dreams are like rainbows

After 21, birthdays just come and go with no big fanfare, and that's the way I like it... As per tradition, I took some homemade baking into work, and was pleasantly surprised to find that Larissa and Steph had prepared a gift for me - a wedding planner folder/book thing, which I didn't already have and should come in extremely handy in the next few months (only four and a half now!), given my utter state of ignorance of most wedding traditions and etiquitte.

Anyway, for dinner we went to Sylvia Park because I wanted to go to Borders (easier to find a park than in town) and thought we would give 'Casablanca' restaurant (next to Nandos) another go. We'd been there once when it first opened and can't really remember how we felt about it afterwards, but we knew it wasn't one of jaw-dropping amazement, given how we hadn't felt compelled to return until now. If you haven't been there, the décor is actually quite 'authentic' Morroccan, and most of the menu items seem to be too. Being a special occasion 'n all, I decided to splash on a jug of sangria, which was listed as $35. Now I figured if it was that expensive, it must be pretty good, right? Well... James and I could see the bar from where we were sitting, and while we didn't actually see them pour it in, James saw the person hovering near a jug holding a bottle of Fanta... Hmmm...

They brought it over, and we both took cautious sips. First it tasted like how we thought it should - i.e. a kind of fizzy, fruity red wine. However, then came the distinct aftertaste of Fanta. As for the chopped fruit, let's just say there's no way it could've been soaking in the wine overnight (unlike the version we had at a Mission Bay restaurant once). No doubt about it, this was some shoddy work... But seeing as I hate making a fuss in restaurants, we decided to let it pass. Besides, I still got roaring drunk, and it provided some great LJ fodder! Still, we're probably not going to go back there again...

I just realised that I never wrote about what finally happened with the HK Airport-typhoon incident. Two weeks later is better than never, right?

Well, obviously I finally managed to get home okay... After 19 hours of delay we finally got off the ground and on our way. Arrived back in Auckland at 7am Monday morning, my brother picked me up, I had a quick change of clothes and then drove myself straight to work. Yes, that's how dedicated I am... actually there were some very important deadlines that day which couldn't be delegated, otherwise I'm sure I would've flagged it. After I dispensed with the tasks that needed to be dispensed, everyone urged me to go home, but by that stage I was fighting against sleep to avoid jet lag - if I could just resist until the normal NZ bedtime that night, I should be all okay for the rest of the week. Fortunately I managed to, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

The last two weeks have gone by in a blur. I could specify some of the things I did but perhaps not in a coherent order. Vehicle-wise this weekend has been 'exciting', one could say. When I went to pick James up from work on Friday night, he discovered I had a flat tyre... great! No idea how it happened, and for how long it had been that way, but I'm so ignorant when it comes to cars that it wouldn't surprise me if it had been a week-long deflation process. That's when I discovered my boot didn't even have a jack (haha, for some reason that sounds rude), fortunately James' workmate volunteered his, and without any sort of hard labour on my part my wheel was changed. It's great to be a girl sometimes!

Unfortunately the changed tyre was only a space saver, on which you're not supposed to drive faster than 80km/h, so I had to get a proper fix the next day. On Saturday morning I woke up bright and early (for Saturday) at 8.30am and went into Newmarket to find a solution. Long story short, I went to Beaurepaires, Honda Service, Pit Stop and Newmarket Tyre Service, and only got my problem resolved at the last place. The culprit? One nail... They got it out and repaired the puncture. Who knows how long it'd been there? Ah well, at least it only cost me one hour and thirty five dollars...

The other 'excitement' came when some Asian boyracer idiot in front of me decided to do a sharp u-turn downhill on a busy street with three cars closely behind, one of them me, behind me was jiaryn, and then behind her another car. Suffice to say we all had a heart-stopping, brake-testing moment, but everyone came out unscathed. Lesson? Assume every other driver is an idiot without common sense and give them plenty of distance.

jiaryn and I spent the rest of the day shopping and doing various other things, though with her cold/flu getting progressively worse, and me getting increasingly nauseous after the misguided decision to have two dairy-based concoctions within a short space of time despite being fully aware of my unfortunate and sporadic lactose intolerance, things went a bit downhill... However this was made up for by our nice evening at her house with some good friends, snack foods, and good ol' reduced cream/onion soup dip.

The unrelenting rain today kept me inside watching episodes of No Reservations on Youtube and making cauliflower gratin, which was highly satisfying. Next time I won't skimp on breadcrumbs though!

Finally finished sorting and uploading a selection of our India photos to Flickr! Check them out here.

