Part 2

Part two of my adventure series in Baku is up now. Enjoy: http://notayellowbus.blogspot.com/2010/03/womans-body-is-her-own-part-2.html

New Bus Blog

A Woman's Body is Her Own, Part 1
What happens when two philosophies collide over one woman's body.

Making World Peace

I think this is my best bus blog yet! It has a piece of my heart in it. :)

More bus blogs!

If you haven't checked out my new Not a Yellow Bus blog, you should do so now! I've been busy putting together a list of stories to share and progressively writing them up. As of now, I'm only publishing on Sundays but hopefully posts will be more frequent in the near future.

My latest post is about me, a mentally disabled man, a construction worker, and what it's like to be an American at large. If you like it, leave a comment and feel free to share your own bus/train/plane adventures!

If you wish to subscribe, please be aware that the RSS feed is broken at the moment. I'm working on a way to fix it but this may take a while, so come back each Sunday for a new post!

India Saved

As you probably remember, my time in India wasn't all that lovely. Or fun. But on my last day there, on my way from Amritsar to Delhi, I met the most lovely family on the train and they honestly saved me from hating India. They were so generous, kind, caring, inquisitive, and sincerely interested in me--not my wallet.

We had a wonderful time sitting around, sharing songs and laughing together. They sang me several of their traditional songs from their home village in Kerala and I sang them a traditional song from my home country too--Lean on Me. :) They told me stories and jokes and I shared with them my photos from some of my travels and throughout India. I will never forget them. Honestly, if it hadn't been for this one beautiful family who showed me the kindness of the Indian heart, I probably wouldn't return. But I want to and I will.

Here are a few videos to help experience the moment:

Hear that train whistle blow

The train ride from Ho Chi Mihn City to Hanoi was long (32 hours) but not nearly as long as the alternative: a 40+ hour bus. We were incredibly thankful that we took the train because the scenery was BEAUTIFUL.

Somewhere near Hue.

The only ugly part about riding the train was that people just throw their trash out the window and it remains right where it lands. Some of the most beautiful landscapes were just covered in litter.

We took the hard sleeper 6 berth compartment and opted for the top bunks for extra cash saving. Luckily, we had the whole compartment to ourselves (except for this old woman) on the second day. She was super sweet. She would share her bread and sugary peanut butter with us and we shared what little food we had with her: oreos. It was a fun day. She slept pretty much the whole way so J and I listened to music, took pictures, cuddled, and played cards. Fun, fun, fun!

The rural areas of of the central highlands were really nice too.

I didn't take too many photos of the locals on the train but I did snap off this one of this little guy and his father watching as the train went by. Super cute.

Later that afternoon, on the second day, our compartment filled up with a second old lady and her two daughters with their two whiny children. And they were really rude to us. Normal train protocol is that all beds are folded up and everyone sits on the bottom ones until it's time for bed. But these ladies felt the need to kick us out; they found someone who spoke some English to come tell us their children wanted to sleep and so we needed to leave the bottom beds. It wasn't even dinner time yet! But we were like, "Fine, we were okay with that," but it soon became clear that no naps were on the agenda and they just didn't want to sit with us. How were we to supposed to eat smooshed into the top bed? You can barely roll over up there! It was a big annoyance and a little rude of them. They even made our old-lady friend move to her middle bunk! She was OLD! Ugh. I had to keep reminding myself that these people were not like the rest of the people I've met in Vietnam and that they were an exception. So, Jeremy and I moved our sorry selves to another car and ate dinner in a seat.

Later that night, we crawled into our beds amid the whining and rapid text-messaging of the two inconsiderate women below us and their children. They wouldn't turn off the light, kept opening the door (often leaving it open and letting in cigarette smoke and noise from the tracks), and took no heed to lower their voices all night. But the most perplexing part: from where Jeremy laid in the bunk across from me, he could see the woman in the bottom bunk below me. And what he saw was disgusting. The woman down there had pulled up her shirt and bra over her breast and was letting the little boy who was sleeping with her play with her nipple! And she didn't seem to care that there was a man in the car or that he could she her! I was sooo shocked when Jeremy told me this in the morning. Vietnamese people are generally very modest! It was hard to believe.

The rest of our train adventures were pleasant though (in case you now have an apprehensions regarding the train in Vietnam). On our way to Lao Cai from Hanoi, the locals shared food with us, invited us to take their pictures, talked with us, and even offered Jeremy some of the local fire water!! (Read: crazy rice wine.) He refused and thus made himself look like a sissy amid the ecstatic laughter of the car's passengers. :)

Good times, good times.

A brief interlude

Bangkok is busy, seedy, crowded, but full of good food, and after getting our fill, we too headed out.

Khao San Road (Backpacker Street), Bangkok



Haven't got your Obama shirt yet? How cool is it that our president is pretty much an international rock star? I seriously passed this place a few hours before I took this photo and he had several more t-shirt designs that had sold out.

