They were very sympathetic to my constant moaning and wanted to know all about my trip. We wondered around the town for the afternoon to see the sights together.

The bus there and back was draining to say the least. It took over two buses, several hand gestured conversations and entire dialogues that only involved the repetition of a place name, just to go one way. I was told off by huge woman for sitting in the Ladies section. I don't know why she chose to make a snide comment and a rude grimace rather than just simply explain to the foreigner that these seats were reserved for ladies (I can't help but thinking of Matt Lucas dressed as a woman in Little Britain when I use that word), but it didn't help my mood.

The next day I decided I would do whatever I wanted, rather than seeing any sights. And I decided I wanted to go to the cinema. I didn't care what I saw, I just wanted to watch a film in silence for two hours while I gorge myself on poor quality snacks. Well I didn't get, but what I got was far more fun.

Being its release day, the only film that I could see was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. As a stand alone film, it's average to poor due mostly to poor acting, bad dialogue and awkward scenes. The experience of watching a film with hundreds of Indians however was priceless.

The first main character to appear is Hermione, standing in her room alone, she looks melancholic as she toils with burden of a great responsibility of saving the world. Pathetic fallacy in full force meant that a gloomy English rain sprays the windows and the room made colourless by the grey clouds. In complete contrast however, the crowd went crazy, howling, screaming, clapping as if she was actually on stage. Every main character got such a greeting, Ron Weasley's being particularly groopie-esque.

Spoiler alert (don't read if you plan on seeing the film and haven't already read the book): At one point, the elder Weasley boy delivers the bad news that Mad-Eye didn't make it. Saddened, the camera pans around as the characters bow their heads and look to the floor at the sad news of their friend's untimely but martyrly demise. The crowd however burst into tear inducing laughter at Hagrid's need to stoop down in the Weasley's house due to his colossal nature. I couldn't help but laugh myself. The line that received most applause, cat-whistles and howling was, and I kid you not, "Dobby has no Master. Dobby is a free elf" when the small Harry Potter version of Gollum pronounces his right to freedom in a William Wallace-esque proclamation. I cringed and had goosebumps simultaneously. I'm almost willing to go back to India to watch Part II.

That night I made my way to the airport where I began the first of four flights over two days from Chennai, through Colombo (Sri Lanka), overnight in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and finally Hanoi (Vietnam) where I am writing from now.

Kuala Lumpur is a Western city in Asia essentially. Sky scrapers everywhere, large well planned streets and parks, and shopping malls with the high end mansionhold brands (e.g. LV, Gucci), but impressive mosques and Hindu temples centrally located, markets everywhere, busy streets and a slight hint of South East Asian chaos.

In one of the markets, I paid to dip my feet into a bath full of 4 inch long black fish, that crowded around my feet and in a ticklish massage, rid me of dead skin and the like. It was quite a novel experience, well worth a try.

The night in Kuala Lumpur was relatively fun. I met a very warm and friendly Moroccan girl with whom I could speak French. With another Brit who spoke better French than I did, we had a French style dinner of slowly eating, drinking and discussing politics and religion over three shared plates of Chinese food.

The alcohol slowly peeled back layer after layer of the Brit's personality, at first showing a calm, incredibly bright and well educated person, then tweaks of arrogance and pomposity, and eventually a 34 year old who became a dive instructor to **** girls and nurture his misogyny. Somewhere between a poor quantum physics joke about wave-particle duality (which he recounted to nurture a bond in a fellow geek, but also alienate what he considered the ignorami sitting around us) and endless recounting of his carnal conquests in Indonesia as a dive instructor, he lost my respect - but probably didn't notice for his ego was in the way. He was fully aware of his flaws, he admitted them to me openly. I may have been slightly envious of his brightness at first, but later had little to envy when I found him three sheets to the wind following a group of girls into their hostel, slurring their names which, having got their names wrong, they would correct him and slip away from greasy grip.

Having not drank regularly, any amount is enough to be too much for me these days. A paternally inherited intolerance for alcohol means that sleeping becomes impossible as the room spins whenever I close my eyes. So I was up late waiting for the nauseous side effects to ease and am awfully hungover today.

I'm now Hanoi in North Vietnam. Jo is currently flying across Asia to meet me tomorrow morning. I'm really looking forward to her arrival.

It's not always about hustle and bustle blood

I found my way to the bus stop in Mangalore. As usual, my blind stubbornness led me to walk there, over a mile from the centre with my full backpack. I could probably use the exercise. Exhausted, but ready for the next part of the journey, I found a corner, dumped my bag and sat on the floor to enjoy the stares of the local travellers. An older station guard came over and aggressively ushered me off the floor and into the waiting area seats as if to say "you're not part of the riff raff, so sit on the bloody chairs like a normal person". Without an exchange of words, I agreed with his point and moved.

The Eastern monsoon had begun by the time the bus had arrived. A light drizzle turned into the Jaws ride at Universal studios. The water was hammering down across all the bus' windows as if the fire brigade was holding a high pressured hose above us - the viz was zero. The bus driver gave up after a few corners of blind driving, unlike blind flying, the instruments aren't precise enough to juggle the roads of Karnataka.

The gentleman next me, by the name of Kumar, was a pleasant Keralan on the way back to Cochin where he ran the outsourced branch of a British software company. His English was perfect having visited the London branch many times. Travelling with his wife and daughter, they were returning from a religious mini-pilgrimage to a temple near Mangalore for a day's worth of prayer.