Well, seems like even though I've had enough of HK, it hasn't had enough of me because I'm still here... Last night after waiting for ages at the departure gate, it was finally announced that the flight was delayed until 7.40am the following day. Usually in these situations the airline provides a free hotel stayover, but given that this weather had affected around 200 flights or something, all the hotels were already full and the only thing they could offer were meal vouchers. They urged any HK residents to go home and rest, and the next day they would be able to claim up to HK$300 in travel costs. I decided to go back to Mei Foo because the idea of sleeping in the airport didn't appeal much... Would normally have taken a bus or maybe even tried the MTR but they were pretty much gone by then, so went by taxi (plus could claim it back anyway). On the way we passed an another taxi which had obviously just crashed on the side barrier, the vehicle looked pretty bad but I could hear through the radio in my taxi that the police had already been called, and it didn't look like anyone was passed out or in mortal danger, so we kept going. Got hardly any sleep last night since by the time I had a quick shower and went to bed it was already about 2am, and then couldn't really go to sleep because it was so narrow etc. Got up at about 5.45am-ish to go back to the airport at 7am, I even checked on the Cathay website beforehand and it still said the flight was 7.40am, but by the time I got there they had delayed it again to 4pm... Well, I certainly wasn't going to wait around the airport for 9 hours so decided to go back to Mei Foo AGAIN. Dad was actually with me so we both took the bus back to Mei Foo. The plan now is try to get some rest, and then check the flights again before going back to the airport this afternoon... What fun!

The airport was of course a complete mess and the Cathay staff were all over the place working their ass off, so I didn't really bother to complain much because I can totally sympathise with them, a tropical cyclone isn't exactly something you can have control over and having thousands of people yelling and swearing at you probably doesn't help. Last night I even saw one of the Cathay girls fighting back tears because she was so stressed... anyway, I'll see what happens, let's hope I can still go to work on Monday because I have a TON of things to do........... 

Well, my prediction that being in HK would inspire me to post entries certainly seems to have been overly optimistic in hindsight, doesn't it? Only the fact that I've been forced to wait at the gate for my delayed flight for well over two hours now and the availability of free wifi seems to have spurred me to action...

Anyway, the previous two weeks have passed in a blur of shopping, eating, shopping, eating, and then more shopping, with a slight break for some sightseeing. Wedding-shopping wise I think I've accomplished everything I set out to achieve. Food wise I think there was slightly less variety than I had hoped for but that's not always possible when travelling in a group.

The main thing of course was to finally show James the Hong Kong I'd been going on and on about all these years, although I have to admit maybe it wasn't as #1! in every way as I had promised. The grass is always greener from afar, after all... I think I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say this again, it's nice to live in NZ (or similar) and visit HK. We both agreed that unless we were filthy rich, it would be quite difficult to lead the same sort of relaxed lifestyle we have in NZ. Even I get tired of shopping in HK. Of course if I lived here I would make a much greater effort to expand my activities such as exploring the plethora of hiking tracks in the region, but it's usually unfeasible given the short time we have here.

I don't know if I'll write much more for now for fear of losing everything in some technical disaster, and the fact that I simply can't think of much more to say, but I posted some photos from this trip to facebook. Flickr is of course still vastly superior for photo sharing but given we're still in the middle of posting all our India photos (pretty slack of us, I know) I didn't really want to upset the flow of our photostream... Have a look if you're interested!

P.S. I think this icon is pretty apt given my current situation, but I do intend to update my icons... one day...

Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any to write the first entry of the year! Having been just about three full months since my last entry... since I like doing things in bullet points, here are the various things I want to get down in this entry, in no particular order:

- 'Proof' (or pure coincidence) that bad things come in threes, today I, 1) forgot to bring my laptop to work, 2) broke my favourite mug, & 3) forgot to take my mobile with me when I left the office. It just wasn't my day...

- James & I got engaged just over a month ago now on 23 Feb, most likely going to get married in late September. I can't be bothered to go into the details because it's such old news now...

- Jack Johnson in Napier was pretty good except we blew a tyre on the way there and then had trouble changing it - mostly my fault for preventing James from stopping earlier when he felt there was a problem. Fortunately shops are open on Easter Saturday and Beaurepaires were there to lend a hand, James was adamant about going there because of Vince Martin.

- I joined a gym near my work and have been going pretty well except for from last week onwards due to various circumstances, but they're all excuses in the end, aren't they?

- I'm going back to Hong Kong this Saturday for a fortnight, will be back in NZ on April 20. James is coming as well but only for the first week, the focus will be more sightseeing and and less shopping in that week, and then back to shopping in the second, lol. Seriously though, I plan to buy as much wedding stuff there as possible to save money, yay for the strong Kiwi dollar!

- I now usually dispense news via facebook (e.g. engagement), which partly contributed to this journal's demise...

- Yes, James & I have been house hunting, it's been quite fun actually, and since we're not in an urgent rush it hasn't become 'the bane of our existence' like some of our friends have described prolonged house hunting to be... we do have some very specific tastes, requirements and price bracket too so it helps narrow things down.

That's all I can think of for now, though I'm sure there are some things I've missed... But be thankful that I wrote anything at all! Who knows, being in HK my inspire me a bit more though, like it does usually...

