Friday, February 11, 2011
India is too damn photogenic
I forgot to realize that I had to create a second photo album for all the snaps I've been taking because I went over the 1000 photo limit on google photos already. You can see the rest here. There are some really good ones in there, including the Kumbhalgarh Fort and some ones I took on the road on the way there. The Rajasthan countryside between Udaipur and the fort is really beautiful, but unfortunately the photos I took from the car really don't do it justice. It's a semi-arid region that kind of reminds me of the mountain west, but with more exotic looking plants, and tons of fields of poppies in the valleys. Also be sure to look for the snaps of the two women carrying full-sized bales of hay on their heads.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Holy Hucksters
After Jaipur, I spent a day in Pushkar. It was a beautiful place, but it kind of got on my nerves. It’s another sacred place where people go to bathe in the waters around a small lake. It’s basically the same drill as Varanasi, but 10x cleaner. Unfortunately, the charm of the place was largely spoiled for me due to the ubiquitous scam artists posing as holy men around the lake that won’t leave you alone until you perform some ritual of throwing flowers petals into the lake, which of course they charge for. They then give you a red string tied around your wrist, so unfortunately you can’t claim to have already done it. I don’t think it would have amounted to all that much money, but I didn’t want to give these guys any money on principle. So to a large extent I minimized my time walking around the lake just to avoid them.
I’m sorry to report that this has been a persistent problem in India. Almost everywhere you go in the developing world you’re going to have drivers that try to grossly overcharge you for fares, people running gem import scams, touts, merchants that try to sell you overpriced face merchandise, tour operators that bring you into a craft shop to see the craft performed and you later end up being pressured to make a purchase for which they get a commission on, people begging in the street, service providers trying to run a bait-and-switch on you, etc. However, what goes on here in India is at a whole different level from anywhere else I’ve been. It seems as if almost everyone I meet at best has an ulterior motive for talking to me, and at worst is an outright thief. For every single interaction you have, you have to be working to anticipate the various ways that they are trying to scam you or setting you up for a scenario in which they will try to pressure you for money. This is really a shame, as it seriously undermines the all the other things which make the country so enjoyable. It also results in making genuine connections with people here extremely difficult.
Fortunately, my day in Pushkar was salvaged by the company I made. While walking around I met a couple Israeli women. We struck up a conversation, and ended up going to dinner together to a fantastic little dive place in the middle of town. We had the veg thali since they said it was the best in town (no meat is ever eaten in Pushkar due to the religious strictures here)(you can think of thali as the sampler platter). Not exactly the cleanest place I’ve ever been to as there were flies swarming around the kitchen and there was a layer of grime on everything, but it was fantastic, and the place had the kind of hole-in-the-wall charm I love and prices to match. $2.00 for thali with seconds, fresh-made chapatis, and chai). I think I paid for it a little the next morning in the form of some minor digestive issues, but luckily it passed pretty quickly and I was OK by the time we got back on the road.
The next morning we headed to Udaipur, stopping at Ajmer on the way. Ajmer was and interesting stop for two hours. I also had another fabulous lunch. It was chicken handi, a spicy chicken dish with a cream-based curry sauce with lots of peppers. I’m beginning to realize that you can’t really go wrong with food in this country.
You certainly can go wrong with service providers, however. When we arrived in Udaipur I was a little disappointed with the quality of the hotel which my tour provider had set me up with. It was clean, but very old and decayed looking. It had peeling paint and stains on the walls and ceilings, sheets with stains and holes in them, a cruddy looking bathroom with a leaking toilet so there was standing water on the floor and substandard plumbing, and a bed that was a rock. Given what I had paid I was expecting more. However, I wasn’t planning on being at the hotel aside from sleeping and showering, so I figured I’d just live with it.
That night, though, the bed turned out to be much more uncomfortable than I had anticipated, so much so that I wasn’t even able to get a full night’s sleep (not that it mattered all that much since I would have been prevented from sleeping in the early morning due to the noise, anyways). So I dropped an email to my tour provider to complain the next morning, at which point he immediately texts me back saying that I’m in the wrong hotel. Needless to say I’m surprised at this. When I purchased the driver and hotel package I was given a packet of vouchers for each hotel. At every hotel I then had a reservation, and at every one I was immediately asked to give them the voucher for the stay which specifies the hotel and is my proof of payment. However, starting a couple cities back my driver started handling all the vouchers, so I hadn’t even looked at the voucher for the past couple cities, so I had no idea what the hotel name on the voucher for Udaipur was. So I go to the front desk and ask to see the voucher. The guy working the desk, the same guy that checked me in the night before, says that my driver never gave it to him. I find this a little odd as this is my proof of payment and every other places we had been to had immediately asked for it. So I got back to my room to finish my workout and shower up. When I come back out, my driver is by the front desk. I ask both him and the clerk where the voucher is, and now the hotel guy says that it’s already been sent to the office. Leaving aside the fact that it’s only 9:30 AM, the guy had now changed his story. So it seems to me like he doesn’t want me to see the voucher.
My driver commences to apologize profusely. He says he was confused because the same people own both hotels, and that’s why he mistakenly took me to this one instead of the much nicer place I was supposed to be. I’m a little perplexed by this as I doubt the voucher would have been ambiguous as to where I was staying, although I can’t confirm this because I can’t get a hold of the voucher. The other part that doesn’t add up is that there should have been a reservation for me, and that the hotel should have realized we were in the wrong place when we arrived because I wouldn’t have had a reservation there. So there are some things that just don’t add up in the “oops, I accidentally took you to the wrong hotel” story.
Here, however, is the story that fits all the evidence: my driver was trying to scam me by taking me to a cheaper hotel. As he stated, both the dump I ended up at and the nicer place I was actually booked at were owned by the same people. He takes me to the dump knowing I wouldn’t know where I was actually supposed to be so I end up seriously overpaying for my crappy room (which was pre-paid), and now the room at the nice hotel is freed up for another guest. The hotel then brings in more $$$ equal to the cost difference between my lousy room and the nice one I was supposed to be in, and my driver gets a chunk of that back. And it would have worked had I not complained to the tour provider about the room. Further evidence to support this is the fact that I was unable to move to my originally booked hotel the next day because it was full. If they had open rooms there would be no point to moving me to the cheaper property, and it's evidence that they gave my room to someone else, despite the fact that I had a fully pre-paid reservation.
I was about 80-90% sure about this, but asked the tour provider to send me a scan of the carbon copy of the voucher he wrote for me. Sure enough, there is little ambiguity as to the name of the hotel I was supposed to be checking into. Please note the comment about scams above. I had expected that a hired driver would try to further profit from me by cross-selling me overprices tours, taking me to shops and restaurants where he gets a commission, etc., but I’m quite disheartened to find out that somebody I had come to think of as a friend was literally trying to take money out of my pocket.
So relations with the driver are pretty chilly at the moment. Believe it or not, he’s behaving as if he’s mad at me, which I think takes quite a bit of temerity. Not that I really care all that much—I’m not interested in chuming around with somebody that was trying to steal from me.
Once the hotel situation was sorted out and I was moved to another property, the day actually ended up being pretty nice. Udaipur is a really charming place. It’s actually the city where much of Octopussy was filmed. It has a huge palace on the likeside, and a couple more actually out in the middle of the lake. It’s obviously a much more wealthy city than any of the other places we’ve been. It’s also by far the cleanest. I spent the afternoon checking out the city and grabbed a much-needed glass of wine in a terrace on the lake (my first in 7 days, wine is pretty hard to come by here). After that I want to an area outside of town filled with cenotaphs, monuments erected in honor of deceased rules of Udaipur. It was an extremely photogenic place and spent a good 90 minutes just walking around and taking shots. It kind of reminded me of Recoleta Cemetary in Buenos Aires. At night I went to a dance performance that was absolutely fantastic, and grabbed another killer meal on the lakeside. It was this smokey mutton curry that is a Rajasthan regional specialty. I was a little curious as to how they would make a curry smokey (you obviously can’t grill it), but I found out when they brought it out. It came in a small covered metal pot that appeared to be its original cooking vessel. The waiter takes of the lid, and inside sitting on top of the curry is a large lump of smoldering hardwood charcoal sitting on top of a thick leaf to keep the ash from getting into the curry. And it lived up to the billing—it was definitely quite smokey. And good.
The next day we drove to Jodhpur, stopping by the temples in Ranakpur and the amazing Kubalgarh Fort along the way. Wasn’t much conversation in the car, but that was just fine by me. I’m wrapping up the post just now in Jodhpur. Seems like another place I’m really going to like. There are definitely no problems with the hotel, either. It’s a heritage hotel built in an old haveli, which is an Indian term for private mansion. It’s also situated right in the center of town, immediately underneath the fort. It’s also within walking distance of everything I want to do tomorrow, which is good as I won’t need to bother with my driver until we leave for Jaisalmer on Saturday. So it should hopefully be another good day tomorrow.
I’m sorry to report that this has been a persistent problem in India. Almost everywhere you go in the developing world you’re going to have drivers that try to grossly overcharge you for fares, people running gem import scams, touts, merchants that try to sell you overpriced face merchandise, tour operators that bring you into a craft shop to see the craft performed and you later end up being pressured to make a purchase for which they get a commission on, people begging in the street, service providers trying to run a bait-and-switch on you, etc. However, what goes on here in India is at a whole different level from anywhere else I’ve been. It seems as if almost everyone I meet at best has an ulterior motive for talking to me, and at worst is an outright thief. For every single interaction you have, you have to be working to anticipate the various ways that they are trying to scam you or setting you up for a scenario in which they will try to pressure you for money. This is really a shame, as it seriously undermines the all the other things which make the country so enjoyable. It also results in making genuine connections with people here extremely difficult.
Fortunately, my day in Pushkar was salvaged by the company I made. While walking around I met a couple Israeli women. We struck up a conversation, and ended up going to dinner together to a fantastic little dive place in the middle of town. We had the veg thali since they said it was the best in town (no meat is ever eaten in Pushkar due to the religious strictures here)(you can think of thali as the sampler platter). Not exactly the cleanest place I’ve ever been to as there were flies swarming around the kitchen and there was a layer of grime on everything, but it was fantastic, and the place had the kind of hole-in-the-wall charm I love and prices to match. $2.00 for thali with seconds, fresh-made chapatis, and chai). I think I paid for it a little the next morning in the form of some minor digestive issues, but luckily it passed pretty quickly and I was OK by the time we got back on the road.
The next morning we headed to Udaipur, stopping at Ajmer on the way. Ajmer was and interesting stop for two hours. I also had another fabulous lunch. It was chicken handi, a spicy chicken dish with a cream-based curry sauce with lots of peppers. I’m beginning to realize that you can’t really go wrong with food in this country.
You certainly can go wrong with service providers, however. When we arrived in Udaipur I was a little disappointed with the quality of the hotel which my tour provider had set me up with. It was clean, but very old and decayed looking. It had peeling paint and stains on the walls and ceilings, sheets with stains and holes in them, a cruddy looking bathroom with a leaking toilet so there was standing water on the floor and substandard plumbing, and a bed that was a rock. Given what I had paid I was expecting more. However, I wasn’t planning on being at the hotel aside from sleeping and showering, so I figured I’d just live with it.
That night, though, the bed turned out to be much more uncomfortable than I had anticipated, so much so that I wasn’t even able to get a full night’s sleep (not that it mattered all that much since I would have been prevented from sleeping in the early morning due to the noise, anyways). So I dropped an email to my tour provider to complain the next morning, at which point he immediately texts me back saying that I’m in the wrong hotel. Needless to say I’m surprised at this. When I purchased the driver and hotel package I was given a packet of vouchers for each hotel. At every hotel I then had a reservation, and at every one I was immediately asked to give them the voucher for the stay which specifies the hotel and is my proof of payment. However, starting a couple cities back my driver started handling all the vouchers, so I hadn’t even looked at the voucher for the past couple cities, so I had no idea what the hotel name on the voucher for Udaipur was. So I go to the front desk and ask to see the voucher. The guy working the desk, the same guy that checked me in the night before, says that my driver never gave it to him. I find this a little odd as this is my proof of payment and every other places we had been to had immediately asked for it. So I got back to my room to finish my workout and shower up. When I come back out, my driver is by the front desk. I ask both him and the clerk where the voucher is, and now the hotel guy says that it’s already been sent to the office. Leaving aside the fact that it’s only 9:30 AM, the guy had now changed his story. So it seems to me like he doesn’t want me to see the voucher.
My driver commences to apologize profusely. He says he was confused because the same people own both hotels, and that’s why he mistakenly took me to this one instead of the much nicer place I was supposed to be. I’m a little perplexed by this as I doubt the voucher would have been ambiguous as to where I was staying, although I can’t confirm this because I can’t get a hold of the voucher. The other part that doesn’t add up is that there should have been a reservation for me, and that the hotel should have realized we were in the wrong place when we arrived because I wouldn’t have had a reservation there. So there are some things that just don’t add up in the “oops, I accidentally took you to the wrong hotel” story.
Here, however, is the story that fits all the evidence: my driver was trying to scam me by taking me to a cheaper hotel. As he stated, both the dump I ended up at and the nicer place I was actually booked at were owned by the same people. He takes me to the dump knowing I wouldn’t know where I was actually supposed to be so I end up seriously overpaying for my crappy room (which was pre-paid), and now the room at the nice hotel is freed up for another guest. The hotel then brings in more $$$ equal to the cost difference between my lousy room and the nice one I was supposed to be in, and my driver gets a chunk of that back. And it would have worked had I not complained to the tour provider about the room. Further evidence to support this is the fact that I was unable to move to my originally booked hotel the next day because it was full. If they had open rooms there would be no point to moving me to the cheaper property, and it's evidence that they gave my room to someone else, despite the fact that I had a fully pre-paid reservation.
I was about 80-90% sure about this, but asked the tour provider to send me a scan of the carbon copy of the voucher he wrote for me. Sure enough, there is little ambiguity as to the name of the hotel I was supposed to be checking into. Please note the comment about scams above. I had expected that a hired driver would try to further profit from me by cross-selling me overprices tours, taking me to shops and restaurants where he gets a commission, etc., but I’m quite disheartened to find out that somebody I had come to think of as a friend was literally trying to take money out of my pocket.
So relations with the driver are pretty chilly at the moment. Believe it or not, he’s behaving as if he’s mad at me, which I think takes quite a bit of temerity. Not that I really care all that much—I’m not interested in chuming around with somebody that was trying to steal from me.
Once the hotel situation was sorted out and I was moved to another property, the day actually ended up being pretty nice. Udaipur is a really charming place. It’s actually the city where much of Octopussy was filmed. It has a huge palace on the likeside, and a couple more actually out in the middle of the lake. It’s obviously a much more wealthy city than any of the other places we’ve been. It’s also by far the cleanest. I spent the afternoon checking out the city and grabbed a much-needed glass of wine in a terrace on the lake (my first in 7 days, wine is pretty hard to come by here). After that I want to an area outside of town filled with cenotaphs, monuments erected in honor of deceased rules of Udaipur. It was an extremely photogenic place and spent a good 90 minutes just walking around and taking shots. It kind of reminded me of Recoleta Cemetary in Buenos Aires. At night I went to a dance performance that was absolutely fantastic, and grabbed another killer meal on the lakeside. It was this smokey mutton curry that is a Rajasthan regional specialty. I was a little curious as to how they would make a curry smokey (you obviously can’t grill it), but I found out when they brought it out. It came in a small covered metal pot that appeared to be its original cooking vessel. The waiter takes of the lid, and inside sitting on top of the curry is a large lump of smoldering hardwood charcoal sitting on top of a thick leaf to keep the ash from getting into the curry. And it lived up to the billing—it was definitely quite smokey. And good.