First post-Bangkok stop: Ko Pha Ngan, the Full Moon island. Known for it's outrageous parties over the last 20 or so years, Ko Pha Ngan is the "it" place of Southeast Asia. We were there a few days before the big festivities began but enjoyed ourselves none the less. In fact, I think coming in a few days before made it better because there were less drunk people to navigate around, things were far less crowded and bungalows were still available (and about 300 Baht cheaper).

He's got the greatest smile. :)

The beach was really nice and we spent quite a bit of time just sitting there doing nothing but reading books and sleeping. And the sunburns weren't too bad either. In the evenings, we'd fall asleep early or go out for a drink and watch the crazies jump through hoops of fire or do jump rope with a rope soaked in gasoline and lit on fire. Jeremy has been to the island before (about the same time last year) and did the jump rope thing back then; he wanted to do it again but after seeing a few guys get a flaming rope tossed on their back or the clothes catch on fire, I begged him not to. How that restaurant remained upright and not in a pile of smouldering embers remains a mystery...

We only stayed 3 days and then headed back to Bangkok on the train. That was a LONG journey. When we were about 80km from Bangkok, an accident occured on the tracks in front of us (perhaps a derailment?) which forced the train to sit on the tracks for 4 hours before they finally decided what to do with us. The solution was put everone on busses and take them to the train station in Bangkok. Of course it took a couple more hours to get the busses there after the decision was made (this is Asia, remember) and then another hour to fill them and decide where they were going, and then several more hours getting to Bangkok but avoiding the freeways. A nightmare. Our plan had been to get in early and catch the only train out to Pattaya to meet J's uncle but now we had to take a bus (which turned out to be a local bus and not a direct bus, so the ride to Pattaya became a 3.5 hour affair of stopping and going every 200 meters or so).

But we made it and have stayed two nights here in Pattaya with his uncle and his girlfriend. They are super nice and have treated us to luxuries we could only dream about: having a driver for the day, eating a three course meal, air conditioning, unlimited and FREE internet access. It's been good fun here. Yesterday, his uncle took us around Pattaya and showed us the tropical gardens (pretty cool) where we watched an elephant and Thai culture show, a large engraved Buddha in a hill side, and then took us downtown Pattaya last night to see the seedy side and get some pizza. (Pattaya is where Thailand's sex trade industry started back in the 70's when American GIs would come on leave from the war and look for some weekend lovin'.)

Jeremy walking on ants at the gardens.



I think this is the only photo I took within the gardens themselves, and it's not even of a plant. I should have taken more.



Cheeky elephant...



How cute are they? I LOVE elephants. Even though the show was a little like the circus, it seemed that all of their elephants were happy. And well fed. Holy cow! They get a lot of bananas from the tourists! I watched one elephant shove his trunk right into a sitting girl's lap and snatch up her ENTIRE bundle of bananas and swallow them in one gulp! She screamed but later laughed; it was too funny. :)

I can't say that Pattaya is a beautiful city or even has much to offer the casual tourist other than a few good restaurants, some fancy hotels and countless Thai girls willing to be your "girlfriend" for a price. Jeremy and I watched the whole thing with a curious disgust that lies somewhere between entertainment and a train wreck. I'll definitely write more on this later.

But for now, we're shipping out and heading to Ko Chang, another pristine island loaded with bamboo bungalows and hammocks in the palms. This place is significantly more low-key than Ko Pha Ngan, so much that J is calling it "Slow Chang." And it's a bit off the usual backpacker trail so maybe we'll get some cheap accomodation and a beach to ourselves. :) We'll be there for a week and then we're off to Cambodia! So if you don't hear from me for a while, just know that internet on the islands is expensive and hard to find and that we'll be in transit a lot over the next week. But good photos to surely follow. Happy Tuesday!

Mis-adventures...

...in kissing.
The other day Jeremy thought it would really funny to kiss and bite a gummy in half during the act. Well, it was pretty entertaining until my lip got in the way and I was left with a mouth full of blood. Ooops. Don't try this one at home, kids. After a few days it returned to normal color and the cut healed up but ouch! Jeremy's still a little sensitive when I tease him about it. :)

...in train travel.
Last night we took a train from Goreme to...? (can't remember where we are...) and curiously found ourselves surrounded by policemen (maybe 6 in total?) sometime around 5 AM with GIANT assault rifles and machine guns. Turns out they were transporting a prisoner who just happened to be sitting behind my seat. Oh joy! lol. At one point, the leader of the armed guard walked up the carriage and started yelling at one of his men for holding his loaded gun between his legs.

...in befriending the locals.
One day, while walking to lunch in Bishkek, Jeremy and I came across a rather foul looking old lady knitting on a chair just outside the entrance to a bank. Jeremy, being a little smart, waved and grinned like the Cheshire cat. The lady, in return, snarled, glared and shook her head in silent disapproval. That was more than enough to send us into heaves of laughter--almost to the ground!--and as I looked back, the old woman was mouthing foul things at us in Russian. Oh, those post Soviets... Gotta love them.

...in LOIs.
That means "letters of invitation." We're trying pretty hard to get letters of invitation so that we can visit Uzbekistan but have been met with road block after road block. Apparently the latest mishap is a mistake in the transfer of funds?? They want more money?? Argh. Annoying. Really.