Well, hope everyone had a nice Christmas, even if the weather was crap as in Auckland... Today we went to the Boxing Day cricket and nearly got hypothermia from the cold wind and lack of sun in the main stand... we even rushed back home during half time to grab some jerseys, that's how cold it was. It was also a bit annoying how our juice and soft drink got confiscated at the gate, even though they weren't in glass bottles and weren't alcoholic, which was obviously a ploy to try and make more money from selling drinks. We did cave in and buy some horrendously overpriced hot chocolate because it was so cold, but that was it. As for the cricket itself, Bangladesh had a pretty good run but then collapsed at 201 all out, leaving us a not-too-difficult task of winning. In fact, it was so easy that the Black Caps pretty much cruised all the way to the finish. I mean, we got some 4s and 6s here and there but it was generally pretty boring, in fact, so boring that the drunken louts in the terraces started chanting 'boooooring... boooooring'.

In the evening we went to Sylvia Park and saw The Golden Compass, even though I'd read bad things about it I still wasn't going to give it a miss. In the end though, no matter how hard I tried to love the movie I just couldn't, it was just very... average. They skipped out a lot, and I understand there are time constraints in a movie, but even skipping out the most important part of the book, i.e. the ending - really? Then again, still not as bad as the horrendous movie version of Howl's Moving Castle, which is still the worst book-to-movie adaptation I have ever seen.

Back to work tomorrow! But it's only a 2 day week so I can't really complain. =)

Being the 21st of December today and the last day of work for most (but not me), quite a few people started drifting out of the office from noon onwards... So I didn't really feel guilty taking the last hour of two of the workday to play Guitar Hero in one of our larger meeting rooms. It was the first time I'd played and I was immediately hooked, just like I've been with all other coordination games... Anyway, after two or three songs I'd pretty much decided that I needed to buy one of these for the Xbox 360 at James', so off we went to EB that very evening! We even got a great discount from the two crap games we traded in for it, so that was even better...

If not for the fact that the console & game are at James' and I'm at home at the moment, I would surely still be strumming away... Though I'm sure the tiredness would start having an impact on my playing ability pretty soon! I'm also looking forward to buying Guitar Hero II (we have III) so I can get the Trogdor song! Funtimes...

Okay, so basically when I decided to stay in Wellington for that weekend in Jan and that James should come down as well, I thought he better book his flights as quickly as possible so we can still get those 'Smart Saver' fares ($89 one way). Very sensible, right? Because once you miss them you may end up having to pay 'full price' (of $280 one way). So we got all that sorted out. Great.

Then the very next day they launched their 48 hour domestic sale where I found it it was only $49 one way AKL-WLG! And for the dates we wanted! I was already a bit annoyed but it would only have suited one of the timings we wanted, so that offered some consolation. Of course, for Smart Saver fares you can't get a refund if you cancel, so re-booking on the cheaper fare was out of the question.

Just now I checked grabaseat again and their domestic sale is over but turns out they're doing a different $49 AKL-WLG special, which this time included the flight we did want coming back up.

In summary, we could have saved a total of $80 if I had booked the flights at their 'optimum' prices. But how was I to know?

Sigh, I guess the whole point is that if people are aware of stuff like this in advance, everyone would just be able to plan around it and Air NZ wouldn't be able to make any profits... Also, since I already don't have to pay for my flights because it's partly for work, we are 'saving' on that (not that I would've gone down in the first place otherwise). Finally, we have our Saturday night accommodation sorted at a friend's so that's another $80-120 we don't have to pay to a backpackers/motel/hotel.

Still. If there's one thing which is sure to irk me (and I'm sure it's in my HK genes), it's knowing that I could've paid less for something than I actually did. -_- Ah well, I've just got to live with it, and hope it doesn't happen again too much! And I could've saved myself all this trouble by not even looking at the Air NZ site - ignorance is indeed bliss...

Looks like it's going to be a busy summer for me, already have 3 out of Auckland trips confirmed with more in the works! So far, there's:
Jan 4-6: going to Wellington partly for work but then staying for the rest of the weekend for fun
Feb 2-9: going to Blenheim and then onto the Queen Charlotte Sound track, will probably also head down to Kaikoura
Mar 22: going to see Jack Johnson in Napier, will probably drive down (I'm supposed to aim to get my full license by this time, let's see how that goes...)

We're also going to try to go to the Bay of Islands sometime this summer, though let's hope the muggy Auckland weather doesn't spread to there as well... Despite (or because of?) all these plans, I'm not taking any leave over Christmas/New Year apart from the forced office closure on 24 Dec so hopefully I should get a lot of stuff done while everyone else is away! Then again, I'm sure things will end up piling up anyway...

Finally, I can't resist posting this - if you've heard of a turducken, you'll still be impressed by this monstrosity consisting of the following birds all stuffed within each other:


Mmm, 50000 calories' worth of poultry...

Seems like it's been exactly one month since I got back from India, but it seems like a lifetime ago... (Hinduism reference! Get it? LOL) Seriously though, I totally didn't mean to just abandon this completely, there were tons of things I neglected to mention in my hurried internet café bloggings, and I was also going to do a summary, but once we got back it was so easy just to fall back into the grind.

Anyway, I know someone who's going to India soon so it's as good an excuse as any to dispense my invaluable advice for anyone game enough for such an undertaking... Okay, it's not that bad, but some of the pointers below could help. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so I'll probably come back and add/amend it later on. Also, most of them are probably already in your Lonely Planet, but it's good to stress how important some of it is...

