But I'm trying people! So here, after only a month, I will update y'all. We are right now on a train from Saigon to nha trang, Vietnam (lies, I started this on the train, then let 8 days go by and am finishing it on the bus to Hanoi) Which means I have two (three) countries to fill you in on.
To start, we had a lovely time in Hyderabad. We stayed with Tara's host family from 2007; Sikander, his wife Fatima, their 8 year old son Ruzbihan, Fatima's brother Sabir, and their mom. It was lots of fun to be living with a family. We spent about two weeks with them and were totally wrapped into the family. We went to several wedding functions, a birthday party, and just daily life. I loved it. Indian hospitality involves LOTS of food so my waistline wasn't so lucky, Indian food is heavy stuff, but no worries it was totally worth the wonderful people I got to meet and hang out with.
Then we had another nice exciting Harry Potter ish bus ride to Pune. I felt like we were doing something sketchy when our tuk tuk drive took us to buy bus tickets from a vender set up on the sidewalk. But it was ligit and everything went smoothly (not literally it was another hairy bus ride) until we got off in Pune. First of all, both buses we took in India just sort of stopped and told us to get off, with out a station or real bus stop. So we got of and walked back down the shoulder of the road to the back side of the train station where we spent half an hour trying to explain to our friend's driver (who was picking us up) where we were. To make it better, it was in the half an hour that Tara's stomach bug started. So here we are at 10 in the morning, me on the phone trying to understand what the station man was telling me and Tara is doubled over behind the tuk tuks losing her breakfast. We found the driver, he was very apologetic, and went to Marie Helen (a french woman who is living in Pune who was part if Tara's yoga certification and was nice enough to let us stay with her) where Tara slept and processed her stomach flu and I chilled out for the day. That night we meet the three other Indian women from the yoga certification who also lived in Pune. That was when the stomach flu hit me and I had a rather restless night. We went to see some carved caves the next day, which I can't tell you much about because I was a bit miserable. Then meet up with nirvana and went to a movie (the silver linings playbook, which I loved. Jennifer Lawrence totally deserved that Oscar) We flew out of Mumbai at 6 am so we took a taxi from Pune the next night at about 11 pm. Mumbai is the only airport I have ever been to that getting there at 2 am for a 6 am flight is a good idea. There were literally crowds of people outside and lines for everything. Bizarre.
And so we flew from Mumbai to Bangkok! Got off after a quick flight in a new country, with a new language, atmosphere, culture, attitude, and standards. After our all nighter at the airport we were real party animals and went to bed at 18:something. We did explore, buy bus tickets (sort of accidentally, plans are very very lose things in Asia) and ate amazing papaya salad.
Enter Mr. James Bahensky. Who we picked up from the airport at 11 pm and had the audacity to be up at like 6 am the next day. Damn jet lag. An off we went to sight see in Bangkok (with the help of Thai street coffee. Which is like liquid happiness in a cup. We will ignore what's in it and just say it is rather amazing iced coffee.)
What there is to see in Bangkok:
*the largest reclining Buddha, it was huge. I mean you expect it with the whole worlds largest but then you actually walk in. It was gigantic. All gold (colored) and its feet were black with mother of pearl inlay. Super pretty.
* the emerald Buddha, which is actually jade, was way smaller than I thought it would be, so that counter balanced the giant reclining one, was a seated Buddha on a giant gold alter.
*the complex around the emerald Buddha was amazing. Full of beautifully decorated buildings, temples, statues, and all that jazz. Thailand has totally redefined ornate for me.
*the queens textile museum was very cool actually! The present queen created her look to be "classic Thai style" but because of all the occupations there wasn't a traditional dress, so she created one from the old pictures and descriptions. They were very beautiful. Then we learned about silk and her project to make villagers have an income through weaving fabric. Quite interesting.
*the grand palace: was big and pretty but we could only walk along the outside so not much I can tell you.
Then we went to the train station to catch the bus that we had booked (leaving at 7:30) to then catch a ferry to koh phangan. I am really getting good at the whole crossing your fingers and going sith the flow hoping it will work out how you want. We rode the bus all night (a semi sleeper so it was, you know, cozy) and arrived at what looked like a rest stop at 5 something am. Where we were given a sticker that had a boat on it and told to wait a while. So we did. After about an hour another bus came a picked us up, from what turned out to be an old dock, and drove us an hour to the real dock where we got on the ferry. Which we stayed on for 3 and a half hours... And after a mere 19 hours in transit (sorry James that was totally my bad) we arrives to our bungalow! And finally ate real food.
Then we spent a week on koh phangan. Which was lovely. We took a tour of the island (because it included snorkeling but it was rather stormy so we just looked at some cloudy water), I went diving (thanks dad!), we relaxed in the sun, walked all over the little town, and did what ever we felt like. Beside the cold that I still had from Mumbai it was awesome. And I finally got to meet James, bonus.
We went back to Bangkok a few days before James left and wandered around shopping, eating, hanging out, and packing James up (he was lovely enough to bring two suitcases to take home some of Tara's and my stuff. I am in debt to that man.)
