Vijay and Shefali's TAtW » Vijay

The New Delhi

Vijay — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 12:24:13 +0000

I got booted out of my hotel at 7AM on the 23rd. That’s the most eventful thing that’s happened (to me). I wasn’t the only one, but I probably fared better than many. I’m lucky to have people on the ground here, a lot of others now belong to a changed city and a shifting fate. Delhi is a mere whisper of a former shout. A silent twin you never thought you’d meet. A ghost town of 19 million people. The weather is beautiful. The silence is arresting. I didn’t grow up here, I didn’t really get used to the constant din of hawkers and beggars, of uncles chatting and relaxing as chaiwallas bring snacks in, of taxis and tuk tuks and mopeds and big trucks all loudly, incessantly vying for dominance, laying on the horn to the point of proud obsolescence while driving on the wrong side of the road. So I’m sure for the real Delhiites it’s the silence that speaks the loudest. It’s a warning call. India is a tinderbox and the match has been lit.

So right, got booted, need to find a place to go. I was staying with relatives, but I’ve been traveling and there’s a worldwide pandemic out there, not sure if you’d heard. They aren’t comfortable with me staying with them right now and tell me they’ve organized a test. For nCOVID-19. I’m a little shocked. I’m a little interested. I’m a little ambivalent and I’m sure it showed. I’m still not sure how I feel. Tests are in short supply, and should be saved for those who actually need them. Obviously. On the other hand – and at the time this happened – it was made very clear to me that nobody wanted me near them, no matter how much I paid them, no matter how well I knew them. That’s completely fair and everyone’s prerogative of course. I harbor no ill will. But still, I needed a place to stay and a clean bill of health seemed like the only way I could convince someone to take my money (or let me eat, sleep and drink theirs). I walked along, bags in tow, to the hospital where the test would be done. The same hospital where they politely informed me they didn’t have any tests. I turned around and walked back even further (not so far in retrospect, about 4km or so; don’t ask me what the hell that is in American) and to be honest I am surprised I had any possessions to my name at all when I finally found the place I would be hiding out. I eventually did give a sample to be tested, and have never felt more exposed to contagion in all my life. Future descriptions to come but for now please understand that their “isolation ward” was basically just a sign on a door. They told me I could expect results the next day. That was five days ago. A family friend runs a school that is out of use, so I’ve been holed up here in an old staff member’s room, kind of a self quarantine. It’s a cozy, spartan affair. That is to say, the bed is too small, I can’t drink the water and the curtains are needlessly erotic (carefully cropped pictures to come) but more than that it’s a roof and a couple meals. And it’s better than any alternative. And I am grateful. Seriously, there are definitely people who are out on the street right now because no hotel will take them, so I will be careful to point out explicitly that none of what has been written or that which follows is a complaint. Some staff members live here, they’ve been taking great care of me. The chai is of course legendary and the paneer tikka masala is the best I have ever had in my life, bar none. Sorry Mom. I wake up early around 0700 IST whether I want to or not, and most of the day lately is trying not to get down. I try and keep up with people at home, but with a 9.5 hour time difference it’s basically whenever they start their day (around 5PM here) and a quick message right before I sleep. I brought a bunch of Hindi lessons, I stick with them and try to crush the Duolingo leaderboards with little success (apparently I’m not the only one capitalizing on a lockdown). Some classrooms are open – or can be easily opened – and I go into them to study. I survey my fiefdom from the door, imagining the scholastic possibilities and the ideas we will share. I raise my hand dutifully from my desk for the teacher to check my work. I stand at the board, point and underline, gesticulating wildly as I elucidate the finer points of writing and speaking in a language I can barely read. Sometimes the tip snaps off the chalk as I am at the board and I curse, softly and under my breath so as not to set a poor example for my pupils. I walk the grounds a lot in the day and explore the darker rooms on the upper floors at night because it’s creepier that way. I feel myself getting lethargic and isolated. I’ve started pooping less, I’ve no idea why. It’s tempting to give up and collect bedsores. When I laugh at something now, I really laugh, if only to hear something besides the fans or the wind. I’ve been rationing my clothes since I don’t have access to laundry and don’t know how long I’ll be here. I’m down to my last pair of socks and underwear. The lucky ones I wore for 3 days in a row but eventually had to retire. I’ve amazingly kept away from the snacks I plan on bringing home for people. Secretly I hope they will fear nCOVID-19 enough that I get to hoard them but never actually eat them, because where the hell else am I going to get another bag of tikka masala flavored tortilla chips? I drink water like a motherfucker. I think about writing, or maybe I write about thinking, or maybe I dreamed both of those, even all of those things and just woke up now. I can’t tell if it’s been twelve hours or five days, even though by now I’m doing the math and I know it’s been five days. Six days. Today is the sixth day. I slept in. It’s 0720.