Food & Drink

Water

- only drink bottled mineral water and ensure that you're the person cracking open the seal for the first time when you get it. Good brands to look out for and stick to are Kinley (made by Coke), Aquafina (Pepsi) and Bisleri (also a big brand). However, the dodgier looking local water brands turned out to be alright anyway, just make sure it's sealed...

Chai - if you've ever had a chai latté in Starbucks, you'll soon realise that it's miles apart from the real chai in India, which is an entirely different experience altogether! We drank it everywhere and didn't really have any major stomach problems (or maybe we did, but we couldn't trace it back to one particular thing...). It's generally boiled pretty well though so should be alright. If you're on the Sleeper class carriage in the train it's fun to get fresh chai in clay cups which you can throw out the window afterwards.

Maximum Retail Price (MRP) - a lot of manufactured/processed items will have somewhere printed on it a 'MRP' which indicates Maximum Retail Price, but if you're in a restaurant or just a dodgy roadside stall they're almost certainly going to charge you twice or more. Unfortunately there's not a huge amount you can do about this, but it's good to know what it should cost. Sometimes the MRP is unsubtly rubbed off... Generally a 1L bottle of mineral water should only be 12Rs.

Chocolate in Ooty - this is a bit random but if you're ever in Ooty make sure you don't buy the local 'handmade' chocolate. It may look delicious in the shop window, but trust me, it tastes nothing like what chocolate should.

How to Deal with Dodgy, Deserted Restaurants - if you're forced to eat somewhere which looks a bit dodgy and you're the first patron there in weeks, or even the rest stop restaurants along the highway, it's a much safer bet to stick to vegetarian food. Paneer Butter Masala is just like Butter Chicken but with cubes of tofu-like cheese instead of chicken and a nice stand-in for real meat.

Breakfast

- Indian breakfasts are sorely lacking in variety, so I would highly recommend any Kiwis/Aussies to take some Vegemite/Nutella/Peanut Butter with them. I mean, depends on what you like. Generally you can get access to (under/overdone) toast, but they only give you butter and a sickly sweet jam to go with it. Parantha is kind of like a roti (flat bread) with a curried potato stuffing which doesn't taste too bad, but you can get tired of that pretty quickly.

Seafood - I would stay away from seafood anywhere inland because it's not likely to be fresh... However, in Goa you should definitely try the pomfret fish! It may be a bit more expensive than the other stuff, but it was delicious... Be wary of waiters trying to sell you lobsters though, they may well show you one thing and serve you another, but that's a hazard all over Asia I suppose. The crab I had in Mamallapuram was really good, so I would also recommend that!

 

Shopping

Pesky Street Hawkers

- everywhere you go, if you look non-Indian then you will be inundated with people trying to sell you crap. The best and I've found quickest way to get rid of them is just to pretend they're invisible and don't even acknowledge their presence. Same goes for beggars. It might be difficult at first, but all they're trying to do is guilt-trip you into buying their stuff, don't be fooled! Trust me, after a week of trying to be polite and saying 'no thanks' to a million people a day, the ignoring option will start being easier to do. Unless you're genuinely interested in their wares (but they're probably ripping you off anyway), better just to ignore them.

Bargaining - this is an essential skill if you want to be doing any kind of shopping (or even for payment of services) because most people have some ridiculous 500% markup on their prices. Depending on what kind of thing it is, you should generally offer at least a third of what they said the price was. As you haggle, make sure you don't end up settling for something which is only, say, 10% off the original price... A surefire way to speed things up is just to start walking away, at which point most people will start shouting lower prices at you. I must admit I wasn't great at this, especially when it was something I knew I wanted to buy...

Regional Specialities - try to find out from your guidebook what your destination is famous for and only stick to buying that, because otherwise the likelihood of being ripped off is considerably heightened.

Show-and-Guilt-Trip Sales Presentations - if you're on a tour it's certain to happen, and even if you're on your own you're likely to be pulled into one of these stores with empty promises of 'just looking, no buying'. It generally goes like this - they show you how they make what they have, what they have in store, and then shrewdly manipulate you into spending a fortune in their shop using mainly guilt tripping. It's best just to avoid these situations altogether by not going into those shops, but when you end up in one, just be firm and rude, if necessary. I mean, it's entirely possible you might want to buy some of their stuff, but depending on what it is, there's probably a way to get it cheaper. For example we bought a load of tea in Jodhpur, but when we were in a supermarket in Ooty we saw the same thing but heaps cheaper... It's helpful to shop around if you have time. Use your discretion and be careful, basically!

 

Travel & Transport

Travel Agencies - I have mixed feelings about these because even though I know they take a ridiculous amount of margin, it can take a lot of the hassle out of things. However, given the choice again I definitely wouldn't have chosen one for the beginning of our trip. It's especially important to avoid travel agencies when booking one off things like train or bus tickets because they're totally going to cream it, and speaking of which...