The next day we drove to Jodhpur, stopping by the temples in Ranakpur and the amazing Kubalgarh Fort along the way. Wasn’t much conversation in the car, but that was just fine by me. I’m wrapping up the post just now in Jodhpur. Seems like another place I’m really going to like. There are definitely no problems with the hotel, either. It’s a heritage hotel built in an old haveli, which is an Indian term for private mansion. It’s also situated right in the center of town, immediately underneath the fort. It’s also within walking distance of everything I want to do tomorrow, which is good as I won’t need to bother with my driver until we leave for Jaisalmer on Saturday. So it should hopefully be another good day tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
A word about creepy Indian men
One of the unique things about India is that many of the dudes here are quite willing to openly express their admiration for my physique. More often than not this comes if the form of indiscreet staring, but is sometimes also vocalized. Unfortunately, this not always done in an appropriately bro-tastic fashion, such as “Dude! You’re totally buff!” The complement is appreciated, but oftentimes it is expressed in a way that gives me the willies. The first time was worst. It was my first day in Delhi. At the Red Fort, I had a young twentyish man come up to me and sheepishly ask for a photo. It took me a moment to realize that he wasn’t asking me to take a photo of him, but that he instead wanted a photo with me. “Um, uh, sure” I say. He stands next to me, his friend takes a photo, and next thing I know literally a dozen other young guys show up asking for the same thing. The whole experience was a little surreal, and a bit awkward. But it was all OK up until one of the last guys grabbed a photo of me and says, “Ooooooooooh, you have a niiiiiiiiiiiiice, boooowdy!”, sounding disturbingly like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings films. This creeped me the fuck out. Not bro-tastic. Not bro-tastic at all.
I have become somewhat inured to this over the past 12 days. Usually, it’s a completely innocuous exclamation of “Nice muscle!” directed my way when I walk past some random guy on the street. This happens about 20-40 times a day (no exaggeration). Maybe about a half dozen times I day I’m asked if I work out, or am asked for workout tips, which I also have no problem with. I’ll also periodically get a “I like your body,” or a “I like you” (this latter one also gives me the heebie-jeebies, although I usually chalk it up to being simply a language issue). Then there’s my personal favorite, “Hey, James Bond!” Only about once or twice a day am I asked if somebody can take a photo with me. However, as with the Red Fort, these usually come in packs – when one is seen taking a photo with me, another 4 immediately come out of the woodwork for the same. I always accept, as I’d be quite a hypocrite to decline request for a photo given the amount of shots I take of the locals every day (done discreetly as possible, but usually without their consent). I then just pray that there won’t be any inappropriate, if inadvertent, homoerotic overtones to the conversation that will leave me feeling violated afterwards. Thankfully, there usually there isn’t. There was, of course, the guy in Khajuraho that upped the stakes by asking me if he had correctly guessed the size of my penis (not as completely out from left field as it might sound here since he was a tour guide we were just talking over lunch about the philosophical context of the erotic sculptures in the temples there, but still definitely not bro-tastic).
It would certainly be refreshing if I got a “Nice muscle” or an “I like your body” from a female for once. Alas, it’s only the guys that are telling me how much they like my pecs. The ladies are mum on the subject.
I have become somewhat inured to this over the past 12 days. Usually, it’s a completely innocuous exclamation of “Nice muscle!” directed my way when I walk past some random guy on the street. This happens about 20-40 times a day (no exaggeration). Maybe about a half dozen times I day I’m asked if I work out, or am asked for workout tips, which I also have no problem with. I’ll also periodically get a “I like your body,” or a “I like you” (this latter one also gives me the heebie-jeebies, although I usually chalk it up to being simply a language issue). Then there’s my personal favorite, “Hey, James Bond!” Only about once or twice a day am I asked if somebody can take a photo with me. However, as with the Red Fort, these usually come in packs – when one is seen taking a photo with me, another 4 immediately come out of the woodwork for the same. I always accept, as I’d be quite a hypocrite to decline request for a photo given the amount of shots I take of the locals every day (done discreetly as possible, but usually without their consent). I then just pray that there won’t be any inappropriate, if inadvertent, homoerotic overtones to the conversation that will leave me feeling violated afterwards. Thankfully, there usually there isn’t. There was, of course, the guy in Khajuraho that upped the stakes by asking me if he had correctly guessed the size of my penis (not as completely out from left field as it might sound here since he was a tour guide we were just talking over lunch about the philosophical context of the erotic sculptures in the temples there, but still definitely not bro-tastic).
It would certainly be refreshing if I got a “Nice muscle” or an “I like your body” from a female for once. Alas, it’s only the guys that are telling me how much they like my pecs. The ladies are mum on the subject.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Jaipur
Just got done with Jaipur. It's called the "pink city" because the majority of the buildings are painted pink by tradition (actually more of a salmon color). I missed a couple of the city highlights there because I didn't manage my time very well. Because I worked out in the morning I got a bit of a late start on the day. I first went to the large fort in Amber in the hills overlooking the city, which was definitely the highlight, sights-wise. After that I came back to the city and I headed out for lunch and to see the sites. Realizing I was low on cash, I blew 45 minutes looking for an ATM. After that I spent another 40 minutes or so looking for the restaurant I was searching out. It was well worth the time investment, though. It was this atmospheric little mom-and-pop hole in the wall on the city wall, and it had fantastic food. The garlic naan there was phenomenal, and the house specialty, a paneer curry with a yellow-brown sauce with vegetables, was absolutely fantastic. I also met a couple interesting fellow travelers there, an older American woman that has been teaching in an international school in Paris for the past 40 years, and a young guy from New Zealand. This stretched out my late lunch even more, though, so by the time I started walking around the city and seeing sights, everything was closed. However, I'm not particularly bent out of shape about it, as I was able to get the feel for the city and saw the fort, which I think is probably the most interesting part.
Since it was a weekend evening, later that night I caught up with the guy from New Zealand with the intent of meeting some nice charming young ladies out. We went to a restaurant which we were told had a nice bar and may have a good scene, but it was dead. After that we sought out a night club we thought someone had recommended. I say "thought" because there obviously was some kind of misunderstanding, when we arrived at the place we saw that it was not in fact a night club, but a cricket club. It was closed, and definitely had neither tasty cocktails nor charming company. After that we went to plan C, which was to check out a lounge located in a fancy hotel in a former palace. Rooms there started at $350/night and ran up well into the thousands, so drinks were likely going to be pretty pricey, but I was more than willing to cough up some cash for a little decent nightlife at this point. So we catch up tuk-tuk up there (we couldn't find any taxis), wanting to get dropped off a couple hunderd yards from the entrance as we thought the staff there wouldn't look very kindly upon a couple young, single guys showing up in a golf cart. Unfortunately, the tuk-tuk driver didn't speak any English, so he rolled us right up to the front gate of the resort for our grand ghetto-style entrance. Somewhat embarrassed, I get out of the car, walk up, and ask if the lounge is still open. Of course, I'm told that it's not. I'm not sure if that was actually case or if they just didn't want us mixing with the clientele that was paying $800/night for a room, but I guess it really didn't make any difference. Out of options at this point, I pack up and head back to the hotel for some shut-eye so I can get ready before heading to Pushkar tomorrow.
Since it was a weekend evening, later that night I caught up with the guy from New Zealand with the intent of meeting some nice charming young ladies out. We went to a restaurant which we were told had a nice bar and may have a good scene, but it was dead. After that we sought out a night club we thought someone had recommended. I say "thought" because there obviously was some kind of misunderstanding, when we arrived at the place we saw that it was not in fact a night club, but a cricket club. It was closed, and definitely had neither tasty cocktails nor charming company. After that we went to plan C, which was to check out a lounge located in a fancy hotel in a former palace. Rooms there started at $350/night and ran up well into the thousands, so drinks were likely going to be pretty pricey, but I was more than willing to cough up some cash for a little decent nightlife at this point. So we catch up tuk-tuk up there (we couldn't find any taxis), wanting to get dropped off a couple hunderd yards from the entrance as we thought the staff there wouldn't look very kindly upon a couple young, single guys showing up in a golf cart. Unfortunately, the tuk-tuk driver didn't speak any English, so he rolled us right up to the front gate of the resort for our grand ghetto-style entrance. Somewhat embarrassed, I get out of the car, walk up, and ask if the lounge is still open. Of course, I'm told that it's not. I'm not sure if that was actually case or if they just didn't want us mixing with the clientele that was paying $800/night for a room, but I guess it really didn't make any difference. Out of options at this point, I pack up and head back to the hotel for some shut-eye so I can get ready before heading to Pushkar tomorrow.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
No, I’m not dead
I’m just busy. I’ve had so little free time at the start of the trip that I haven’t had time to write a post. Deal with it. So I’m writing this one a little after the fact. A big part of the problem I’ve had is related to the fact that I’ve had to spend most of my free time making plans for the latter part of my trip. I also haven’t had as much time to spend on the computer since my first couple travel connections were flights, which didn’t leave me much train/car/bus time to kill.
So Delhi was worth a brief stop, but it wasn’t exactly my favorite travel destination. It had a couple nice historic sites downtown, including a medieval fort and a massive mosque built by the same crew. I also rolled through the area of town with India’s national monuments, major government buildings, and the president’s house. By far and away the highlight of Delhi, though, was a tomb of one of the ancient Mughal Emperors. It was very atmospheric, and I was able to get some great photographs (great by my standards, at any rate).
There were definitely some things about Delhi that I didn’t like. First of all, it’s the most polluted place I’ve ever been in my life. Right after getting picked up at the airport by a driver from my hotel, I asked him if there was a fire nearby because there was a noticeable acrid smell in the air and there was a thick smoke-like haze everywhere. No fire, that’s just how the air is. To be fair, it’s particularly bad out by the airport as the area is basically a plantless dust-bowl, but everywhere I went there was a thick haze in the air. On my flight leaving Delhi a couple days later I get in a conversation with a Chinese woman from Beijing, and she actually mentioned what a problem it was. If you’ve got somebody from urban China complaining about the pollution and smog, you know you’ve got a problem.
Delhi was also pretty sprawling. It’s not very tourist-friendly, without a small, walkable core to it. I suppose a certain amount of sprawl may be inevitable in a city of 13 million people, though. It’s not as if the population density wasn’t high. The concentration and sheer mass of humanity packed into the streets in the area I was staying in was shocking. This is probably partially my fault, though. I picked a hotel that was described in reviews as being located “at the end of a long, dark alley situated in the middle of a slum”. At the time I chalked this up to people being prissy, insulated little whiners that haven’t ever traveled to the developing world. At least in this case, though, they were absolutely right. The “street” we were located off of was basically a big dusty, dirt track lined with small concrete block shacks with corrugated metal roofs, or in many cases just corrugated metal walls, as well. Off this you then had to walk about 40 yards into a side alley which at many points was no wider than 4 or 5 feet across to get to the hotel. I would not have thought it possible to get that much dust and dirt in an urban environment with so many people. Ironically, I actually liked the hotel. The rooms were decent, the staff was helpful, and the building was quiet, and they had great food. It was just in a horrid location. Being there actually gave a fascinating look into the life of India’s urban poor. This neighborhood had crappy back-alleys off of back-alleys that seemed to go on forever, with legit looking businesses and people’s homes tucked into them. It’s as if there’s an entire hidden world in these crevices and crannies hidden from the streets.
This environment was just a block or two away from two of the city’s most significant sites, the Jama Masjid Mosque and the Red Fort. I wanted to stay there partially because I did want to be able to walk to as much of the things I wanted to visit as possible. I didn’t spend too much time outside the hotel, though. Even once you got outside of the serious slum area I was in, it was still pretty seedy. There was a market just to the north of me, but navigating the crush of people there was so difficult, and the area was sketchy enough that even I needed to seek refuge back in the hotel. This is saying something as I often enjoy seeing the seedy underbelly of places I go, and am generally able to shrug off conditions in cities I travel to that people would find appalling back home.
The squalor I experienced in Delhi was just about made up for by the quality of the food. There was a renowned restaurant just a few blocks from me that I hit on Saturday. All I can say is “wow”. The food there was almost unbelievably good. I had mutton burra, a kind of barbecued mutton (although I actually think it was goat), aloo gosht, a rich goat brown curry with potatoes, and sahi paneer, a cream and tomato based curry made with paneer, the ubiquitous . I didn’t recognize it by name, but when I came out I realized the shahi paneer was something I’ve had many times before at Indian restaurants in the US. Normally, it doesn’t turn my crank all that much. At this place I damn near licked the bowl clean, despite the fact that I had ordered two full entrée-sized portions of food. The other items were equally as good. The total cost for this feast ended up being around $5. (Incidentally, this place wasn’t in the full-blown slum with the men bathing themselves on the sidewalk and homeless cripples and midgets laying around on the street, it was just in the adjacent semi-slum with the stores with piles of decapitated goat heads out front) (I think one of those goats ended up in my food, by the way). And while this place was definitely the standout for food, the other places I ate at didn’t disappoint either. Even my hotel (in the alleyway in the middle of the slum) had great food.
I don’t want to give the impression that all of Delhi was so shockingly desperate. Many parts of it are relatively nice, it’s just not where I ended up.
While the food was great, the nightlife was a bit of a bust for me. I was there on a Saturday night, so I had high expectations for going out and meeting some pretty Indian girls. Most of the nice clubs are in the high-end hotels in the city. One of the guys from my hotel recommended one, so I threw on the set of nice duds I brought and headed out. Upon arriving, I saw a fancy, modern hotel, with a swank looking club on the first floor, and some rather attractive ladies walking in that were no doubt representatives of the moneyed Indian upper class. This was all rather promising, so I head in. I get to the door, and the host asks me “Are you a guest in this hotel?”. “No”, I tell him, at which point he informs me that the cover charge is 4000 rupees. I do the math in my head, and thinking that can’t possibly be right, pull out my phone and use the calculator to confirm that yes, this clown just asked me for $90 US to get into the club. Based on the cost of living and relative purchase power, this would be like being asked for $450 to get into a place in the US. Thinking I don’t need to spend that kind of money to go in and feel awkward because I don’t fit in with the crowd and being resentful because I know I never would have been asked for such an outrageous sum if I were either female or not a foreigner, I decline, head back to the hotel, watch a bit of Indian MTV, and go to bed. This of course reminds that I actually hate night clubs and how much I despise the bullshit at them, regardless of in what part of the world they’re located.
One of the things I was able to polish up in Delhi was the plans for the rest of my trip. I booked two flights to get me to my next two cities, and then arranged for a private driver to take me the rest of the way. Being by myself, the driver was a bit of a splurge, but should be worth it. I’ll get to cover a lot more territory in my time, and will have lots more flexibility. It will also allow me to spend my time experiencing the places I’m at, instead of trying to figure out train and bus schedules every single night. As part of the package I also had the tour operator who set me up with the driver pre-book all my hotels up until the 17th when I finish with the driver, so the rest of the trip will hopefully be hassle-free. Here’s the schedule:
Day 1-2: Delhi
Day 3-4: Varanasi (with day trip to xxxuusdfklsj )
Day 5: Khajuraho; get picked up by driver
Day 6: Orccha
Day 7: Agra; Fathepur Sikri
Day 8-9: Jaipur
Day 10: Pushkar
Day 11-12: Udaipur
Day 13-14: Jodhpur
Day 15-16: Jaisalmer
Day 17: Bikaner
Day 18: Mandawa
Day 19: Delhi
Day 20-21: Hyderabad
Day 22: fly back to Delhi, catch one last Indian meal, fly home
So next it was on to Varanasi. This is a holy city for Hindus, who believe that they can be purified by bathing in the river waters, and that someone who dies there can also be freed from the continual cycle of death and reincarnation central to their religion. In addition, many people are cremated along the holy river there for reasons which escape me and I’m too lazy to look up at the moment. So you can walk along the river and see some startlingly intimate portions of people’s lives going on: people performing their ritualistic bathing in the river, public cremations on wooden pyres in full view of anyone passing by, and nightly outdoor religious ceremonies. All this sacred activity is going on intermixed with the completely mundane activities also going on along or in the river: people watering their goats and cows, doing laundry, kids flying kites and playing cricket, etc.