Just one more day.

It’s got to be just one more day.

Beer Pilgrimage to Abashiri

Vijay — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 19:53:00 +0000

Japan has some fantastic locally produced beer. It makes sense that good beer would come from the Japanese – a healthy respect for craftsmanship and a passion for making simple things the best they can be are both strong traits of the cultural identity. There’s a place I read about that has some really unique beers. I mean, way beyond the spirulina algae beer of Myanmar. More on this later. It’s in Abashiri, which is in the northeastern most region of Hokkaido, which itself is a prefecture on the northeastern most island of Japan. It’s a small fishing town with little else going on. Well, that’s not entirely true. I was talking with a Japanese craft beer nerd (he was both Japanese and enjoyed craft beer) at a bar in Osaka and he was like “Why are you going to Abashiri? The only thing there is the prison.” To be fair he hadn’t heard of the brewery. So yeah, it’s only really known for an especially brutal prison and some especially delicious seafood. We had arrived in Sapporo early yesterday morning around 6 AM after the grueling 17-hour ride from Hiroshima, and the journey out to this brewery wasn’t going to be quick. But we need to get our money’s worth out of these rail passes, and when’s the next time we’re going to be in Japan? For that matter, where the hell do we have to even be for the next three months? We set the alarm, hit the sack early (which was understandably easy) and were up at 6 again to catch the 5-hour train to Abashiri. Obviously sitting on your ass for 5 hours straight isn’t the hard part, though this is skill each of us honed independently back when we were long distance. And in spite of the snow there was some fantastic scenery most of the ride up. We were getting excited to try these strange concoctions and experience something else new. When we finally arrived, it became clear: this beer wasn’t going to be bought. It would have to be earned. The brewery was only a ten-minute walk from the train station, but you would think it was an epic trek across an arctic tundra. I know, you guys had a rough winter this year. But this place was just powder on snow on slush on ice – no part of the street or sidewalk was even visible. Snowdrifts as tall as people. And winds whipping it constantly – I could never tell if it was still snowing or just moving fluff around. We arrived at the door and a sign greeted us in Japanese. It said a bunch of things (I assume) but what stood out was that the place was closed till 4PM… maybe. The only train back to Sapporo was a little after 5PM, so this might be cutting it close. But, fresh off another failed pursuit of elusive and hidden effervescent nectar we weren’t going to let anything stop us. We had to stick around to see how this would play out. That is far easier said than done when you’re wandering around in a blizzard and ill-equipped to even communicate basic needs of food and shelter. But yet I know 26 different ways to order a beer. We got along okay though, ducking in for cover whenever we could. We grabbed some lunch (prawn, katsu and totally amaze-balls mystery sauce for me; an impromptu salad made especially for shefali since vegetarian here means “I eat shrimp, fish and pork broth.”) and went to a bakery for some ridiculous creamy eclairs. That’s another thing – most of Japan’s milk comes from this region. I don’t know if it squirts out as soft-serve in this weather or what but the milk and cream based stuff here is so good. Just so damn good. The lady there was sweet, we told her we were going to the brewery and she told us her thoughts on the beer. About two hours later, when the place finally opened, we sat down to down 6 beers in about an hour. This doesn’t sound like much, I know, but let’s talk about the beer:

So this place is kind of gimmicky – they have these bright multi-colored beers. The color’s kind of a gimmick, I guess, but they’re strangely-colored because they’re made with strange ingredients. And they all sucked. Every last one of them was just terrible, even in reference to each other. When have you ever experienced that? Not being able to discern which of something was the least worst? They violated the olfactory system and viscera in very profound ways, I just can’t accurately express how awful they all were from nose to hose. Some smelled good from the bottle, but once in the glass they had a noticeable septic quality. So it didn’t smell like shit, but you know when you poop and there’s the poopy smell but then the poop goes underwater, like completely submerged, but still smells strongly of poop? That’s exactly what they smelled like. Inexplicably, we sampled these with vigor, even experimenting with mixing them and trying to get just the aftertaste by holding our noses first (both terrible ideas). This jives with what the bakery lady told us (I said she told us her thoughts – I never said what these thoughts were. Her thoughts were “I don’t like it.”) and literally everything I read on the internet. Is there a capital I on that yet or what? All told they had beer made from green tea, cherry blossoms, lotus root, sweet potato and even an inexplicably blue one made from glacier water. There’s also one made with milk, and thank Dijkstra that wasn’t available or we’d have splattered the whole damn place with a volcanic release of foaming, curdled technicolor.

So it was a swing and a miss, and a sad, humiliating one at that, like a fat kid striking out in kickball because he split his pants. But was it a total loss? That’s debatable. I came away with a few things:

Shefali is tough. She pushed through the snow like she was part husky, and that’s probably not the kind of compliment a beautiful young woman wants but here we are. When we were walking back to the station it was actually worse than when we had arrived. The wind blew crystals of snow and ice into your face so hard it hurt. Several inches of fresh powder had piled up in the short time we were inside the brewery, and yet Shefali was characteristically unstoppable in her resolve to move forward to our next goal (especially since this next goal was our only shot of leaving this forsaken subarctic hell hole). I really admire the hell out of her for that. I also really appreciate her coming on this fools errand with me and not once turning to sarcasm or derision, no matter how justified it would have been. Except on the train ride back she said “thanks for finding this place for us.” Which you’d think would just HAVE to be sarcasm, but it didn’t sound that way. So there you go.
You do things because you just have to. Everyone said these beers sucked, and the ten-hour train ride round trip and inclement weather should have been understood as the deterrents they were and not seen as challenges to overcome. And yet, I don’t know. I still had to try. I just wanted so badly to believe.
Sometimes it’s about the journey. Sometimes it’s about the destination. Sometimes it’s about you being dicked around and kicked repeatedly in the crotch, figuratively or otherwise, for things you did wrong that you don’t even remember, but your number’s up and there’s interest due. This was one of those times.

All in all, I’m still counting this one as a win. I don’t know how to explain why.

[1] Sapporo, Abashiri and Otaru

Osaka, Japan

Vijay — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 06:49:44 +0000

We’re on the train from the airport into town now and still reeling off of Taiwan. Make no mistake, like most nerds I’ve wanted to experience Japan since I was a child, but as it stands Taiwan has cast a considerable shadow – to be completely honest I would have been fine ending the trip immediately. It was that great. Anyway on to Japan.

Osaka had me waiting to pass judgment. I just couldn’t get a beat on it. I think the fact that it’s Japan had me expecting monorails and future-retro pneumatic transport – not anachronistic ticket kiosks with physical keypads in the subways and vending machines lining every wall and sidewalk like they had just been invented. It’s a city with more grit than charm and a subtle sketchiness that leaves you a little on edge no matter where you go. For all its polish and smartly dressed inhabitants there is a palpable sense of danger walking around Dotonburi – especially (and somewhat ironically) in the well lit areas. We came prepared to enjoy as much of Japan as we could but things are really expensive here. Well, food that’s not from a convenience store is, anyway. In general, it’s cheaper to drink alcohol than it is to get a decent meal. It’s ingrained in the culture to drink heavily. Talking to expatriates here who’ve adapted, it’s a pressure valve. They work long hours, go out after work, get ripshit drunk and talk trash straight at the boss’s gaping maw. The next day, everything’s forgiven and nothing changes. This explains why everyone still uses flip phones. Japan has a great craft beer scene – one of the best we’ve found in our travels (still no match for home, of course) so we made sure to experience a little of that as well. We finished off at the ramen museum just outside of town. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. We even made our own custom cup o’ noodles that we have to eat in a month. Maybe it’ll be for date night before we leave.