Night Buses - definitely avoid night buses when there is a night train alternative!! We went on two, and both turned very badly. Plus the fact that whoever's selling it to you is probably making heaps of profit. Unless you'e super strapped for cash (buses are cheaper than trains), it's just not worth the pain.

Trains - it pays to book in advance because they can often be sold out, especially in high season, but always book at the official ticket office (which should be in your guidebook). When you're waiting in the line random people might come up and tell you the train is full, then sell you a bus ticket with a hefty commission attached, but just ignore people who isn't the one sitting behind the window. Generally you have to fill out a booking form before you go up to the window to actually book/pay, so to avoid queuing twice, when you first get to the ticket office push towards the counter and grab a form first. Some train stations also have tourist-dedicated booking offices which helps a lot. On the train itself, 3AC (an air-conditioned car with 3-tier bunks) is the best option for most foreigners, especially on overnight trains. On a short or daytime-only journey it can be fun to go on Sleeper class a few times just to get the 'real' experience though, you'll get tons of stares and people trying to talk to you though.

Auto-rickshaws & Taxis - one of the most important things you'll learn in India is never trust a rickshaw driver, which also applies to taxi drivers. They will always be trying to take you to their hotel (to get comission) or tell you some tourist attraction is closed so they can take you somewhere further away, or take you to their travel agent friend to rip you off even more. Always agree on a fare before you start the journey, which should hopefully match what the guidebook says. Unfortunately you won't always know what's a fair fare, but if there are several taxis around it helps to ask around first to see if someone else has a better offer. However in many tourist attractions they seem to have formed a price-fixing alliance against tourists which won't help much.

Government Buses - we actually found these fantastic value for money when we were travelling around the south of India. At least they pretty much always stop at a bus station which is on the guidebook's map, and buses between major centres are so frequent that it doesn't matter if you miss one, just hop on the following vehicle... Of course the only downside is that they can be a tad uncomfortable, especially when going over the ubiquitous potholes on the highways or up the winding roads towards Ooty (very sore bum afterwards).

Local Flights - if you can, definitely arrange this yourself online at an internet café, because it'll be cheaper than through an agency (of course!). We went with Air Deccan/Kingfisher for our Delhi to Mumbai flight, and booking was pretty smooth, you just need your credit card, they give you a confirmation number, and when you show up at the airport you just quote them the number, and show them your passport about a dozen times and it's all sorted! Being in an air-conditioned guarded airport (only passengers can even enter the terminal) is a refreshing change from being in a noisy, crowded train station.

 

Accommodation

Booking Ahead vs. Turning Up? - Of course there's pros and cons to both. The pro of booking ahead is of course that you're ensuring you have somewhere to stay, which is super helpful for when you first arrive in the country, if you know you're going to be arriving in a town quite late at night, or there's a big festival happening and all the hotels fill up super fast. Booking ahead will also eliminate the worry of people rightly or wrongly telling you a particular place is full and leading you somewhere else for their commission. The con is that you may well get a better price if you just turn up somewhere and start asking about prices. But again, if you're wandering around with your 15kg packs people are going to start asking if 'you want see nice room?' which means they are going to get commission if you decide to stay there... Of course a problem arises if you're wanting to go where they want to show you anyway, and when you stay there they will demand a commission from the hotel, which equals a higher room rate for you... Turning up can also allow you to stay somewhere not mentioned in the guidebook which may also end up being cheaper and/or nicer. I wouldn't recommend that during high tourist season or if there's a festival though. Then again, sometimes you can get totally caught off-guard, such as the unavailability of a decent hotels room in the hole known as Coimbatore...

AC or Non-AC? - Sometimes a non-airconditioned room is perfectly adequate for cooler places as long as they still have a ceiling fan to keep the air circulating and drive away mosquitoes.

Tipping - of course this depends on how generous you are and what kind of thing the person's done for you. Quite often as soon as you arrive at a hotel there will be people jostling to grab your bags in the hope of a monetary reward at the end. If they're the kind who stands around and waits for you to tip them before they leave you alone, give them 10 or 20 Rs and that's about the fair amount. If they ask for more, they're just guilt tripping you so it depends on how firm you can put your foot down I suppose. In some tourist attractions such as the elephant ride in Jaipur they try to force you to give some exorbitantly high tip, but again, a tip is a tip which is up to the giver, if they pressure you too much just start threatening to call for the authorities and they should leave you alone...

 

Useful Things to Have

A Local Simcard - I don't know what I would've done without my Indian simcard, because we used it all the time. I mean, we would have managed, but it would've been way more of a hassle trying to borrow phones from everywhere. You can use it to book a guest house at your next stop, ask about bus or train times, or track down a missing camera... Of course it depends on how long you're spending there, but a prepay doesn't cost that much and it's always good to know you have something to fall back on!

Some Laundry Powder and Travel Clothesline - since washing machines are more costly than just hiring manual labourers, there's no such thing as laundromats where you can just put in a $2 coin for the machine and wash all your clothes at once. No, they have to be taken away by either the hotel or the laundry service shop and charge you per item of clothing, down to the last sock. As you can see this ends up being pretty expensive after a while... I would recommend washing at least your own underwear and socks in the hotel room each night as you go. Shower gel can also help if you don't have laundry powder.

