RA:
man, i realized it's been since egypt and since i blogged, and when went back and read the egypt blog, i saw why - egypt really took it out of me. that was NOT a good place to start our travels in. but enough about egypt, with one side note: i have a fantasy of going back in 25 years, and egypt - now ruled by a democratic, left wing government that managed to completely turn things around, and clean up that god forsaken city, Cairo - is now an awesome place to visit. we'll see how that works out....
2 months in india also managed to drain the excitement of travel out of me. as we flew into Bangkok, i explained it to sasha. i believe that if you move, as an adult, to a different country, and stay there for long enough, the sense of "newness" is eventually gone, and the excitement associated with it is gone - perhaps for ever. so, it was hard for me to get excited about going traveling, and once we do get to places - they all look alike to me. it's kinda hard to explain - the architecture is different, the language is different - everything is different, but it's not NEW or exciting. it just... is.
India was..... well, just as i remembered it. dirty, full of people who look at you and see dollar bills, with some diamond in the rough places in there. and when i say in the rough, i mean dirty. although there were some pretty places we saw - Humpi comes to mind - the entire time there - Gokarna excluded - was marred by how hard it is to do anything. take walking, for example. i love walking. it seems to help my pain in my body. but in india, walking means you're walking in a cloud of smoke - cars, trucks, rikshas - a cloud of sound - horns blaring everywhere from anyone to anyone and anything. there are no sidewalks in most places, and when they exist, no one really uses them. so, a five minute walk out from wherever you're staying turns into something you just don't wanna do. and that's before you even started your day!
although India is a place that values the right side of the brain quite a lot - hence the many computer programmers - i found the vast majority of people there unwilling - or unable - to understand that there are other ways of living your life - something i was quite surprised by, considering how this is one of the cornerstones of Hinduism. see, in the Caste system in India - which although outlawed a while back, still exists everywhere - foreigners are BELOW the lowest caste. and because most of us were educated somewhere else, with a completely different set of values and rules, we simply don't follow what they consider common sense. so, they think we're idiots. interestingly enough, we also think of them as idiots - most of the time, not always, of course - since they don't follow our values and rules. so, both sides seem to think they are the smarter one of the two ;)
there are many things that india makes you wonder. such as, how does a country of a billion people not figure out a trash removal system that's better than just burning it. or how to build roads that aren't awful. or how to put people in a bus terminal help desk that speak english (one of the official languages of india), or even know information about the buses - to that guy, i was nothing but a nuisance, someone that bothered him as he tried reading his paper - not a traveler that might need help (HELP desk, dude!). sigh.
so, after a month of this, and 7 places in one month, we landed in Gokarna. of course, we missed our stop off the train, since there's no way of knowing which station you're in/on, but that's another story. as we drove into the town of Gokarna, i looked around and thought: "ahm, yuck. this looks just like any indian town i've seen so far, which is to say, dirty, full to the brim with people, and loud".
luckily for us, we realized the town is for day excursions only, and the beaches are where it's at. now, i've never been a beach person. i never liked hanging out on the beach - never been my thing. but here.... the beaches are beautiful. the people were super nice. restaurants with vegi food everywhere, and toward the end of our stay there, we spent quite a lot of time with a nice group of israelis - which i enjoyed. we got to go hiking every few days, did yoga 5 days a week - first time and type of yoga i've been able to do since the accident, and i found myself actually relaxing - from the stress the past month in India has put me in.
we stayed on Kudle Beach, (pronounced kud-lee), drank Rama Temple water, had our favorite spots where we became the locals, and generally got to decompress. i <3 that place, and will forever.
our next stop after that was Thailand - something Sasha's been talking about since we started dating. but first,we had to stop over in Bangalore and get a 60 day Visa for Thailand, since the one given at arrival is only 30 days. we ended up couch surfing with some very nice people, and some.... not great people... the first time i've met anyone through couch surfing i didn't like. Bangalore was... well, if you read my description of indian cities on top, you get the idea. i was happy to get out of there.
and now, Bangkok. as always, it took us a couple of days to find our bearings, but once we did, we're enjoying it. it's MUCH cleaner, almost no honking, and although the taxi and riksha (here called Tuk Tuk) drivers are still "devilspawn", as sasha calls them, they are a minor inconvenience in our day. we wake up late, do yoga if we're lucky, have breakfast, take ferry rides to temples, hang out with Limbo. much better.
tonight we're taking an overnight train to an island called Koh Phangan - well, it's actually an overnight train to a place we can take the ferry from. i'm envisioning Koh Phangan to be kinda like Kudle Beach, and i'm wondering - is that wrong? is it wrong to want a fairly easy travel, or does travel have to be hard to count as travel?
to keep traveling like this - for the extended period of time that we are traveling for, i realize that i would HAVE to find these kinda places every once in a while. but, to go somewhere that isn't as nice and easy as what i imagine kho phangan to be, there needs to be a draw for me. something to excite me, and make me WANNA go there. right now, i don't know where that place is/will be.
man, i realized it's been since egypt and since i blogged, and when went back and read the egypt blog, i saw why - egypt really took it out of me. that was NOT a good place to start our travels in. but enough about egypt, with one side note: i have a fantasy of going back in 25 years, and egypt - now ruled by a democratic, left wing government that managed to completely turn things around, and clean up that god forsaken city, Cairo - is now an awesome place to visit. we'll see how that works out....