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157643758699943/

Welcome to Taiwan

Vijay — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 15:24:54 +0000

Taipei was just as great the second time around. We stayed closer to the city center at a hostel near the main station. The guy who runs it (Chunky, who is far slimmer than his nickname would have you believe) had us feeling like old friends by the time we left. By now we’ve learned that the night markets are serious business here, and they probably sell things like clothes or electronics or whatever but you know that all gets tuned out when I see food. Chunky gave me the inside track on that as well, he walked a few of us to the local night market and he schooled me on the real Taiwanese delicacies. Then I schooled him on General Tso’s (alleged) Taiwanese origins. He hadn’t heard of it. Also of note was our first Michelin-starred restaurant experience. It was a dumpling place that was absolutely mobbed outside. I was expecting to break the bank but it only cost about $25 total for the both of us. Just another in the long list of reasons to love this place.
Taipei and Taiwan in general were so good to us, so welcoming to strangers it made us want to stay forever. Seriously, it’s been the first new place we’ve been on the trip that we’d actually want to live. On multiple occasions complete strangers (a waitress at a restaurant, a new family sitting next to us, american expatriates drunkenly waxing illicit long after the market booth in which their art is displayed has closed) have offered assistance and solicited questions via email. And every encounter ends the same way: “Welcome to Taiwan!” It’s like the national anthem – they love that someone new is here and appreciates their home. We eventually left for Japan but a little sooner than we had wanted to.

[1] Taipei Again
[2] Ruisui and Jiaoxi
[3] Hualien
[4] Kaohsiung
[5] Taipei

Ruisui and Jiaoxi, Taiwan

Vijay — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 11:22:21 +0000

We made it a point to hit some more hot springs to heal us of our need to travel. If there’s one thing Jiaoxi has, it’s more hot springs and more friendly Taiwanians. They’re everywhere here, this place had them literally right outside the train station as well as all around the town square. We even found a restaurant with them right at the outdoor seating. At this point you should be wondering if we found hot springs everywhere or friendly Taiwanese everywhere. In the end, we found both. Yes, our legs were under the table soaking in a literally half-boiling hot spring and I couldn’t handle it. I kept having to sit sideways with my legs out of the water just to get at my food. This was endlessly entertaining to the people sitting inside facing out the window at us. And yes, right next to us was a friendly Taiwanese couple with whom we struck up a conversation. They had a new baby that was adorable. Chubby cheeks and bundled up in a little striped beanie. The man (I think his name is spelled Gou?) was really kind and offered to show us around a bit. He heard that we had a love of food worldwide (and especially in Taiwan), and you know food is the great equalizer across all cultures. What stood out though is when he started just buying things for us, like a bag of smoked duck (a delicacy of Ruisui) or the first of two epic desserts (I muscled my money into the hands of the second purveyor of fine Taiwanadian sweets after witnessing the lightning quick speed with which Gou can treat you while completing a transaction. It’s like trying to beat my Dad to the check). To be fair, I don’t think he expected anything in return – I get the impression he just genuinely wanted share his culture and acquaint us with some new experiences. They weren’t the first people to start a cold war of perfect hospitality with us (sup Beljawns!) and hopefully they won’t be the last. Who knows, maybe it’ll be us that some other traveller is blogging about meeting some day. That’s one of the best things about this trip, and especially Taiwan, meeting people who are genuinely warm and friendly, who just want to share a piece of their world when they cross paths with someone visiting from far away. We ended by introducing them to the weird green beer (we suspect it was Vincent’s since it tasted very similar and, well, the whole green algae thing) hanging out next to the hot spring in the center square. The baby got cranky, or maybe crapped itself, so they had to go take care of it. It was great to meet them. What if we hadn’t talked to them? Or what if we had talked to them but stopped at exchanging generic pleasantries? It’s amazing the things you can learn and share just by talking to the person next to you. Last time I did that I made friends for life in Belgium! But maybe I’m just lucky. Like elsewhere in Taiwan, Ruisui and Jiaoxi were great to us. It’s hard to move on sometimes but you can’t really call it a trip around the world if you just pick one place and soak till your nipples are wrinkly. That’s a metaphor. Think about it.