 

Okay, I think I'll leave it there for now, more later!

Originally posted on clararar.vox.com

In the continuation of adding to our 'classic' book collection, in the weekend I bought The Complete Fairy Tales by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, published by Vintage (part of Random House). As I'd sort of expected, the tales are just as horrible and gruesome as Arabian Nights and the book of Indian folk tales I'd bought earlier. I mean, sure, most of them have happy endings, but not for the villians... As evidenced in the original, unsanitised version of Cinderella, which I've pasted below because I think it's well worth the read...

( No mention of fairy godmothers here... )

Such as not updating my LJ as often as I should... Well, I've been back just over a week now and India's already fading into my long-term memory. Getting back into work was easier than I expected, and so was eating the normal foods again, though I seemed to have developed an intolerance for over-indulgence in food... On Friday night I had dinner with my HK Dio friends, and even though we'd had a very deliciously filling dinner at Portofino, we still got gelato afterwards and then still went to have pearl milk tea at Hulu Cat, the last of which proved to be my undoing. Basically the pearl milk tea ended up coming back up the way it went down (James said in programming it's called a stack, 'last in, first out') which wasn't pleasant, but I felt a bit better afterwards. And I thought I'd be safe from any digestive system mishaps once I left India! Ah well, that should teach me a lesson about stopping when I've had enough, but I don't doubt I'll make the same mistake again, somehow...

Anyway, if you haven't seen these videos already, do check it out because they're HI-larious! My mouth was totally agape when I heard some of these responses... (And I do hope this was the minority of the population!)




I'm sure that they interviewed tons more people and just edited out anyone who gave a sensible answer, but the mere fact that anyone replied to the questions as they did on the video is a bit scary...

Now it's time to 'take rest' (as they say in India) and somehow summon the motivation to go to work on Monday. Somehow I already have social activities planned tomorrow, looking forward to catching up with my friends and continuing to eat normal food! Mmm, cow...

Here we are at KLIA, where there's free wifi, beef noodles, clean toilets, people who all understand English properly and don't do a useless head-wobble as an answer, no cows wandering around the terminal, no stench of poo and rubbish everywhere, no beggars, no hawkers, etc, etc... Wow!

Our last experience with the Indian public transport system didn't exactly leave a glowing impression, either. Basically a bus journey from Mamallapuram to Chennai Airport which should've taken two hours ended up taking three and a bit, there was some horrendous traffic jam and for a while we thought we might even miss the plane, but fortunately it didn't come to that.

Okay, we may have been a bit harsh on India, but it is what it is - a developing country, and we've still really enjoyed our trip in its entirety, but we're definitely glad to be back in civilisation! Now we have another ten hours to wait in this airport before our connecting flight to Auckland, fortunately we have internet and power so we should be set! There are still tons of things I want to write about the trip, which I'll probably continue to on this blog even after we get back to NZ.

Originally posted on clararar.vox.com

Sea Shore Restaurant, Mamallapuram (a.k.a. Mahabalipuram)

Here we are at the beach again, kind of reminiscent of Goa, except with slightly less polluted skies (thanks to the recent rains) and maybe a bit more amenities such as shops, restaurants and guest houses more conveniently located in a cluster.

It poured with rain basically the entire time we were in Pondicherry (cleared up the day we left) but it didn't really dampen our spirits much, since there wasn't much to see there anyway. Much of the time was spent hanging around in Coffee.com, and talking to Davide, our new Italian friend. Other highlights included seeing giant sewer rats, one dead, and later another live one which had a body about a foot long. When we saw it, Davide exclaimed 'Incredible India!', lol.

Yesterday at the Pondicherry bus station we encountered a bunch of unhelpful people in the effort to get to Mamallapuram, and also a fragrant drunk who had puke all down his arm. A security guard squirted a whole bottle of water at him, after which he stumbled away, barfing periodically on the ground. Classy.

When we got to the guest house I'd booked over the phone, I immediately got a sinking feeling when I saw the sign outside that said 'cheap and best', because that usually translates to 'crap hole', and we were proven right once again. All the dogs barking, people chipping away at rocks, the nearby mosque with its prayer calls and some idiots yelling each other throughout the night didn't really help either. In the morning a monkey nonchalantly wandered onto the landing outside our room and started tipping over bins to look for food. Fortunately we've found a much nicer place now closer to the beach, hopefully it should be a bit quieter as well...

Today we visited the main two tourist attractions in Mamallapuram, the Shore Temple and Five Rathas, which were very underwhelming. It also didn't help that every time you got close to either of them you had to pass through a gauntlet of hawkers, beggars, and people offering to be your guide. I totally don't care about being rude anymore though, any semblance of politeness is only used by those people as an opening for pushing you even harder for their own purposes, so it's better to just ignore them completely, which we're very skilled at doing now.