The rain eased and we eased out of town. After a pitstop for food, I felt it was a good time to go to sleep. After wishing me a "goodnight!", watching me put my seat back and eye cover, Kumar thought it a reasonable time to watch Indian music videos on his iphone...without any headphones. The immediate inescapability and less immediate inevitability of the tortured cat like piercing shrills of the female singers constructing the four walls of the cell of my mental prison in which my patience and subsequently reasonabless would erode, are laughable in retrospect. A moment of silence would cause me to hesitantly rejoice with the hope of freedom from these acoustic shackles. But my ankles were reshackled a dozen times before I could finally rest peacefully...well as peacefully as you can get on an overnight bus.

I arrived in Cochin where I found some slightly more expensive accommodation than I had been used to, but well worth it. I immediately napped. My malaria tablets have a habit of making my dreams more vivid and overnight trains and buses have a tendency of making reality a little out of grasp, dangerously blurring the distinction, so when I awoke to discover I was still several floors deep in my travelling inferno and not at home, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Regardless, I got on with my jobs, laundry, booking a backwaters tour and buying a ticket to get to Chennai.

After another surprisingly slow struggle, I had managed to secure a day train to Chennai on the coming Wednesday. The relief that I should make my flight was enough to re-energise me for the afternoon. I caught a rickshaw over to the main jetty where I caught a boat to Mantancherry, a few islands away. The mood was far more relaxed in this part of town, clearly an influence of the European architecture from the 16th and 17th century incursions of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, etc.... The Mattancherry Palace/Dutch Museum had some very interesting and well preserved murals depicting the Hindu Trimurti (Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma) and scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The rest about the maharajas of the area was a little dull.

Around the corner was the local synagogue. After my travels through Israel, I was quite excited to see this. Most interesting was the mini-museum at its entrance that had a dozen paintings depicting the history of the synagogue and the Jews in India. They had arrived in 72 AD after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans; this was one of the four corners of the Earth to which the Jews were sent, known at the time as the Malabar coast. They lived relatively peacefully in Kerala for over a millennium and a half until the Portuguese arrived mostly to trade, but also to unilaterally install Catholicism in the country (not that it hadn't already been tried by St Thomas, one of Jesus' apostles who was begrudgingly posted to spread Christianity in India, twice!). They swam between the islands, a rabbi with his wife on his shoulders, to rebuild their lives in Mattancherry.

The synagogue was a little different to many I saw in Northern Israel, but most the same. Same same but different, as they say here. A simple and modest layout, a mysterious curtain on the back wall hiding some famous old scriptures of the Torah and candle chandeliers hanging from ceiling with usual references to the twelve tribes of Israel (e.g. twelve candlesticks).

I got a rickshaw over to Fort Cochin, the other side of the island, the more touristic part of town. It had an increasingly relaxed atmosphere and European architecture (small ground floor, fully detached houses painted white with lots of greenery). I saw the Chinese fishing nets, rarely used nowadays due to their relative inefficiency to modern technology, they are barely a tourist attraction. The St Francis Church lay at the end of a street of mid-range tourist hotels, European cafés and seemingly expat run restaurants.

The East Monsoon struck again and I had to dive into a book shop to find some shelter for an hour. I flipped through a lot of books I wouldn't mind reading and considered buying An Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen, but already carrying several books, one still only half read, I thought best to save my money on this occasion.

The Santa Cruz Basilica was well positioned at sunset to have the red sky behind it, but camera now on the fritz and a cantankerous child standing in all my photos (until I threatened to beat him) meant that I didn't quite get the picture I wanted. On the way back I thought I'd stop in one of the many cafés for some chai and cake...or two. I had an excellent nutella like chcoloate spread (without the hazelnut) mixed with other nuts and fruit in a shortcrust pastry cup. I finally headed back to my hotel in Ernakulum after sunset.

The next day was spent touring the Keralan backwaters. The peacefulness and slow pace of the day was a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of the city. I use this term as a reference to the lads from Birmingham of Indian origin, that joined me on the tour. Dressed almost in an identical uniform of a black tank top, white checkered shorts, black Lacoste shoes, oversized glitzy watches and Ray Bans, the taller, better looking one attempted to console the smaller, fatter one by explaining to him that "it's not always about hustle and bustle blood".

The morning tour of the islands and backwaters on the houseboat lasted four hours. They showed all the locals spices and how they grow naturally. It was interesting to see all the things I'm used to cooking with in the kitchen, out in the wild all within a few metres of each other - especially because I probably wouldn't be able to tell what it is without a label. The afternoon tour was a three hour tour on small canoes amongst smaller canals, but was rained out for a short while. I spent most of the first tour talking to an older American who was working as a consultative economist in Kabul to the Afghan government. We had some very interesting conversation about state and economy building. The latter tour was spent talking to a couple very well traveled lesbians, as friendly as they were butch, they advised me on Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and China (the latter of which I am seriously considering cutting out of my trip). I can't say they sold China to me.

We got back in the early evening. I ventured out to get dinner only to find either restaurants with little to offer or restaurants full of scam artists. For example, I picked up a menu in one place, before having it snatched away from me and another handed to me...unsurprisingly, the prices were 20% more...so I walked out. It may only be a few rupees difference, but I refuse to be treated like I'm a get rich quick scheme. Principle over practicality. Chennai, or at least the area I was in, has a hole in the market for affordable friendly restaurants. I finally found a place further away.