I’ve traveled an awful lot, but it must be said the Varanasi was completely unlike any other place I’ve ever been. Just really amazing. In addition to all the aforementioned highlights, one of the most charming and simultaneously repulsive aspects to the city was the intermingling of animals with the people in the urban environment. While not the cheek-to-jowl setup of Delhi, it’s still very densely populated, and in this environment it seems every third person is keeping a cow or a small pack of goats. There are no fields for these cows or goats, they’re literally just living out in the streets, in the back alleys, or in the steps along the river (called ghats) where people bathe, wash their clothes, and cremate their dead. So it’s charming because, well, how can it not be? It cracked me up to be driving around in traffic in the middle of the city waiting for a herd of cattle to get out of the way. And it’s repulsive because, as you can probably imagine, the city is inundated with shit (literally). There really isn’t any trash pick-up, so the animals do their business, and there it stays. This is particularly true of the most touristic areas along the river. There’s one main road that runs parallel to the river, about 60-70 yards away. To get to the river (and most likely your guest house), you have to navigate a mass of tiny back alleys crammed with homes, small shops, guest houses for the religious Hindu visitors, and craft shops (silk weaving is apparently big business in Varanasi). Many of the residents in this area keep their own sacred cows, and many that don’t bring their cows and goats through there to get to the river. So I found it to be incredibly quaint to have to step over a lounging 1200 pound brahmin bull to get to my hotel, but at the same town was absolutely disgusted by the amount of feces lying around. And the people there were extremely nonchalant about it. Women would clean their laundy, then lay it out to dry on the same ghat steps that the animals are continually shitting all over. Guys are just sitting around on the steps along the river (ugh). I didn’t even want to think about the amount of goat crap on the cricket ball the kids were playing with. And of course, all this runs off into the river which may of the locals and Hindu visitors are bathing in. I did my damnedest to not touch anything or anyone the entire time I was there. Being both a city boy and a non-dog-owner, I’ve got serious issues with animal feces, and felt filthy the entire time I was in Varanasi, and continued to do so until I arrive at my next location, washed every single item of clothing I had work during that time as well as my jacket, cleaned my shoes, wiped down my bags and everything else I was carrying (including my laptop, cell phone, and all other personal belongings). It was a fascinating place and definitely worth going to, but if I come back I think it’s going to be in a head-to-toe gore-tex suit with a gas mask. Either that, or stay in a hotel that whenever someone enters they are stripped naked, have their clothes incinerated, and a given a jail-house style power spray wash and fresh clothing before they are allowed in.
After Varanasi I caught a flight to Khajuraho. It’s a city in central India with a large cluster of Hindu temples covered in incredibly intricate sculptures. The recurrent themes in the sculptures are Hindu religious images, women, and sex (or as the non-English speaking caretakers of the temples say when they point at them “Kama Sutra, Kama Sutra”). While the erotic content was amusing (there were some particularly acrobatic scenes depicted in some cases), the sculptures were also great art. And while the architecture there was amazing, I also loved Khajuraho because it was clean-ish. There was still an awful lot of dirt in the air, and while there are still cows and goats roaming the streets most everywhere you go, the levels of dirt and shit were tolerable. I think this will be much more representative of much of India. Enough animals wandering around through traffic to be cute, but not so many that you feel like your entire body is coated with a thin film of cowpie every time you come back from being outside. Thank god. Apparently, the amount of cows in Varanasi is particularly large because of its religious significance there.
At Khajuraho I hooked up with my driver and we headed to Orccha. It’s a small town with a massive fort, a set of medieval palaces, huge Hindu temple, and other associated historical structures. I really liked this place. All the buildings were amazing, particularly the large Hindu temple. It was almost like visiting the zoo. It had a bunch of monkeys hanging around on the roof, a vulture and it’s new offspring perched along the dome, a large bright green parrot zipping around the upper parts, and a bunch of bats that were living in the dark underside of the ancient stone dome. A young Indian guy was able to let me into the locked door leading to the interconnected sets of hidden halls and stairwells in the building to lead me up there. He hustled me for an exorbitant tip at the end, but it was well worth it to see the menagerie in the building and to get some fantastic shots of the other buildings in the town from the roof, including one of me feeding the monkeys on the rooftop. I also scored some amazing street food in Orccha. It was called aloo something-or-other, unfortunately I can’t remember. Essentially, it was a deep-fried crushed potato, which was then stir-fried with some onion, cilantro, some kind of soupy brown beans or lentils, garam masala and other seasonings, and served with a mango and tamarind sauce in a bowl make out of two large tree-leaves formed into a bowl using toothpicks. Killer.
After Orccha, it was on to Agra. I saw a certain building there which you likely have heard of. It didn’t disappoint. Be sure to check out the photos when they are up (taking a while as I have yet to stay at a hotel with functioning internet in my room). As I write this post I’m on the way to Jaipur. I’ll try to post more regularly going forward. Now that I’ve got a driver, I should have 2-3 hours of car time every couple days which should allow me to keep up. Cheers.
So Delhi was worth a brief stop, but it wasn’t exactly my favorite travel destination. It had a couple nice historic sites downtown, including a medieval fort and a massive mosque built by the same crew. I also rolled through the area of town with India’s national monuments, major government buildings, and the president’s house. By far and away the highlight of Delhi, though, was a tomb of one of the ancient Mughal Emperors. It was very atmospheric, and I was able to get some great photographs (great by my standards, at any rate).
There were definitely some things about Delhi that I didn’t like. First of all, it’s the most polluted place I’ve ever been in my life. Right after getting picked up at the airport by a driver from my hotel, I asked him if there was a fire nearby because there was a noticeable acrid smell in the air and there was a thick smoke-like haze everywhere. No fire, that’s just how the air is. To be fair, it’s particularly bad out by the airport as the area is basically a plantless dust-bowl, but everywhere I went there was a thick haze in the air. On my flight leaving Delhi a couple days later I get in a conversation with a Chinese woman from Beijing, and she actually mentioned what a problem it was. If you’ve got somebody from urban China complaining about the pollution and smog, you know you’ve got a problem.
Delhi was also pretty sprawling. It’s not very tourist-friendly, without a small, walkable core to it. I suppose a certain amount of sprawl may be inevitable in a city of 13 million people, though. It’s not as if the population density wasn’t high. The concentration and sheer mass of humanity packed into the streets in the area I was staying in was shocking. This is probably partially my fault, though. I picked a hotel that was described in reviews as being located “at the end of a long, dark alley situated in the middle of a slum”. At the time I chalked this up to people being prissy, insulated little whiners that haven’t ever traveled to the developing world. At least in this case, though, they were absolutely right. The “street” we were located off of was basically a big dusty, dirt track lined with small concrete block shacks with corrugated metal roofs, or in many cases just corrugated metal walls, as well. Off this you then had to walk about 40 yards into a side alley which at many points was no wider than 4 or 5 feet across to get to the hotel. I would not have thought it possible to get that much dust and dirt in an urban environment with so many people. Ironically, I actually liked the hotel. The rooms were decent, the staff was helpful, and the building was quiet, and they had great food. It was just in a horrid location. Being there actually gave a fascinating look into the life of India’s urban poor. This neighborhood had crappy back-alleys off of back-alleys that seemed to go on forever, with legit looking businesses and people’s homes tucked into them. It’s as if there’s an entire hidden world in these crevices and crannies hidden from the streets.
This environment was just a block or two away from two of the city’s most significant sites, the Jama Masjid Mosque and the Red Fort. I wanted to stay there partially because I did want to be able to walk to as much of the things I wanted to visit as possible. I didn’t spend too much time outside the hotel, though. Even once you got outside of the serious slum area I was in, it was still pretty seedy. There was a market just to the north of me, but navigating the crush of people there was so difficult, and the area was sketchy enough that even I needed to seek refuge back in the hotel. This is saying something as I often enjoy seeing the seedy underbelly of places I go, and am generally able to shrug off conditions in cities I travel to that people would find appalling back home.
The squalor I experienced in Delhi was just about made up for by the quality of the food. There was a renowned restaurant just a few blocks from me that I hit on Saturday. All I can say is “wow”. The food there was almost unbelievably good. I had mutton burra, a kind of barbecued mutton (although I actually think it was goat), aloo gosht, a rich goat brown curry with potatoes, and sahi paneer, a cream and tomato based curry made with paneer, the ubiquitous . I didn’t recognize it by name, but when I came out I realized the shahi paneer was something I’ve had many times before at Indian restaurants in the US. Normally, it doesn’t turn my crank all that much. At this place I damn near licked the bowl clean, despite the fact that I had ordered two full entrée-sized portions of food. The other items were equally as good. The total cost for this feast ended up being around $5. (Incidentally, this place wasn’t in the full-blown slum with the men bathing themselves on the sidewalk and homeless cripples and midgets laying around on the street, it was just in the adjacent semi-slum with the stores with piles of decapitated goat heads out front) (I think one of those goats ended up in my food, by the way). And while this place was definitely the standout for food, the other places I ate at didn’t disappoint either. Even my hotel (in the alleyway in the middle of the slum) had great food.
I don’t want to give the impression that all of Delhi was so shockingly desperate. Many parts of it are relatively nice, it’s just not where I ended up.
While the food was great, the nightlife was a bit of a bust for me. I was there on a Saturday night, so I had high expectations for going out and meeting some pretty Indian girls. Most of the nice clubs are in the high-end hotels in the city. One of the guys from my hotel recommended one, so I threw on the set of nice duds I brought and headed out. Upon arriving, I saw a fancy, modern hotel, with a swank looking club on the first floor, and some rather attractive ladies walking in that were no doubt representatives of the moneyed Indian upper class. This was all rather promising, so I head in. I get to the door, and the host asks me “Are you a guest in this hotel?”. “No”, I tell him, at which point he informs me that the cover charge is 4000 rupees. I do the math in my head, and thinking that can’t possibly be right, pull out my phone and use the calculator to confirm that yes, this clown just asked me for $90 US to get into the club. Based on the cost of living and relative purchase power, this would be like being asked for $450 to get into a place in the US. Thinking I don’t need to spend that kind of money to go in and feel awkward because I don’t fit in with the crowd and being resentful because I know I never would have been asked for such an outrageous sum if I were either female or not a foreigner, I decline, head back to the hotel, watch a bit of Indian MTV, and go to bed. This of course reminds that I actually hate night clubs and how much I despise the bullshit at them, regardless of in what part of the world they’re located.
One of the things I was able to polish up in Delhi was the plans for the rest of my trip. I booked two flights to get me to my next two cities, and then arranged for a private driver to take me the rest of the way. Being by myself, the driver was a bit of a splurge, but should be worth it. I’ll get to cover a lot more territory in my time, and will have lots more flexibility. It will also allow me to spend my time experiencing the places I’m at, instead of trying to figure out train and bus schedules every single night. As part of the package I also had the tour operator who set me up with the driver pre-book all my hotels up until the 17th when I finish with the driver, so the rest of the trip will hopefully be hassle-free. Here’s the schedule:
Day 1-2: Delhi
Day 3-4: Varanasi (with day trip to xxxuusdfklsj )
Day 5: Khajuraho; get picked up by driver
Day 6: Orccha
Day 7: Agra; Fathepur Sikri
Day 8-9: Jaipur
Day 10: Pushkar
Day 11-12: Udaipur
Day 13-14: Jodhpur
Day 15-16: Jaisalmer
Day 17: Bikaner
Day 18: Mandawa
Day 19: Delhi
Day 20-21: Hyderabad
Day 22: fly back to Delhi, catch one last Indian meal, fly home
So next it was on to Varanasi. This is a holy city for Hindus, who believe that they can be purified by bathing in the river waters, and that someone who dies there can also be freed from the continual cycle of death and reincarnation central to their religion. In addition, many people are cremated along the holy river there for reasons which escape me and I’m too lazy to look up at the moment. So you can walk along the river and see some startlingly intimate portions of people’s lives going on: people performing their ritualistic bathing in the river, public cremations on wooden pyres in full view of anyone passing by, and nightly outdoor religious ceremonies. All this sacred activity is going on intermixed with the completely mundane activities also going on along or in the river: people watering their goats and cows, doing laundry, kids flying kites and playing cricket, etc.
I’ve traveled an awful lot, but it must be said the Varanasi was completely unlike any other place I’ve ever been. Just really amazing. In addition to all the aforementioned highlights, one of the most charming and simultaneously repulsive aspects to the city was the intermingling of animals with the people in the urban environment. While not the cheek-to-jowl setup of Delhi, it’s still very densely populated, and in this environment it seems every third person is keeping a cow or a small pack of goats. There are no fields for these cows or goats, they’re literally just living out in the streets, in the back alleys, or in the steps along the river (called ghats) where people bathe, wash their clothes, and cremate their dead. So it’s charming because, well, how can it not be? It cracked me up to be driving around in traffic in the middle of the city waiting for a herd of cattle to get out of the way. And it’s repulsive because, as you can probably imagine, the city is inundated with shit (literally). There really isn’t any trash pick-up, so the animals do their business, and there it stays. This is particularly true of the most touristic areas along the river. There’s one main road that runs parallel to the river, about 60-70 yards away. To get to the river (and most likely your guest house), you have to navigate a mass of tiny back alleys crammed with homes, small shops, guest houses for the religious Hindu visitors, and craft shops (silk weaving is apparently big business in Varanasi). Many of the residents in this area keep their own sacred cows, and many that don’t bring their cows and goats through there to get to the river. So I found it to be incredibly quaint to have to step over a lounging 1200 pound brahmin bull to get to my hotel, but at the same town was absolutely disgusted by the amount of feces lying around. And the people there were extremely nonchalant about it. Women would clean their laundy, then lay it out to dry on the same ghat steps that the animals are continually shitting all over. Guys are just sitting around on the steps along the river (ugh). I didn’t even want to think about the amount of goat crap on the cricket ball the kids were playing with. And of course, all this runs off into the river which may of the locals and Hindu visitors are bathing in. I did my damnedest to not touch anything or anyone the entire time I was there. Being both a city boy and a non-dog-owner, I’ve got serious issues with animal feces, and felt filthy the entire time I was in Varanasi, and continued to do so until I arrive at my next location, washed every single item of clothing I had work during that time as well as my jacket, cleaned my shoes, wiped down my bags and everything else I was carrying (including my laptop, cell phone, and all other personal belongings). It was a fascinating place and definitely worth going to, but if I come back I think it’s going to be in a head-to-toe gore-tex suit with a gas mask. Either that, or stay in a hotel that whenever someone enters they are stripped naked, have their clothes incinerated, and a given a jail-house style power spray wash and fresh clothing before they are allowed in.
After Varanasi I caught a flight to Khajuraho. It’s a city in central India with a large cluster of Hindu temples covered in incredibly intricate sculptures. The recurrent themes in the sculptures are Hindu religious images, women, and sex (or as the non-English speaking caretakers of the temples say when they point at them “Kama Sutra, Kama Sutra”). While the erotic content was amusing (there were some particularly acrobatic scenes depicted in some cases), the sculptures were also great art. And while the architecture there was amazing, I also loved Khajuraho because it was clean-ish. There was still an awful lot of dirt in the air, and while there are still cows and goats roaming the streets most everywhere you go, the levels of dirt and shit were tolerable. I think this will be much more representative of much of India. Enough animals wandering around through traffic to be cute, but not so many that you feel like your entire body is coated with a thin film of cowpie every time you come back from being outside. Thank god. Apparently, the amount of cows in Varanasi is particularly large because of its religious significance there.
At Khajuraho I hooked up with my driver and we headed to Orccha. It’s a small town with a massive fort, a set of medieval palaces, huge Hindu temple, and other associated historical structures. I really liked this place. All the buildings were amazing, particularly the large Hindu temple. It was almost like visiting the zoo. It had a bunch of monkeys hanging around on the roof, a vulture and it’s new offspring perched along the dome, a large bright green parrot zipping around the upper parts, and a bunch of bats that were living in the dark underside of the ancient stone dome. A young Indian guy was able to let me into the locked door leading to the interconnected sets of hidden halls and stairwells in the building to lead me up there. He hustled me for an exorbitant tip at the end, but it was well worth it to see the menagerie in the building and to get some fantastic shots of the other buildings in the town from the roof, including one of me feeding the monkeys on the rooftop. I also scored some amazing street food in Orccha. It was called aloo something-or-other, unfortunately I can’t remember. Essentially, it was a deep-fried crushed potato, which was then stir-fried with some onion, cilantro, some kind of soupy brown beans or lentils, garam masala and other seasonings, and served with a mango and tamarind sauce in a bowl make out of two large tree-leaves formed into a bowl using toothpicks. Killer.