Originally posted on clararar.vox.com

Ram Guest House, Pondicherry

Here we are on the home stretch! Only about five days to go before we head back home, and fortunately there's only a four hour bus trip now between here and Chennai (Madras), where we're flying out of. The day before yesterday we left Ooty on the World Heritage 'toy' train thing, which was actually a bit underwhelming... Not as cool as the train from Dunedin, but I guess different enough for Indian standards. It was fortunate we got a seat in the first class cabin, because there was a bunch of idiots in the normal cabin who kept hooting when we went through tunnels...

The last stop was Mettupalayam, which we'd been strongly advised against staying in since it was such a hole, so we caught a bus to Coimbatore, another hole, but this one had the population of Auckland and many more accommodation choices. For some reason though pretty much everywhere was full, so we ended up at a pretty dodgy place with an over-friendly attendant who kept coming into our room to talk to us. I guess just for novelty value since not many foreigners would stay there.

The next morning, after much misinformation from various unhelpful people, we finally ended up on a bus to Salem, where we could then transit to Pondicherry. I'm surprised that 1) there's a town called Salem in the middle of Tamil Nadu, and 2) they haven't changed it to some other thing like they have with Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, etc, to rid itself of any signs of colonialism.

We were on those buses for nine hours, and since they were cheap government buses there were plenty of locals using them as well. We got to watch some great Tamil movies onboard, including the Indian version of Mrs. Doubtfire. In the south it seems that the ideal look for male actors is to be short, fat, sport that John Travolta Grease hairstyle, and of course have a great big moustache. You can tell that they don't have nearly as much of a budget as Bollywood because all the movies look like they were taken with some home video camera, with the fast zooming and panning etc.

The other fun thing about being on public buses were the stares - we sat by the rear door (well, door frame, there wasn't usually an actual door there) and whenever we slowly passed through a town, it was funny to see people's reactions as they noticed we were foreigners, their mouth would go agape and then they would nudge their friends and point us out to them. It wasn't much better on the bus itself, once there was this woman who just stared continuously at us (mostly James) the entire time she was there - about an hour. We should be used to it by now, but it's still quite disconcerting...

So far what we've experienced of Pondicherry is that, sure, there are some French buildings, street names, and plenty of French tourists, but it's still just like anywhere else in India - too many rickshaws, rubbish everywhere, and traffic chaos. We had lunch at a place called Coffee.com (but their website is coffeedotcom.net) which was almost like being in another country! The western food actually tasted good, and it has wifi, so that's actually where we're going to upload this from.

The place we're staying at is called 'Ram Guest House', except they mark everything as just 'Ram Guest', which is funny because seems like they're using it as a verb... Anyway, we mostly chose this place because the other budget accommodation are ashrams, which cater to hippies wanting to explore their spirituality... not really what we're after! The owner here asked where we were from, and then said he had been to the Pacific with the French military in the 70s during the nuclear testing, lol. There's quite a few French people staying here and we heard him talking to them in French, which was a bit unusual because he's Indian.

Last night we had dinner at this local place near our guest house, one dosa, a fried rice, and two drinks, very nice, filling, and only costing NZ$2 all together! Tonight we'll probably splash out on some French cuisine (well, I guess an Indian version of French cuisine) and the tax-free alcohol, but it'll still be much cheaper than NZ I'm sure. We'll meet up with Davide, an Italian guy we first met in Hampi, and bumped into again in Ooty, so that should be good. Actually we've talked to quite a few other backpackers in the past week or so, hopefully we'll actually see a few of them again in NZ as well.

Originally posted on clararar.vox.com

We just uploaded a bunch more photos, so go have a look if you're interested!

This afternoon we're taking the toy train (another World Heritage thing) down to Mettupalayam, and then staying the night in Coimbatore, before heading to Pondicherry, so will probably update again in a day or two. =)

Originally posted on clararar.vox.com

Reflections Guest House, Ooty

We went on the trek after all, and it would've been a lot better if the weather had been clear and our guide had been replaced by a trained monkey (since he hardly said anything the entire time and walked super slowly). We walked through some farms and tea plantations, and then to a top of a hill where we were supposed to get a great view over the valley, but we just got a great view of clouds instead. Ah well, I guess it was still good exercise!

Since it doesn't seem like the weather's going to improve for the entire region (apparently the monsoon has come back for a second hit), we're now thinking about flagging the whole Kodaikanal/Madurai idea, and going back to our original plan of heading straight to Pondicherry from Ooty, go to Mamallapuram, maybe lie on the beach for a few days, and then go to Chennai the day of our flight back to NZ - only a week away now! We're definitely ready to come home, though I don't know if I'm ready to go back to work, haha. Got to fund the next trip somehow though...

Originally posted on clararar.vox.com

Reflections Guest House, Ooty

We're currently in Ooty, and it's wet and miserable outside, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up in my entries, especially since quite a bit has happened since my last one... This is the first time that rain has really interfered with our sightseeing plans, but James says he almost doesn't mind because it reminds him of Auckland.