Vijay

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157643309142795/

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Vijay — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 15:11:18 +0000

Kaohsiung is a small town the size of a large city. It was a lot of fun, the night markets here really stole the show. Some of the stuff (read: food) here I’ve never seen anywhere. Also, as further evidence of the inherent kindness of the Taiwanese, they have by far the fattest stray animals we’ve ever seen. You’ll see them waddling around the night markets, bellies dragging on the pavement. You know they ain’t goin’ hungry. We had some good walks all around the city – lots of free standing artwork and sculpture, we hiked a bit up a mountain and visited an animal shelter. Also, Shefali got mugged by a monkey. We made the classic mistake of having food on us while walking into monkey mountain – one of them started pursuing her so she gave up the goods. Kind of reminds me of how we met but I think in our case Shefali was the one doing the pursuing.

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157642724758935/

Remember Taiwan

Vijay — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 13:32:35 +0000

We came to Taipei to kill a little time while waiting for our Japan rail passes. We figured we could get in and out quickly without trying too hard or breaking the bank. We were dead wrong. We came for three days and stayed for two weeks. And left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have moved on. Seriously. Taiwan used to be under Japanese occupation so I suppose there’s some influence there. I’m not an expert on the subject but their urban planning is very well thought out, and their metro system is easily the most intuitive and efficient I’ve ever encountered. Sure beats waiting for fucking septa or mta to even approach a scheduled time. Anyway some say it’s what China would be like under democratic rule. I say it’s amazing nobody comes up with Taiwan being a major destination in SE Asia. The people are so warm and friendly, there’s such diversity of landscape and nature (nearly 300 mountains over 3000m, at least one of which is full of monkeys) and it’s surprisingly affordable for how developed it is. We were infatuated with it pretty quickly after getting off the train, It was love at first night. We started in Beitou which is just outside the Taipei city center. Beitou is known for its natural hot springs, and people here say Japan took control for that alone. Nothing beats a good hot soak – we learned that early on in Iceland and now we try and take advantage of it wherever possible. Our first night we kind of had to play it low key – everything was closed cause that’s just how they do Mondays here. We walked a bit to try and find some action, or at least a couple beers, but it was all so quiet. Just a few restaurants with beer taps rigged into what looked like old tahitian treat soda fountains. And then we passed one place, everything was in Chinese, but there was this diagram on the wall we knew we recognized. This block diagram with large vats of liquids and lines depicting order and flow. It took a few seconds for it all to click but it eventually dawned on us we were standing on the doorstep of a microbrewery. You have to understand – we’ve been drinking pretty steadily shit beer since before Myanmar. And we didn’t have a map or a plan or anything. To be just wandering around, and mere moments from giving up and drinking more crap beer at some sad and empty Thai restaurant… This place was an oasis. It was more than we would have asked for. It was greater than what we had dared to dream. And the best part? Well, honestly the best part was the owner Vincent. He’s a very witty conversationalist and told us about the place’s history (he used to make beer in Germany and shipped all the equipment to Taiwan to start something here). We told him where we were from and he lit up – he was also a telecommunications engineer and did some time in, of all places, Philadephia. It got a little too specific at that point, like this was all a mirage and we were standing outside Family Mart tripping off a bad egg salad sandwich. Anyway the (second) best part? Green beer. No, not that St. Patricks Day bullshit. This was the elusive spirulina algae beer we had searched for in vain all through Myanmar. It’s the healthiest kind of beer (in Chinese medicine spirulina is believed to have anti-aging properties), so we didn’t feel bad knocking back a few rounds. They had a few different varieties of beer and we celebrated their entire catalogue that night. We had to, we didn’t know if we would ever be back. I distinctly remember thinking, after we left, “did that really happen? was that place a ghost?” It just didn’t seem like we could be that lucky. The next day the weather was kind of crap, so you know what that means – time to hit the hot springs. We did it right and went to a swank hotel spring that had a few different pools with different healing properties. I think we burned like 4 hours there, it was great. If they served food there I’d have probably never left. I guess you could make noodles in the spring while you soak, but that’s just a Kramer situation no one should be a part of. After healing our outsides in the hot springs we decided to heal our insides with some cold suds. We broke our unwritten rule of never visiting a place twice and went back to Vincent’s to drink ourselves young. There were a few more people there this time, and after a little while Vincent started introducing us. After a little more time, we all started drinking together. Ever the gracious host, he shared a drink with us here and there, even dipping into his private scotch. Eventually, the place is long closed and we’re all still going strong. And every time we would toast he would say the same thing – “Remember Taiwan.” This became a recurring theme throughout our time with Vincent and indeed our tour. Well, this and one other expression which I’ll get to in another post. But it was endearing, that so many people we met here would express the same sentiment – to not overlook this tiny, friendly country that inexplicably never seems to get enough visitors. Also, it was a bit counterintuitive, as this was frequently uttered between shots of Taiwanese moonshine, and when you drink moonshine until 3 in the morning you’re lucky if you remember anything at all. We still talk about that experience and about Vincent a lot – it all set the tone for one of the most memorable destinations of our trip.