After Orccha, it was on to Agra. I saw a certain building there which you likely have heard of. It didn’t disappoint. Be sure to check out the photos when they are up (taking a while as I have yet to stay at a hotel with functioning internet in my room). As I write this post I’m on the way to Jaipur. I’ll try to post more regularly going forward. Now that I’ve got a driver, I should have 2-3 hours of car time every couple days which should allow me to keep up. Cheers.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Arrival in Delhi
As I write this I'm on the tail end of the flight to Delhi. Fortunately, I largely got over the cold I caught earlier in the week, so I was able to board the plane without being too much under the weather. With the help of a NyQuil and an Abmien, was able to get a good 5 hours sleep early during the 15-hour nonstop flight from Chicago, and I've spent the rest of the time trying to make more detailed plans for the trip. This is what I'm going to try to do, day-by-day:
-arrive in Delhi
-Delhi
-Delhi
-flight to Varanasi
-Varanasi
-morning flight to Khajuraho
-Khajuraho
-get to Agra
-Agra
-head to Jaipur
-Jaipur and Amber fort
-Pushkar and Ajmer
-travel to Jodhpur
-Jodhpur, night train to Jaisalmer
-Jaisalmer, night train back to Jodhpur
-travel to Udaipur
-Udaipur
-fly to Hyderabad
-Hyderabad
-fly back to Delhi, fly home at night
I've actually a couple more days to use on my trip. Those will be flex days I can use wherever, so I don't have to be constantly worrying about keeping to a strict schedule. To do this the flights to Varanasi and Khajuraho will also still have to be available by the time I get to the hotel and can book them (fingers crossed). I also may jumble the order in which I'll do Jodhpur and Udaipur. I'm actually taking the first part of the trip a little slower than I had wanted to, but that's by necessity. My original plan had me getting to Agra and the Taj Mahal a day earlier, but I realized that unfortunately, that would put me there on a Friday (the Taj is an active mosque, so it's closed for everyone by worshippers on Friday).
Hopefully they're going to feed us soon here. There's a 12-hour gap on this flight between dinner and breakfast. I slept for a good chunk of it and ate a Clif bar and some snacks, but still, I'm starving. It's too bad the sun has already gone down. It would be interesting to see what's on the ground. We took a northeasterly route out of Chicago, flying directly over Greenland, across the Arctic Ocean, just barely skimming the top of the Scandinavian countries, and then came down through Russia. We're flying into the sun, so during the short window of daylight all I was able to see was a cloud carpet underneath us or empty Siberian snow cover. According to the flight path information on the entertainment system, we appear to be passing over what I believe is Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan at moment. If we hold this course, it actually appears like we'll fly right by Kabul in the next 20 minutes. Good times.
-arrive in Delhi
-Delhi
-Delhi
-flight to Varanasi
-Varanasi
-morning flight to Khajuraho
-Khajuraho
-get to Agra
-Agra
-head to Jaipur
-Jaipur and Amber fort
-Pushkar and Ajmer
-travel to Jodhpur
-Jodhpur, night train to Jaisalmer
-Jaisalmer, night train back to Jodhpur
-travel to Udaipur
-Udaipur
-fly to Hyderabad
-Hyderabad
-fly back to Delhi, fly home at night
I've actually a couple more days to use on my trip. Those will be flex days I can use wherever, so I don't have to be constantly worrying about keeping to a strict schedule. To do this the flights to Varanasi and Khajuraho will also still have to be available by the time I get to the hotel and can book them (fingers crossed). I also may jumble the order in which I'll do Jodhpur and Udaipur. I'm actually taking the first part of the trip a little slower than I had wanted to, but that's by necessity. My original plan had me getting to Agra and the Taj Mahal a day earlier, but I realized that unfortunately, that would put me there on a Friday (the Taj is an active mosque, so it's closed for everyone by worshippers on Friday).
Hopefully they're going to feed us soon here. There's a 12-hour gap on this flight between dinner and breakfast. I slept for a good chunk of it and ate a Clif bar and some snacks, but still, I'm starving. It's too bad the sun has already gone down. It would be interesting to see what's on the ground. We took a northeasterly route out of Chicago, flying directly over Greenland, across the Arctic Ocean, just barely skimming the top of the Scandinavian countries, and then came down through Russia. We're flying into the sun, so during the short window of daylight all I was able to see was a cloud carpet underneath us or empty Siberian snow cover. According to the flight path information on the entertainment system, we appear to be passing over what I believe is Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan at moment. If we hold this course, it actually appears like we'll fly right by Kabul in the next 20 minutes. Good times.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
I'm off to India
Just about to head to the airport. I'm a little rushed as I had a last minute explosion of work today, but should have no problem making it in time. Just double-checking everything I packed, and seeing if I can get some more last-minute planning in. I still don't know exactly where I'm going to go after Delhi, but hopefully with a little more research on the plane and maybe some input from the peeps at the hotel in Delhi I can commit to a plan. At this point it's either a plane Varanasi or straight to Agra via train.
See you on the other side of the planet.
See you on the other side of the planet.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Buenos Aires, San Clemente, Uruguay, and Out
So the show is all wrapped up now. I finished with 9 more days, mostly in Buenos Aires, but with a couple dips into other spots in the area. Buenos Aires was great. It's got tons of great turn of the century architecture, so I was able to amuse myself for a couple days just walking around the neighborhoods and soaking it all up. Other highlights include the food. Everybody talks about the great Argentinean steak, but while that was quite good, I generally preferred the more sophisticated restaurants where you'd get cuisine prepared with a little more flair and panache to the parrilla joints where you pick up a mountainous pile of grilled meat with side salads and bread. The highlight was the 8-course me we got at Pura Tierra on Thursday (thanks for the tip, Audi!). All 8 courses were at least very good, and often excellent, and we were able to get a wine pairing including 4 full glasses. We actually ended up getting more as they were actually refilling our glasses as we emptied them. Due to the quantity of wine consumed, I’m a little foggy on what all the different courses were, but overall it was a fantastic experience, particularly when you consider that this feast cost us a paltry $65 each.
The other big food highlight is the Italian grub. Because there were so many Italian immigrants to Argentina, the Italian food is plentiful, of generally very good quality, and an excellent value just like everything else you put in your stomach there. The highlight here was the house-made black squid-ink seafood pasta I had right before skipping town on Saturday night. And as with any place with serious Italian roots, there’s great gelato. Several times I ended up skipping breakfast so I could have gelato for my first meal of the day.
While there I of course did a lot of your standard BA stuff: went to the Recoleta cemetery, caught a tango show, went to a milonga/tango club, Boca, did some shopping, etc. The tango show we went to was touristy, but really fantastic. Laura, who is somewhat of an authority on such things, said it was by far the best tango performance she had ever seen. The tango club we went to afterwards was also pretty cool, although not being a tango dancer this got old for me pretty quick (social tango dancing isn’t exactly the most exciting spectator sport). Nevertheless, I think it’s obligatory to at least check out a milonga, so I went and watched Laura and all her tango pals dance around in slow circles for a couple hours while I pounded cocktails and empanadas.
While in BA I spent one day doing a day-trip to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It’s a neat place, but I’m glad I just did a day-trip instead of spending the night like I had originally planned. You can easily check out all the historic parts of the city in a couple hours. Also, the place really slows down at night and there aren’t very many interesting places to eat at after 4:00 PM. This was particularly aggravating for me as I wanted to get a second nice meal in before catching the ferry back across the delta to Buenos Aires. As a result, I had to settle for a basic parilla place and some blood sausage. Don’t get me wrong, I love blood sausage, but the same thing is available all over Argentina and I was hoping to partake in that reputedly great Uruguayan seafood instead. There was, however, plenty of opportunity to suck down some Uruguayan wine. What I had I was pretty impressed with.
After arriving in Buenos Aires we also took a 2-day trip with Laura’s aunt and uncle to their vacation house in a small beach town called San Clemente a few hours south of BA. Since school had recently started in Argentina, the place had officially hit the off-season and things were pretty slow as a result. It was also a bit more mellow since our buddy Diego wasn’t able to join us, so it was a pretty small crowd. It was nice to relax for a couple days, though. We hit the beach, drove around in her uncle’s ATV, hit the saltwater springs and spa, and got to enjoy her uncle’s fantastic cooking a couple times.
Overall this was a really great trip. I could definitely go back to any of these countries a second time. I think I’d like to do Bolivia, possibly some of Peru, and the northern parts of Chile and Argentina (Atacama desert, Salta, Iguazu) for one trip. I could easily make a trip out of southern Argentina and Chile (Torres del Paine, Tierra del Fuego, Perito Moreno Glacier, Lakes District), as well. There are some spots I’d like to put more due-diligence into Colombia on, too, particularly other areas on the Caribbean coast and some of the archaeological sights in the southwest. Looks like I’ll have plenty of tough decisions to make for next year…
The other big food highlight is the Italian grub. Because there were so many Italian immigrants to Argentina, the Italian food is plentiful, of generally very good quality, and an excellent value just like everything else you put in your stomach there. The highlight here was the house-made black squid-ink seafood pasta I had right before skipping town on Saturday night. And as with any place with serious Italian roots, there’s great gelato. Several times I ended up skipping breakfast so I could have gelato for my first meal of the day.
While there I of course did a lot of your standard BA stuff: went to the Recoleta cemetery, caught a tango show, went to a milonga/tango club, Boca, did some shopping, etc. The tango show we went to was touristy, but really fantastic. Laura, who is somewhat of an authority on such things, said it was by far the best tango performance she had ever seen. The tango club we went to afterwards was also pretty cool, although not being a tango dancer this got old for me pretty quick (social tango dancing isn’t exactly the most exciting spectator sport). Nevertheless, I think it’s obligatory to at least check out a milonga, so I went and watched Laura and all her tango pals dance around in slow circles for a couple hours while I pounded cocktails and empanadas.
While in BA I spent one day doing a day-trip to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It’s a neat place, but I’m glad I just did a day-trip instead of spending the night like I had originally planned. You can easily check out all the historic parts of the city in a couple hours. Also, the place really slows down at night and there aren’t very many interesting places to eat at after 4:00 PM. This was particularly aggravating for me as I wanted to get a second nice meal in before catching the ferry back across the delta to Buenos Aires. As a result, I had to settle for a basic parilla place and some blood sausage. Don’t get me wrong, I love blood sausage, but the same thing is available all over Argentina and I was hoping to partake in that reputedly great Uruguayan seafood instead. There was, however, plenty of opportunity to suck down some Uruguayan wine. What I had I was pretty impressed with.
After arriving in Buenos Aires we also took a 2-day trip with Laura’s aunt and uncle to their vacation house in a small beach town called San Clemente a few hours south of BA. Since school had recently started in Argentina, the place had officially hit the off-season and things were pretty slow as a result. It was also a bit more mellow since our buddy Diego wasn’t able to join us, so it was a pretty small crowd. It was nice to relax for a couple days, though. We hit the beach, drove around in her uncle’s ATV, hit the saltwater springs and spa, and got to enjoy her uncle’s fantastic cooking a couple times.
Overall this was a really great trip. I could definitely go back to any of these countries a second time. I think I’d like to do Bolivia, possibly some of Peru, and the northern parts of Chile and Argentina (Atacama desert, Salta, Iguazu) for one trip. I could easily make a trip out of southern Argentina and Chile (Torres del Paine, Tierra del Fuego, Perito Moreno Glacier, Lakes District), as well. There are some spots I’d like to put more due-diligence into Colombia on, too, particularly other areas on the Caribbean coast and some of the archaeological sights in the southwest. Looks like I’ll have plenty of tough decisions to make for next year…
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Córdoba
Córdoba was a cute little town. Based on some feedback Laura passed on from some Argentinean friends, I was a little concerned, but apparently there was nothing to worry about. I really enjoyed the place. It has several of the most beautiful churches I’ve seen outside of Europe, a really atmospheric pedestrian part to the town center, and a very lively and upbeat vibe due to all the young people there for the various universities (do the words “eye candy” mean anything?). While it’s not exactly Paris, it was well worth a one day stop on the way to BA from Mendoza.
It seemed to be a pretty religious town, and because I got there late in the afternoon by the time I set out most of the churches were having services. In some ways this was good as it allowed me to get in and take photos, although I had to be pretty discrete and couldn’t take many. I didn’t want to appear to be the jackass tourist taking photos during mass. I realize that I was, in fact, a jackass tourist taking photos during mass, but at least I didn’t want to advertise the fact, right?
It seemed to be a pretty religious town, and because I got there late in the afternoon by the time I set out most of the churches were having services. In some ways this was good as it allowed me to get in and take photos, although I had to be pretty discrete and couldn’t take many. I didn’t want to appear to be the jackass tourist taking photos during mass. I realize that I was, in fact, a jackass tourist taking photos during mass, but at least I didn’t want to advertise the fact, right?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Mendoza
Everybody reading this probably already knows what I spent my time doing in Mendoza. I got a jump on the wine tasting my first full day by taking a full-day up-market winery tour in the Lujan de Cuyo wine region with a group of 5 other people I had arranged ahead of time. It was pretty pricey by Argentine standards, but was well worth it. The tour at the first winery was absolutely fabulous, as were the wines (if you can find them in stores in the US, check out the higher-end lines of Bodega Benagas). While definitely not at the same level, the other winery tastings and tours were nice as well, and the lunch we had at the restaurant of one of the wineries was absolutely superb. Of course, the entrée was a perfectly juicy and tender (despite being slightly overcooked) Argentinean steak.
I had planned on doing some more tasting that night, but my palate was still pretty burnt out. Instead I just recouped a bit in my hotel and then hit dinner at a place recommended by the sommelier that led our tour that day. It certainly didn’t disappoint. Both the sweetbreads with a nectarine and torrontes chutney and the grilled pork chop with a blueberry malbec sauce were killer.
In contrast to my high-class testing setup on Monday, on Tuesday I went wine tasting with the riff-raff. There’s a very popular wine tasting bicycle route that a lot of people do in Mendoza. It’s in a town near Mendoza called Maipú which has a bunch of wineries conveniently located along a 10 km stretch of road. You just catch a bus there, rent a bike and get a trail map from any one of a numerous set of bicycle shops, and shove off. Although there are exceptions, the wineries on this route are more of the down-market or mass-market type (or both). The first place I went was a place the sommelier from Monday recommended, and that was a definite winner. It dropped off from there, though. In addition, much of the bike wasn’t particularly scenic (while a lot of Mendoza is stunning with all the vineyards with snow-capped mountains in the background, the city of Maipú isn’t exactly Oakville), and the road wasn’t very good for biking. There was no side path or groomed shoulder to the road, so you either had to ride in the narrow street and trust the cars coming behind you to avoid you, or you had to bike on the ungroomed side of the road which was riddled with rocks the size of softballs. In addition, the road was really lousy and had huge fissures in it. My prostate was killing me after about 20 minutes. As such, I didn’t stick around too long. I tasted at a couple wineries, grabbed some grub at one place, and split. The grub was actually the highlight of the ride. I got it from this really flash winery that would fit right in at Napa which had phenomenally good sandwiches, although the wine there was pretty unimpressive.
Leaving early allowed time for me to hit the big wine bar in downtown Mendoza that evening. I ended up being pretty popular as I brought a rare bottle of wine that the guide of my fancy tour gave me as a gift. I brought it out as I didn’t want to pack it in my luggage on my next several flights, so I was planning on having it with dinner. Instead, we pulled the cork on it at the wine bar and we passed it around amongst the staff for tasting.
After that it was to what was supposedly the best parrilla in town for some traditional Argentinean asado. The grilled meats I got were OK, flavorful but a little too tough, and once again the side salad of tomatoes and onion came out undressed. C’mon man! Undressed salad! WTF! It wasn’t even seasoned! How in the name of Christ can you create a tomato salad without any salt? Unseasoned tomatoes are an abomination unto man, as far as I’m concerned (as is unseasoned anything, for that matter, but particularly tomatoes). This is apparently a situation I’m going to have to adapt to around these parts. Maybe I need to start walking around with my own stash of sea salt and a pepper grinder.