I was hoping to get on the internet that night to write this very blog post, unfortunately the East Monsoon came in heavy again. I got stuck in the restaurant until it closed, when I got stuck outside instead. The lightening was strikingly close and the rain torrential. We don't get weather like this in Europe.

My patience and irritability on short fuses, I was calmed by watching a young boy playing with his mum, curiously looking over at the white person. His mother smiled and told him to say hello. Shyly, he did. A smile goes a long way. I wish I had met more genuine people like that and less of tourist blood sucking
touts and rickshaw drivers.

Watching the boy cheekily play with his mother by climbing all over her, then laying out flat and not responding to any orders with a big smile, I was struck at how children up until a certain 'culturation' age have a universal culture that allows them to communicate the most basic, genuine and above all else unmistakably clear message (e.g. joy, sadness, pain, etc...). The fact that a cheeky little boy is so endearingly charming to watch and that "a smile goes a long way" regardless of culture, makes me like to think we keep a bit of that universal human nature as we grow older, even if it is watered down or crowded out.

The next day I caught my early 16 hour day train to Chennai. It gave me time to read amongst intermittent naps and plenty of train food.

"Who's the Gora in our wedding photos?"

Worried I would miss the last bus from Benaulim in Goa to Margao and eager to escape a room where the floor looked like it was moving due to an infestation of ants, I headed to the bus stand extra early...unfortunately missing the sunset on the beach.

The bus was not dissimilar to the Kenyan Matatos, only bigger as it was an actual bus, rather than a taxi. After giving the bus runner Rs 10 and not getting any change, I got suspicious. The other passengers were smiling and laughing. I put my hand out for change, he nodded his head no. Another guy said it was Rs 7. Rs. 3 (5p) doesn't sound like a lot, but it's the principle of not being ripped off just because I'm white. So I kicked up a stink. He said he had not change. So I demanded my money back and gave him the exact change. He dropped a Rs 1 coin, he asked for another. T.F.L. buddy (for those of you who don't know the acronym, I'll let you figure it out, it's too rude to spell out), you should have kept you're eyes on the prize.

I arrived in Margao with too much time to spare, so wondered around, found some food and walked to the train station - it was a fair distance away, but I had nothing better to do, though I must say I walked through a rather gritty part of town. I had bought what is known as a Wait Listed ticket for the 1:30 am train to Mangalore in Karnataka. Clueless as to where and what to do, I spoke to the information centre, they said to wait until midnight. Midnight eventually came, outside the office were sheets printed on the old fashioned MS Dos dot paper. I found my train....number 2619....my eyes ran down the list of names....as if I had read my passmark for an important exam, I was overjoyed to see my name on the list: Charles Stuart CONFIRMED A1 33. Halle-freaking-lujah.

While waiting I used the internet to write up the District Naan post. My internet use time came to 1:02 ish, I got up and handed the shopkeeper the (already extortianate) Rs 40 for the hour I had used. He went to check the computer, by now 1:05 ish and so demanded Rs 10 more. I was so sick of being treated like a cash machine by salesmen that I, at first, firmly said that I had used an hour and so would pay for an hour. Less than a minute later, it had escalated into a Paul Mason style row, arms flailing, swear words flying and my final offer "40 rupees or nothing. Your choice asshole." I threw the money down and walked out.

After several platform changes, my belated train arrived. I found my bed, only to be kept up all night by the neighbours.

Top 3 most annoying things to do on a sleeper train:

1. Snore;
2. Leave your mobile on full volume, not answer it the first three times it rings an obnoxious ringtone, but take the call the fourth time; and
3. Turn the lights on and started chatting to your friend at 3:00 am.

I finally got some sleep around 6:00 for a few hours before being awoken by the sheet collectors "Mangalore! Mangalore! Mangalore!" he shouted. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" I replied while jumping off the bed so high, I was putting my socks on while airborne. "Mangalore not here. 5 minutes" he added seeing my reaction. OK. Chill. It was at least another 30 minutes until the Mangalore stop...

Frazzled to say the least and on Delhi Belly High Alert, I decided to sit in the waiting room to rest my weary soul for an hour. Lots of men, having just got off an overnight train from wherever were getting changed, showering, brushing their teeth and sharing toothpaste and talkem powder. Semi-rested, I made the walk from the station into town and found somewhere to have breakfast.

My LP guide said there was a park and church up the road. I thought this might provide a nice place to rest and read for a few hours. I marched up the hill with my big bag on my back, small bag on the front in the sweltering heat. Even in the shade, my sunburn was warming and radiating heat. I found a concrete bench in the shade under some trees, next to the church and a Portuguese style building which was actually a college.

The concept of peace and quiet does not exist in India. When I opened my eyes, swarms of women and their daughters in their best Sarees were headed my way, a few men sprinkled about stood around like lemons, occasional ostentatiously hawking rather large spit balls.

One small people carrier, along the lines of a Renault Espace, was filled with three dark shadows, heads tilted in my direction. The gentleman in the driver's seat even had to shrug down to be able to stare at me. The staring happens everywhere, but in these sorts of circumstances, even in broad daylight, it can be quite uncomfortable and intense. To break the tension, take command of the situation, but also as a sign of my decreasing patience and increasing irritability, I waved and smiled comically. Back home it would be considered sarcastic, but they didn't quite pick up on that element, so they reacted quickly and all waved backed simultaneously. I went back to reading.