2 months in india also managed to drain the excitement of travel out of me. as we flew into Bangkok, i explained it to sasha. i believe that if you move, as an adult, to a different country, and stay there for long enough, the sense of "newness" is eventually gone, and the excitement associated with it is gone - perhaps for ever. so, it was hard for me to get excited about going traveling, and once we do get to places - they all look alike to me. it's kinda hard to explain - the architecture is different, the language is different - everything is different, but it's not NEW or exciting. it just... is.
India was..... well, just as i remembered it. dirty, full of people who look at you and see dollar bills, with some diamond in the rough places in there. and when i say in the rough, i mean dirty. although there were some pretty places we saw - Humpi comes to mind - the entire time there - Gokarna excluded - was marred by how hard it is to do anything. take walking, for example. i love walking. it seems to help my pain in my body. but in india, walking means you're walking in a cloud of smoke - cars, trucks, rikshas - a cloud of sound - horns blaring everywhere from anyone to anyone and anything. there are no sidewalks in most places, and when they exist, no one really uses them. so, a five minute walk out from wherever you're staying turns into something you just don't wanna do. and that's before you even started your day!
although India is a place that values the right side of the brain quite a lot - hence the many computer programmers - i found the vast majority of people there unwilling - or unable - to understand that there are other ways of living your life - something i was quite surprised by, considering how this is one of the cornerstones of Hinduism. see, in the Caste system in India - which although outlawed a while back, still exists everywhere - foreigners are BELOW the lowest caste. and because most of us were educated somewhere else, with a completely different set of values and rules, we simply don't follow what they consider common sense. so, they think we're idiots. interestingly enough, we also think of them as idiots - most of the time, not always, of course - since they don't follow our values and rules. so, both sides seem to think they are the smarter one of the two ;)
there are many things that india makes you wonder. such as, how does a country of a billion people not figure out a trash removal system that's better than just burning it. or how to build roads that aren't awful. or how to put people in a bus terminal help desk that speak english (one of the official languages of india), or even know information about the buses - to that guy, i was nothing but a nuisance, someone that bothered him as he tried reading his paper - not a traveler that might need help (HELP desk, dude!). sigh.
so, after a month of this, and 7 places in one month, we landed in Gokarna. of course, we missed our stop off the train, since there's no way of knowing which station you're in/on, but that's another story. as we drove into the town of Gokarna, i looked around and thought: "ahm, yuck. this looks just like any indian town i've seen so far, which is to say, dirty, full to the brim with people, and loud".
luckily for us, we realized the town is for day excursions only, and the beaches are where it's at. now, i've never been a beach person. i never liked hanging out on the beach - never been my thing. but here.... the beaches are beautiful. the people were super nice. restaurants with vegi food everywhere, and toward the end of our stay there, we spent quite a lot of time with a nice group of israelis - which i enjoyed. we got to go hiking every few days, did yoga 5 days a week - first time and type of yoga i've been able to do since the accident, and i found myself actually relaxing - from the stress the past month in India has put me in.
we stayed on Kudle Beach, (pronounced kud-lee), drank Rama Temple water, had our favorite spots where we became the locals, and generally got to decompress. i <3 that place, and will forever.
our next stop after that was Thailand - something Sasha's been talking about since we started dating. but first,we had to stop over in Bangalore and get a 60 day Visa for Thailand, since the one given at arrival is only 30 days. we ended up couch surfing with some very nice people, and some.... not great people... the first time i've met anyone through couch surfing i didn't like. Bangalore was... well, if you read my description of indian cities on top, you get the idea. i was happy to get out of there.
and now, Bangkok. as always, it took us a couple of days to find our bearings, but once we did, we're enjoying it. it's MUCH cleaner, almost no honking, and although the taxi and riksha (here called Tuk Tuk) drivers are still "devilspawn", as sasha calls them, they are a minor inconvenience in our day. we wake up late, do yoga if we're lucky, have breakfast, take ferry rides to temples, hang out with Limbo. much better.
tonight we're taking an overnight train to an island called Koh Phangan - well, it's actually an overnight train to a place we can take the ferry from. i'm envisioning Koh Phangan to be kinda like Kudle Beach, and i'm wondering - is that wrong? is it wrong to want a fairly easy travel, or does travel have to be hard to count as travel?
to keep traveling like this - for the extended period of time that we are traveling for, i realize that i would HAVE to find these kinda places every once in a while. but, to go somewhere that isn't as nice and easy as what i imagine kho phangan to be, there needs to be a draw for me. something to excite me, and make me WANNA go there. right now, i don't know where that place is/will be.
We have been missing you guys a lot lately. Stay safe and try to have some fun.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you were considering it, but I recommend against Phuket. You'd get Indians aggressively trying to sell you stuff all over again. I don't think it's wrong to want to relax! Based on my travels in Thailand, it seems to me that almost everywhere is more relaxing than Bangkok (which isn't that bad either, besides the crazy drivers).
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to find "body comfortable" wherever you may be....nothing wrong with that. Love hearing your stories! :-)
ReplyDeleteNot all of Phuket is as some say it is. I know of a lovely wonderful pocket of a beach that is magical. I spent week there. Phuket is a large island that cannot be lumped into 1 generalization.
ReplyDelete