Thailand has some amazing food. We tried to eat at different places often and sample many thing. On koh phangan we found a food market that was wonderfully fun. Tons of stalls selling everything from pad Thai to sushi to mangos and sticky rice. We spent several dinners there wandering around sampling things. Pad Thai is amazing and slightly different everywhere you order it. I love papaya salad, it is spicy and crunchy, made out of green Papaya, lime, chillies, bean sprouts, tomatoes, and peanuts. I already mentioned street coffee, it's made from instant coffee mixed with sweeten condensed milk poured over a ton of ice and topped with milk. They are basically sweet iced lattes for under a dollar. Street venders line the street of Bangkok selling everything including tons of fruit. You can get fresh squeezed juice (orange, mango, pineapple, papaya, pomegranate) in little bottles or bags of fresh fruit.
Tara and I were nice and packed James into a cab heading to the airport for his 7 am flight so we could run, the other way, to the train station to catch the 5:50 am train to Cambodia. It took all day but the trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap was remarkable easy. A 6 hr train, a tuk tuk ride, a very long immigration line, a bus, a taxi, another tuk tuk and we were at a hotel. That sounds way harder than it actually was, believe me.
So Cambodia:
*Is the southern country between Thailand and Vietnam (just FYI because I honestly didn't know before now. Geography, never been my strong suit.)
*It uses US dollars as the main currency (Cambodian Riel is the official currency but they expect and give prices in dollars) I had to use dollars! I hardly knew what to do.
*Siem Reap is the city right by all the temples, it is very tourist oriented. Very very touristy, with people selling cheep things at markets, handicaps trying to sell you books to feed their family, pub street (a street full of all kinds of restaurants. Which all served 50 cent draft beer. No complaints from me!) and guesthouse or bike rentals every other building. It was almost weird.
*They do $3 pedicures on the street. I finally had pretty toes! (Until I hit Tara's parked bike and broke my big toenail, then later a concrete parking stop and tore the top part right off (same toe) I swear I'm not usually that bad of a biker. I blame the bike, and the sandals)
*Ancient Angkor: all of the ruins are in some way being restored (not sure how I feel about that. All conflicted about it) and some have been amazingly pieces back together. We biked around to all the temples over three days (an estimated total of 120 km) and saw so many amazing ruins! It was great fun and swelteringly hot. Here are a few highlight stops we made:
-Angkor Wat is the worlds largest religious monument with bas-relief of Hindu mythology all around the outer galleries. It was once a temple and a city and was beautiful. We didn't have a guide so we made up our own story for the pictures. Lots of battles... We got about half way around before figuring out (from the helpful little go this way signs) that we were going around it the wrong way. So our stories weren't just wrong (carvings are hard to interpret with no background) but also backwards! We attempted to watch sunrise here but the clouds thwarted that and we just ended up starting our exploring really early.
-Angkor Thom actually was a city! One of the largest Khmer cities ever built, 9 sq km in area (can you tell I'm reading a book about this while writing?) There were impressive gates and statues at the entrance and then the Bayon. The Bayon has a ton of "face towers", towers that are carved with faces usual facing in the four cardinal directions. I don't know much about it but it was fun to wander around and the faces were very cool. I also tore my toenail on Tara's bike when I went crashing into it because of back brakes and a bike seat that turned. Sigh, they were freshly painted too!
-Preah Khan according to this book was a Buddhist university and city. I liked it because when we got there there were very few people so we just wandered around, climbing over rubble and exploring. It is not very restored right now (funny thing, it's the temple that America is doing to reconstruction on) but I liked it that way, ruins are fun to explore through.
-Ta Prohm was awesome! It is known as the tomb raider temple because a screen from tomb raider was filmed here. It is the perfect jungle ruin with strangler fig and silk-cotton trees growing with their roots wrapped around, under, over, and through the stone. Minus the million tourists (temples take a good imagination) it felt like a lost world.
-Banteay Srey is a beautiful little temple that is made out of pink sandstone and every inch of it is carved with amazingly delicate and detailed carvings. Totally different from the other temples with much more delicacy instead of imposing hugeness. It is about 20 km away from the other temples but totally worth the bike ride.
We ended up with four days in Cambodia (because of bad counting on my part, seriously don't trust me with timing!) We spent the first day exploring Siem Reap then went to Angkor Wat for sunset, the second day biking the mini circuit, the third day we biked all the way to Banteay Sreyn then found a swimming pool for the afternoon, and the last day we did half of the grand circuit then hung out at on restaurant patio planning the rest of our trip. The food was good and cheep ish, the beer was really cheep, and getting to bike was wonderful. It was a rather lovely four days.
The next morning of the 17th we caught our flight to Vietnam (flying because of visa issues.) and landed in Ho Chi Min (Saigon) around noon, took a rather expensive cab ride to the train station, and jumped on the train that was leaving to go north right then. For once we had good timing! So we are now in Vietnam and because this is too long already I will post about that soon. I promise.
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