Leaving culinary issues aside, if you want to check out some gorgeous Mendoza scenery you can do so here.
I had planned on doing some more tasting that night, but my palate was still pretty burnt out. Instead I just recouped a bit in my hotel and then hit dinner at a place recommended by the sommelier that led our tour that day. It certainly didn’t disappoint. Both the sweetbreads with a nectarine and torrontes chutney and the grilled pork chop with a blueberry malbec sauce were killer.
In contrast to my high-class testing setup on Monday, on Tuesday I went wine tasting with the riff-raff. There’s a very popular wine tasting bicycle route that a lot of people do in Mendoza. It’s in a town near Mendoza called Maipú which has a bunch of wineries conveniently located along a 10 km stretch of road. You just catch a bus there, rent a bike and get a trail map from any one of a numerous set of bicycle shops, and shove off. Although there are exceptions, the wineries on this route are more of the down-market or mass-market type (or both). The first place I went was a place the sommelier from Monday recommended, and that was a definite winner. It dropped off from there, though. In addition, much of the bike wasn’t particularly scenic (while a lot of Mendoza is stunning with all the vineyards with snow-capped mountains in the background, the city of Maipú isn’t exactly Oakville), and the road wasn’t very good for biking. There was no side path or groomed shoulder to the road, so you either had to ride in the narrow street and trust the cars coming behind you to avoid you, or you had to bike on the ungroomed side of the road which was riddled with rocks the size of softballs. In addition, the road was really lousy and had huge fissures in it. My prostate was killing me after about 20 minutes. As such, I didn’t stick around too long. I tasted at a couple wineries, grabbed some grub at one place, and split. The grub was actually the highlight of the ride. I got it from this really flash winery that would fit right in at Napa which had phenomenally good sandwiches, although the wine there was pretty unimpressive.
Leaving early allowed time for me to hit the big wine bar in downtown Mendoza that evening. I ended up being pretty popular as I brought a rare bottle of wine that the guide of my fancy tour gave me as a gift. I brought it out as I didn’t want to pack it in my luggage on my next several flights, so I was planning on having it with dinner. Instead, we pulled the cork on it at the wine bar and we passed it around amongst the staff for tasting.
After that it was to what was supposedly the best parrilla in town for some traditional Argentinean asado. The grilled meats I got were OK, flavorful but a little too tough, and once again the side salad of tomatoes and onion came out undressed. C’mon man! Undressed salad! WTF! It wasn’t even seasoned! How in the name of Christ can you create a tomato salad without any salt? Unseasoned tomatoes are an abomination unto man, as far as I’m concerned (as is unseasoned anything, for that matter, but particularly tomatoes). This is apparently a situation I’m going to have to adapt to around these parts. Maybe I need to start walking around with my own stash of sea salt and a pepper grinder.
Leaving culinary issues aside, if you want to check out some gorgeous Mendoza scenery you can do so here.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Chile
So I made it in and out of Chile with no incident. My flight from Bogota to Santiago was rescheduled a few days in advance to run an hour later, but aside from that it was right on time. There was apparently a lot of damage to the passenger terminal, so they had set up makeshift facilities for processing everyone. The kept us on the plane for about 15 minutes after we stopped while they removed all out bags and laid them out on the tarmac. We then disembarked the plane, picked our bag off the ground, and followed a set of orange street cones to one of those large while plastic tents where you might have an indoor wedding reception. Inside there they had set up the customs process with processing and baggage screening. After finishing that you just walked out to the airport parking lot where the different rental car and transportation companies were just set up on the sidewalk. You just popped by, waited for your ride, and then headed into the city. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the efficiency of the thing. I've certainly had much bigger hassles at the airport in my day.
In my 2 1/2 days there I never noticed too much damage in either Santiago or Valparaiso. Aside from the airport, I saw two bridge overpasses which had large fissures where the bridge met the land (although both were still open for traffic), one museum whose facade had crumbled a bit, and maybe 4-5 large broken pane glass windows. A few sights were also closed, including the museum with the crumbling facade, one other museum in Viña del Mar, the cable car that takes you to the top of the big hill in Santiago, and another hilltop viewpoint in the city. Aside from these few things, though, it seemed to be pretty much business as usual in the area. All the other museums were open and full of people, the restaurants and cafes were filled with people eating, drinking, and relaxing all weekend, and the night club I went to was packed with people at 3:00 AM. So while the quake obviously is dominating the news and conversation there, everyone seems to be moving on.
The city was really enjoyable. It's a pretty modern city, with lots of older beaux arts and other historical architecture thrown in which gives it a really nice flavor. I spent a full day walking the city center, and another day taking a day trip to Valparaíso. Valpo was really quaint, too, although it didn't pack quite the punch I was expecting. Being a UNESCO World Heritage City, I was expecting something really amazing. It was certainly nice and worth visiting, but I'm glad I didn't plan to spend more time there as it didn't quite live up to the extremely high expectations I had for it.
The food was generally pretty good in Chile, too. After spending 15 days in Colombia I was certainly ready for something different. The grub in Colombia was nice, but I had become thoroughly burnt-out on fried food after my first week (they deep fry damn near everything in that county outside of the really high-end restaurants). So I was really looking forward to some of that fresh Chilean seafood. The place I went on my first night didn’t disappoint. I had a grilled octopus with ratatouille and some kind of egg dough construction, a sautéed sea bass filet with assorted mushrooms and a porcini mushroom broth, and a light banana and mango soup with fresh berries for dessert, all of which were killer. I paired these with a Chilean Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, each of which drank like a bottle of fine Burgundy 3 times their price. If I recall correctly, this grand feast cost me a total of around $45 US.
After this I was figuring I was going to eat like a king every meal of the day the rest of my vacation. Unfortunately, it turns out the place I went to isn’t representative of the food scene as a whole. I went to the Santiago fish market the next morning, during which I hit one of the little mom-and pop stalls around the market for what I was expecting to be the best piece of swordfish I’d ever had. What they brought me smelled pretty bad, and tasted even worse. It took me 10 minutes to wash the nasty taste out of my mouth. They replaced it with something else, which while not rancid like the first item, was still a little underwhelming. I had a similar experience that night for dinner. At this place I ordered a Patagonian deer tenderloin which came out overcooked. I also had a salad with proscuitto which came out undressed and, as far as I could tell, unseasoned. Now, I can cut Colombia some slack from my particular brand of food fascism, but Chile? C’mon man! You’re a developed country! Undressed salad? WTF!!!
That being said, the quality of the food is still quite good, even when prepared without much flair or panache. They grow just about every kind of produce imaginable in Chile, so everything is very fresh. So even when things are prepared very simply, like a sautéed sea bream with (undressed!) avocado salad on the side, it’s still quite good. And you can always get the kind of modern preparation at upscale places, which will cost you just a fraction of what it would back home.
On Sunday I caught my bus to Mendoza. We can chalk this one up as yet another drive that is worth taking simply for the views, regardless of whether you need to get anywhere or not. Chile’s Maipo wine region is right by the city (it’s so close you can take a taxi to some of the wineries), so we passed though that on the way. Central Chile is a desert, so I got some really interesting photos of vineyards with the desert mountains in the background. The portion of the drive right before we got into Argentina was also a stunner. It’s a good thing Laura wasn’t with me, as you have to make about 30 hairpin turns in about 10 minutes for the steep climb right before the border, which given her bus travel issues would have undoubtedly ended with her lunch on the floor.
I also got some nice snaps on the Argentina side. I’ll get everything posted ASAP.
In my 2 1/2 days there I never noticed too much damage in either Santiago or Valparaiso. Aside from the airport, I saw two bridge overpasses which had large fissures where the bridge met the land (although both were still open for traffic), one museum whose facade had crumbled a bit, and maybe 4-5 large broken pane glass windows. A few sights were also closed, including the museum with the crumbling facade, one other museum in Viña del Mar, the cable car that takes you to the top of the big hill in Santiago, and another hilltop viewpoint in the city. Aside from these few things, though, it seemed to be pretty much business as usual in the area. All the other museums were open and full of people, the restaurants and cafes were filled with people eating, drinking, and relaxing all weekend, and the night club I went to was packed with people at 3:00 AM. So while the quake obviously is dominating the news and conversation there, everyone seems to be moving on.
The city was really enjoyable. It's a pretty modern city, with lots of older beaux arts and other historical architecture thrown in which gives it a really nice flavor. I spent a full day walking the city center, and another day taking a day trip to Valparaíso. Valpo was really quaint, too, although it didn't pack quite the punch I was expecting. Being a UNESCO World Heritage City, I was expecting something really amazing. It was certainly nice and worth visiting, but I'm glad I didn't plan to spend more time there as it didn't quite live up to the extremely high expectations I had for it.
The food was generally pretty good in Chile, too. After spending 15 days in Colombia I was certainly ready for something different. The grub in Colombia was nice, but I had become thoroughly burnt-out on fried food after my first week (they deep fry damn near everything in that county outside of the really high-end restaurants). So I was really looking forward to some of that fresh Chilean seafood. The place I went on my first night didn’t disappoint. I had a grilled octopus with ratatouille and some kind of egg dough construction, a sautéed sea bass filet with assorted mushrooms and a porcini mushroom broth, and a light banana and mango soup with fresh berries for dessert, all of which were killer. I paired these with a Chilean Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, each of which drank like a bottle of fine Burgundy 3 times their price. If I recall correctly, this grand feast cost me a total of around $45 US.
After this I was figuring I was going to eat like a king every meal of the day the rest of my vacation. Unfortunately, it turns out the place I went to isn’t representative of the food scene as a whole. I went to the Santiago fish market the next morning, during which I hit one of the little mom-and pop stalls around the market for what I was expecting to be the best piece of swordfish I’d ever had. What they brought me smelled pretty bad, and tasted even worse. It took me 10 minutes to wash the nasty taste out of my mouth. They replaced it with something else, which while not rancid like the first item, was still a little underwhelming. I had a similar experience that night for dinner. At this place I ordered a Patagonian deer tenderloin which came out overcooked. I also had a salad with proscuitto which came out undressed and, as far as I could tell, unseasoned. Now, I can cut Colombia some slack from my particular brand of food fascism, but Chile? C’mon man! You’re a developed country! Undressed salad? WTF!!!
That being said, the quality of the food is still quite good, even when prepared without much flair or panache. They grow just about every kind of produce imaginable in Chile, so everything is very fresh. So even when things are prepared very simply, like a sautéed sea bream with (undressed!) avocado salad on the side, it’s still quite good. And you can always get the kind of modern preparation at upscale places, which will cost you just a fraction of what it would back home.
On Sunday I caught my bus to Mendoza. We can chalk this one up as yet another drive that is worth taking simply for the views, regardless of whether you need to get anywhere or not. Chile’s Maipo wine region is right by the city (it’s so close you can take a taxi to some of the wineries), so we passed though that on the way. Central Chile is a desert, so I got some really interesting photos of vineyards with the desert mountains in the background. The portion of the drive right before we got into Argentina was also a stunner. It’s a good thing Laura wasn’t with me, as you have to make about 30 hairpin turns in about 10 minutes for the steep climb right before the border, which given her bus travel issues would have undoubtedly ended with her lunch on the floor.
I also got some nice snaps on the Argentina side. I’ll get everything posted ASAP.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Salento, Valle de Corcoca, and Bogota
After Medellín I headed to Salento, a small town in the Zona Cafeteria. I was considering plopping down a little extra cash and flying, but I’m really glad I didn’t, as I got in a great conversation with a charming woman that lives in the area and because, much as was the case with Santa Fe, the bus ride there had some really amazing scenery. In Colombia it appears that the bus rides are attractions in themselves.
It just got better from there. Salento is a small town in the region of the country where most of the coffee is produced. It was a puny little town, surrounded by coffee plantations and located nearby the Valle de Corcora. I was only there for one day and two nights. The first thing I did on the day I was there was take a long 6 hr hike in the Valle de Corcora. A lot of the scenery I saw on the hike was almost unbelievably beautiful. Just check out the photos and you’ll see (bear in mind, though, that it still doesn’t look nearly as impressive in the photos as it does in person).
In the afternoon I took a tour of a finca (coffee farm) run by the same British chap that owns the hostel I stayed in. He was a pretty engaging guy and the tour was really fascinating, even for a non-coffee drinker like me. The farm itself was really beautiful, too. I spent a fair amount of time just walking around the finca taking photos after he finished his tour.
One thing that really surprised me was the town itself. I arrived after dark, so I was under the impression that that town was in a valley or otherwise relatively flat area. I was pretty shocked when I woke up the next morning and walked out of my room and saw that the town was perched on the top of a mountain with hillsides and coffee plantations sprawled around it.
The next morning I took a short bus ride to Armenia where I caught my flight to Bogota.
I didn’t have much time in Bogota, and I knew I was going to have to spend a fair amount of time sorting out the deal with Chile, so I headed right out into sightseeing when I got there. Despite not getting in until 3:00, I was able to tick off all the historic sights on the first day. I was also able to catch up with a friend of a friend that happened to be in town for dinner and drinks.
One day two I did a couple other standard tourist things, and then spent a fair amount of time shopping. I won’t say what as I don’t want to spoil the surprise for somebody that I know will be reading this, but let’s just say it was good.
Bogota wasn’t my favorite city to visit, but I think that was partly due to where I was based and had to spend most of my time due to the locations of the tourist sights. Unlike the neighborhood where I stayed in Medellín, the neighborhood I was in was pretty gritty. Unfortunately, due to the short amount of time I had and the Chili mess, I had little time to explore the nicer neighborhoods farther north. I was able to get there for dinner with my pal on night one, though, and from what I saw I was pretty impressed. There were lots of nice restaurants and little cafes, which as I understand it is pretty characteristic of that part of town. I also didn’t have any time to really party at all. I suppose I’ll have to be a little more thorough next time I’m around.
It just got better from there. Salento is a small town in the region of the country where most of the coffee is produced. It was a puny little town, surrounded by coffee plantations and located nearby the Valle de Corcora. I was only there for one day and two nights. The first thing I did on the day I was there was take a long 6 hr hike in the Valle de Corcora. A lot of the scenery I saw on the hike was almost unbelievably beautiful. Just check out the photos and you’ll see (bear in mind, though, that it still doesn’t look nearly as impressive in the photos as it does in person).
In the afternoon I took a tour of a finca (coffee farm) run by the same British chap that owns the hostel I stayed in. He was a pretty engaging guy and the tour was really fascinating, even for a non-coffee drinker like me. The farm itself was really beautiful, too. I spent a fair amount of time just walking around the finca taking photos after he finished his tour.
One thing that really surprised me was the town itself. I arrived after dark, so I was under the impression that that town was in a valley or otherwise relatively flat area. I was pretty shocked when I woke up the next morning and walked out of my room and saw that the town was perched on the top of a mountain with hillsides and coffee plantations sprawled around it.
The next morning I took a short bus ride to Armenia where I caught my flight to Bogota.
I didn’t have much time in Bogota, and I knew I was going to have to spend a fair amount of time sorting out the deal with Chile, so I headed right out into sightseeing when I got there. Despite not getting in until 3:00, I was able to tick off all the historic sights on the first day. I was also able to catch up with a friend of a friend that happened to be in town for dinner and drinks.
One day two I did a couple other standard tourist things, and then spent a fair amount of time shopping. I won’t say what as I don’t want to spoil the surprise for somebody that I know will be reading this, but let’s just say it was good.
Bogota wasn’t my favorite city to visit, but I think that was partly due to where I was based and had to spend most of my time due to the locations of the tourist sights. Unlike the neighborhood where I stayed in Medellín, the neighborhood I was in was pretty gritty. Unfortunately, due to the short amount of time I had and the Chili mess, I had little time to explore the nicer neighborhoods farther north. I was able to get there for dinner with my pal on night one, though, and from what I saw I was pretty impressed. There were lots of nice restaurants and little cafes, which as I understand it is pretty characteristic of that part of town. I also didn’t have any time to really party at all. I suppose I’ll have to be a little more thorough next time I’m around.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Continuing to Chile
As it turns out, my flight tomorrow to Santiago is still going. The airport has had significant damage to its passenger terminal, so they've had to create makeshift facilities and as a result are only operating with 20% of their originally scheduled traffic, but as it turns out my flight is one of the 20% that is going. So for better or for worse, I’m continuing as originally planned.