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157642619264614/

Macau and Hong Kong

Vijay — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 08:34:45 +0000

Two words: Francesinha. Macau is a former Portuguese colony and as such it has a very European feel. We stopped here and in Hong Kong only briefly – mostly cause the weather was crap when we arrived and projected to remain crap long after our intended departure. Macau is a huge gambling destination, I think it was in a James Bond film once. Yeah it was the first one with Daniel Craig and the second half of the move was just him dicking around playing poker. It was probably kind of a rip off if you pay for movies, but I don’t know anyone under 70 who does that anymore. But they do casinos they way we do in Vegas, like making an entire working model of a Venetian canal through the middle of a shopping mall inside a casino. I’d like to say I threw down a few hundo and beat the house but we all know I only spend obscene amounts of money on either fly kicks or things I can poop out afterward. Hong Kong was good, but super expensive – compared to all the other places we had been in SE Asia the case of acute sticker shock was especially pronounced. Also, this winter has been pretty cold (not sure if you guys noticed at home) and they just don’t have a solution for that here. It’s normally so comfortable in the winter here I guess they never thought they’d need heat. We left pretty quickly and figured we’d cop a few days somewhere cheaper and wait for our Japan rail passes. We settled on Taiwan, of which the only things I know is that 1) something obscene, like 90% of our semiconductor chips come out of Taiwan and 2) the inventor of General Tso’s chicken was possibly Taiwanese. We also met a real cool Taiwanese kid in Berlin, and he swears it’s great there. That’s good enough for me. So… on with the show!