Eventually one of them bucked up the courage and walked over, the others stood behind hesitantly as he smiled nervously. The usual novelty conversation ensued. I took the chance to ask what was going on...church maybe? He said that the church was over there, pointing to another building, but this was a wedding. My eyes lit up. I had to get in somehow. Before I knew it, they had gone. I'd missed my chance and regretted not dropping some hints, or even asking outright.

An hour later, another guy came over and started with the same conversation opener and questions. I dropped the least subtle hints about food and the wedding until he said the magic words "Are you hungry? We go in!". I felt like Charlie when he'd won the Golden Ticket to go Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory in the Roald Dahl classic.

The party was pretty dead, but catering was still going strong. He offered me a plate and told me to load up. Rice, masala gravy, some curried chicken, some vegetable curry, the works. He then made me get a second plate. Within 15 minutes I had inhaled two massive plates of Indian cuisine.

Opposite where I was eating was some sort of gymnasium, filled with red chairs, lots of people and pumping music. I couldn't dare ask. After washing my hands, he said "Do you want to see..
- YES!" I interjected before he could finish his sentence, nodding my head excitedly.

Inside the gymnasium, on the stage behind a sea of red plastic chairs half full, were two couples setting off into the..wonderful...world of arranged marital bliss. My new friend told me that 2000 people will have come to the wedding today, each eating, going up on stage, offering presents, shaking the grooms' hand and having their photo taken.

My friend disappeared for a minute, I could see he was talking to a gentleman at the front. In no time, he had brought the man back. He said we were going up on stage to meet the brides and grooms. No dude, you gotta be crazy, I can't do that.

Well in front of a few hundred Indian people, a scruffy, tall, lanky white kid with shorts, dirty from curry, bushy long hair and wonk classes was escorted up on to the stage for a meet and greet, and a quick photo. Slightly embarrassed, I couldn't stop grinning.

District Naan

Poverty in India is harsh. Harsher than what I have seen in Africa, mainly because it's often an urban poverty with incredible inequality, when Africa has a more rural poverty, where people live on limited means, but with less inequality.

Kids in in Africa are seemingly very happy, but they still run up to you and ask for money - see my earlier blog post regarding what I think about this. The conclusion being that the dependence on charity often overflows from necessity into greed due to unconditional charity by tourists and development focused institutions (e.g. World Bank, IMF that have only recently refound favour in the financial crisis due to years of poorly structured aid to African countries and South-East Asian economies).

In India, kids do come up to you and instead of speaking the words "give me money", they simply cup one hand and use the other to peck the one and then lift it up to their mouths to signify feeding, as if they're hungry. Their clothes often worn and filthy show semblance of former bright colours worn away by time, user and mostly the slum/garbage dump where it was picked up. Their hair often so dirty it sticks up by itself, usually black and wiry, but with streaks of brown. They tilt their heads and try to syringe sympathy from you.

Usually it occurs in larger cities, an occurrence that isn't limited to India, but is well recorded everywhere from Washington DC to London. Especially when in traffic, beggars will roam between the cars, cabs and trucks to find anyone they think is willing to give. All of a sudden, they spot the Gora (white man) and rush over. More often than not it's a woman with a child or two, holding one in her hands and the other trailing along behind her. She gives the "I'm hungry" or the "kids are hungry" motion. They press their faces up to the window, tap and try to get your attention.

Other times, it's an elderly couple...which makes you wonder, if they're begging at this age, how long have they been doing it? How have they survived so long?

The worst example is of a young girl, maybe 8 to 10 years old, pulling a small platform with wheels. On it, sits a gentleman with no legs, trying to speed up the process by pushing himself along with his hands. That's when two issues strike you: the welfare state is limited, especially for the disabled, and secondly, the poor are very organised.

Gautmik explained to me that begging is an industry in India, especially in Mumbai. For food and shelter, beggars hit the streets to collect ridiculous sums everyday. The girl pulling an invalid on a trolley is set up to maximise sympathy and thus charity. It's disgusting in some ways, but in other ways you can see the benefit. Imagine the charity as a tax that gets given the a private company that delivers, for a profit, public services such as food and shelter. Usually the government steps in when these business are loss making, but the 'public good' is deemed necessary. Here, there is profit to be made and so the private sector steps in. The beggar gets the benefit that if they hall in a lot today, then tomorrow, if they fall short, they still have food and shelter...in other words, the organisation allows for risk minimisation or insurance.

Regarding disability, this is where you see the most desperate beggars, struggling to live without any help from the state. In Jaipur, Casi and I were walking through the streets between sightseeing stops when a woman with no legs sitting on the floor, lunged at Casi grabbing him and delving into his pockets. She was utterly desperate for anything. In Delhi, sitting in the back of an autorickshaw, a gentleman with ragged clothes and arms cut off just below the elbow, and thus holding a bag on what little he had left of one, stood by the rickshaw trying to reach in for any charity.

India's corruption is the source of leakages that prevent the creation of an efficient welfare state and so why the privatised begging system can step in to fill the hole. The disabled can't work, they are physically unable to. Without a welfare state, they really have nothing, so they turn to organised poverty, a veritable business of begging. And business is booming.