So long as I can get there, things should be OK. I’ve touched base with the hostel where I’m staying and a friend that happened to also be there this week and it sounds like the things in the places we are going and the basic infrastructure of the city and public transportation systems (with the exception of the airport) are pretty much back to business as usual. Of course the hostel owner might have a biased opinion on this as she doesn’t want to lose any more income streams than she already is as a result of the earthquake. I can always play it by ear, and if I find it’s not appropriate for me to be there once I arrive I can always bump up my plans and catch my bus to Mendoza the very next morning after I arrive (I was told the bus system in Santiago has been fully operational since Monday).
The biggest problem at this point was not being able to meet Laura there as we had planned. She wasn’t as lucky as I, and her flight was canceled. She was able to set up some alternate flights so she can continue the rest of her vacation, but we won’t be meeting in Chile. As a result I had to cancel a day trip with a private driver to a few wineries, Valparaíso, and Viña del Mar. I’m pretty bummed out about it as I was really looking forward to it, but I’m certainly not dwelling on it. In comparison to all the people in the parts of Chile that were hard-hit by the quake and have had their homes destroyed or lost family and friends, messing up my trip itinerary a bit is a rather insignificant issue.
So long as I can get there, things should be OK. I’ve touched base with the hostel where I’m staying and a friend that happened to also be there this week and it sounds like the things in the places we are going and the basic infrastructure of the city and public transportation systems (with the exception of the airport) are pretty much back to business as usual. Of course the hostel owner might have a biased opinion on this as she doesn’t want to lose any more income streams than she already is as a result of the earthquake. I can always play it by ear, and if I find it’s not appropriate for me to be there once I arrive I can always bump up my plans and catch my bus to Mendoza the very next morning after I arrive (I was told the bus system in Santiago has been fully operational since Monday).
The biggest problem at this point was not being able to meet Laura there as we had planned. She wasn’t as lucky as I, and her flight was canceled. She was able to set up some alternate flights so she can continue the rest of her vacation, but we won’t be meeting in Chile. As a result I had to cancel a day trip with a private driver to a few wineries, Valparaíso, and Viña del Mar. I’m pretty bummed out about it as I was really looking forward to it, but I’m certainly not dwelling on it. In comparison to all the people in the parts of Chile that were hard-hit by the quake and have had their homes destroyed or lost family and friends, messing up my trip itinerary a bit is a rather insignificant issue.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Medellín
So after my initial couple hours in Medellín, I got a more balanced perspective on the city. As it turns out, the part of the city I'm staying in, El Poblado, is one of the nicest neighborhoods and isn't particularly representative of the city. You've got a pretty wide range from the upscale neighborhoods the likes of which I was staying in, to more middle-class areas, to grittier parts and some of the slums up in the hills surrounding the city. Overall, I really loved it there, though. It's a stunning place, there's lots of great nightlife, everybody is friendly, and the climate is fantastic. It was definitely a nice change from the sticky, steamy heat of Cali and Cartagena.
I hit most of the tourist highlights on the first day. It was raining on and off, so I didn't make real good progress. In general, the weather wasn't too great when I was there and it was often rainy or overcast. This was a big problem as I really wanted to go paragliding while I was there. With all the mountains surrounding the city and great thermal air currents, Medellín is a major center for this, and you can do it pretty cheap.
On day two I hit the botanical garden in the late morning/early afternoon. After that was the highlight of the city, riding the city’s metro system. Sounds a little boring, but it was an amazing experience. They've got a regular light rail system like larger European cities which is very modern, new, and efficient. There are just two lines, one that runs the length of the valley and a short one that runs perpendicular to it. There’s nothing special about that. The cool part is the two new lines that connect to the rail lines. This is the city’s new MetroCable system which is really just a gondola-style ski lift system which is used to connect the rail system to the neighborhoods way up in the hills. One of these two lines gets up high enough so that my ears popped. I spent the better part of the afternoon riding both lines and up taking photos. I got some fantastic pictures of the city. These probably provide you the best idea of the scope of the city and how it's built into the mountainsides surrounding the river.
At the top of each line I got out and walked around a bit. The top of one of the lines seems to be a new development area where they are constructing a bunch of new condos. However, the other line leads directly to a relatively poor neighborhood, where most of the houses have corrugated metal roofs with bricks laid down on them, apparently to weigh them down and keep them from blowing away. This is pretty typical in Medellín. The nicer neighborhoods are generally down in the valley and the poorest areas are located up in the hills where the accessibility (at least prior to MetroCable) was very poor. Needless to say it isn't the safest place for a lone gringo to go walking around, and as such I kept within a couple blocks of the MetroCable station and was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible with my camera and hence didn't get too many photos. The ones I did get turned out really great, though.
On day three the conditions were finally good enough for paragliding. I say good enough, as they were hardly ideal. On a sunny day the upward thermal drafts allow you to take off from one of the surrounding mountains, at which point in time the currents will catch you and carry you even higher, allowing you to actually land at the same point at which you originally took off. As it was, though, the currents weren't strong enough and as a result we did a slow downward spiral into the city, landing in a field in the valley. This actually worked out better for me, as it meant I didn't have to take a taxi or bus both ways on the long trip up the mountain, and got dropped off within about a mile of the metro system. Aside from the cab driver that hustled me a little on the trip up the mountain, my only complaint would be the landing site. There were horses grazing in the field, and thus we landed in big piles of horse shit. Luckily the only thing that was in contact with the ground was my shoes and the paragliding seat. Because the pilot had to fold up and put away his equipment that landed in the grass, I was a little hesitant to shake his hand when I was done. I did it anyways, but let's just say that I washed my hands very thoroughly before lunch.
In the afternoon I went to a large forest preserve which is connected to the city by another extension to the MetroCable system. The place is largely under construction, so there wasn't too much to see. The cable ride there was probably about the most interesting part. The view when you go over the ridge of the mountain and first see the city beneath you is really breathtaking.
On Saturday I took a day trip to Santa Fe de Antioquia. It's a quaint little colonial town about 1.5 hours from Medellín. It was a cute little place, although it was hotter than Hades there (apparently people from the city go there on the weekend to soak up the heat and sun and go swimming). It was definitely worth going, though, if for no other reason than because it had per capita the highest concentration of Colombian hotties I had yet to see on the trip. There was also some amazing mountain scenery I was able to take in from the bus on the way there. In addition, I met a new friend on the bus. We ended up grabbing dinner that night, and went out for drinks and hit a night club afterward. The two of us polished off an entire bottle of Don Julio at the first bar, and we made pretty good headway into a half bottle of Scotch at the night club, so it ended up being a pretty fun evening. Pretty expensive, but definitely fun.
I hit most of the tourist highlights on the first day. It was raining on and off, so I didn't make real good progress. In general, the weather wasn't too great when I was there and it was often rainy or overcast. This was a big problem as I really wanted to go paragliding while I was there. With all the mountains surrounding the city and great thermal air currents, Medellín is a major center for this, and you can do it pretty cheap.
On day two I hit the botanical garden in the late morning/early afternoon. After that was the highlight of the city, riding the city’s metro system. Sounds a little boring, but it was an amazing experience. They've got a regular light rail system like larger European cities which is very modern, new, and efficient. There are just two lines, one that runs the length of the valley and a short one that runs perpendicular to it. There’s nothing special about that. The cool part is the two new lines that connect to the rail lines. This is the city’s new MetroCable system which is really just a gondola-style ski lift system which is used to connect the rail system to the neighborhoods way up in the hills. One of these two lines gets up high enough so that my ears popped. I spent the better part of the afternoon riding both lines and up taking photos. I got some fantastic pictures of the city. These probably provide you the best idea of the scope of the city and how it's built into the mountainsides surrounding the river.
At the top of each line I got out and walked around a bit. The top of one of the lines seems to be a new development area where they are constructing a bunch of new condos. However, the other line leads directly to a relatively poor neighborhood, where most of the houses have corrugated metal roofs with bricks laid down on them, apparently to weigh them down and keep them from blowing away. This is pretty typical in Medellín. The nicer neighborhoods are generally down in the valley and the poorest areas are located up in the hills where the accessibility (at least prior to MetroCable) was very poor. Needless to say it isn't the safest place for a lone gringo to go walking around, and as such I kept within a couple blocks of the MetroCable station and was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible with my camera and hence didn't get too many photos. The ones I did get turned out really great, though.
On day three the conditions were finally good enough for paragliding. I say good enough, as they were hardly ideal. On a sunny day the upward thermal drafts allow you to take off from one of the surrounding mountains, at which point in time the currents will catch you and carry you even higher, allowing you to actually land at the same point at which you originally took off. As it was, though, the currents weren't strong enough and as a result we did a slow downward spiral into the city, landing in a field in the valley. This actually worked out better for me, as it meant I didn't have to take a taxi or bus both ways on the long trip up the mountain, and got dropped off within about a mile of the metro system. Aside from the cab driver that hustled me a little on the trip up the mountain, my only complaint would be the landing site. There were horses grazing in the field, and thus we landed in big piles of horse shit. Luckily the only thing that was in contact with the ground was my shoes and the paragliding seat. Because the pilot had to fold up and put away his equipment that landed in the grass, I was a little hesitant to shake his hand when I was done. I did it anyways, but let's just say that I washed my hands very thoroughly before lunch.
In the afternoon I went to a large forest preserve which is connected to the city by another extension to the MetroCable system. The place is largely under construction, so there wasn't too much to see. The cable ride there was probably about the most interesting part. The view when you go over the ridge of the mountain and first see the city beneath you is really breathtaking.
On Saturday I took a day trip to Santa Fe de Antioquia. It's a quaint little colonial town about 1.5 hours from Medellín. It was a cute little place, although it was hotter than Hades there (apparently people from the city go there on the weekend to soak up the heat and sun and go swimming). It was definitely worth going, though, if for no other reason than because it had per capita the highest concentration of Colombian hotties I had yet to see on the trip. There was also some amazing mountain scenery I was able to take in from the bus on the way there. In addition, I met a new friend on the bus. We ended up grabbing dinner that night, and went out for drinks and hit a night club afterward. The two of us polished off an entire bottle of Don Julio at the first bar, and we made pretty good headway into a half bottle of Scotch at the night club, so it ended up being a pretty fun evening. Pretty expensive, but definitely fun.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Cartagena and first impressions of Medellín
Cartagena was absolutely killer. The old city is amazing. As usual, you can check out the photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Colombia. I spent a full day and a half just walking around the old city and taking photos. It looks even better at night when they have the city walls and all the churches and squares lit up.
In addition to the ambience, the food situation was pumping on all cylinders there, too. This is where wealthy Colombians go to vacation, so there are tons of upscale and tasty restaurants. The highlights included a traditional turtle stew, some octopus and grouper carpaccios, an obatala beef stew (an traditional costeña dish). Just about everything here is served with coconut rice, which tastes fantastic. They must be putting something else other than just coconut in there as it comes out brown and has the taste of sweet spices like cloves. In addition, many of the restaurants were in 400 year old colonial homes or buildings. They were definitely more expensive than those in Cali, but still a steal by US standards. The fanciest and most expensive meal that I had was at this mod little place that would fit right in on South Beach, where I had the octopus carpaccio, oxtail braised in red wine with potato puree, and a couple glasses of Rioja, which came to a grand total of about $55.
On the first night here I met another new friend. We were eating at the same restaurant and started chatting, after which we hit a couple bars. We were also supposed to catch up for lunch the next day before left, but unfortunately we were unable to connect prior to her flight from Bogota. She's actually a Colombian pop singer. You can check out here music here: http://www.hannalatina.com
On the second full day in town I went to a giant mud volcano (don't ask me about the geology behind this, I have no idea). It's not too hot so you can get right in and swim (wallow) around. It was great fun, although I did somewhat regret my decision to dunk my whole head into it.
After the volcano, I was able to hit the beach for a short while. Beaches bore me a bit, so I didn't stick around too long. Just took a couple photos, went for a swim, got a little workout and stretch in on the sand, and headed out.
I just got into Medellín and am finishing this post while I'm waiting for the hostel to clean up my room. This is a great place--very stylish and upscale. It looks more like a modern upscale boutique hotel than a hostel. From what little I've seen, the city is absolutely amazing, too. The entire city is surrounded by lush green mountains, which you have to drive over when you come in from the airport. The taxi turned a bend at the top of one of the mountains, as which point you're looking straight down at what appeared to be a full kilometer at this huge city of 2.5 million people filled with skyscrapers. My jaw nearly hit the floor of the taxi. What little I've seen inside the city so far looks great, too. The neighborhood I'm in is covered with trees, has several parks with modern sculpture, and is filled with trendy-looking restaurants and boutiques (not to mention a fair number of Colombian hotties I spied walking the streets). I'm pretty glad I had planned to spend 4 full days here, as it appears I won’t have any problems filling the time.
In addition to the ambience, the food situation was pumping on all cylinders there, too. This is where wealthy Colombians go to vacation, so there are tons of upscale and tasty restaurants. The highlights included a traditional turtle stew, some octopus and grouper carpaccios, an obatala beef stew (an traditional costeña dish). Just about everything here is served with coconut rice, which tastes fantastic. They must be putting something else other than just coconut in there as it comes out brown and has the taste of sweet spices like cloves. In addition, many of the restaurants were in 400 year old colonial homes or buildings. They were definitely more expensive than those in Cali, but still a steal by US standards. The fanciest and most expensive meal that I had was at this mod little place that would fit right in on South Beach, where I had the octopus carpaccio, oxtail braised in red wine with potato puree, and a couple glasses of Rioja, which came to a grand total of about $55.
On the first night here I met another new friend. We were eating at the same restaurant and started chatting, after which we hit a couple bars. We were also supposed to catch up for lunch the next day before left, but unfortunately we were unable to connect prior to her flight from Bogota. She's actually a Colombian pop singer. You can check out here music here: http://www.hannalatina.com
On the second full day in town I went to a giant mud volcano (don't ask me about the geology behind this, I have no idea). It's not too hot so you can get right in and swim (wallow) around. It was great fun, although I did somewhat regret my decision to dunk my whole head into it.
After the volcano, I was able to hit the beach for a short while. Beaches bore me a bit, so I didn't stick around too long. Just took a couple photos, went for a swim, got a little workout and stretch in on the sand, and headed out.
I just got into Medellín and am finishing this post while I'm waiting for the hostel to clean up my room. This is a great place--very stylish and upscale. It looks more like a modern upscale boutique hotel than a hostel. From what little I've seen, the city is absolutely amazing, too. The entire city is surrounded by lush green mountains, which you have to drive over when you come in from the airport. The taxi turned a bend at the top of one of the mountains, as which point you're looking straight down at what appeared to be a full kilometer at this huge city of 2.5 million people filled with skyscrapers. My jaw nearly hit the floor of the taxi. What little I've seen inside the city so far looks great, too. The neighborhood I'm in is covered with trees, has several parks with modern sculpture, and is filled with trendy-looking restaurants and boutiques (not to mention a fair number of Colombian hotties I spied walking the streets). I'm pretty glad I had planned to spend 4 full days here, as it appears I won’t have any problems filling the time.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Cali & Popayán
I ended up getting into Cali right on time on Wednesday. By the time I get checked into my hostel and situated, though, it was already 11:00 PM. At that hour on a weekday it's pretty slow in town, and I ended up hitting a dive bar in the neighborhood I was staying in. I ended up meeting a bunch of people, including an American who was taking a 4-month break from her job. After the bar closed we ended up going to a small party at the house of one of they guys there, an artist that makes handicrafts typical of his ethnic group. Apparently he's quite a well-known guy. My Spanish is hardly perfect, but for the life of me I had no idea what he was talking about. My impression is that he was one of these flaky, conceptual artist types, and I got the impression that whatever he was talking about would have been blather even if he was speaking in English.