When we first boarded the bus that would take us from Hospet to Bangalore (where we would then take another bus to Mysore), we were initially pleasantly surprised to find the sleeping berth quite wide and, to James' delight, even long enough for Caucasian statures! There was a sturdy rack for shoes, and even a power point for recharging your mobile. We both thought these were good omens for our journey, but alas, it was not to be smooth sailing for us.

On all the long-distance buses we've been on, they usually make stops along the way to let people on/off, for the driver to take tea breaks, and for hawkers to jump on and push their wares in your face. So at around 4am when our bus stopped, we sort of both assumed it was just another one of those stops. However, after an inordinately long time I thought something might be up, and when I drew aside the curtain and peered around, the bus was practially empty. When we asked what was going on, some guy just kept saying 'change bus, change bus', so we groggily got our stuff (I couldn't even see cause I didn't have my contacts or glasses on), grabbed our big bags from the luggage compartment as well, and then got shoved onto another bus which was waiting behind us. There was also one other foreigner behind us as well, who had also no idea what was going on. Turns out our original bus had broken down, and we were being transferred to one which had left Hospet a bit later. Of course, nobody had told us what was going on, and even now I wonder if maybe they would've just left without us... I'm glad we didn't have to find out.

That already had us cursing the dodgy travel agent guy in Hampi who lied about the train being full, booking us on that bus instead and ripping us off by about 300Rs in the process, but our troubles weren't over yet, because it turns out our bus didn't even stop at the central bus station. It dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, where we had to take a rickshaw to get to the actual bus station. Once we got there though, things went relatively smoothly. I know I've complained a bit about dodgy people in India leading us astray, but for every five of these there's at least one nice, helpful person!

According to the Lonely Planet, Bangalore has a 'huge, well-organised Central Bus Stand'. I was expecting something akin to Britomart, maybe with helpful maps and signs, but this is India - what was I thinking?! It was absolute chaos, but I guess some sort of organised chaos... We asked some random person where the bus to Mysore was, and he actually sent us to exactly the right place! Once we got there, there were two or three buses with guys leaning out of it calling 'Mysore-Mysore-Mysore-Mysore' etc, we just chose the one which looked the least like it was falling apart, and off we went! Well, kind of. The buses all chose to depart at the same time and there were no lanes or anything. It was like a herd of cows all trying to get through the same narrow gate simultaneously.

We got to Mysore without incident, which was teeming with people due to it being the last day of the Dussehra festival. Seems there were a lot of local tourists in town to see the big parade, which was a bit like the Santa parade, except for with about ten times as many people, many of them drunken youths... The police were on hand to beat back the crowd, and of course there were people precariously perched on every high thing such as power posts, signs, trees, rubbish skips... There was a local who started talking to us (and some other foreign tourists), explaining what was going on etc, he was really helpful actually - at the end I half expected him to ask for some sort of tip, but miraculously he thanked us (for letting him practise English on us?) and just left! Wow. The parade itself wasn't that spectacular, I mean there were guys on horses and elephants and floats, but the whole thing had a fairly budget feel to it. Ah well, I guess we were lucky to have caught at least one big festival parade on our trip!

In the evening we went to the Mysore Palace, which was lit up at 7pm with 97,000 lightbulbs (they weren't even the energy-saving ones!). There were tons and tons of people around (due to it being the festival) and we really did feel like some sort of walking freak show. Everyone would stare and stare at us - I mean, that's happened everywhere we've gone in India, but it was especially bad in Mysore because of the sheer number of people around, and most of them were probably from the countryside as well and not that used to seeing foreign tourists. The hawkers were annoying too, there was one particular kid trying to sell us pens who followed us for about five or ten minutes, even after we repeatedly said 'no' and even walked really far away from where he first accosted us.

The next morning we went back to the palace to see the inside, which was very interesting because of the mix of European and Indian artwork, but was altogether a bit too gaudy and over-the-top. We decided to skip the 'famous' silk factories of Mysore given we'd both seen the ones in China and had no intention of buying any silk, and boarded a 2pm bus to Ooty, the most famous hill station in southern India.

What should've been a five hour journey turned out to be seven hours long, with lots of fun bumpy bits on the way. James and I were in the back row and in some bits I think my bum levitated about a foot above the seat! By the time we'd dropped our bags off at this guest house and went off to look for dinner, it was 9.30pm and the restaurants were closed, so we went without dinner last night - but I guess we hadn't exactly done much either, so it wasn't too bad.

Today we just wandered around Ooty, booked our train ticket away from here, visited St Stephen's church where a nice caretaker guy turned on the lights just for us (and didn't even demand a tip! wow), and then bought a ton of books at a shop called Higginbothams. We got Dante's Inferno, Treasure Island, Frankenstein, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (the original by Lewis Carroll), Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, The Man Who Was Thursday, King Solomon's Mines and The Lost World. I'm sure we won't get through all of them on the trip, but we both getting more into the classic sort of books, and they were just so cheap compared to Borders, that we thought we might as well! They're the proper versions too, not the pirated books they sell on the streets.

Tomorrow we're planning to do a full day trek with a guide, but I'm not sure if that will go ahead if the weather continues to be like this, so we shall see...

Originally posted on clararar.vox.com