One has to keep a realistic perspective on it. The slums in Mumbai are not the cesspools depicted in films such as Slumdog Millionaire (which was disliked all over India when released here). They are buzzing hubs of business, industry and slum suburbs (slumburbs). Perfectly educated, middle class, white collar workers, having been born in a shack in the "slums", owned by his father and his father before him, are at home like any of us are in our brick wall houses or the Masai people are in their cow dung huts. Producers and traders gather together in enclaves to produce and sell goods from their native origins (e.g. Gujarati women making certain Saris, Muslim women making square cushions with eclectic patterns made from copper coil, etc...). They even have public services, such as transport. It's a way of life that functions perfectly well.

Nonetheless, poverty is aggressive in India. You have to be cold enough to shrug it off, but find a way to maintain your humanity somehow. When begging becomes big business, I struggle with the latter of these.

Gonna Go to Goa

Having failed to find the magical charm of India, especially in Rajasthan, which people outside India talk so warmly about, but having only found what people actually travelling India berate about endlessly, I had low expectations for Goa.

I had another long night's travel on a bus between Mumbai and Panjim. Due to my ticket being unreserved, I was shifted seat three times with the quality of seat deteriorating each time I moved. I got an hour's rest by curling up into a ball over the seat next me...until it was filled...then I was to sleep upright for 12 hours. The young guy who sat next to me spoke excellent English and even used vocabulary I would only expect of someone who lived in an English family like "shady" and "doze off" using it describe some riff raff at the back of the bus playing incessant music on their mobiles.

I arrived in Panjim around lunchtime. I found the usual shady looking canteen, but being conspicuously full of locals, always delivers fresh food. After a brief stint on the internet, I had found some local numbers of PADI courses (the scuba diving course) in the local area. After a few short calls and a few minutes of my usual fun-sucking indecisiveness, I decided to take the course starting the next day from a local dive shop.

A gentle older man greeted me at the resort and after a quick discussion, I was signed up. Since I didn't have the cash on me or a place to stay, he said he would give me a ride down to the ATM and to a local hostel that was cheap, but very decent, in his opinion.

We walked out to a large range rover. I thought "finally, some comfort travel". Then we kept walking...to the scooter stand. I willingly jumped on the back; my travel bag strapped to my back, I gripped my day pack with one hand and the other around his waist. Whizzing around Panjim couldn't have been more fun. Traffic was the lightest I've seen in India, well paved roads, overhanging palm trees, slow moving water in the distance and small houses zipping by in the foreground.  There could definitely be some charm in Goa, I thought. Though not a holiday hotspot, Panjim's charm comes from the mix of its overtly Portuguese inheritance and tropical flora. It's what I would call tropical suburban (or tropurban for fun).

The hostel he took me to was basic and had more rules than useful staff, but with a student discount, I got a bed in 10 person dorm for just over a pound a night. It had quite a high turnover, with buses of Indians rolling in late at night and gone the next day, obviously on a break to somewhere nicer.

When I arrived, the bed next to mine was occupied by a young Mediterranean looking chap fast asleep. I figured he'd been partying hard in North Goa and was resting a day or two before moving on. I couldn't be more wrong. He was a 30 year old New Yorker...with the hilariously aggressive and nasal NY accent...who had been horrible ill for a few days and was resting up before exploring Goa. Born and bred in Brooklyn, he got into the clubbing scene way to young, but nonetheless would dance from midnight to midday. After being a successful plumber, he gave it up to go to dance school. He was accepted at one of the best in NY and went to perform with Cirque du Soleil. But the dance world is cutthroat, and this began to wear him down. So he settled into a more relaxed life as a yoga teacher, lifeguard, waiter and DJ. He was in India travelling, but also hoping to do a course in Ayurverdic massage. We ate most meals together while I listened to his great stories and shared a not dissimilar view of India.

The PADI course was overly underwhelming. Having dived a lot before, but never having managed to fit in the PADI, I found all the exercises and theory straight forward. The others, though unexperienced and sometimes a little slow, managed easily as well. The first day was spent in class with one pool dive. The second we went out to Grande Island to perform the same exercises in the Arabian Sea.

Quite excitingly, we got to see two cuttlefish mating, with a third that approached to intervene. Though it wasn't quite a private party with four scuba divers watching them mate, I'm not sure what the third cuttlefish expected to get out of his intrusion into the couple's private moment. The male cuttlefish suddenly turned a bright white from a brownish red - a sign of aggression and a warning to the third cuttlefish to back the hell away. It was a sight I'd expect to see only on a well edited David Attenborough tv series.

The third day was back in the classroom and the fourth back at sea where we got to swim around a shipwreck. It was incredibly eerie as the water was very murky, the viz (visibility in the scuba world - I use the term with a pinch of pretentious salt) was only a few metres at best. I almost accidentally touched a scorpion fish, not lethal but incredibly painful; it would have complemented my already badly sunburned shoulders. A lion fish, a sea snail and a few exercises later, I was a certified diver.



The other students included a girl who looked and acted 15, but was 25 (even the dive instructor remarked). Apparently she was a primary school teacher, but she desperately required to babied around...asking annoying unnecessary questions constantly and at a volume only attention seeking children speak at. Remarkably hairy for a girl, her boyfriend, who was her singer teacher from Texas, was over 70 years old. It was a little odd, but hey, as long as it doesn't harm me or anyone else, I'm happy for them.

The third student was a very pleasant Indian guy who worked in the cruise business. We had a good chat about the Maritime Labour Convention and what the cruise industry's reaction to it is. He lived in South Goa and drove everyday, so on the last day of the course, he gave me a lift down to Benaulim where I found a small room...that would eventually fill with very fast moving ants. I thought I had had my fair share of ants in Africa, apparently not.