My American friend that I met there ended up heading to Popayán together the next day. It was a several hour long bus ride with some fabulous mountain scenery on the way. Probably the best part was all the snacks. Up until the point where we got out of the city, whenever the bus stopped in traffic or at a light guys would jump on the bus selling little snacks like raw coconut pieces, fresh fruit, fresh squeezed juice, pastries, etc., and then jump off at the next stop. So you can score all kinds of little treats. It’s kind of like a drive-through, but in reverse.
Popayán was nice, although I wasn't bowled over by it. I got some good photos during sunset, though. You can check them out here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Colombia
We returned from Popayán to Cali the next afternoon. There was plenty of time so that I could grab a couple meals and do some walking around. I never got too much in the way of history or fancy photos, but I knew that was going to be the case before even going there. The appeal of Cali isn’t it's history or architecture, but the nightlife (and reputedly the women, although I didn't see anything special).
This was a Friday night, so it was perfect timing to hit the salsatecas. For everybody reading this that isn't one of my salsa geek friends I'll spare the gory details, but in summary the salsa style is very different there. As such I wasn't up to my usual standard, but I got by just fine. I noticed a fair amount of surprised faces on the ladies I was dancing with. As far as I could tell, they were thinking something along the lines of "Whoa! The tall white guy isn't that great, but he actually knows what the hell he's doing!" (which now that I think of it is probably not too different from what they're thinking at the Latin clubs in Chicago).
I had one more full day in Cali which I spent scarfing street food and milling around. I wouldn't say the food is fantastic, but you can get some really good stuff if you know what to grab. The highlights are all the tropical fruits. They’ve got all kinds of fruits that even a hard-core foodie like myself has never heard of (lulo, anyone?), and they're all fantastic. The overall quality of all the produce here is phenomenal, so you can just get some fresh fruit or fresh-squeezed juice at a little mom-and-pop dive and it tastes live heaven. Food-wise, he best thing I had there was a stew called sancocho with chicken, yuca, and green plantains. It was a very good thing that I liked it, as I had it twice in one day. I had it for lunch when I ordered it not by name but just as the daily special. I then went to dinner later, looked at the menu, and said, “Ah, sancocho, I remember reading about that. I really must try it”. I was mildly annoyed when they brought it out and I realized it was the same thing I had for lunch, but hey, it was good, so I got by OK.
While eating lunch on this day I started chatting with a Colombian gal that lives in Miami. The restaurant I was eating in was her brother’s place, whom she was back visiting for her niece’s confirmation. We ended up catching up later that night and heading out to the clubs, first to a salsa place and then a mixed club. This was nice as I didn’t have to worry about going to some of these places (many of which are a long cab ride outside of the city) by myself. I realized this might not be advisable when I got into one of the cabs alone the night before to be taken to a salsa club in the outskirts and the conversation with the cab driver went something like this (in my half-assed Spanish):
Ryan – “I would like to go to Juanchito, please. Chongó.”
Cabbie – “Where are your friends?”
Ryan – “I’m alone.”
Cabbie – “And you want to go to Chongó by yourself?”
Ryan – “Yes.”
Cabbie – “You sure?”
Ryan – “Yes.”
Cabbie – “Really?”
Ryan – “Um, maybe. Not a good idea?“
Cabbie (now realizing he’s about to lose a fare for a 20-minute ride) – “Oh, never mind. Let’s go.”
However, I felt pretty safe once I got there. You had to get frisked by security in bulletproof vests and walk through a metal detector to get into the club, so what’s to worry about? Anyways, I did feel a little more comfortable going out with a native the next night, so it worked out well.
I’m actually finishing and uploading this post in Cartagena. This place is incredible. I’ll fill in on details in a couple days.
My American friend that I met there ended up heading to Popayán together the next day. It was a several hour long bus ride with some fabulous mountain scenery on the way. Probably the best part was all the snacks. Up until the point where we got out of the city, whenever the bus stopped in traffic or at a light guys would jump on the bus selling little snacks like raw coconut pieces, fresh fruit, fresh squeezed juice, pastries, etc., and then jump off at the next stop. So you can score all kinds of little treats. It’s kind of like a drive-through, but in reverse.
Popayán was nice, although I wasn't bowled over by it. I got some good photos during sunset, though. You can check them out here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Colombia
We returned from Popayán to Cali the next afternoon. There was plenty of time so that I could grab a couple meals and do some walking around. I never got too much in the way of history or fancy photos, but I knew that was going to be the case before even going there. The appeal of Cali isn’t it's history or architecture, but the nightlife (and reputedly the women, although I didn't see anything special).
This was a Friday night, so it was perfect timing to hit the salsatecas. For everybody reading this that isn't one of my salsa geek friends I'll spare the gory details, but in summary the salsa style is very different there. As such I wasn't up to my usual standard, but I got by just fine. I noticed a fair amount of surprised faces on the ladies I was dancing with. As far as I could tell, they were thinking something along the lines of "Whoa! The tall white guy isn't that great, but he actually knows what the hell he's doing!" (which now that I think of it is probably not too different from what they're thinking at the Latin clubs in Chicago).
I had one more full day in Cali which I spent scarfing street food and milling around. I wouldn't say the food is fantastic, but you can get some really good stuff if you know what to grab. The highlights are all the tropical fruits. They’ve got all kinds of fruits that even a hard-core foodie like myself has never heard of (lulo, anyone?), and they're all fantastic. The overall quality of all the produce here is phenomenal, so you can just get some fresh fruit or fresh-squeezed juice at a little mom-and-pop dive and it tastes live heaven. Food-wise, he best thing I had there was a stew called sancocho with chicken, yuca, and green plantains. It was a very good thing that I liked it, as I had it twice in one day. I had it for lunch when I ordered it not by name but just as the daily special. I then went to dinner later, looked at the menu, and said, “Ah, sancocho, I remember reading about that. I really must try it”. I was mildly annoyed when they brought it out and I realized it was the same thing I had for lunch, but hey, it was good, so I got by OK.
While eating lunch on this day I started chatting with a Colombian gal that lives in Miami. The restaurant I was eating in was her brother’s place, whom she was back visiting for her niece’s confirmation. We ended up catching up later that night and heading out to the clubs, first to a salsa place and then a mixed club. This was nice as I didn’t have to worry about going to some of these places (many of which are a long cab ride outside of the city) by myself. I realized this might not be advisable when I got into one of the cabs alone the night before to be taken to a salsa club in the outskirts and the conversation with the cab driver went something like this (in my half-assed Spanish):
Ryan – “I would like to go to Juanchito, please. Chongó.”
Cabbie – “Where are your friends?”
Ryan – “I’m alone.”
Cabbie – “And you want to go to Chongó by yourself?”
Ryan – “Yes.”
Cabbie – “You sure?”
Ryan – “Yes.”
Cabbie – “Really?”
Ryan – “Um, maybe. Not a good idea?“
Cabbie (now realizing he’s about to lose a fare for a 20-minute ride) – “Oh, never mind. Let’s go.”
However, I felt pretty safe once I got there. You had to get frisked by security in bulletproof vests and walk through a metal detector to get into the club, so what’s to worry about? Anyways, I did feel a little more comfortable going out with a native the next night, so it worked out well.
I’m actually finishing and uploading this post in Cartagena. This place is incredible. I’ll fill in on details in a couple days.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Time to suit up folks
Ready for South America. Here's the itinerary by day:
1. Arrive in Cali late
2. Cali
3. Popayán
4. Cali
5. Cartegena
6. Cartegena
7. Cartegena
8. Medellín
9. Medellín
10. Medellín
11. Medellín
12. Salento and the Valle de Cocora
13. Salento and the Valle de Cocora
14. Bogota
15. Bogota
16. Santiago
17. Valparaíso
18. Santiago
19. Mendoza
20. Mendoza, get really drunk
21. Mendoza, get even more drunk
22. Córdoba
23. Buenos Aires
24. Buenos Aires
25. Buenos Aires
26. Buenos Aires
27. Montevideo
28. Colonia
29. San Clemente (Argentinean coast)
30. San Clemente (Argentinean coast)
31. Buenos Aires
32. Buenos Aires, red-eye home
For those of you that are geographically impaired, 1-15 are in Colombia, 16-18 in Chile, 27-28 in Uruguay, and the rest in Argentina.
1. Arrive in Cali late
2. Cali
3. Popayán
4. Cali
5. Cartegena
6. Cartegena
7. Cartegena
8. Medellín
9. Medellín
10. Medellín
11. Medellín
12. Salento and the Valle de Cocora
13. Salento and the Valle de Cocora
14. Bogota
15. Bogota
16. Santiago
17. Valparaíso
18. Santiago
19. Mendoza
20. Mendoza, get really drunk
21. Mendoza, get even more drunk
22. Córdoba
23. Buenos Aires
24. Buenos Aires
25. Buenos Aires
26. Buenos Aires
27. Montevideo
28. Colonia
29. San Clemente (Argentinean coast)
30. San Clemente (Argentinean coast)
31. Buenos Aires
32. Buenos Aires, red-eye home
For those of you that are geographically impaired, 1-15 are in Colombia, 16-18 in Chile, 27-28 in Uruguay, and the rest in Argentina.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Hhhhmmn
OK, one more post. Maybe I need to go to Japan next year. I'm currently sitting in the ANA lounge during my layover on the way home and marveling at just how mechanized, automated, efficient, spotlessly clean, and well, just how damn Japanese the Tokyo Narita airport is. There's a fancy machine for dispensing everything from fresh ground coffee to beer on tap. All the doors are automated. All the escalators slow down when people aren't on them to save energy. And there isn't a single speck of dirt in the entire place. It looks like you could eat off the damn floors here, including the ones in the bathroom. And speaking of the bathrooms, I've never seen so much technology go into a toilette. When I fired up my wifi, there were about 15 wifi networks in range, and every single one of them showed a full 5 bars strength. How is that even possible? Surely one of those hotspots is a ways away. I'm now convinced that Japan is magic.
Anyways, I'm going to go help myself to the sake bar. Later.
Anyways, I'm going to go help myself to the sake bar. Later.
Bangkok and Finish
So I'm done with my five days in Bangkok. It was a blast. I was able to catch up my second night here with a friend of a friend (thanks Disco!) that took me out and showed me the town a bit. He was out of town the next few days so after that I was on my own. In terms of sights there isn't a particularly large amount to see. The Royal Palace, Wat Pho with the huge reclining Buddha (why doesn't that lazy bastard get off his ass anyways?), and a couple other temples and minor sights are about all that's worth seeing as far as specific sights go. After that I just did a lot of wandering around and exploring the different neighborhoods. It does take a while to knock all the sights off, though, as the town is a complete pain in the balls to get around. The sky train and metro system there is great, but unfortunately it doesn't cover the parts of the city where the major tourist attractions are. Go figure. And traffic is a nightmare. There were several occasions where I got into a cab and asked them to take me somewhere and the cabbie told me to get out of the cab because he wasn't even willing to try getting me there. It's a pretty difficult city to navigate by foot, too, and I spent quite a bit of time searching around for the places I was trying to go. Some of this could maybe have been alleviated by catching more tuk-tuks. However, I had sworn off tuk-tuks within 24 hours of arriving in Bangkok, as I quickly became convinced that every tuk-tuk drive the city is a hustler and I grew pretty weary of dealing with all their bullshit.
That being said, the city is really great. It's got a great energy and there's always something going on. It's very modern, too. Well, parts of it are, at least. One of the highlights was hanging out at Bar Vertigo on the roof of the 59-story Banyan Vines hotel. The skyline view there was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me and I only got some half-ass snaps with my cell phone. I also enjoyed the bar as it was one of only about 4 places I’ve been to on this entire trip that had even half-decent service of wine by the glass. I had to pay out the nose for it, though. My single pour of a humble German QbA Riesling cost me a whopping $19 US. Needless to say, I didn’t stick around long enough to require a second drink.
I also went to the famous Damnoen Saduak floating market. Yes, I guess it is more of a tourist attraction than an actual working market any longer, but it still was an interesting stop and I got some great photos. I took a taxi there at 5:30 in the morning so as to beat the crush of tourists in the tour groups, and it allowed me to have the place pretty much to myself and the locals for about an hour or so.
The most interesting thing I did in Bangkok was catch a Thai boxing match. It was pretty fascinating to watch a couple guys do the traditional dance together before the fight and then beat the living hell out of each other 3 minutes later. It was a pretty colorful spectacle. It was also much humbler place than I anticipated. The stadium I went to was the premier fighting arena in the country, so I figured it would be relatively modern and polished. It’s actually pretty small and modest place. I would guess it only seats about 1500 people, has a corrugated metal ceiling, and hardly any permanent seats. It also doesn’t appear to have dressing rooms for the fighters. I stepped out to go to the bathroom, and as I walked to the back arena saw an open area under the stands with the concession stands to the left, the men’s bathroom to the right, and the fighters and the trainers for the next fights sitting or warming up right in the middle with all the spectators milling around them. You could smell all the menthol on the guys when you walked by. The other really entertaining thing was watching the action in the mezzanine and upper tiers of seating in between rounds. These are the areas where most of the locals sit, with well over half the people in the stadium being seated in the upper level. By sit, I actually mean stand as I don’t think there are any seats provided in the upper level and it’s just plain concrete steps. There was a gambling frenzy going on up there in between rounds, particularly on the good fights. You’d see literally hundreds of guys screaming and frantically flashing hand signals to one another between each round. I didn’t see that much passing of actually cash, but you could definitely tell that there was a lot of money changing hands.
Probably the best thing about the boxing stadium was the food outside. I grabbed some of the best chow I’ve had on this vacation from the street vendors right outside the main gate of the arena. The one thing that was particularly good was the black rice which was cooked in a hollow bamboo log. There must have been some kind of sweetener in it since it almost tasted like a dessert. Kick ass. I’ve generally done much better with food here in Bangkok than I did in Chiang Mai, and I’ve had some really great stuff. Yesterday I got this mushroom soup that had wood ear, enoki, shitake, and straw mushrooms in it that absolutely rocked. In the past few days I’ve also gotten some killer phad thai, some roast duck with sweet soy sauce, some of the best grilled chicken I’ve ever had, I a few other things which I really couldn’t identify but tasted great. I’ve done better with the restaurant food, too. On Tuesday I had a stir-fried whole crab with a spicy-sweet sauce which was out of this world. The other restaurant stuff I’ve had has generally been pretty good, if not fantastic.
I also took another cooking course. 5 full days in Bangkok was a little more time then I really needed, even at the leisurely pace I was taking it (I was staying up late and sleeping in a lot) so I filled the last afternoon with another cooking course. The only cooking school which had an opening was a pretty fancy place and was awfully expensive by local standards, but I’m glad I went. I got some good experience and was able to fill some gaps on my knowledge of Thai cooking and learn some knew techniques. The food which we made as this restaurant was really fantastic, as well. This was also one of the few places with a decent wine list, and I was able to try a couple Thai wines which they were pouring by the glass. They weren’t exactly complex or well-balanced, as they were super-rich and jammy, almost tasting like some kind of a dry dessert wine. However, they were nevertheless drinkable and I thought went well with the food.
So that wraps up my trip. I’m actually writing this during my flight from Bangkok to Tokyo. Hopefully I can wrap up this post soon while I’m still coherent. I’ve got a business class flight with free wine, and the ANA flight I’m on has 1 sparkling wine, 2 whites, 2 reds, 2 sakes, 1 Japanese whisky, and a plum wine on offer. Since they’re free and since I’m hoping to sleep all the way from Tokyo to Chicago, I’ll need to try every one of them on this segment. So I’ll be pretty bombed in short order here.
It will be nice to be back home, but I’m definitely going to miss:
- Being able to get a reliably good if not downright phenomenal meal for $2 US
- The coconut shakes
- The cheap massages
That being said, there are a few things which I definitely won’t miss, including:
- The pollution and the dirt
- The incessant heat and humidity
- The difficulty in getting a decent glass of wine, and when you can find it having to pay 2-3 times what you would in the states for something of similar quality
- The appearance that everything going on around me is some sort of scam to separate me from my money.