Vijay

[1] Macau Pictures
[2] Hong Kong Pictures

Yangon Again

Vijay — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 08:36:16 +0000

We came with full intentions of going elsewhere for one more trip. But… Like I mentioned earlier, travel in Myanmar is hard – especially if you’re prone to motion sickness and a generally slothful person. I am at least two of those things. So we hung around in the big city (Yangon) for our last few days here. It was a lot of fun – partly as a respite from constant traveling and the limitations of rural touristing and also because we had skipped a few things in Yangon the first time around. We settled into a nice groove here, seeing the sights (mostly larger temples, markets and stupas) in the day and chowing into some cheap beer and satay at night. Also we ran into a friendly Australian named Alex during one of our swill and satay sessions. He’s an enormous economics nerd, and by that I mean he’s pursuing a graduate degree in economics and he’s physically enormous – when he stood up I thought it was actually two people standing foot to shoulder trying to sneak into an R-rated movie. Either way, it’s pretty easy to run into Australians while traveling and we eventually figured out we were staying at the same hotel, the Hyatt Regency in Yangon city center. No affiliation to the actual Hyatt Regency chain of hotels – that’s just how they do business here. And how did the magic green spirulina algae beer saga end? With empty glasses, and not in the good way. We searched high and low, and though we found clues and even ended up at the former brewery of it (the sign was still up, however faded), we had to throw in the towel on our way out. It just wasn’t meant to be. I guess you could say our fruitless search for green beer left us feeling a little blue. True story. We left in high spirits, grateful for the experience of going somewhere a little untouched and out of the way, for seeing a culture to which we may have never been exposed. That’s the biggest thing that stood out to me – how sincerely welcoming the people were. Irrespective of age or class, the single unifying thread was that we were always treated with warmth and friendly curiosity. It’s a far cry from the increasingly insular data-saturated west and a welcome change from feeling like walking dollar signs in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I’m not sure if we’ll ever make it back, but there’s ample reason to for sure. And we still have to find that mythical green beer…

[1] Yangon Angain
[2] Bagan
[3] Inle Lake Boat Trip
[4] Inle Lake
[5] Mandalay
[6] Night Train to Mandalay
[7] Yangon

Prepare to be Stupafied

Vijay — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 08:17:27 +0000

After Inle we came through Bagan. Bagan has stupas (small buddhist temples) everywhere. Seriously, there are over 3000 of them in this one tiny area. They’re in various states of upkeep but are generally safe and open for exploration, as long as you’re okay with someone trying to sell you artwork or black market currency exchange. Also, I’m pretty sure I got a snakebite or some shit our first night so that’s something to watch out for too. We rented electric bikes, which is like a motorcycle only far, far gayer, and tore off all around town trying to see the sights. About halfway through, the power assembly fell out of mine and started riding the chain. To be honest I barely noticed – if it weren’t for the sound and subtle vibration you couldn’t even tell – that’s how underpowered they are (and how rural and rocky the terrain is). Then Shefali got a flat. They were cool about it, we went back to the hotel and owners came and dropped off another bike. We got back on track and then my battery ran out. It definitely got us some snickers and funny looks, this big furry gorilla trying to ride a tiny banana yellow bike uphill on a dirt road. It was something out of Barnum and Bailey, and my knees were literally banging into the handlebars if I wasn’t careful with my seating. In hindsight, I could see how it would have been humorous to witness. So as usual, a friendly stranger came to our aid and called the rental place to come rescue us. I’m not sure what he said to them but I like to think it was the Burmese equivalent of “Brown hawk down!! We need an extraction! Bring samosas!!!” Sunset is an experience, people climb up and onto the facades of the stupas in order to get a great view of the sunset. I’m generally callous and irreverent, but even I could tell that was probably disrespectful to the people of Myanmar as Buddhists as well as the stupas as religious monuments. Also, it’s probably a dumb idea, I mean it’s not like these things have recently posted certificates of inspection or anything. Anyway I can’t say I blame them – as elsewhere in Myanmar, the sunsets here are smoldering and gorgeous, and the scattering of tiny monuments in every direction and far into the horizon is perhaps one of the more arresting sights one can hope to experience halfway around the world on a whim taking a wild stab at adventure. Still no green beer which at this point may as well be made of Unicorn sweat and I’m starting to think is an elaborate and targeted hoax by either Anonymous or the guys who invented crop circles. We eventually made way toward Yangon with hopes of seeing one more city, but not before another early-morning, nauseating, ear-popping ten-hour bus ride.

[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157642416443635/