Tonight I head to Mangalore in Karnataka by train. I've been wait listed, but being the second in line, I hope to get on without too much trouble.

Explosive Bombay

We arrived in Mumbai in the mid-afternoon, well rested, but hungry as only a few wallahs with odd meals had been served on the train. Though I did have a very tasty plate of vegetables and fruit...I felt a little bad because I ate it all, saving none for Casi (my reasoning, if ever he reads this, was simply my hunger and the fact that he was gone for so long - inexcusable).

Christine, part of the community of couch surfers (online profiles show your languages, interests and most importantly where you live, travelers then contact you to host them or simply to have a coffee in an alien place - what do you get in return? To stay at people's houses when you're traveling. It's a good way to save money and meet people/locals) met a French girl at the station. She told us a bit about Mumbai, helped us get on our way. Though I was sometimes unimpressed with her lack of knowledge about Mumbai, she was brave trooper, who interestingly was working for the manufacturing branch of a French company in India, learning Hindi, as part of a government programme.

We tried to find the tourist office at the train station...it was closed for Diwali...all tickets counters were closed. I had no ticket to leave Mumbai for Goa, so we spent a stressful few hours figuring out that everything was closed. All the while, we are being hassled by taxi drivers. My irritation level was getting close to boiling over into an 11 out of 10.

We gave up and made our way to the hotel that I had booked a few weeks in advance. Luckily they were able to upgrade us to a twin room and for two nights, though relatively pricey. The room however was a big step down from Udaipur. A small third floor room that resembled a basement apartment that would be best put to use by an Austrian pedophile, lit by one flickering neon light, and a fan, that must have once been used in a 1920's L'Oreal advert, hung precariously from one wall. If I stretched out my arms I could touch both ends of the room and also would need to duck my head down to avoid hitting the ceiling. It was grim.

We ate a mid-afternoon dinner at a small Muslim owned canteen next door. Regardless of its hectic staff, simple bench/table combos and clinical decor but questionably hygienic feel, the food was excellent. After a eating there few times, Casi and I realised that all the meals were the same basic curry with only a slight variation...add a fried egg, cheese, coriander, etc...

We headed down to Colaba, the trendy Southern tip of Mumbai, to meet the girls and other couch surfers. Loads of French people turned up, Casi and Christine for a short while were the only non-French there - a chance for them to get a little closer. Gautmik, the brother of a former work colleague of mine, joined us there. The most immediately interesting thing about him, his brother and family, is their lack of surname like Cher, Bono or Prince, except superstar fame is replaced by excessive intellectual ability.

After heading to a boring and overpriced expat style restaurant (I didn't come to India to have American food) and some confusion over where and when the fireworks would be, we headed to the bay front to watch a Baghdad style light show.

Seconds after stepping out of the car, a rocket flew through some nearby bushes and straight passed us before exploding on the other side of the car park. I looked at Casi slowly and with wide eyes; he laughed uncontrollably. Bombay was living up to its name.

All along the bay, people were setting off fireworks, flying in all directions, including some that wouldn't leave the ground creating a semi-sphere of red/white/green light, eardrum bursting sound and a crater of destruction.   One was set off a few metres from us, I heard the wick fizzle and disappear into the cylinder, a puff of smoke came out....but no rocket - it had failed to launch. Fearing for my life at worst and my eyebrows at best, I dived down covering my head ... the others laughed. Closer to us, all sorts of fireworks and gunshot like bangs were going off, eventually I became used to it. Fire fountains and balls were going off less than a few metres way...set off by kids with sparklers. It was incredible to see it from so close, a great experience that I'm not sure I would repeat, but I would definitely advise doing once.

Casi was busy charming Christine. Gautmik and I were convinced she was interested, despite her having a boyfriend back home - the constant smiling, head tilting, touching her hair - they're what we call in the industry indicators of interests. Despite Gautmik's numerous subtle hints to go back to his house and my prodding, shaking and shouting, Casi was too in the game to take in any exterior stimuli.

Eventually it was time to roll out. The others wanted to eat, so we headed to a restaurant surprisingly and conveniently close to our hotel. Gautmik and I headed in to the hotel, where he spoke with the receptionist to cancel our second night there, so we could stay with him. Gautmik was a continuously generous host; this was just the first of many miracles he would perform.

Once we knew that we were staying there the Friday, but no longer the Saturday, Gautmik could go home. I felt quite relieved as I had worried that Casi's *****footing around and the group's flakeyness meant he was withheld from returning to his apartment, even though he had work the next day.

The restaurant they had chosen was severely overprice, so my stubbornness lead me to the cheap Muslim canteen next door to eat similar, if not better food, at a third of the price; I also had 5 minutes of well needed peace.

Finally we got to bed around 1:00 after an awkward goodbye kiss that would fuel Casi's ego and relieve his surprising, but soon apparent insecurities. Brother, if you're gonna talk the talk, walk the walk!

The next day began with some sightseeing and failed attempts to buy tickets to Goa. I eventually found a bus ticket which, as per usual, was slightly overpriced. We met up with the girls to wonder around Chor Bazaar in the afternoon. I've eaten at the restaurant of the same name in Mayfair a few times, so was interested to see the real Thieves' Market. As you would expect, it has some of the usual junk any Indian market has, but also has streets of shops with an incredibly eclectic mix of decorations, ornaments and electronic paraphernalia from varying origins.