All said and done, it was a great trip. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I’ve got the feeling that I’ve blown the budget for the trip pretty badly. I hadn’t really factored in a private driver and tour guide for Siem Reap, 80-km taxi drive to the floating market and back, $450 in custom-tailored clothing, and $180 bucks in cooking classes into my original estimates. I think I really started to fall off the wagon the last few days in Bangkok, as too much free time on my hands equals too much time spent at the spa getting a massage which relatively speaking isn’t as cheap in the big city. It also didn’t help that the garbage Lonely Planet guidebook I was using was reliably low on costs for just about everything, particularly for accommodations where is many cases it was egregiously low. It was still much cheaper than another trip to Europe would have been, though. But I think I’ll hit another continent before I go back to Asia. Maybe I’ll do Central and South America or Europe again next year. We’ll have to see. I definitely wouldn’t mind coming back to Thailand and Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia were great, but I think I’ve covered all the things I was really interested in doing in those countries on this trip. I’d love to be able to do the mountainous north of Vietnam some other time, and I also think a trip to the islands and beaches in Thailand is a must-do at some point.
This will be my last post for this trip. Thanks for checking in. Hope to hear from everybody soon.
Ryan
That being said, the city is really great. It's got a great energy and there's always something going on. It's very modern, too. Well, parts of it are, at least. One of the highlights was hanging out at Bar Vertigo on the roof of the 59-story Banyan Vines hotel. The skyline view there was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me and I only got some half-ass snaps with my cell phone. I also enjoyed the bar as it was one of only about 4 places I’ve been to on this entire trip that had even half-decent service of wine by the glass. I had to pay out the nose for it, though. My single pour of a humble German QbA Riesling cost me a whopping $19 US. Needless to say, I didn’t stick around long enough to require a second drink.
I also went to the famous Damnoen Saduak floating market. Yes, I guess it is more of a tourist attraction than an actual working market any longer, but it still was an interesting stop and I got some great photos. I took a taxi there at 5:30 in the morning so as to beat the crush of tourists in the tour groups, and it allowed me to have the place pretty much to myself and the locals for about an hour or so.
The most interesting thing I did in Bangkok was catch a Thai boxing match. It was pretty fascinating to watch a couple guys do the traditional dance together before the fight and then beat the living hell out of each other 3 minutes later. It was a pretty colorful spectacle. It was also much humbler place than I anticipated. The stadium I went to was the premier fighting arena in the country, so I figured it would be relatively modern and polished. It’s actually pretty small and modest place. I would guess it only seats about 1500 people, has a corrugated metal ceiling, and hardly any permanent seats. It also doesn’t appear to have dressing rooms for the fighters. I stepped out to go to the bathroom, and as I walked to the back arena saw an open area under the stands with the concession stands to the left, the men’s bathroom to the right, and the fighters and the trainers for the next fights sitting or warming up right in the middle with all the spectators milling around them. You could smell all the menthol on the guys when you walked by. The other really entertaining thing was watching the action in the mezzanine and upper tiers of seating in between rounds. These are the areas where most of the locals sit, with well over half the people in the stadium being seated in the upper level. By sit, I actually mean stand as I don’t think there are any seats provided in the upper level and it’s just plain concrete steps. There was a gambling frenzy going on up there in between rounds, particularly on the good fights. You’d see literally hundreds of guys screaming and frantically flashing hand signals to one another between each round. I didn’t see that much passing of actually cash, but you could definitely tell that there was a lot of money changing hands.
Probably the best thing about the boxing stadium was the food outside. I grabbed some of the best chow I’ve had on this vacation from the street vendors right outside the main gate of the arena. The one thing that was particularly good was the black rice which was cooked in a hollow bamboo log. There must have been some kind of sweetener in it since it almost tasted like a dessert. Kick ass. I’ve generally done much better with food here in Bangkok than I did in Chiang Mai, and I’ve had some really great stuff. Yesterday I got this mushroom soup that had wood ear, enoki, shitake, and straw mushrooms in it that absolutely rocked. In the past few days I’ve also gotten some killer phad thai, some roast duck with sweet soy sauce, some of the best grilled chicken I’ve ever had, I a few other things which I really couldn’t identify but tasted great. I’ve done better with the restaurant food, too. On Tuesday I had a stir-fried whole crab with a spicy-sweet sauce which was out of this world. The other restaurant stuff I’ve had has generally been pretty good, if not fantastic.
I also took another cooking course. 5 full days in Bangkok was a little more time then I really needed, even at the leisurely pace I was taking it (I was staying up late and sleeping in a lot) so I filled the last afternoon with another cooking course. The only cooking school which had an opening was a pretty fancy place and was awfully expensive by local standards, but I’m glad I went. I got some good experience and was able to fill some gaps on my knowledge of Thai cooking and learn some knew techniques. The food which we made as this restaurant was really fantastic, as well. This was also one of the few places with a decent wine list, and I was able to try a couple Thai wines which they were pouring by the glass. They weren’t exactly complex or well-balanced, as they were super-rich and jammy, almost tasting like some kind of a dry dessert wine. However, they were nevertheless drinkable and I thought went well with the food.
So that wraps up my trip. I’m actually writing this during my flight from Bangkok to Tokyo. Hopefully I can wrap up this post soon while I’m still coherent. I’ve got a business class flight with free wine, and the ANA flight I’m on has 1 sparkling wine, 2 whites, 2 reds, 2 sakes, 1 Japanese whisky, and a plum wine on offer. Since they’re free and since I’m hoping to sleep all the way from Tokyo to Chicago, I’ll need to try every one of them on this segment. So I’ll be pretty bombed in short order here.
It will be nice to be back home, but I’m definitely going to miss:
- Being able to get a reliably good if not downright phenomenal meal for $2 US
- The coconut shakes
- The cheap massages
That being said, there are a few things which I definitely won’t miss, including:
- The pollution and the dirt
- The incessant heat and humidity
- The difficulty in getting a decent glass of wine, and when you can find it having to pay 2-3 times what you would in the states for something of similar quality
- The appearance that everything going on around me is some sort of scam to separate me from my money.
All said and done, it was a great trip. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I’ve got the feeling that I’ve blown the budget for the trip pretty badly. I hadn’t really factored in a private driver and tour guide for Siem Reap, 80-km taxi drive to the floating market and back, $450 in custom-tailored clothing, and $180 bucks in cooking classes into my original estimates. I think I really started to fall off the wagon the last few days in Bangkok, as too much free time on my hands equals too much time spent at the spa getting a massage which relatively speaking isn’t as cheap in the big city. It also didn’t help that the garbage Lonely Planet guidebook I was using was reliably low on costs for just about everything, particularly for accommodations where is many cases it was egregiously low. It was still much cheaper than another trip to Europe would have been, though. But I think I’ll hit another continent before I go back to Asia. Maybe I’ll do Central and South America or Europe again next year. We’ll have to see. I definitely wouldn’t mind coming back to Thailand and Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia were great, but I think I’ve covered all the things I was really interested in doing in those countries on this trip. I’d love to be able to do the mountainous north of Vietnam some other time, and I also think a trip to the islands and beaches in Thailand is a must-do at some point.
This will be my last post for this trip. Thanks for checking in. Hope to hear from everybody soon.
Ryan
Monday, March 2, 2009
Chiang Mai and Sukhothai
So I've hit my first couple spots in Thailand. Chiang Mai was pretty cool. After a while, I was getting templed out, but the markets were interesting and there was a really good cooking school that I took a couple of classes as. I also took a long day tour of the Golden Triangle area where Thailand, Lao, and Myanmar all meet. During the tour we stopped at a couple ethnic villages, although that was pretty commercialized. It's obvious that these villages now see tourism as their primary way of living instead of agriculture. A bunch of the villagers were dressed up in their traditional dress as if it was Halloween and when you took a photo of them they'd come up to you and say "5 baht, money, 5 baht". A bunch of the kids came begging for money, too. And of course there were little shops and stands selling tourist trinkets everywhere. This included not just things made in the village, but a lot of items purchased in the Chiang Rai market for re-sell. I'm glad I was able to see some more genuine small ethnic villages in Laos where tourism has not played such a corrupting influence on the daily lives of people there.
Other than that, Chiang Mai is about what you'd expect for Thailand. Lots of prostitues. Lots of massage parlors. I've found it's pretty hard to distinguish between the legit places and the spots where you get what I call the massage-plus treatment. I walked by a place on my second day there that was inside a big fancy high-rise hotel that marketed itself as a spa and also provided facials and body wraps and such, and also charged about double what most places do. So I figured that's a place where you can just get a really good massage (a massage-minus). So I go in, and about two thirds of the way through I'm being asked "Do you want extra special massage?". Hhhhmmmn, let me think about it.
More disturbingly, there are lots of she-males here. On a couple of occasions I'd be thinking to myself "Hey, that's a nice piece of....WHOA HOLD ON A SECOND THAT'S A DUDE!". I’d then go home and take a shower to symbolically cleanse myself of my thought crime.
I ended up getting some bespoke-tailored clothing in Chiang Mai. I was a little leery of custom tailoring after my experience in Hoi An. I was cruising around temples with some ex investment banker from NY I met (this was the 3rd newly unemployed investment banker that is now traveling the world for an extended period that I met on this trip), and we started a conversation with this guy from Singapore. He had flown in with his wife to visit this one particular tailor, which he said he does every 6 months or so. According to this dude, Chiang Mai has supplanted Bangkok as the custom-tailoring capital of Asia. He was the second guy that day that told me to go there, we figured we might as well check it out. We go, and it seems like they really know what they are talking about, so I order up a sport coat. The next day I go back in for my first fitting, and he's got the base of the jacket laid out with no arms and unfinished lapels, and aside from needing just a tad more space in the arm holes it feels perfect. I come back in on day 2 and the thing fits like a glove, and looks great. So I ended up having him put together an overcoat for me, too. I'm pretty happy with how both turned out. I do regret my choice in fabric on the sport coat a little, though. I was hoping I would get something that would be good for both work and casual, but I think it's not going to be that versatile. It will still be a nice item to have, though. I think that's probably the one limitation of the whole process, is that you have to pick your own fabrics and they have pretty standard suit materials on-hand that don’t work as well for casual clothing. If you want just basic stuff, that's fine, but if you want something more fashion-forward I think you'll need to show up with your own cloth.
Sukhothai was pretty nice. The historic park was really interesting. I rented a bike and tooled around for about 4 hours, in which I was able to cover about everything worth seeing. It worked out well as I was able to get an early start, get back to the hotel and clean up, and catch a long bus ride to Bangkok, which I'm on right now (and being subjected to a painfully bad Thai movie, by the way). This will give me just shy of 5 full days in Bangkok before I have to catch my flight home on Saturday night. This is probably 1 more than I need, but I suppose it will give me ample time to explore the night life and give me some incentive to hook up with some other travelers I can party with.
The food has been good here in Thailand, but it hasn't blown my mind. I've actually preferred much of the Thai food that I've had at home. Maybe that means I'm used to more Americanized stuff. Some of the stuff has been a bit hard on my stomach, too. It's not been uncommon for me to have a mild stomach ache after eating at nice restaurants. I think that it's just the ingredients, not the fact that the food has made me ill. Don't get me wrong, that's happened too. I've spent another few days crapping my guts out and I'm on my second Z-pack and box of immodium for this trip. It's the cost of doing business, as far as I'm concerned. As with Vietnam and Laos, all the best stuff I've had has been street food. To skip out on street food would defeat the point of coming here. Sukhothai has a really vibrant night market, so I hit that last night. I got some unidenfitied pork thing with sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and some stir-fried frog with garlic and pepper. Alas, the frog was not as tasty as the ribbit dished I had in Cambodia, but the pork was pretty good. And dessert was off the hook. I went to this little Thai-style crepe stand where they were making sweet crepes with condensed milk drizzled all over it. Killer.
However, there are definitely some things I won't touch. Since I didn't see the deep-fried hairy spiders that are supposedly so common in Cambodia, Thailand appears to be the winner for wierdest food I've seen. Check out the photo of all the deep-fried worms for sale. Eewww.
Other than that, Chiang Mai is about what you'd expect for Thailand. Lots of prostitues. Lots of massage parlors. I've found it's pretty hard to distinguish between the legit places and the spots where you get what I call the massage-plus treatment. I walked by a place on my second day there that was inside a big fancy high-rise hotel that marketed itself as a spa and also provided facials and body wraps and such, and also charged about double what most places do. So I figured that's a place where you can just get a really good massage (a massage-minus). So I go in, and about two thirds of the way through I'm being asked "Do you want extra special massage?". Hhhhmmmn, let me think about it.
More disturbingly, there are lots of she-males here. On a couple of occasions I'd be thinking to myself "Hey, that's a nice piece of....WHOA HOLD ON A SECOND THAT'S A DUDE!". I’d then go home and take a shower to symbolically cleanse myself of my thought crime.
I ended up getting some bespoke-tailored clothing in Chiang Mai. I was a little leery of custom tailoring after my experience in Hoi An. I was cruising around temples with some ex investment banker from NY I met (this was the 3rd newly unemployed investment banker that is now traveling the world for an extended period that I met on this trip), and we started a conversation with this guy from Singapore. He had flown in with his wife to visit this one particular tailor, which he said he does every 6 months or so. According to this dude, Chiang Mai has supplanted Bangkok as the custom-tailoring capital of Asia. He was the second guy that day that told me to go there, we figured we might as well check it out. We go, and it seems like they really know what they are talking about, so I order up a sport coat. The next day I go back in for my first fitting, and he's got the base of the jacket laid out with no arms and unfinished lapels, and aside from needing just a tad more space in the arm holes it feels perfect. I come back in on day 2 and the thing fits like a glove, and looks great. So I ended up having him put together an overcoat for me, too. I'm pretty happy with how both turned out. I do regret my choice in fabric on the sport coat a little, though. I was hoping I would get something that would be good for both work and casual, but I think it's not going to be that versatile. It will still be a nice item to have, though. I think that's probably the one limitation of the whole process, is that you have to pick your own fabrics and they have pretty standard suit materials on-hand that don’t work as well for casual clothing. If you want just basic stuff, that's fine, but if you want something more fashion-forward I think you'll need to show up with your own cloth.
Sukhothai was pretty nice. The historic park was really interesting. I rented a bike and tooled around for about 4 hours, in which I was able to cover about everything worth seeing. It worked out well as I was able to get an early start, get back to the hotel and clean up, and catch a long bus ride to Bangkok, which I'm on right now (and being subjected to a painfully bad Thai movie, by the way). This will give me just shy of 5 full days in Bangkok before I have to catch my flight home on Saturday night. This is probably 1 more than I need, but I suppose it will give me ample time to explore the night life and give me some incentive to hook up with some other travelers I can party with.
The food has been good here in Thailand, but it hasn't blown my mind. I've actually preferred much of the Thai food that I've had at home. Maybe that means I'm used to more Americanized stuff. Some of the stuff has been a bit hard on my stomach, too. It's not been uncommon for me to have a mild stomach ache after eating at nice restaurants. I think that it's just the ingredients, not the fact that the food has made me ill. Don't get me wrong, that's happened too. I've spent another few days crapping my guts out and I'm on my second Z-pack and box of immodium for this trip. It's the cost of doing business, as far as I'm concerned. As with Vietnam and Laos, all the best stuff I've had has been street food. To skip out on street food would defeat the point of coming here. Sukhothai has a really vibrant night market, so I hit that last night. I got some unidenfitied pork thing with sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and some stir-fried frog with garlic and pepper. Alas, the frog was not as tasty as the ribbit dished I had in Cambodia, but the pork was pretty good. And dessert was off the hook. I went to this little Thai-style crepe stand where they were making sweet crepes with condensed milk drizzled all over it. Killer.
However, there are definitely some things I won't touch. Since I didn't see the deep-fried hairy spiders that are supposedly so common in Cambodia, Thailand appears to be the winner for wierdest food I've seen. Check out the photo of all the deep-fried worms for sale. Eewww.
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