...in using the Lonely Planet guide.
Let me just put it on record that the 2007 edition of Lonely Planet Turkey is crap. Let me explain. First, the authors do little more than advise you to take taxis and join tour groups when it comes to getting around. Second, none of the prices listed are accurate. Third, on more than one occasion, we've found the maps to be inaccurate--as in incorrectly named streets, incorrectly named sites, misleading distance keys, and mis-labled bus stations. Fourth, the book is pretty thin on descriptions of the sites and the authors actually suggest visiting certain towns "for their unique boutique hotels." Um, yeah, right. Last night we got off in Kayseri at the bus station and according to Lonely Planet, only had to walk a measly 400 meters to the train station. Not so. Instead, we got off at the NEW bus station (which the book makes no reference of) and the old bus station doesn't exist anymore. Turns out we were 4 km's from the train station and completely unsure if we were even walking in the right direction because our compass didn't match the street we were on (turns out the map had the street incorrectly named and we were going in the right direction after all). But it all worked out. We found some very nice people at a super market--a young woman about my age and her mother--who called their father and asked him to drive us to the train station. They were sooo sweet. The mother kept asking us (maybe 20 times or so) if we would come to her house so she could make us dinner but unfortunately we had to catch our train and had to decline. Boo. But the good news is that we made it and made some nice friends along the way. Love the Turks. :) Oh, and complaint number five: the book fails to list true budget options. Everything it lists for the city we're in is over $20 but we found a place today for $10 that wasn't listed in the book and just happens to be closer to the transport stations. Argh. Stupid book.

The Plan, Stan.

Hey all! I'm here in Kyrgyzstan and had a very safe and quiet flight. Thanks for all your pleasant thoughts. :) My first night was spent in a yurt or gur (a collapsible nomad house made of wool and sticks) as there were no rooms at the inn. It was pretty cool... For about the first 6 hours. Then I was woken up by the train--or should I say train-S. And after that, there were the dog fights. And in the morning (6 am) the gardener scraping his metal dustpan across the sidewalk. And later that morning, I discovered the flea bites. LOTS and LOTS of flea bites. Ick. I feel for all dogs everywhere today. Amazing that I did not get a single flea bite in India but take me to a 3 star hotel in Bishkek and I get about 50. *sigh*

I waited all day for Jeremy yesterday but he arrived around 5 pm after a long night of Kebab revenge (food poisoning) and a 4 hour bus ride. Then he had about a 6 km walk to the hotel with a 30kg bag on his back. Poor guy! He was exhausted when he arrived but it was a really nice reunion. From there, we stayed up all night sharing photos and stories about my time in India and Pakistan and his adventures in Kazakhstan. Good times all around.

Today we've been out and about exploring Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. First stop: a really cool sidewalk gallery of some French photographers work. The display included 100 photos of life from the air covering every topic from India rug markets to garbage cities in Mexico. Loved it. Second stop: an art market with hundreds of pieces painted by local artists. Most of it was Kyrgyz mountain scenery but also the typical majestic horse in the wind kind of stuff too. :) Third stop: the State History Museum. Some pretty interesting stuff. Mostly branze painted plaster monuments of Communist themes and LOTS of letters penned by Lenin. The only bad part was that everything was in Russian and the only place I saw anything in English was a couple news clippings on display. The best part though was the gallery on Kyrgyz nomadic life. I must say, their art work, weavings, tools, and lifestyle really reminded me of the Native Americans. It's cool to think that this lifstyle still exists out there on the steppe... Fourth stop: lunch! Some really good mutton on a stick, a nice wheat noodle soup in a bell pepper and tomato broth, and some interesting dumplings not too different from China's gyoza and Korea's mandu. Fifth stop: the Russian Orthodox church. We wondered in just before service started which gave us a really nice opportunity to hear the traditional songs and prayers as well as witness many worshippers lighting candles. The inconography was beautiful as well as the numerous paintings form the life of Jesus. Sixth stop: the internet cafe. :) Next stop: check out another guest house where we can leave our bags and head out for some trekking. This may be where we go tomorrow night as they've got a really cheap dormitory and free luggage storage (plus cheap meals!).

I will keep you all up to date as we get moving here. Right now we're just feeling out the city, spotting the tourism offices, looking for some hiking stuff (for me), seeing what gear we can rent, and making plans about where we're going and how we're going to get there. But things look good! There's a lot to see here! Some really beautiful mountain lakes, glaciers, snow capped peaks, old Russian sanatoriums with natural hot springs, and some pretty cool horse back riding. Appearently it only costs about $300 to buy a horse here... And Jeremy is considering heli-skiing. I'm certainly not good enough to justify the expense (or the steep descent) but have vowed to wait at the bottom with a hot cup of hot chocolate when he gets down. But we'll see. Kyrgyzstan is an outdoor wonderland.

Hope you are all doing well! Thanks for keeping up with this journey of mine. I really didn't expect things to go this way but I'm really glad they did. :)