Gautmik met us at the train station for an evening in the Bombay suburbs. His friends joined us at his 13th floor flat overlooking the Western end of the suburbs, out to sea. They were incredibly well educated and spoke English excellently. Casi was surprised just how much he had in common with them...for example, one had been to Oktoberfest and traveled around Europe with plenty of drinking stories to tell. I wasn't so surprised. India's population is as diverse as the population of the entire European continent, I would expect to find some barbarian bottom feeders, but also well-educated, technologically up to date and well opinionated high fliers (especially because I know some back in the UK).

They took us to their favourite local restaurant where we ate an incredible amount of food. All of these kids had solid frames and I can't blame them, as I imagine I will too by the time I leave on the 20th. The banter between these boys had an incredible energy. If seen from afar you would have thought a fight was constantly erupting, but it was just good ol' fashioned tom foolery - all in Hindi of course, so Casi and I stood there dazed and confused. The night eventually pittered out and we headed to bed.

On Sunday, Gautmik, having already paid for our dinner and drinks, treated us the breakfast of kings...Lassis , Bhajis, Mango juices, the works. Luckily Casi managed to intervene before Gautmik paid again, his generosity was overwhelming. Fully loaded and barely awake, he took us to film city in the hope of catching a Bollywood movie or tv show in the making. Unfortunately, the Diwali weekend put a stop to that; nothing was being filmed. We did a quick, but comprehensive tour of the city before being dropped off in town. I can't thank Gautmik enough for his hospitality - it was amazing.

Casi and I hung around for a short while before going our separate ways. A bromantically emotional goodbye later, he was off to Hyderabad for his dissertation, and I to Goa by bus....

I've been expecting you, Mr. Bhond

Casi and I took a bus from Jodhpur to Udaipur leaving at 7:00 after getting in at 6:00, an early squeeze that involved a quick and spicy breakfast. Though bumpy at times, it was surprisingly bearable and shorter than we expected. It was quite a scenic route through the hills.

After another protracted negotiation with a rickshaw driver, we visited a hostel suggested to us by Chandra. Out of courtesy we saw it (though I would have happily skipped it as he made me feel overly awkward), but lacking a lake view, we moved to the next. Casi gave up and let me scout around for accommodation. Very quickly I found a place with a great view and negotiated it down to Rs 200 (barely 3 pounds). A tree blocked our view of the lake where at the reasonable hour of 5:00, Indian women would wash their clothes by beating them with paddles (I'm still not convinced that beating your clothes with all your force is the most efficient way to clean them); a Hindu temple within arm's reach of our West facing window would mean incense would be carried in on the morning breeze and constant bell ringing on the evening winds; the hotel next door was under construction, so our heads were inches away from hammers, bricks, cement, metal beams and the acoustic pandemonium when those elements are transformed into a suspiciously sturdy structure; and a toilet so close to the adjacent wall that you had no choice but sit sideways on it. Regardless, it was the best room we had had so far because it was so relaxed and light filled compared to the schmorgasboard of accommodation that we had between Varanasi and Jaisalmer.

We spent the afternoon and whole of the next day resting. I slept an uncountable number of hours. We saw the City Palace. We ate at several of the over-abundant rooftop restaurants...

Meanwhile...Christine, having taken an earlier bus to Udaipur, had met a young Indian man by the name of Ankit. They really hit it off on the bus, so he invited her to stay at his family's house. In a show of surprising courage and perhaps a sprinkle of stupidity, she accepted and (thankfully) had a wonderful time with this guy's family. She couldn't stay the second night because his parents were leaving for a funeral, uncomfortable about their son staying in a house alone with a girl, it was best she left. As such, she found our hotel and checked in to the room below us. She happened to walk into the restaurant hotel as we were having a cooking lesson with the cook; I will try to import some cooking knowledge, but it was more impressive how quick they made such tasty food, and though fresh, how disgustingly fatty it was.

Ankit came over around 21:00 to hang out with Christine - this was our first chance to meet him and Casi's first chance to size up the competition. Ankit was a slim but sturdy Indian, young and handsome, but beginning to bald at 25, with an impressive grasp of English having studied in Australia. He had done a Masters in International Business and was soon to head off to Africa, in particular, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire and South Africa where he would be joining or starting companies (seemingly simultaneously). His business acumen and forthright courage were impressive. However, this was soon to turn into an over-controlling and patronising pushiness hidden behind a child like naiveté of an over-caring host.

The next day, Casi and I were awoken by a phone call from Ankit. Though we had agreed to meet at 10:00 in the restaurant for breakfast, he was already there at 8:45 with Christine. We showered and packed up our stuff as quickly as possible to eventually make it to breakfast at 10:00 (...as per planned...).

Due to the upcoming Diwali festival, the rooms at our hotel were all pre-booked, so unfortunately we were kicked out and had to find somewhere else to stay for our final night in Udaipur. Before we had managed to finish breakfast, Ankit had called us from the roof of the adjacent hotel with Christine to tell us he had found us two rooms. Casi and I had already checked out the place - it was grim and overpriced. However, the price had dropped dramatically and Christine was already checking in, so we accepted nonetheless.  Inside the construction site, the lack of light complemented the faded colour of the walls and sewer stench of the toilet.

Ankit headed to work and we hit some sights. We got a boat out to Jagmandir island, sitting neatly in the middle of a lake, it's ornamented with marbled elephants and arches all around. Inside, it has a lovely, but heavily overpriced, restaurant and a small and well kept botanical garden. It was a great place to get some views and photos of the palace.

We headed back where Christine and I went shopping for a few presents, while Casi worked on his essay back at the room. We met Ankit back at the room where after thorough inspection, he insulted our purchases as poor quality and overpriced. He was getting closer to insulting me personally.

Kids were throwing bangers in the street and, I think, into the construction site right next to our room. The blows were akin to the sort one would hear in a Kabul market - scary as hell. I said that kids shouldn't be allowed bangers that big, they'll blow their hands off. Ankit retorted that I can't say that because it's part of the culture. I flipped. I am completely pro-religious freedom, but I will not support kids blowing up their hands for Lord Rama....who supposedly made his way back from Sri Lanka to Ayodyah by a path lit by candles...candles - yes, fireworks - yes if properly regulated and organised, kids let loose with sticks of diamond - hell no. It's like saying that if you support religious freedom, you support female circumcision in Saudi Arabia or the stoning of someone outside the city walls for working on the Sabbath in a Christian nation...or even suicide bombing in the name of Allah. I recognise the major difference in the examples which were intentional and the actual facts where the kids are negligent...but I think that should be included just the same.

We had planned to go to dinner with Ankit and two English girls we had met earlier that day. We managed to find each other, despite some awkward moments and relaxed organisation. Finding a restaurant was the first hassle. Once we did, Ankit proceeded to choose and order for people as if none of us had ever ordered food at an Indian restaurant. Each order had to pass through him.

As you might expect, entire meals were forgotten. The rest of us were eating happily...though there were a few garlic flavoured milkshakes rolling about...but Casi's Chicken Butter Masala just didn't turn up. As if comunication in this country wasn't hard enough, our host was making it infinitely harder.

The bill arrived; he duly snatched it and began questioning everything. There were no mistakes. An old-married-couple-on-the-verge-of-divorce style bicker broke out between Christine and Ankit before we could all pay, have a few photos and escape le Diner des Maladroits.

I felt vindicated when one of the English girls mentioned that last time she was India for Diwali "so many kids had their hands and/or fingers blown off".

Over a few cups of chai on the lakeside, we started to relax. The two English girls had a good sense of humour which allowed Casi and I to break out the more risqué jokes.

When we returned to the hostel, Ankit, not at all interested in the rest of us, forcefully questioned Christine as to what her plans were for the next day. The doctor prescribed some 100mg chill pills to be taken three times a day with plenty of food. If the problem persists, we'll consider surgery.

A more relaxed breakfast allowed us to enjoy the morning and midday in peace. I purposely forgot to turn my phone off...mostly to have a lie in.

Christine had agreed to meet Ankit at Café Edelweiss (an exclusively white café due to a recommendation in the Lonely Planet guide) at 12:30. Casi and I, though originally interested in joining his family for Diwali preparation, had decided to go in another direction by that point. Having bought Christmas presents, I needed to send them on to Australia to lighten my load for the next month. Casi had bought some large wooden masks that he wanted to send home, again so he didn't have to lug them back to Thailand, then the US. As most simple tasks in India, this was an incredible hassle.

Half a day was spent finding the post office; waiting for the boss to turn up (though other staff are there, they are useless in that they don't know how to send anything); waiting for the guy who wraps parcels; having this old guy wrap them; going back to the post office; filling in three forms; showing our passports and paying...

The wrapping is by far the lengthiest and most ridiculous of tasks. I had a carrier bag with a few soft items in, nonetheless, this old man, who can only be described as a Mahatma Ghandi look-a-like (no hair, no teeth, white pyjamas) had to find a box that was slightly too big, cut it down to size with a wooden ruler and tape it up with my stuff inside. Then he sizes up a few pieces of white cotton cloth and sows them together using a sewing machine that had jumped out the early 1900s. His toes grip a panel that when pushed back and forth, makes the sewing machine begin to weave the needle in and out of these two pieces of cloth he is merging. Eventually a pillowcase emerges and he shoves my box into it - a very tight squeeze. He sows up the loose ends by hand and finally melts red wax on to the stitches and imprints them with a two rupee coin.

It took over an hour and a half just for the wrapping. The posting was horrible overpriced.

Overspent by a hectic day, we headed to a café to chill where the English girls would eventually join us...though not before a failed attempt at finding a café started by an English woman all the locals were raving about and regardless of a map, was impossible to find. We had planned on grabbing dinner before catching our train to Mumbai/Bombay.

Due to Udaipur's idyllic palaces (floating or not) and surrounding picturesque scenes, it was the setting for the James Bond classic: Octopussy, starring Roger Moore. Much to our delight, the restaurant manager set up a television on the roof and let us watch the film over dinner. It was surreal to be sitting on the set of a film while watching it. A fort sitting neatly atop a steep hill is in a transition scene in the film and was actually in the background to the television simultaneously.

Meanwhile across town...Christine was being bugged incessantly. She had bought a Sari (traditional Indian outfit) that she had had tailored. When they went to pick it up, the trousers didn't quite fit because they weren't the right size. Ankit's explanation was that she wasn't putting them on right. He got his mother to literally explain to Christine how to put trousers on...one leg at a time.

He tried to convince her to change her train to a later one, but thanks to her pushiness she managed to make it just in time. We met on the train, where Ankit sat with us talking until the train started moving, he finally panicked and jumped off. Understandably, Christine wanted some serious alone time on the train.

17 hours later we arrived in Mumbai.